Jason Perlow

I drink both. Actually, I am a fiend for any hot beverage. I rarely drink coffee at home because Rachel hates coffee and it only gets prepared if I -really- want it and am committed to drinking an entire pot (or want ice coffee for later) or if guests are over and we can prepare an entire pot. Otherwise, we drink tea at home. In winter months we brew at least a pot or two a day. In the cases when I am consulting or working away from home and I am at someone else's office, I drink coffee. At restaurants or when we are out, I drink coffee and espresso. When we're at Barnes and Noble and if they have one of those cafes, I like a good hot caramel cider or a hot chocolate. At asian restaurants I drink tea, copiously.

Sounds very promising!

Caffeine is definitely very bitter and even adding a small amount of it to a product is going to change the flavor profile a lot. The US Army has been testing a caffeine-enhanced chocolate bar for its troops for a while and it is proving to be highly unpopular because of the bitter flavor. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309082587/html/1.html

I'm quite sure Avant-Garde is an accepted term used in Spanish. It's been used since Picasso and then Dali later became effectively the center of it.

It might be, in which case that date is out.

And Fink can cook, let me tell you.

Oy. That would probably be us.

Sounds good.

http://www.webdesk.com/chinese-new-years-traditions/ Year of the Monkey, Lunar year 4702

From what I know of Austrian wines is that they don't use new oak. So I'd probably like it.

See, I dont see "bitching oak" as a particularly good match for seafood, or anything for that matter. My first thought would have been a Alsatian wine, a Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer or a Reisling. Even a German Reisling Spatslese or Auslese because you got the mango and kiwi sauce which should stand up to the residual sweetness pretty well. Then perhaps an Austrian Gruner Veltliner and perhaps Chenin Blanc or Sauvignon Blanc if you want to go more mainstream french. Chardonnay would NEVER enter in on my list to match with that dish!

Han Il Kwan in Fort Lee is a really clean restaurant. It had to be something stupid.

By the way, a casual search of Yahoo of the word "cusina" yeilds results in various Italian web sites: http://www.valenzapo.com/pascoli/migrazioni/veneto.htm Might be a piedmontese dialect, I dunno.

That phrase would do me no good as I hate salt cod. In every language.

What language is "cusina"? Yeah, its italian. My bad. Fuck it. Actually, it's neither. It's cucina (koo-CHEE-nah, not koo-SEE-nah), meaning "kitchen," "cooking" and "food." Cocina does indeed mean "cooking," "cookery" and "cuisine" (as well as "kitchen" and "stove"). I would also say that it is the appropriate Spanish equivalent of the French word cuisine, which also means "kitchen," "cookery," "cooking" and "food." The Spanish translation of "nouvelle cuisine" is indeed "nueva cocina." That said, I think FG's use of "avant-garde" makes a lot more sense. Yeah, I know that. My foreign language skills must have taken a nose dive today after all that codeine syrup. Two or three swigs of that and 20 years of international travel and fluency in Spanish and some Italian doesn't mean dick Remind me not to enter these language referendum threads in the future, thanks.

Chong: Hey meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaan, have you seen this foam stuff man? Cheech: Yeah man I hear he made weed into foam, that Spanish dude. Chong: Wow man, how do you smoke foam? Cheech: I dunno man I think you eat it. Cheech: Wow man.

[gandolfini] Hey snapperhead, its the Italian American espresso experience. And who says I can't drink a cappucino after 10am? I'll break your friggin' legs. And I'll have a big slice of lemon peel too. [/gandolfini]

What language is "cusina"? Yeah, its italian. My bad. Fuck it. Cocina is no good either because it means "cooking" not cuisine. Thus Alta Cocina would be "high cooking".

And the ability to press down hard with it when necessary.

Like sex, good espresso requires a learning curve.

Yeah, what you need is one of those $600 La Pavoni's. 1920's technology. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...G/egulletcom-20

Its Nueva Cusina.

Hubbie reports that the feeling among people who've tried it is that the results are as good or better with the variac/fresh roast combination than with those from a more expensive roaster. Might just be the hacker boy mentality, though... It sounds like way, way too much trouble and that if you don't know what you are doing, you could ruin the coffee or worse, set fire to your house. I've "hacked" a lot of consumer electronics in my time but this just sounds like it isn't worth the trouble.

Ok, but doesnt the variable transformer cost 100 bucks or more? Doesnt it make sense just to buy one of the better $300 home roasters if you are going to bother to hack a hundred dollar air roaster?

The closest thing compared to this is a gigantic seafood restaurant in Singapore I saw on Tony Bourdain's show. The place was about the same size (it might have been larger) with a giant central open kitchen and had all kinds of tanks for live shellfish and displays for freshly caught fish.