Chris Amirault

I think that's partly right. I remember reading an article years ago (in the NYT?) about a group of martini drinkers who discussed methods, proportions, bars, and so on. To a man (they were all men), they could tell the difference between shaken/bruised and stirred/unbruised, and they explained that bruised gin was more watery and had shards of ice floating in it. All preferred the smooth, less diluted gin of the stirred martini. (They also preferred tiny dribbles of vermouth and didn't mention orange bitters, I'll grumpily add, but that's a thought for another topic.)

I'd think she's trying to make a curry paste but doesn't want to say "curry paste" for some reason, so she's using the more au courant "pesto." Like jmolinari, I've crushed a lot of white peppercorns into curry pastes with a mortar and pestle. David Thompson, my Thai food guru, does it all the time.

Thanks for the responses. donbert, I am planning to take a crack at bitters a bit later, but this month's goofy experiment is making gin. FFR, thanks for the tips; I think that's an excellent idea! fatdeko... (rubbing hands) I'm very intrigued. What are the benefits to distilling over infusing? I'm worried about my ability to control the flavoring agents and their proportions, which is why FFR's method is so appealing.

I've got two unopened 1.75l bottles of Stoli sitting in the back of my liquor cabinet, where they've been for years. I don't even remember why I bought them -- perhaps at a two-for-one sale -- and whatever the reason was then, it's gone now. No one in my life wants Cape Codders, Bloody Marys, or V&Ts, least of all me, given my turn toward classic cocktails lately. So I snooped around the topic on infusing vodkas in the hopes of finding something I'd like to have on hand. I wrote down a few ideas (ginger and lemon grass from our garden? rosemary?) but whenever I tried to figure out what the hell I'd do with them, I drew a blank. There's a reason that I don't have flavored vodkas on hand: I never use them. (I also find their names idiotic, but that's another topic.) So I asked Janet what I should do, and she told me a penny-pinching tale from her past in which she sought to transform some cheap vodka and juniper berries into gin. And, well, that clinched it. I'm gonna make me some gin. I have no idea how, but that's where y'all come in. From a quick perusal, I think I'm looking at small quantities of a couple dozen ingredients. Here's the most useful list I've found so far, from cocktail.com, on the subject: Right now, I've got the items in bold on hand and feel that I can probably get started without angelica, calmus, orris, and bitter almonds, right? So the question is the initial recipe: I obviously want an assertive juniper flavor and far more subtle nuances of the rest, but I've few ideas about how those nuances would best transfer to the vodka in terms of time and proportions. And, of course, what's missing from that list? One last thing. I keep Tanqueray on hand for martinis and Plymouth on hand for mixing, and when I can I grab a bottle of Hendricks. It might be interesting to try to match one of those, but, frankly, if I can produce something that doesn't taste like swill I'll consider this a raving success. Of course, if I can convince a few other people to try this out, I'll feel a little less insane. Any takers?

Good question. Evidence of clouding an otherwise fine drink can be seen here, where a dumbass shook up his Sazerac quite publicly. Take photos, measure carefully, and report back.

Well, this is going to happen a lot more quickly than I had thought. Our freezer door came ajar yesterday somehow, and an entire freezer of sausage, pork bellies, stock, and other stuff defrosted. In particular, 20 lbs of Niman Ranch pork bellies need to be cured starting this weekend! As far as tweaking goes, I think that one element worth investing some effort to find is good quality shaoxing wine. I have a jug at home that I bought a while ago and it is a less harsh, rounder flavor that I really do think I can detect in the cure. (The good folks at the Chinese market with whom I've shared this lop yuk think the same, I'll add.) I also think that I'll go for thicker strips of pork, closer to 2" than 1".

This strikes me as a dish in which ground cilantro/coriander root might be the aromatic that you detect....

Thanks Dejah! I'd be interested in the "spices"; I've not added anything but have wondered about tweaking it a bit with szechuan peppercorns. Wherever you get your sausage you're almost certain to find the bacon. Look for a cryovac-ed package.

At this wonderful dinner at StudioKitchen, Shola told a very funny story about a series of phone calls in which the diner revealed ever-limiting and -befuddling dietary restrictions. Finally, he just told her that he was canceling the meal. Welcome to the biz, Bryz.

Over in the Charcuterie topic, I've been fiddling with curing my own lop yuk, which I did in earnest earlier this spring. But I've been lead to understand that fall is truly lop yuk season, and the pork bellies are starting to appear in my local Chinese grocery. It's time to get some more hanging! I've done a few batches and wrote up this recipe in Recipe Gullet, but I think that it's a recipe that's worth more work and tweaking. I also think it's a very rewarding item for folks getting started with curing meat. Finally, if you have lop yuk on hand, you can start making Naw Mai Fon, or Chinese sticky rice, to your heart's content. Which, if you're like me, is weekly. Dave the Cook also tells me that thinly sliced lop yuk is a great appetizer. So: who's game?

BUMP. I've been using Ruhlman's Charcuterie for the basics of some chorizo I've been making lately, but it's been prompting some questions concerning the spices (which seem a bit off in the Ruhlman book) and the grind. Has anyone fiddled with the grind coarseness? I'm thinking of trying a batch that's half roughly ground and half chopped pork.

One other ingredient for this (at least as I'd had it prepared for me at Pegu Club) -- flamed orange peel. At home, I've found that Regan's Orange Bitters are a close enough approximation. (Drinkboy.com recipe includes a lemon twist as well.) ← Thanks, Christopher and John. I just made this with the tequila mentioned above, NP vermouths, and the Regan's bitters: very nice indeed, sort of a Mexican twist on a Negroni.

Thanks, Shalmanese. The strangest aspect of being in the store was the sense of simultaneous familiarity and confusion. I'd been in dozens of similar places -- it was laid out like any major US grocery store -- and still felt suddenly and utterly at sea at different moments. Some of that was due to many of the product labels being in Arabic (though a lot were in English too), but things I expected to find would be missing, or in odd places, making me go from confident to disoriented in a moment. An uncanny shopping experience!

Found out that Chilangos closes on Wednesdays (grrr...) and went over to Bombay Club with my 9-year-old. OK samosas, excellent naan, good palak/saag paneer, and a somewhat bland aachari chicken. Fantastic rice, too. Interesting.

Sure! Though I think that LI Iced Tea counts in about two-thirds of the topics in this forum!

Jason, my copy of Nancie McDermott's Real Thai lists this as "goong ope maw din," or clay-pot shrimp with bean thread noodles. There's a "cilantro pesto" (sorry, man) of cilantro, garlic, and black pepper, and there are a lot of ingredients that reveal the dish's Chinese origin (oyster sauce, sesame oil), but I'm not seeing any galangal....

I've got a bottle of Sauza Añejo Commemorativo for mixing, and I've quickly grown bored of fiddling around with the ratios for margaritas. It's time to find a few new cocktails for the rotation. Tonight I started with the Bunny Bonanza. I didn't add the sugar and clearly should have done so, as it's got a bit more bite than I'd like. What are people's favorite tequila cocktails?

The nice thing about a CR#2 in this situation is that it evokes other drinks (what Regan calls the New Orleans sours) but throws you a curve with the Pernod/Herbsaint/... addition sneaking in at the end.

Went with a Corpse Reviver #2, which was a hit.

I think I know what you mean about just doing it. Increasingly I find that my naw mai fon method is to go to the grocer, get whatever is available and looks good -- fresh mushrooms, long beans, Chinese celery (hard to find here) -- and then add whatever I think is missing -- dried mushrooms that I've reconsituted, agroconglomerate green beans or celery -- to the meats, onions, and rice. Can people comment on what types of rice they use? I've been using mostly 100% medium grain Nishiki, but I tried it with a 1:1 Nishiki:sticky rice mixture last time, which seemed good, too.

I think that your rhetorical question implies an accurate point: you don't want to wash away the starches on aborio. As for the wet rice question, it's just the usual issue concerning wet things in hot fat: instead of frying the outer coating of the grains, you're creating steam, which changes the texture of the surface of the grains. It's the same principle behind the drying of vegetables and proteins before stir-frying them in a wok.

I grew epazote this year and live even further north than bjcohan, and I'd like to emphasize the noun "weed". You're unlikely to have trouble growing it; you're likely to have trouble preventing it from taking over.

Nice work, Mike! The Niman Ranch bellies are far more marbled than the ones I've gotten at the carnicaria. You'll be amazed.

OK, wash the old rice first. Check. But here's a question. I don't want to put wet arborio into the oil or butter in the crucial risotto step of pan-frying the rice a bit, right? So how do I dry it quickly after washing it?

Recipes, please!