Chris Amirault

I've been tweaking away and think that I've come up with a pretty damned good variation on the Toronto Cocktail which -- my first foray into cocktail nomenclature -- I'm calling the Corktown Cocktail: 2 oz rye 1/4 oz Fernet Branca 1/4 oz Cointreau (go light) 1/4 oz demerara 1:1 syrup (go light) dash Angostura dash orange bitters Stir, pour, and serve with a fat orange twist that you've squeezed over the glass.

Gin. I cry uncle: it's a fool's errand.

This seems like a particularly relevant passage: Dave, do you have a sense of what some of those potentially lost sources are that are of particular interest to cocktail historians?

I'd like to know about classic recipes, techniques to keep them from becoming gray (cough -- blanch then ice bath -- cough), seasons, whether there are ties to Native American cooking, and who the people are that harvest the buggers.

Last batch at the Providence Whole Foods tonight. Making seviche, pisco sours, and popcorn. Gracias, las gambas de la Maine!

Two thoughts. Make a bison chili with cinnamon, clove and allspice up front of the cumin, ancho and a little bit of chipotle, and serve it over the roasted parsnips (chili on baked potatoes). Poach the pears in marsala or, failing that, port, halve them, and then broil them with slices of the cheese atop.

Not overly harsh at all -- and a good point. Still and all, he was the first bartender I've seen check the balance of a drink in years -- save at Pegu Club.

Bring out your best egg custard tarts. For your consideration, I submit Egg Custard King Cafe, several locations. We ate nearly two dozen over the course of two wobbly days last weekend. Their tarts knock the socks off of many of the other bakeries in Chinatown. Might it be the lard in the crust?

I've never done it -- I'd kick dinner butt and then lose miserably in the end because of my baking idiocy -- but I'm dying to hear more!

How much does a warming drawer run?

Every now and then my wife and I find an apartment via craigslist, drop the kids off with my parents, and head down to NYC for a day or two of, well, not much: wandering around, hitting stores and museums, eating wherever we find ourselves. This trip we were staying in a flat on 5th Av in Park Slope Brooklyn, and for dinner on Saturday night we decided to try Coco Roco, a Peruvian restaurant at 392 5th between 6th and 7th. Like virtually every place in the five boroughs, there was a cocktail menu, and somewhere below the Mojito I found a Pisco Sour. What the hell, I thought, and ordered it. I was sitting with my back to the wall and facing the young bartender (probably college age), so I got to watch the entire procedure unfold. His precision was a thing to behold: separating the egg using the shell halves; squeezing the lemon and pouring the pisco; adding some sugar and bitters; the vigorous, lengthy shake; the pour into a chilled glass and -- to my great surprise -- a taste using a cocktail straw and index finger. He looked to the sky while he lifted his finger from the straw and tasted the drink, nodded, and handed it to our waiter. It was fantastic. After the dinner, I went up to him to chat a bit. It was clear that no one in the history of the place had ever complimented his bartending chops, and I realized that this sort of fellow, toiling away in the back of a restaurant not known for such things, might just be building a little, secret cocktail mecca. Does anyone else have pleasant discoveries of this sort?

We had terrific hand-pulled beef noodles at Super Taste Restaurant (26 N Eldridge at Canal) this weekend. They are, apparently, a Muslim Lanzhou specialty; I'd never heard of them or the place until a character in the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's website recommended it. Dirt cheap, too: very good steamed dumplings, and two bowls of soup for $11 + tip.

My wife and I had the pleasure of Will's company and food last Saturday night. To start, we ordered the chocobubbles glass (described as "warm chocolate muscovado mousse, apricot chibouste, cocoa crispies, less sherry"), which was as swell as others have described. The two tastings we shared were voyage to India (chocoate parfait with chai, mango sorbet, coconut cream, almond dacquoise) and plat du jour (nolitela and powder, basil brioche, brioche sorbet, lemon cloud 'truffle'). The brioche and dacquoise were both just okay (no detectable basil or almond), but the rest was outstanding. I was particularly taken by the nolitela and the lemon cloud, both of which were powerful flavor and textural statements and couldn't have been much more different. Will was as attentive as possible given the absurdity of doing all of the FOH work he does. (As we left, he insisted I call for coffee the next day because he felt he had been insufficiently gracious -- the self-critique was absurd but the gesture sweet.) He saw me peering toward the library and said, "They're all there to look at. It's a lending library; just get them back to me when you can." His copy of the latest El Bulli tome has a broken binding. We didn't borrow it but instead replaced it on the shelf with slightly quivering hands. The answer to every cooking question I asked was "powdered egg whites and gelatin." We really loved everything about it. I grabbed the nolitela jar from the server helping Will and swirled my finger around it to get every last bit.

Hey! Who knew?! I had a verrine at Fat Guy's house the other day, in a coffee cup: sautéed shiitake mushrooms on the bottom, truffled mashed potatoes in the middle, and a shirred egg on top. Damned good!

Well, our 6 quart KA bit the dust in the last few weeks. It had always been a pita: beaters not reaching the bottom of the bowl; grease working through the gears of the meat grinder into the meat itself; bowl popping out of the lock; dough hook not kneading -- on and on. Very frustrating experiences that increased over time. Turns out that the motor casing had cracked, several gears broke, and who knows what else -- $200 to fix a flawed machine. Since we do a lot of heavy work (kneading pasta dough, grinding meat, etc.), we're going to move up in power. So here's the question: DeLonghi DSM-7 or Electrolux Magic Mill DLX? (Don't say Hobart N-50, which I cannot find for less than $1200.) Anyone able to compare the two in terms of performance? service? power? accessories? Thanks in advance.

What do you get at Bombay Club?

Had a pretty good, if small-portioned, lunch at Rasoi today. The lamb kofta with prune centers were great, but there were only four of them -- yikes!

Brooks Hamaker (Mayhaw Man) has stepped down from his role as an eGullet Society volunteer after a long and compelling ride. We thank Brooks for his service and look forward to his continued participation as emeritus staff. To honor Brooks's service, we've started a topic in the Member News forum here.

As we just announced here, Brooks Hamaker (Mayhaw Man) is stepping down from his role as an eGullet Society volunteer. During his tenure, Brooks hosted in forums and provided support for several of the Society's development projects. Brooks will continue to participate as a member and will carry the emeritus staff designation, but we'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for his service. Please use this topic for food-related reminiscences about Brooks's tenure. For personal notes of thanks, please use the personal messenger system. I'll start by saying the obvious: Brooks's powerful and insightful posts about the impact of Katrina on the food and lives of the New Orleans community were unique contributions to the Society that I'll never forget. Though he was on the wrong side, I suppose he deserves some credit for starting that cake vs pie topic. Finally, I was ever so grateful when he humored this ill-informed Yankee and contributed with panache to the gumbo cook-off. Thanks, Brooks.

Though I've no comparisons to make with the above restaurants, I'd third (? fourth?) Hisop. Writeup here.

Ling and Henry, can you say a bit about how you prepared that confit pot pie? I'm intrigued!

This fantastic Daily Gullet article (click) provides some additional context. Yikes.

No, really, I insist. The food here is great. And such portions!

Now, now. Hat is tasty with a side of crow.

Driving into work in the rain, I think that I've put my finger on the crucial difference in your two posts, Margy. Here's excerpts from the first, with some material in bold: Here's your more recent post: With these two pieces of evidence in hand, I'd like, formally, to eat my hat. In this, our kangaroo court, I suggest we toss out our charges against MargyB, and I hereby accuse the in-laws of a bait-n-switch. Our faithful member (who mispoke of "lunch" initially) was in fact expecting not a meal but a nosh, a snack, a bite to eat. So, entering the establishment, she anticipated being able to get away with ordering just that. However, the expectation of the gathered group changed while they were ordering, moving from a "cup of soup" to "full meals." This is the crucial context, for it forced our member to determine whether she would comply NOT with the original implied contract BUT rather with a new, and far more involved one. Why did this happen? Why, it probably happened because, while Margy was nervously scanning the menu for something edible, the rest of the group was having their appetites piqued by the outstanding selection of delectables. That is to say, Margy likely sat there watching herself travel further and further away from the increasingly ravenous group. Canny as she was, she attempted to find a way out: order half of a Cobb salad, the perfect item to order to address this dilemma. Pop a few cubes of ham into the mouth, push around the iceberg lettuce: it's the veggie equivalent of a "cup of soup" that can appear to be a "full meal." An ingenious solution to the social dilemma. Alas, the restaurant did not cooperate, forcing her to choose either the sorts of "full meals" that others, who ate a large breakfast just a few hours ago, are diving into in mid-afternoon. Understandably incapable of figuring out what other item that would solve this problem, she chose, merely and politely, not to order at all. I ask you: Should she have ordered a pile of food like the others and then choked it all down, causing herself to grimace and perhaps ralph, insulting the other eaters who were enjoyably munching away? No, I say! Should she have ordered a pile of food like the others and then eaten only a tiny bit, showing up all other eaters who cleaned their plates? No, I say! Should she merely have ordered the aforementioned "cup of soup," thus rudely implicating the over-ordering of the in-laws and spouse? No, I say! Is it her fault that the restaurant prevented her from eating her small Cobb salad, which would have allowed her to gesture toward the "full meal" successfully? No, I say! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I say that Margy was placed in an impossible situation not of her own making, and did her level best to extricate herself from that situation with the minimum of trouble. That she could not do so in the end is not her fault. Who here can judge her? I rest my case.