Chris Amirault

I sure would. Wouldn't you?

That sounds fantastic. Cocchi and Beefeater is a great combo.

Sure, I'd like some new stuff in it, but after four decades of frustration over kitchen layout, I would like to say that I'm finally in a kitchen in which my answer is: I would change nothing.

The hits just keep coming. Atlantic Monthly's online website summarizes everything so far here, including the Waters quotation. Meanwhile, I urge those in the US who have the book on order to run down to your nearest Whole Foods and get a pair of their reusable "Better Bags." When the book arrives, you can ponder the irony that the entire six-volume set, plus case, fits inside the doubled bags like a glove.

Sounds like the healthiest thing in the world to me.

What do people think so far? As a Studio Kitchen diner, I'm very eager to see what Shola/Speck has to offer, yet it's difficult to image the SK being replicated anywhere.

Mid-$30s US.

You'd know it if you had had it! Yeah, the Ransom isn't as sweet as Hayman's, but as you can see I added an additional dash of bitters (the JT). Lillet & Apry scares me.... Anyway, I think that you could probably adjust for the Hayman's somehow. Ransom is sort of like Genevieve: it's something of a meta-version of a type of gin that takes it into a slightly different genre. In the case of the Ransom it's more aromatic and complex than Hayman's by a long shot. I think that it's tricky with things like sweet vermouth, but once you get the hang of it, the skies the limit. You know, kinda like Lindbergh. Seriously, Ransom competes with Genevieve in my "one gin at the deathbed" competition.

Looks terrif. How did you prepare the cassoulet, Matt?

Gave that a try, but decided that I wanted to fiddle with the gin and proportions a bit, so: Lindbergh's Baby 2 oz Ransom Old Tom gin 1 oz Lillet blanc dash Apry dash Scrappy's grapefruit bitters dash Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas Own Decanter Bitters Stir; strain; no garnish. It's excellent, I must say.

No one has brought up the need for an organized arrangement of concave items. I'm regularly rearranging things so that spoons aren't nestled or that like-sized plates are all in a row facing the same way, not piled here and there where they "fit." After years of being quite militant about this, I am able to feel a sense of serenity with my family's ineptitude, even if a few... plates... Come.. OUT... DIRTY!! DIRTY!! Ahem.

I noticed that, at Brown now, that selection is called "all-you-care-to-eat." I thought a long time about what to write next and have chosen this sentence.

Thank you, sensei. No wonder mine looked/was wrong.

Yeah, lower temps are better with all that sugar....

I've got some smoked eggs that I may try to use tomorrow night, so I'm snooping around trying to find a good tutorial. The first cooking is one seems a bit, um, indelicate; I guess I have some presumption that one shouldn't make American scrambled eggs and then roll them up. Wrong? Right? I gotta check my cookbooks.... I've never had this dish before so I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for....

Over on the Modernist Cuisine topic I made a big batch of fetuccine, which turned out great: Definitely had a moment of wanting to keep them as whole sheets and make lasagna....

At 8:00a on Saturday, the teen sleeping over my daughter's house got a call from her mom saying "See you at 8:30." They were asleep, and I was unprepared. Grabbed a bag of pancake mix, buzzed two eggs, 1 1/2 c milk, and half a stick of butter I'd melted in the microwave while I heated two pans. The whole process took about 90 seconds; I ended up waiting for the pans to heat up.

Later today, I'm going to have the opportunity to visit Sharpe Refectory, the main dining hall on Brown University's campus that's affectionately known as the Ratty. I haven't been in there for quite a while, and I'll be interested to know what goes on since eating several hundred meals and working there as an undergraduate. From the looks of the website, it's pretty different. I remember a handful of options, not several dozen. "Roots & Shoots," broccoli rabe, rotisserie chicken, "Tastes of the World," flourless raspberry black satin fudge cake.... This is not your mother's college cafeteria. Does anyone have experience in these new-fangled dining halls?

Dorie Greenspan's blondies today -- the only blondies I've ever had that don't suck. They are, in fact, amazing things.

As opposed to gum arabic, which you can adjust with a splash of water or two.

Yeah, it's a small percentage, but that stuff is some crazy gum powder. I've been using gum arabic for a while (a crucial cocktail syrup ingredient) but just cracked into the Bob's Red Mill xanthan package recently. Little goes a very long way....

From my recent reading on emulsions, it's a bit of both: a strong chemical emulsifier and a strong mechanical emulsifier can work wonders. I'm not really sure -- force of habit more than anything for me, and I don't know the safety reasons beyond a vague sense that colder=better.

First, yes, the parametric tables for pasta feature other flours, including '00', semolina, buckwheat, rice flour, alkaline ramen, and cocoa tajarin. Second, I've made semolina before and this dough is similarly tough at first. But when I was folding and rolling and cutting, it became both smoother and firmer than the usual '00' dough, meaning that it was remarkably easy to cut and pile into nests. No need to hang, that is -- a real plus in my book. For that reason, I think it may become my go-to long pasta recipe.

Flour, salt, and xanthan gum whisked and holding the yolk mixture: Though the dough was, as I noted above, quite stiff, it was very workable once I started rolling and cutting it -- remarkably easy, in fact. I had planned to make farfalle but decided to cut it into fettuccine instead. The nests didn't clot up at all while sitting in the kitchen for an hour while I finished prep: One thing I wanted to try was a little trick I saw somewhere for the 65C eggs: Those went into the Sous Vide Supreme while I got the water boiling and the rest of the ingredients prepared. The finished dish was fettuccine with leftovers, but pretty tasty ones: artichoke hearts, Maine shrimp, asparagus tips, shallot rings, bacon chips, and a simple butter sauce: Egg was great -- though my daughter thought the white too runny and turned her nose up at it. Not mom and dad, who loved it. The verdict on the pasta? A qualified hit. When I drained the pasta into the collander, it was truly an excellent texture, as promised much more al dente than my usual fresh pasta recipe, both more toothy and tender and less rubbery. (I will add that a slight rubberiness in egg pasta is appealing to me.) However, by the time we sat down to eat it, it had been sauced in a sauté pan, and that seemed to take away some of the toothiness. I think that next time I'd cut back on the cooking time, which was, I dunno, maybe 3 minutes or so. Meanwhile, after a long day of cold-smoking, I have a brisket in the SVS starting an MC-suggested 72h bath at 63C. Eager to see what that's like on Wednesday night.

The Trident is great. So is Misty Kalkofen's Dunaway: 2 1/4 oz fino sherry (she suggests Lustau) 1/2 oz Cynar 1/2 oz maraschino 2 Angostura orange bitters