Chris Amirault

Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded it to play with the 15 day trial. While it has a lot of annoying recipes (seemingly hundreds that include the word "orgasm"), it has one fatal flaw. When you enter in a new recipe -- a necessity for anyone reading this post -- you have to accept the set list of ingredients from the database. There's no way to add an ingredient to that list, and the database is heavy on branded, flavored vodka but missing a slew of crucial ingredients. Too bad.

I had another great meal at Oleana last night -- the brisket is to die for. I'd definitely try to get there if you can find your way to Cambridge.

Mexican avocados are regularly $1.79-1.99 in the northeast US. Is there a big avocado market in Beijing about which I'm unaware?

OK, I just found a place with a whole slew of things I'd never seen, all with very old state tags on them: Campari raspberry (not a typo), a different Fernet bitters that isn't Branca, several ancient and wee Cointreau bottles, god knows what else. Any ideas about these first two?

Which are...?

From yesterday's trip to the University Heights store in Providence. I wrote down things that I might reasonably buy at Shaw's on a given trip. All produce is conventional. NJ peaches & nectarines: $2.49/lb limes: 3/$0.99 lemons: $0.89 each CA broccoli: $1.99 Haas avocado: $1.99 each celery: $2.49 each red bell peppers: $3.99/lb cucumbers: $0.99 each eggplant: $1.99/lb loose yellow onions: $0.99/lb (also 2 lb bags $0.99) Barilla pasta: $1.79/lb box DeCecco pasta: $1.99-2.49/lb box Coleman's mustard powder: 3.99 for 2 oz box Old Bay seasoning $3.99 6 oz box Kokuho Rose rice $16.99 for 10 lb bag King Arthur AP flour $4.99 5 lb bag Rumford baking pwdr $2.49 can "Sugar in the Raw" turbinado: $4.99 for 2 lbs Ghiradelli chocolate bar: $2.49 4 oz bar Tazo tea $3.99 Tom's toothpaste $4.49 for 5.5 oz Reynolds wax paper $1.99 75 sq feet Rhody Fresh milk $2.79 1/2 gallon

I'm pretty sure that long, thick strips are the standard pork belly cut for most Chinese applications.

Get little vermouth bottles. You're missing out on a ton of fantastic gin cocktails without them. I'd also recommend Campari.

For some things, absolutely. Rice is one of our staples that's exploded.

In an interesting story in today's NY Times, In Lean Times, Whole Foods Tries for a Fresh Image, Andrew Martin details the store's attempt to remake its image for a tight economy: I'll take that challenge. I regularly shop for produce, meat, and fish at one of three Whole Foods here in RI, but I do my basic shopping at one of the large supermarket chains (usually Shaw's, though sometimes Stop n Shop). I'd love to save the time, gas, and hassle, so if Robb is right, I'd rather switch than fight. Wouldn't you? So here's what I'm going to do. I'll track like items at both area Whole Foods and supermarkets and report back here. Since I'm certain that some items are unavailable at Whole Foods (Kleenex, Clorox, and other things that end with "-x"), I'll stick to food only. And no equivalents allowed: as my father will tell you, tofu is not pork. We got some interesting discussion over in the shopping cart topic, and I hope we can do that here as well. Anyone else game for this project?

No, I'm waiting for you to do it. Photos, s'il vous plait.

I just reread Dunlop's instructions, and I think that she's talking about developing a pellicle, which is a form of drying. Since it's just for "several hours," I don't think she means actually curing it like it's lop yuk or something.

I can testify that flourish and frippery have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of cocktails served at Pegu Club, PDT, and Death & Co. Indeed, one night I devoted much observation of stirring technique at two of those bars, and I can vouch that no one floured or fripped.

I have two bellies drying in the fridge right now for smoking this weekend. One is a rosemary/garlic/black pepper cure that I've made before, but the other is new, with flavorings based on breakfast sausage: sage, onion, white pepper, bit of cinnamon and nutmeg. Reports shortly.

Got a couple more, which I thought of while drinking a... Fernet Standard (thanks to Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli at Eastern Standard) 1 oz Fernet Branca 1 oz yellow Chartreuse 1 oz rye (WT 101) dash bitters (you I kid not) Phil Ward's Final Word also fits the bill: 3/4 oz rye 3/4 lemon 3/4 green Chartreuse 3/4 Maraschino

I can't imagine why db_campell had to recheck spelling after all those tests.

Our own Dave the Cook debunked the Bradley cost myth here. I'm a devoted and happy Bradley user, having ditched a Brinkman years ago and finding the constant attention of a Weber kettle to be too much of a pita given my interest in smoking stuff. One of the benefits of using a Bradley for things like brisket is that you can stop the puck feeding, turn up the oven, and leave the brisket right in the unit to finish. That's what I do with pork butts, for example: no need to transfer them into an oven to finish. However, the one I have peaks near 250F, so one requires a bit more patience than one needs in a 300F oven.

I'd think that you merely need to steep lemon zest in olive oil, right? And if you heat up the oil to, say, 225F, you'd cook off any moisture. Give it a try and let us know!

Making a batch of kielbasa this weekend -- it's the girls' favorite meat, bar none, and having a few pounds in the freezer enables us not to have to plan proteins for them at dinner. I'll be eager to see if this happens again: I wonder... could it be that something briefly stuck inside the stuffing horn, near or at the discharge end, and caused the extruded forcemeat to have a longitudinal groove? It'd be concealed by the casing until the cooking process, which I'd think. And the cooking would also account for it being slightly 'crumpled' - though I'm not so sure about the crumpled areas on either side of the 'crease'. ← I'm still not sure, but I'll be on the lookout for whole black peppercorns.

OK, I can buy the import of "being conscious of what you're shaking in your shaker." But that video details a far more fetishized, persnickety routine -- the hold, the stance, the bar spoon, and so on -- than simple mindfulness. Not that I have any beef with fetishized, persnickety cocktail routines.

The bag question is a good one, and I've come to a different conclusion than the one I made last year: I've bolded the phrase that is most relevant to this discussion. Turns out -- duh! -- that one cannot really appreciate the differences between bags by gazing at them in boxes. Here are two photos that help illustrate the point I'm about to make. First, the Kenmore bag: Now, a photo of the Tilia bag courtesy of Marlene: What you want to focus on is the texture of both bags. On the Tilia bag, the plastic is imprinted with a crosshatch pattern that runs on the diagonal. That crosshatch pattern captures and disperses moisture as the vacuum sucks, driving it across the interior rather than up toward the seal. As a result, the seal on the Tilia bags is often much better. The Kenmore bag' texture is minimal -- and the wavy lines run vertically, driving the liquid toward the seal. I also suspect, though I can't prove, that the Tilia bags have higher quality plastic. I've had no breaks in the plastic nor any busted seals with them, but have had a few with the Kenmore. So, short answer: the Tilia bags seem, to me, to be clearly superior. ET clarify about the textures -- ca

Don't forget also the great eG Forums Q&A with Ferran Adria, the full forum of which is located here.

From the F&W article: Aside from a bit more excess -- unless I'm missing something, I think that a non-laser thermometer would work in this application -- this paragraph would seem to suggest that the main, readily apparent advantages are better integration/balance (two different things, but I'm being picky) and colder temperatures. I'll add mouthfeel as the third, based on some other comments. So can't one of the NYers get on over to Tailor with a few friends and a thermometer, hand out score cards for the drinkers at the bar, and propose a good old fashioned competition based on blind tasting?

For a moment I considered calling it a jerk, apricot, and habanero bitters, but then thought that anyone making JAH bitters should be shot.

Precise he surely is. I'd be a little miffed that he let my glass warm for nearly two minutes, myself. So: questions. Is the idea here to produce (what for lack of a better term I'll call) circulation of the ice within the shaker? As opposed to collision as in a piston-like, back-and-forth motion? And are we to understand that only cobbler shakers and not Boston shakers will bring the hard love?