The Hersch

I will when I get home in about twenty minutes.

I recently acquired a beautiful silver cocktail shaker. Beautiful to look at, frustrating to try to use. In fact, it seems to be damned near useless. Here's a picture of the lovely little thing: And another: The problem is that when you mix a cocktail in it and uncover the little pouring spout, as you attempt to pour, the ice falls against the inside of the strainer and completely blocks the spout. I've tried both whole ice cubes and cracked. No crushed ice, but I don't want to use crushed ice. Now, I've seen (but never before tried to use) many shakers built exactly like this, and surely they wouldn't have kept making them if they were all completely useless. What am I doing wrong?

Apparently the pinky-orangey "French dressing" dates to the 1930s, at least according to www.foodtimeline.org: This website has a lot of cool information desperately in need of a copy editor/proofreader. I make no claim as to its reliability.

This called Paste Cacio e Burro. Alfredo adds a little cream. ← Yes, annanstee, that is the familiar current usage of "Alfredo," in the Americas anyway. But per earlier in this thread, there are some indications that the dish has changed, under that name; that was the question. Just as, for instance, "French" salad dressing in the US no longer means what it did until the 1970s or so (and still does in other English-speaking countries.) When you see "French dressing" in a US cookbook from about the 1960s or earlier, it normally meant some kind of vinaigrette, not something sweetened and flavored with tomato. The term was appropriated. ← Mario Batali's fettucine Alfredo recipe in his new book is pasta, butter, cheese, and a little of the pasta cooking water. No cream. That pretty much settles it as far as I'm concerned. As to "French dressing": This certainly meant the sweet orange goop back in my 1960s childhood, at least in my part of the US. Maybe not in cookbooks, but in restaurants and supermarkets. I would speculate that it already meant that in the 1950s.

There's a nice brief history of Burger Chef HERE. Back in the days when Burger Chef was the principal competitor to McDonald's, they certainly had the better hamburger. And they gave us, through their TV advertising, the deathless "Incrediburgable!"

What happened to Popeye's onion rings, and when? Do they not offer them any more, or did they replace them with the extruded-onion-derivative-coated-with-wallpaper-paste that other fast food joints serve? I haven't been to a Popeye's in several years and was unaware that their astonishingly good onion rings were no more.

Puff pastry without butter? Puff pastry WITHOUT BUTTER??

You (and maybe others in this elephantine thread) have claimed more than once that the 't' in these names is pronounced because of some rule of French pronunciation. Way upthread you included this link as if it contained such a rule, but it doesn't (unless I'm missing something). I believe that the 't' in these names is pronounced not because of a rule but because they're exceptions to the rule (which is somewhat common in French proper names). What is the rule that supposedly covers these names?

Fresh tuna simply cannot compete with really first-rate tinned (or jarred) tuna in olive oil. There are some excellent products from Spain and Italy available in the US now, although they are incredibly expensive. Bonito del Norte from Ortiz is one of my favorites. Fresh tuna is insipid by comparison. Supposedly, as noted upthread, "classic" salade Niçoise has no lettuce, no green beans, no potatoes, and (as I understand it) no tuna either, but rather tomatoes, bell peppers, olives, anchovies, and eggs. However, as Julia Child notes (in Mastering v I, I think), the typical modern version with all those other things is basically the version given by Escoffier, in himself the locus classicus of French cuisine in general, with the added authority of having been Niçoise.

KitchenAid is selling the 12-cup processor for $198 on its very own website. Free shipping, too.

I keep a bottle of (Heinz) ketchup in the fridge for one use only: "Russian" dressing for Reuben sandwiches. Good, fatty corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, "Russian" dressing on rye, fried in butter. I think I'm going to faint.... Remember Lucy having lunch in Montmartre? She unwittingly orders escargots, complains to the waiter that there are snails in her food, asks for ketchup, and gets arrested when she pays for her lunch with counterfeit money?

Buon Italia at Chelsea Market is fabulous. They carry, among many wonderful things, a life-altering guanciale. I don't know where they get it. I find it hard to imagine a better example of guanciale--or, indeed, food.

Did anyone see the review of The Perfectionist in this past Sunday's Washington Post? In making the fair-enough but trivial point that big-name chefs occupy a more exalted position within French culture than within the American, Jonathan Yardley delivers himself of the following gem: Yes, the United States does have its celebrity chefs, but they're mostly in New Orleans (Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse), and such celebrity as they enjoy is mostly limited to shows on cable television. Wow.

In Portuguese, though, you have to order three. ← Is this because I need to be extra drunk? Or because you still have to know the gender of said item to correctly ask for two of them? ← The latter, although I like both answers. But yes, Portuguese inflects two-zies for gender: duas cervejas, dois cafes.

In Portuguese, though, you have to order three.

1979 not new??? Perhaps my time-line is a bit off. But BAYZEL is a relatively new American innovation, not to be found in Webster's Second (1934). Okay, that's more than 25 or 30 years ago. But also not encountered in my 1960s childhood.

Which brings me to one of my pet food-pronunciation peeves. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, virtually every English speaker pronounced the name of that herb BAZZEL, which is how it should be pronounced. If you look in any older American dictionary (like Webster's Second) or any modern British dictionary (if I'm not mistaken--I'm going by the OED 2nd edition), this is the only pronunciation you'll find (represented in their proprietary notational systems). Somewhere along the line, though, Americans got it into their minds to pronounce it BAYZEL, which is a silliness that drives me to distraction. Would they say Bayzel Rathbone, or Bayzel Faulty? The herbal name and the male proper name are exactly the same word, and should be pronounced BAZZEL. Please join my campaign to restore this word. (I never heard anyone pronounce it BAHZEL, though.)

I had lunch at Capt. Ratty's once, because my car broke down. It wasn't awful.

I finally made this recipe Saturday (after asking for it in January) and I must say it was among the most delicious beef stews I've ever tasted. I had a beautiful piece of chuck that I got at the Dupont Circle farmers' market in DC the previous Sunday, and it cooked up tender and un-stringy. My only deviation from spaghetttti's recipe was leaving out the nutmeg, as I dislike it intensely, and adding a wee bit more of the other spices to compensate. Oh, and I stuck the pot in a 325F oven after bringing to a boil. Wonderful. Thanks again, spaghetttti!

Are you saying that there's a high-end Mexican place in Washington? If so, I'd like to try it!

I stumbled on this the other day, when I was hungry and it was about 4 pm so I didn't want a meal. I opened the fridge and there it was, the beautiful piece of Brillat-Savarin I had bought the week before. Perfect, I thought. But what to have it with or on? No crackers in the house, no good bread. But a lovely bunch of radishes. So I sliced a radish thin, salted the slices lightly, and put a smear of Brillat-Savarin on each slice. Enjoyed with a martini. It was heavenly.

The Grill from Ipanema serves what I take to be fairly straightforward, typical Brazilian food. Having never been to Brazil, I'm not much of a judge, and it's also been several years since I ate at this restaurant. You can see a brief Washingtonian magazine review here.

There is a "Grill from Ipanema" in Washington, on Columbia Road. Been going strong for more than a decade.

I'm a tireless promoter of the brunch at Bistro Français on M St. in Georgetown. Excellent "brunchy" items like Eggs Benedict or Norwegian (with smoked salmon); also excellent "lunchy" items like roast chicken. Some of the best French fries in the area. Bottomless champagne glass. $18.95. When you reserve, ask to be seated on the "restaurant side", which is more serene. The service can be a little uneven, but cultivate your waiter to be sure of prompt refills of that bottomless glass.

I was robbed! Actually, it never occurred to me to check for another cocktail with the same name as mine. I named this pre-google. A google search today gets 395 hits. I gather the other Belmont cocktail was named after the horse race and probably predates mine. Oh dash. Belmont Street Cocktail isn't too bad, but the name of the street in question is Belmont Road, which doesn't have much of a ring. Perhaps Kalorama Cocktail, after the neighborhood in which Belmont Road lies (in Washington).