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Chris Amirault

eGullet Society staff emeritus
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Everything posted by Chris Amirault

  1. I keep tinkering with this rub from the classic Behold My Butt! topic, and feel like it's solid enough to publish here. Basically, it's more tart than its predecessor: it includes a hefty dose of asafoetida and I've switched the zataar to sumac straight up. I think it's a great foil for pork in particular (I'm making St Louis ribs this weekend) but it works with chicken as well. Smoke improves it -- as it improves most everything. Mix: 40 g salt 40 g turbinado sugar 10 g powdered mustard (Coleman's) 8 g ancho chile* 8 g New Mexico chile* 10 g sumac 5 g asafoetida Grind: 10 g black pepper 5 g white pepper 5 g cinnamon stick 4 g allspice 4 g nutmeg 2 g anise seed 2 g cloves Combine.
  2. My wife and I have two kids, and we eat a sit-down dinner as a family every night (and sit down breakfasts & lunches every weekend). It's the primary social event of our day as a family, and we talk about just about everything, certainly including the food. I can't imagine life without it.
  3. Revisiting the schedule, I think I will be smoking early the morning of (along with some chicken wings) and can then finish on the grill. Still thinking through marinade, rubs, etc. Thanks for all the input. Question on slicing. How thick do people cut their tenderloin?
  4. You might want to fess up to your shellfishmonger and say that you're a novice. It's an imperfect science, but you can look for shells that have visible gaps at the joints, which tend to be easier to open. If you can't find the joint, you'll struggle.
  5. I made a batch of brandied cherries following the NYT recipe linked above (didn't stem or pit, though) and while many turned out great, just as many had brown, hard, wrinkly spots. This was true for another batch with bourbon. Were those oxidation spots that went bad? Or what? The best of the test batches was one made with applejack. They retained their color and texture almost completely and are delicious. The maraschino cherries were far more brown.
  6. Get a good oyster knife: thick, not sharp but pointed, comfy handle. Put the oyster curved side down on a towel folded four or five times, so that the joint is facing your knife hand. Fold the towel again over the top so that the oyster is encased in a towel in your non-knife hand. Hold it steady with that hand. At about an 45 degree angle from the horizon, place the tip of your knife into the joint and push in, wiggling back and forth across the flat of the blade a bit, until you're about 1/8" in. Then, confident you're in that joint, wiggle a bit more and put a bit more pressure. You want to feel the knife wedging between the two shell pieces instead of chipping away one or the other. When the knife is about 1/2" in, you should try to twist it. If you're in good shape, the twist will release the top shell from the bottom; you may have to push in a bit more or slide the blade away from the joint in one direction or another. The key is letting a bit of air into the oyster's little studio apartment, which will make it possible to slide the blade along the ceiling of the top shell. With luck and practice, you'll have an oyster sitting still attached to its bottom shell but free of the top. The rest is easy: run the blade along the floor of the bottom shell to detach the oyster from the shell. Flick out any bits of shell and pray that you have a little liquor left. As I'm no expert shucker, I also keep a bowl handy for screw ups; just dump the oyster into the bowl without worrying about shell fragments and later place the oyster in an extra shell, dribbling a bit of liquor over it while avoiding fragments. It's just like getting to Carnegie Hall, dude.
  7. Thanks, Dave -- those are all steal-worthy. I have never heard of the Wondrich trick and it's a good one. I'd already planned to stock up on Tivoli ice here at home, but I'll tweet up the town and see if I can find a Kold-Draft machine. Odds are low for reasons indicated above...! Katie, I'm quite sure that there's a server's bin -- but I would like tips for keeping that ice cold. At another restaurant event, I did an impromptu demo and, when I arrived at the ice, the handful I grabbed from the bin was dripping and the resulting drink was junk.
  8. I have this friend, Liam, who's something of a prankster, or slacktivist, or goof-ball. I'm not really sure. As it turns out, 140 years ago, one of his forebears also invented chicken salad. Here's the proof, from that authoritative food history source, wikipedia: You'll note the footnote here, the citation that proves that the claim about Mr. Liam Gray is indeed true. That links to the following Dekalb County Times-Journal article written by one Judy O'Daniel in July 2008: Sense a bit of circularity? Damned skippy: the article refers to the wikipedia entry, which cites the article, which.... You get the idea. Apparently, much of the rest of the internet does not. Ask.com, reference.com, instapedia.com, and a bunch more got punk'd. We've debunked a lot of myths around here, but this little anecdote makes me wonder if we've missed the forest for the trees. What other internet "food history" is ripe for the plucking?
  9. I lived on SM scotch, dark chocolate, and baguettes for two days on a cross-country train trip when I was in my early twenties. Those were the days.... I'm about to make this Stinger/Goodnight, Irene thing I've been playing with: 2 oz rye (Rittenhouse BIB) 1 oz Branca Menta 1/2 oz Licor 43 1 dash Fee's orange bitters Stir with cracked ice; strain into old fashioned glass with fresh cracked ice. Orange peel if you have it.
  10. Yeah, I'm afraid we've already debunked the smoke ring business over here.
  11. Most low-n-slow barbecue comes off quite a bit after 140F. Pulled pork, for example, comes off above 200F.
  12. [cough] Empty Bacardi bottle, full FdC bottle, funnel: problem solved. [/cough] How do people handle ice? I just secured an assistant who can do runs between the freezer and the bar; not sure if there's a freezer at the bar itself. I suppose I could try to find some dry ice, but I'd rather not screw with that.
  13. Not sure if you want to keep it unsalted, but adding a bit of heavily smoked salt to unsalted butter would do the trick.
  14. I think you're right on target, regarding both the "new" versions (that is, old versions) of commonly ruined drinks and the buyer's guide. One of my secret missions is to convince people never to buy Bacardi white again.
  15. That makes sense. Maybe he used warm ice.... Now that we've got a handle on the misses, what are the other hits? I'm out walking the dog for a bit but will try whatever's recommended here if I've got the ingredients. If not, I'll try a non-8:2:1 drink.
  16. Lots of good advice here. I'd add the following. Have a hook, a point, a reason not for writing but for having someone else read your writing. "Read how much I love food" isn't a hook; it's self-indulgence. In case you forget to have a hook, just contact an editor, who will immediately demand one and make you feel like a moron for lacking it. Think about structure. Most of the articles that I've written have had three or four distinct sections, and they keep me focused and on point. Know where you want your reader to go and go there. Have a voice. The world of food writing does not need yet another sappy, sentimental describer of local this or delectable that. Have opinions and state them -- but try not to turn into a UK food critic, please, for my sake. At the same time, be suspicious of simplistic moralism and manichean world views: they are tantalizingly easy perspectives to embrace and even easier to write. Little in the world of food is plainly good or evil. Right now, there are a lot of armchair ethicists who really like telling us what to eat and how to think. Please don't join them. Read outside your comfort zone. MFK Fisher has some really nasty pieces worth hunting down. David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” should be mandatory reading for all food writers, love it or hate it. Identify characteristics you like and don't like and think about your own writing in this regard. Give your stuff to other people and ask them specific questions about it. What is the point? What were strong sentences or paragraphs? What's weak? What could be cut? What else could be cut? No, really, what else can be cut? Finally, remember these words, attributed to Gene Fowler (though I swear Faulkner said it first):
  17. Negroni could be interesting to showcase different ratios: an equal parts Negroni (my go to) is a radically different drink than some others, especially ones that scale back the Campari.
  18. Alcuin, those sample drinks are among the ones I've used as initiation libations, especially the French Pearl, which takes care of at least three "I don't like drinks with X in them" protests (gin, Pernod, mint). It's also a great example of the alchemy of a good drink; when people first see lime, gin, mint, Pernod, and simple, they can't imagine it tasting like anything palatable, much less magical. I give you major props for including the Negroni, a drink near and dear to my heart. I'd be afraid of people running for the doors (and wasting some of my old recipe Campari in the process). Andy, I think I'm approaching stocking the bar the way that Robert Hess does: find a drink you like, get the ingredients, expand from there. It's what I did myself and the only economically feasible method for most people. I have a working list that I'll probably hand out, but I always stress it's idiosyncratic; people who don't love bitters don't need the number I do, and my scotch supply (one: Famous Grouse) is pathetic for most. As for their palate, my sense is that few of those in attendance will ever have had a well-made... anything. Certainly nothing classic, mainly riffs on a fruity, sweet X-tini with a vodka base. One of my rather brusque insistences is that the drink should incorporate the flavor of the spirit and not mask it, starting with, as you said, something gentle. I've found, however, that the sort of people who express interest in this aren't haters of a given spirit, and that they're game to give the real thing a try. I also agree that starting with basic flavors works; some people need to make their way to more complex flavors. When I did one session I had everyone taste several simple syrups (1:1 and 2:1 white, 2:1 demerara, 2:1 cane, 1:1 agave), and it was a great attention-getter. Everyone was amazed that "sweet" had different dimensions. It's sort of like your lemonade.
  19. My point exactly. There are too many counter-examples for it to make sense. However, that's just an opinion. No research out there?
  20. It's not just on eG Forums. There are examples throughout the internet -- none, AFAIK, with references to back the claims up. It's the ether of the 'cue set.
  21. Alcuin, your store buy-in truly is a victory, and hopefully the first of many. See if you can score a Wisconsin Beverage Journal, and then start pushing hard! How are you approaching the structure of your demo? Katie, don't get me thinking about that Liquid Lab.... My jaw dropped when I saw that place. I'll be working from a small 12-seat bar that sits astride a smallish (30 covers?) front of house, and I think I'll need to bring with me most of what I'll use. I've already drawn from your article, Janet's eGCI course on classic cocktails, and several other sources, and I'm pretty keen on the content I want to cover. I can't assume a series quite yet, so the first session will have to be a grabber, in the hopes of getting some longer-term commitments. That sounds like the "training wheels off" session I've been envisioning down the road. For now, I've been thinking about tastings of a given spirit with discussion, then making some sample drinks for them; after tasting each, they decide which to make and what to tweak (sweeter, more sour, stronger, additional ingredient).
  22. Why not just take a few jars, toss a bit of something into three or four samples, and then taste in a couple of days?
  23. Again, my lack of experience is leading me to hit the butchers I know and put myself in their hands. I'm used to checking marbling on the bias slice; what's the best approach dealing with a lengthy muscle?
  24. In a number of topics around here, the following has been declared as (1) an opinion, (2) an empirical datum, (3) a scientific fact, or (4) a shibboleth: Meats being smoked stop absorbing the compounds in smoke when they reach approximately 140F. I've become curious about this declaration. I've made double-smoked bacon: does the ability of protein to absorb smoke compounds return when they are cooled? I've sampled burnt pork that "survived" a literal smoker meltdown that tasted of burned plastic, an event that occurred when the meat was well over 140F: do some compounds continue to be absorbed while others don't? There are other questions that pop to mind. Do different proteins absorb at different rates? What about fats? Nuts? fruits? And who says, anyway? McGee has nothing to say about it that I can find, and everything else seems flimsy thus far. Does anyone have access to actual data on this question?
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