Chris Amirault

Very helpful, Tom -- and welcome! I just wanted to note a bit of Charcuterie-related news. Having read the posts on the subject here, I made a tweaked version of the tasso in the book but increased the spice and pepper while decreasing the pink salt. It turned out great, and I just used it for the first time in a chicken, andouille, and tasso gumbo (click) that was excellent. I have five pounds, give or take, of saucisson sec hanging in the basement next to some lop yuk. I used the R&P recipe as a base but also added some cognac per Grigson. It seems to be settling in there just fine. I pulled the pancetta down after 14 and 21 days, respectively. The former lost 18-21%; the latter 24%. There's definitely greater intensity in the product that cured longer, but it's hard to say whether that's the only reason given the other variables. Specifically, the skin side of the belly -- or more accurately the side where Niman had removed the skin -- was squishier, less firm, on the younger batch. Anyone have any thoughts on this spongy belly issue?

Gumbo season has returned here. I made my best pot yet, with some chicken, tasso ham, and andouille sausage. We're having the same meal again tonight. I made the roux very dark this time -- Hershey-bar brown -- and it made the perfect base for the gumbo. I realized last night that I regularly add a T or so of flour throughout the early stages of roux stirring, and I have been wondering whether it might help with the quality of the roux somehow.

Damn. I had Pollan at Ag, Batali as SG, and Bourdain as Secretary of State: all losers. I'll bet that pretty soon I'll learn that Eric Schlosser isn't running the Department of Labor, and then I'm going to be out of the office pool.

Ever since I saw this photo in johnnyd's blog, I've been thinking about Maine mustard pickles. I just found some fantastic cukes so I'm going to be using the recipe Carrot Top references here. I'll report back in a few weeks. ETA: When I started preparing the recipe, I thought that the brine/cuke proportions were a bit off, and indeed they are. You can cut the recipe in half and easily cover three pounds of pickle cukes, probably up to four.

If you make me the perfect Aviation, then I leave feeling better and want to come back with friends. I've also enjoyed talking to you about how well you make drinks. If you make me -- and, more to the point, I pay for and spend a while talking with you about and drinking -- a crappy Aviation, then I leave feeling like I wasted my money and time and sat across from the person who wasted it. I'm not coming back.

Looking forward to many of the bugs as always! I'm going to be doing an Xmas brunch this year and have started thinking about a shrimp 'n' eggs scramble that replicates the clam 'n' eggs that Albert Asim makes at Bar Pinotxo in Barcelona. Asim uses very small, sweet clams, and I think that the Maine shrimp would be a fine local substitute.

Over in this topic I grappled with a very similar question. I ended up making these: That's Maine shrimp that have been gently blanched, with a "gremolata" of minced kaffir lime leaf, shallot, white pepper, and thai basil, a simple pickle made from long strings of cucumber, and some alaea salt on top for saline and contrast.

I work very, very hard to recreate the flavor of Rice-A-Roni's Noodle-Roni Noodles Romanoff, which my mother made when I was a child with a can of light tuna. Noodles Romanoff have been defunct for a decade or two, but I make Annie's shells all the time for my kids and throw in a can of light tuna drained of its water, along with garlic and onion powders, thyme, sage, and LOTS of black pepper. You can have my duck confit and my truffles. But you'll have to pull that bowl of modified Annie's shells out of my cold, dead hands.

Have you fiddled with it at all by adding seasoning?

Here up north, the idea of getting jarred roux is just foolish. There's the "can't get it" issue, but there's also the "why bother?" issue. Why in the world would you buy roux?

Has anyone tried the saucisson sec recipe? Abra wasn't too happy with it a while back, and I've been snooping through Grigson to see what tweaks I can make. I have some fresh Coleman shoulder that I think I'll use for 'em....

Good idea -- and I think someone ought to do a double-blind with the same meat, fat, and grind from the local favorite butcher, too. ET clarify in light of Chris H's post -- ca

Your experiments with Sam and my own experience since obtaining a first-class meat grinder confirm freshly ground superiority, with all the scientific rigor of a triple-blind sugar pill trial. Part of the reason I'm convinced is that you can season meat on the way into the grinder, ensuring much more consistent distribution without the overmixing that seasoning pre-ground beef demands. But we're talking about straight-up comparisons with cuts, grinds, and meat/fat ratios identical, right? Here's a question. Can you get to La Frieda and get a pound of their pre-ground beef and a pound in proper ratio of the beef cuts and fat they use for their beef? You'll also need to find out what grind they use for consistency. ET add the grind query -- ca

Went to Tini last night. After chatting with George and Johanne while walking around downtown in the afternoon, we we looking forward to the experience. We left feeling... eh. The space is, of course, tiny, with a U-shaped bar seating about 20 on stools. The front entrance has no wind block, and the base of the U is about ten feet or so from that door; on a nippy night, that means that half of the bar gets pretty cold every time someone enters or exits. Hard to carve square feet off the sidewalk or the bar itself, though, so I think they're stuck with it. The design is Euro-steel, and everything looks very new. I've never been to Italy, so I can't compare to anything there, but I kept wanting it to feel cozier, more like the pintxo bars in Barcelona, say. The drink menu made me think the same thing: it's the sort of food that would benefit from a good cocktail menu and some other quirks, like, say, homemade vermouth. No such luck -- though there is a good selection of wines, bottles and glasses both. The menu is displayed on a large TV screen, and it's a bit odd. We've always liked Al Forno because the flavors were very bold and those of us on a tight budget can split the big plates (at big prices). So adjusting to Tini's selection takes some doing. For example, one of the dishes we didn't get was a broccoli dish for (iirc) $5. The people on our right got it, and as far as we could tell it was a handful of florets that had been sauteed in olive oil with garlic and red pepper flakes. I'm sure that they were tasty, but it's hard to understand what that dish is doing on that menu. The things we did order were all good. The pork confit tacos were my favorite, with two good tortillas and moist, flavorful meat that needed a bit more salt and acid. (My wife Andrea thought that the lack of acid completely killed the dish.) We also had a Tini Weenie, their take on a NY system hot dog. Having had some pretty fantastic high-end hot dogs (including Blais's foie dog), I thought this was a real disappointment -- and, hard to believe, it was smaller than the real thing. It was fine, but we both wanted one of the dogs from the Chez Pascal cart, especially given the humdrum chowchow. The other two dishes we had were the button mushroom gnochetti in a standard-issue sherry sauce and a batch of shoestring fries. The latter was served with "hot" sauce and garlic mayo sprayed all throughout the fries themselves, as if the fries were a salad and the sauces dressing, with the obvious result being soggy fries. There are service kinks (the bartenders/servers are getting their bearings in the tight space) and a few missteps to correct (sauces on the side, better balance on the pork, etc.), but on the walk back to the car we talked about how surprised we were to lack a single memorable dish. No dirty steak, no clams and spicy sausages, no pizza margherita.... Wee servings require bold, interesting flavors, and none were in evidence last night. So, though everything was executed perfectly well, the visit was a disappointment.

I'm bumping this up as I've got a pound of fresh rice noodles for dinner tonight. I bought them yesterday and, seeing the package instructions, stuck them in the fridge for overnight. Then I read this topic this morning. Sure enough, they were a solid mass this morning. However, I decided to try a slow defrost and just left them on a sunny window sill, giving them a bend every hour or so. They're softening up and seem to be unfurling into sheets. Maybe a little patience -- as opposed to hot liquids -- is the way to go....

Using Sam's small-batch recipe, I made some today with equal parts almonds, pistachios, and apricot kernels (thank you, Trader Joe's). I really like the combination of the flavors and was careful not to overblend this time around. I haven't tried it in a drink yet, but I'm hopeful that I've addressed the consistency issues I raised above. One note: skinning apricot kernels and pistachios sucks.

I watched Dale DeGroff and Dave Wondrich's stirring technique really carefully at a recent workshop, and Dale made the point that he gives his spoon a slight curve in the lower half to facilitate stirring. That trick helps. I've also learned over the years that I should go counterclockwise (I'm a lefty). Dale's also a smooth stirrer, rotating the ice around in the glass in a constant motion, whereas Dave lifts and lowers his spoon now and then.

An excerpt from the Times article on Orwell:

Pre-made cocktails are also known as "bottled." Gary Regan, in his excellent Joy of Mixology, has many recipes for bottled drinks. As you note, Shalmanese, the water content is critical. As noted above, you also have to pay attention to the temperature: a Martini at 10F would be unpleasantly cold for me. I've often brought bottled cocktails to parties as my contribution, and there are Society-member bartenders who use them in certain situations when the bar is busy. However, those of us dinosaurs who make drinks a la minute with shaker, spoons, and strainer have also learned how those techniques and tools can be maximized for each person to make the best drink for them. After all, a defining component of cocktail culture, from its origins, involves the relationship between the person making the drinks and the people consuming them. It's about sharing a convivial drink with others; it's supposed to be fun to watch and do. As for "hopelessly archaic," well, one could argue the same for holiday toasts, sit-down dinners with the family, and conceiving babies outside of a lab.

My 2007's also matches Ktepi's: lots of spice and definitely sweeter than Angostura but with a pronounced bitter closing note.

Yesterday Nicholas Kristof also gave Obama some free advice in his column for the NY Times: He references the fooddemocracynow.org website, and Pollan gets in some interesting, if predictable, points. Not sure why Kristol has to diss bacon so stupidly, though:

I'm surprised. I'll go home and check again, but my memory suggests that the 2007 bottling was very clovey and rich but still bitter. Maybe they changed the formula?

Yes: absolutely, and I agree. I think we're talking about two sides of the same coin. We can list bartenders who deserve our awe and respect, but they are a very small percentage of the bartenders out there. I also wonder what percentage of their customers sees them in this light, and what percentage merely wants them to grind up a Mojito. Of course, one of the sweet things about many of those bartenders is that they'd rather chat cocktails with you than have you shower them with awe and respect. Your comments here and elsewhere have suggested to me that your philosophy is similar to Dale DeGroff's and others who have spent many years in the business. From that perspective, good bartenders combine the skills of both FOH and BOH, and they do so out of an abiding sense of hospitality and service. Your (and many others') emphasis on casual, friendly inclusion makes the current cocktailian movement far more pleasurable to me than it would otherwise be. It would be easy for all of this cutting-edge innovation and reclamation of past traditions to unfold in a very clubby, exclusive manner, with bartenders clinging to their secrets like magicians hoodwinking the dupes. But the overwhelming ethos of your (and others') great work seems to be "Pull up a stool," reminding us always that this cocktail stuff is fun, weird, and best shared with others. I for one am grateful for that.

I agree about the toasty quality: it can overwhelm. I ended up mixing it about 1/2-and-1/2 with my latest batch of Hess house bitters, and I'm very happy with the results.

We joke about EP as black hole all the time. Just take 195 east, stay right as you head over the bridge, and take the Warren Ave exit. Left at the end of the exit (under an overpass) onto Warren Ave. You'll see Asiana Market on the left and Sun and Moon on the right after a couple of blocks.