Chris Amirault

I just read Josh Ozersky's Hamburger: A History, a perfect airplane read. It's an opinionated overview of the development of the hamburger as a -- really, as the -- quintessential American food. Ozersky makes a very strong case for the bun, and not the burger, as the defining element.

When did "fast food" go from being a largely positive descriptor to a largely negative one?

Any reports on specific drink ingredients?

One week only? The entire middle of the country? Yikes! Unfortunately, "what meat Americans eat at home" and "best BBQ" are not typically the same thing. Will you have a car? I hope so: without a car, you're going to be stuck in major urban centers and unable to get out to the very sorts of places you'll regret missing. Your only hope would be to meander south in a car out of Chicago and choose either to head into Texas or veer east. I guess you could do both, but that's some serious miles in a short amount of time.

The drive-through is the cornerstone on which Wendy's is built. When all thought competing with McDonalds was impossible, Dave Thomas started Wendy's in 1971 and, by modernizing the drive-through window, had 500 restaurants in five years. Read more here.

By this definition, drive-through would not be fast food -- a bizarre omission that reveals the problem with taxonomies like this! ← Your drive-through point is one of semantics and nothing more. ← Dave Thomas would disagree.

I'm not asking about the 100 tortillas. However: More detail please. 350F oven? How long? Wrapped?

More info, please! What were the pickled vegetables?

Davicus, what's the spirit/agent ratio here? Having just parceled out everything into 50 ml/ 5 g containers, I'm wondering if part of the problem you describe has to do with too much booze and too little flavoring. As for the bittering question, I've only used gentian (well, and burnt toast, but that's another thing altogether) and have been very happy with the results. I'll let you know what I think of wormwood in a few weeks. Mind you, I'm still blown away whenever I get a whiff of something made by the folks at Violet Hour, PDT, or Teardrop Lounge; my stuff isn't there yet. However, I think that this tincture-based approach will give greater control over the balance and intensity. I guess we'll see....

Three quick gumbo thoughts brought on by another night of andouille, tasso, and chicken gumbo. First, tasso really adds a depth of flavor that I like a lot -- too much probably for shellfish but great with chicken. It's easy as pie to cure, too. Second, I'm convinced that a stainless steel saute pan is a better choice for the early stages (roux, trinity, initial stock addition) than the Le Creuset I've used for years. It has high enough sides for splatter reduction and I can control the heat much better, in particular. Third, I made an extra large batch of roux this afternoon with a mind toward putting some in the fridge, and, as I suspected, it was easier to negotiate a larger amount of roux than a smaller one. I didn't have to stir quite as frantically as I've had to with a smaller amount -- no edges to worry about burning. In addition, it darkened up in the pyrex bowl while I was waiting for it to cool down. I now have a good cup of extra roux on the fridge door.

Yes, the frittata items proved a happy family, but that's rarely the case. ETA: It was hardly everything in the fridge, either. I wish the leftovers totaled fewer than a dozen at any given moment!

Nice photos! For how long did you cure the saucisson sec?

By this definition, drive-through would not be fast food -- a bizarre omission that reveals the problem with taxonomies like this! I think that FF is a cultural category defined not by this or that criterion but by the attitudes people have about it. Portland food trucks, 1950s cap-hop service joints, New England clam shacks, diners... all have been called fast food at one time or another but today wouldn't necessarily fit the definition. I just read Josh Ozersky's Hamburger, which tells the story of the beef and the bun, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a clear definition of "fast food" in it. Did Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation even have one?

Thanks to the Week without Shopping Klatsch, I've been noticing the small amounts of leftovers I usually have in the fridge after meals and just as usually throw out. I'm finding that harder and harder to do, so I'm looking for dishes that use the stuff up instead. Pasta dishes have often been my go-to, but last night on a whim I noticed four grilled mushrooms and half a cup of grilled balsamic red onions from the night before, a cup of cooked spaghetti, an inch of pecorino romano, and a few Ts of roasted garlic and onion jam in the fridge: five containers with small amounts of stuff that would be headed for the pail most weeks. Last night, though, I decided to make a frittata with six really good eggs from the farmer's market. Diced and sauteed the mushrooms and onion, added the jam, beat the eggs... you get the idea. When my wife Andrea saw the finished frittata, she smiled and said, "That's great -- lunch all week." Well, that got me thinking about other possibilities. What do you make when you have some of this and that in the fridge and want to clean it out?

Thanks. The store at which I bought all this stuff had little signs about this and that, and unless it seemed dangerous I grabbed it. By the time I reached yohimbe, I had inhaled three-quarters of the several hundred items, so who knows what the yohimbe sign said.

I had the Don César acholado in Portland OR and have to say it was pretty good. The DC we can get around these parts isn't very memorable, though.

Since Chris Hennes asked (and I got all that stuff above), I have been trying to figure out what the hell a tincture is exactly. As far as I can tell, it's a higher-intensity infusion that is used as a flavoring element and not as a potable on its own. (If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me here.) So I set out to make some tinctures using an easy standard for each flavoring agent (usually 5g unless specified otherwise) and the spirit base (50 ml). The roots, herbs, and so on were kept whole unless they needed a bit of pounding in the mortar (and some were a real pita -- I mean you, red sage root). As for proof, Avery of Bittermens wrote this post about proof and extraction: I had a bottle of 80 proof vodka (Tito's on sale) and a bottle of 190 proof Everclear; a 1:1 mixture works out to 135 proof, well above 100 but not over 150, so that's what I used for most of the experiments. The following were standard measures of 50 ml 135 proof spirits and 5g of, um, stuff: agrimony allspice angelica bilberry birch bark black haw burdock calamus cascara sagrada chaste tree clove cubeb grains of paradise hawthorne hops licorice stick lovage myrrh pau d'arco prickly ash red sage root sarsparilla sassafrass wild cherry bark wormwood yohimbe Blessed thistle and hops required 100 ml of the 135 proof spirit. Since I was pretty well convinced I'd want to use these tinctures and wanted to fiddle with proof a bit, I made the costus root and pau d'arco with 151 proof Wray and Nephew rum. I also made four cinnamon tinctures at 80, 135, 151, and 190 each. Comments, suggestions, warnings if you've got 'em. Otherwise, I'm letting these sit two weeks and shaking them each day.

I think that Barsol is actually pretty good, and significantly better than Capel.

There's a handy summary of Society members' advice in this post.

I can't quite tell, but are you cutting the steak with, instead of against, the grain? With tougher grilled cuts like skirt and flank steaks, I think it's essential to slice it that way.

I was making Wondrich's Mississippi Punch (2 brandy, 1 dark Jamaican rum, 1/2 batavia arrack, 3/4 lemon, 1/2 rich simple) tonight, and I started wondering how pisco would sub into these sorts of brandy drinks. Has anyone fiddled around with that substitution -- recognizing that there's a big difference requiring serious modifications?

He asks again, what is this apprentice of which you speak ?

Can you share pix of it in its dismantled state so we have a sense of what you mean?

Perusing recent photos, I came to a realization about topping the meat. I admit to liking the crunch but preferring a more vinegary, no-mayo slaw. How about you? Mayonnaise-based slaw slathered on your butt: yes? no? And I should stop and get a couple of butts this afternoon, shouldn't I?

Like others, I'm finding this event has had a real effect on my thinking more intelligently about shopping in general. I just got back from a week in Portland OR, and I devoted a significant portion of my Saturday at the farmer's market. My choices were quite different than last time, when I got stuff that I didn't use or need. This time, save for a few gifts, I stuck to lunch (amazing wood-oven pizza), food I'd eat on the redeye back (a bagel from that same oven, some excellent Fuji apples, dried Italian prunes), some leaf lard that I need for a variety of uses but can't get around here, and an excellent boneless lamb shoulder I also can't get around here and that I'll turn into merguez sausage later this spring. I put back a bunch of impulse buys simply by asking, "You really gonna use that?" Meanwhile, I've been noticing that I get pissed at myself for creating leftovers that the family doesn't finish off, and as a result, for my first prepared meal back, I shopped in a way I hadn't ever before. I make a little seared scallop salad that is a nice, light meal, and I nearly always get a pound of scallops and too much greenery. Because they're so rich, however, we never finish all of the bivalves. I bought seven -- three each with one smaller one for testing -- which worked out to less than half a pound, and instead of a big bag of mesclun I got a small head of superior frisee and a bunch of parsley and used that. Cost less than usual, of course, and no leftovers.