Chris Amirault

I'm happy to say that it is looking increasingly likely that I'll be in Thailand for the first two weeks of June, give or take. When I've traveled to other cities on major vacations (Paris, Barcelona) and whenever we go away for extended weekends (New York, Provincetown) I pack up a basic cooking kit and spend at least part of my time cooking meals with items procured from local markets. (We always stay in apartments with kitchens, obviously.) I'm starting to wonder whether or not this makes sense in Bangkok, which will likely be our home base. (Not at all planning to do this if we visit Sukhothai, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, etc. btw.) The main reason is that the street food situation in Bangkok seems impossibly inexpensive and delectable, and I can't really imagine lugging a mortar and pestle halfway around the world to pound out pastes for a couple of hours while I could be eating four meals on the street during that time. Is it worth it to plan to cook while in Bangkok? If so, what neighborhoods would be most appropriate?

I agree. I've been fiddling with mine a bit and it seems great. I don't have a manual: what does the "S" in the upper left corner mean?

What sorts of things are people planning to do?

Precisely what happened to me -- and I've got a new word of the day: louche.

The flavor does change but not in a bad way, and it's pretty subtle, fewer bright notes at the top but still deep and long. The sauce I made above in Sept has been doing fine on the shelf, and based on the very long life of the open IBs I had down through the years, I don't expect any problems with the homemade stuff.

I've noticed this in general. Those stones can easily create another burr, leading to the flip/grind/repeat problem. One long, light stroke at the end is how I finish off all of my knives, but it has taken practice to do it consistently.

Or you can just let the murk settle and pour off the clear stuff from the top. You waste a bit, of course (I'd guess about 2-3%) but it just requires patience and a steady hand.

Good but not great. Admittedly, my usage tends to pretty sturdy stuff: kneading and rolling pasta, grinding and beating sausage meats. A few months ago, using the machine for the latter, it started to whine a little bit as if the motor were being pushed too hand, and since then it's still been a bit screechy. I have been trotting out the old machine to do the grinding as a result. Having said that, for most other tasks, it's been great. Good paddle and whisk reach, very powerful, good capacity, extremely fast on small jobs (whisking egg whites is a breeze). I'll check in with the wife/baker tonight to see what she wants to add.

Screwing around with Licor 43 tonight. Given that it's foundation is vanilla, it's remarkably overpowering, so I ended up with a rinse. I wanted to try to bring in the yellow Chartreuse that seemed such a good idea a while back, too. Fiddled for a while and then... Here's the European Union, historical metaphor in a glass. It's pretty damned brown, but the double orange peel (flamed and then rubbed) brighten up on the nose when you draw it near. First impressions in the mouth are colonial -- silk, sugar, and spice -- and it ends with an assertive yet complex nod to the future. Can Italy, Spain, France, and England find happiness together? Build and find out. The European Union: 1 oz Averna 1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse 1 1/2 (Plymouth) Gin Stir the above with ice and let it cook while you rinse the chilled cocktail glass with Licor 43 and dump the excess. Strain the cocktail into your rinsed glass. Flame a hefty slab of orange peel over the glass with great ceremony, then rub the spent peel along the edge of the glass. If you're feeling saucy about the future of the euro, drop it in with a smirk.

My pleasure, Taylor. Do report on your results. I seem to remember that Inner Beauty had two different strengths, didn't it? In any event, I've definitely scaled the heat back from my wicked-pissah-hot preferences to just wicked-hot. Guests, children, you know. Maybe I need to make a WPH batch next.....

The NY reviews will be great to read over in the NY forum! So here's the question: having eaten at UK starred joints and these US starred joints, is there something afoot involving different standards across the pond?

I feel like Stanley when Livingstone showed up. Nice sounding drinks, bostonapothecary, but here's the thing. I wonder if the Averna people are looking for pro bar staples in this contest; I was worried about the Apry, for crying out loud....

Though I haven't used the stuff since I moved out of the house for college, I can see that it might be a nice fat for different applications, particularly if you're keeping kosher. Paul Prudhomme uses margarine in a few dishes in his original Louisiana Kitchen. I haven't it handy, but I seem to remember that he finds it the right oil for certain rouxs or étouffées. I'd also bet dollars to donuts that you'd find a lot of margarine lurking in the kitchens of many restaurants. A butter-flavored fat that doesn't burn at high heat is a lot cheaper and easier to deal with than ghee or clarified butter.... I'm pretty sure that I saw a stainless tub of it at an open kitchen here in Providence the other day; the line cook got all nervous when I was staring at it.

It will liquefy when you warm it to room temperature. Try it in risotto and mashed potatoes for starters.

I'd like to count myself in the group of Society members who subscribe to the above list. However, I don't really see the incongruity. How are any of the above statements necessarily inconsistent? ← My apologies for being unclear; I used "enjoy" in two senses there, both "find pleasurable" and "eat regularly." Thus I believe that most folks here would prefer to treat animals, people, and the earth with care, understand the issues, and yet do not fundamentally change their relationships to eating and cooking as a result of those beliefs and knowledge.

Thomas Keller would seem, at least, to give a nod to kaiseki in this Reuters piece, saying that the "Kaiseki dinner (traditional multi-course dinner) is very similar to the way we serve food in the French Laundry." Not exactly a declaration of historical lineage, but there you go.

Update: a tsp was nice addition to a weak stock that I had on hand. It didn't do anything for the body, of course, but as this was for a tomato-y pozole, that wasn't an issue.

C'mon, spill it. What were the NYC restaurants?

I got mine at Radio Shack: cheap and easy to use.

I tended bar for an event last summer (click) and was very glad that I had real glasses. It's not only a nice touch instead of crappy plastic cups; it also keeps the drinks colder longer. For similar reasons, think about ice, too. If you can have access to a freezer, then you can have a steady supply of genuinely cold ice. If you can't, then I'd follow Sam's advice and have some dry ice on hand to keep it cold. Otherwise, you're going to be serving lousy drinks after the first round.

I think it is too cold, yes. Upon request, I made frozen margaritas yesterday with a vintage Waring blender and stuck a thermometer in there to see what's what: 13F. Instant tongue and brain freeze.

Oddly, my MIL called last night with a question about freezing game. She thinks that her venison, elk, etc. always gives off a ton of moisture if it's been frozen, seemingly moreso than with fresh meat -- and moreso than other kinds of meat. Are leaner meats more susceptible to this problem?

Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "dilute"? Unlike limes, pineapple juice is sweet. Is there more than one meaning of "dilute"? As far as I know, "dilute" means "to lessen the strength of a solution." To clarify what I wrote, I mean "dilute" as in: "the addition of juices from the pineapple chunks to the simple syrup will result in a pineapple-flavored simple syrup that has a lower concentration of sugar and lower 'sweetening power' compared to the uninfused simple syrup." ← That is clearer. I wasn't claiming that pineapple juice and simple syrup are equally as sweet. But infusing a simple syrup in lime halves and another in pineapple will result in solutions with different levels of sweetness. S'all.

It's always available in Asian markets around here, given the large Vietnamese population, I think.

Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "dilute"? Unlike limes, pineapple juice is sweet.