Chris Amirault

Hi patajec -- and welcome! Are we talking about eaten out of hand? Has anyone tried cooking these new things?

Absolutely: there are hundreds if not thousands of them, especially if you widen the net to include chains like McDonalds. In addition, many family-run places pool tips and don't pay them out to servers, paying instead a flat hourly wage. I used to work at one place like that, in fact.

When discussing these sorts of generalizable cultural trends, I think it's useful to keep an eye on the outliers, even if considering supposedly homogeneous societies. I've had bad service in Tokyo and fantastic service in LA, and many permutations in between.

I've never seen anything like that. Clearly we need a veterinarian who does charcuterie around here -- an unlikely combination, I fear.

Of course you're right. (I blame this 102F fever.) Thyme would be essential. And, yes, there certainly are green herbs used in bitters.

Toby's being modest. They are infinitely better than the Fee's.

I'm pretty happy with those mole bitters, given that they're based on the half-assed Reese's culinary principle (peanut butter + chocolate = ...). I've yet to have the Bittermen's version for comparison. It got me thinking about the sorts of drinks I'd want a more savory bitters in, and many of my non-tequila thoughts turned to drinks involving rum and pimento dram. That got me thinking about an apricot jerk bitters: rum base, lots of spice (including pimento/allspice, of course), black pepper, orange peel, dried apricot, and a scotch bonnet or three. Anyone seen anything like this? Any ideas to contribute?

Now I always just thought that I was missing an obvious supply somewhere or other but, yep, google turns up nothing. Perhaps it's because the "three good uses" of slicing, dicing, and mincing don't require blade length? (There's a bit more information in this topic where people discuss their inability to grok santoku knives.)

Perhaps the silence speaks, eh? I'd give the folks at Brix a call and ask them what they think. It's a great shop and they'd have a sense of the wine scene for sure. You might also call some of the tried-and-true restaurants (I'd start with No. 9 Park) and talk to the sommeliers there.

Moderator's Note: There are a few mentions of Mas Pau in eG Forums (largely here but also here and here), but no topic devoted to the restaurant itself -- until now!

Remember also that most gunk settles over a day or two, so straining with much more than a fine sieve is usually unnecessary if you can live with half an inch of unused oil/glop.

That's a good point. I get Bell & Evans nearly all the time, and despite their "air-chilled" marketing, they are pretty soggy. But when I've gotten chicken freshly killed at a local poultry place (worth doing if you're going to roast) that I kept on cracked ice in the fridge, they've not needed that much drying.

That Keller. He's such a slacker. Seriously, if you've got the time and a serious chicken skin jones like mine, it's the way to go. If not, use the paper towels. It's not going to destroy the dish.

Air drying for 24 hours does a lot better job than paper towels, but same effect.

Update. I've filtered both a batch of house bitters and a makeshift batch of mole bitters to good effect. However, last night, my wife was cleaning up and tried to remove the hose from the side arm at the top of the flask where the hose connects. It sticks very tightly, and, well, Andrea broke it off. I'm going to order a new one but, yeesh, that damned flask is pretty frail. ET add the proper "side arm" name.

Can you take a photograph of it?

Of course: That's the one. No wonder I couldn't remember. As I indicated in this enthusiastic post about a trip to the wonderful Violet Hour, it blew me away: Thanks, Toby, for the receipt.

Welcome, organicmatter, the Society! I can't find it, but somewhere around here or elsewhere I read about a Laphroaig rinse. That one is more for nose than finish, iirc.

Peter Meehan in the Times has an article about Greg Boehm and the Mud Puddle books today: Indeed.

Just back from Thailand and fell in love with fresh green peppercorns, which I've never seen here in the US. While I'm arm-twisting my local Asian grocers, I have been wondering if French cans of brined green peppercorns are a non-horrible substitution. I fear not. Thoughts?

Definitely do the second one: wrap it tightly until 24 hrs before the smoke, then form the pellicle. I tried to the former once with duck breasts and the outer layer got too hard.

I read that issue before a recent trip to Thailand and, upon my return, am convinced that many of us around here would find a lot of destination cooking schools far too touristy. That's sure what it seemed in Chiang Mai, which is overrun with flyers, signs, posters, and hawkers trying to drive you to one school or another. As I just mentioned here, I think that picking up good cooking tips in Thailand (and maybe elsewhere) may be as simple as demonstrating respectful interest and going with what you find. Had I been willing, I could have spent a few hours at several restaurants throughout the city -- and fed well in the process! Of course, that means I give up the pad thai served in a tropical garden with mood music piped in to soothe me and the other farang, but I can live with those sorts of depravation.

I didn't end up attending a cooking course at all in Thailand, but episure's approach seems like the smartest if I were to go back. There were three places (Dr. Noodle and Good View in CM, plus an outdoor place in Hua Hin) that I would have been thrilled to spend a few hours at, and judging from the smiles and invitations I got simply from watching attentively and asking questions, I would have had no problems arranging a slightly more formal encounter.

At Lupa, yes...especially in the summer when the hordes are shopping in Soho, Noho, etc. ← And then the hungry shoppers nosh on, say, wine and snacks?

Am I missing something? Is there a rush on tables at 4:30 on Saturdays in Manhattan these days?