Chris Amirault

I usually use a sourdough loaf to get some chew in the stuffing but a bagel... now that's interesting...

Do tell! Very interested in bagel dressing....

How do you flatten them?

That would be the wife, who hasn't weighed in on the matter yet.

What's on the menu for Thanksgiving (US) this year? As usual, I have to stick with some basics, so we're looking at: ras al hanout nuts & pepitas smoked roasted turkey breast with red onions & orangeskalkun frikadeller (Danish turkey meatballs)pecan stuffing with sage and pancettapan gravy mashed potatoesroasted root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, rutabagas...) brussel sprouts with bacon and sherry cranberry sauce with ginger & orangecucumber & vidalia pickles Some wine -- not sure what yet -- and I may add a wild rice stuffing if I can find a good supplier. So what are you up to?

Funny you should mention that. I was at a local Williams Sonoma yesterday and overheard the staff talking about how the Breville Smart Grill they were demoing that day was much better than they expected. It wasn't for the benefit of customers: it was backroom work chatter about how clearly it stood out against all the other sorts of things they've demoed there.

I shared a few thoughts on Hua Hin here.

Bumping this up. Any ideas?

If you can find it, I highly recommend Clear Creek's McCarthy's Oregon Single Malt, made in the style of scotch.

The recipe I use adds quite a bit of butter to the pan, and I use that. The non-oil liquids tend to burn off over time.

I don't know what you're calling "nonsense," but there's lots of ways to avoid racing around and still do things like basting, which has definitely been worth the five or seven minutes of added time each year. I'd urge others to give it a go if they haven't done so before!

Basting is definitely not a waste of time. Personal evidence abounds in my house -- and then there's this discussion and quotation from Modernist Cuisine, from which this quote is taken:

Here it's injection brining for the breast; extended seasoned salting for the drumsticks; meatballs (frikadeller) for the thighs.

I'd grab a few inexpensive baseline bottles across a wide variety of styles: Macallan, Talisker, Yamazaki, Famous Grouse 12, Asyla, Springbank. None of those will cost more than $50-60, some quite a bit less. Taste 'em, take notes, read reviews to see if you agree. As you find styles you like, you can then explore within those styles. A knowledgeable bartender and/or good liquor store salesperson is a true friend in this regard, I will add. Both are likely to give you a wee dram to try something for free, especially if you then buy a glass or bottle afterward.

Julep strain stirred drinks with large pieces of ice. Hawthorne strain shaken; fine strain when you want to remove the fine ice particles, citrus pulp, egg clots, etc. In Portland OR, where their ice splinters into shards at the first sign of agitation, every good bartender fine strains out of Hawthorne. In Tokyo, Japan, where ice shards atop a drink are often considered an aesthetic benefit, cobbler-shaken drinks are not fine strained. De gustibus non est disputandum.

I'm holding out for the more definitive, precise Williamsburg version. What is up with all this generic "Brooklyn" shit? haven't any of you heard of terroir?

Shake for 15 seconds with a full tin of the Tavolo cubes then immediately fine strain into your glass. Report back: my money's on significantly less dilution.

Yep. 25% is usually the rough guide for dilution, which is a bit less for stirred than for shaken. You can read Dave Arnold on the subject here. If you're getting five ounces in a glass using three ounces in your tin... that's a significantly overdiluted drink by most standards.

Not a stupid question at all. Typically you aim for ~25% dilution, give or take. So, using that as a guide, bar managers do one of two things: if you have all one size glass, you build drink ratios to hit that size (with, of course, a 1/4" or so at the top to avoid spills); if you have different sized glasses, you specify the glass type in a given recipe. Some bars have two different coupes for exactly this reason. This is particularly true in a cocktail-focused bar, where you don't want to leave 10-20% of a drink (a.k.a., product, a.k.a. cash money) in the tin. In a more fast-paced, shake-n-sling environment, that waste is built into the cost calculations, or poured into a side carafe, or whatever.

Gabriel's Nurse, after Gabriel Byrne and, you know.... 2 oz Irish whiskey 3/4 oz MB creme de cacao 1/2 oz rich demerara syrup 2 Angostura 2 oz milk grate of nutmeg Shake; strain over ice in an OF glass; grate the nutmeg over the top.

He sounds like my maternal grandfather, in which case I'd start with teaching him how to make pickled eggs.

Does he want to learn? Horse, water: that's my concern.

Sorry -- missed this the first time. It is... um... squirrelier. Rougher edges, more tops and tails, I'd imagine. Better for mixing in nearly everything save things like a Vieux Carré, where you want the uber-smooth cognac. But in a Brandy Cocktail, or a Mississippi Punch, or nearly everything I usually make, it's the beans. Whenever I see a bottle of Fundador I grab it.

I dunno! My picante taste memory is not what it used to be, and the variability of the habañeros I grow or can get has prevented me from stabilizing this. And -- sniff -- the last original bottle was drained years ago.... I've had wide variety with color as well, and couldn't tell you why. Once, I added more clove than with another batch, and it seemed wicked brown, but that may be more psychological than anything else: it dominated and annoyed the heck out of me.

Glad you liked it so much -- it looks terrific! Did you tweak the recipe at all?