phaelon56

Check any decent sized Spanish market - specifically one that caters to the Spanish speaking Caribbean population (Cuban. Puerto Rican, Dominican etc.). There's a little windsock shaped coffee filter or cloth sock that's attached to a metal ring and has a wooden handle. Can't recall the Spamnish word for it but look fro Bustela coffee and you'll find this inthe same section. Put dark roast coffee in a pan of water, bring just to the boil, turn off heat and let it steep for 4 - 5 minutes then pour through the sock. Coffee will be very strong and dark - usually served with heavily sweetened black or mixed 50/50 with scalded milk. I imagine it would be very good with the sweetened condensed milk. If you try this and it's still not quite like what you remember in Thailand... try adding a small amount of cardamom to the brew. That happens to be the mystery flavor in Thai Iced Coffee and may possibly be used in some of the hot coffee as well.

This is all good news and very encouraging. We did spot Fuel when we tried to have breakfast at John's Country Kitchen a few weekends ago (but we arrived too late and could only get lunch). Had not yet heard of Louisa's and will check it out on my next visit. I already had El Pollo Loco on my must visit list as I'm very fond of Peruvian style marinated grilled chicken - very convenient that Portofino's is there as well. I'm hoping to start with a roasting business, develop some wholesale accounts to restaurants, cafes and retail outlets and then open a retail cafe of my own. There is definitely a market. By the way.... if you're looking for really good quality espresso drinks in Charlotte, check out Java Passage in the lobby of The Design Center in Charlotte's South End. They'll be opening a few weeks from now and from what I know, will really be doing things right. They've done their homework, have the right equipment and are sourcing very good beans (from Counter Culture in Raleigh).

Peter - thanks so much for joining us here. It's very exciting to have you participating in our community. During my quest for the ideal home made pizza crust I've often run across your name as a highly regarded reference. By chance my beloved has relocated to Charlotte NC where Johnson & Wales now has a wonderful new campus. I'm not sure how often you're actually in Charlotte by virtue of your relationship with them but am curious as to your take on the pizza offerings there. It will take me many visits over the next year and quite some time after I move there in early 2005 to do more than scratch the surface on culinary offerings but pizza has always been an interest of mine. I've seen an abundance of both national and regional chains but am unfamiliar with what else may exist there. As a dyed-in-the-wool Northeasterner I've often been disappointed with the pizza I've found in the South. My questions: 1) Does Charlotte actually have places that make either old fashioned Neapolitan style pizza with nice chewy flavorful dough and quality mozzarella cheese (such as the stuff that was once the standard for great take-out slices in NYC although that breed has mostly disappeared) .... or..... places that come anywhere close to approximating the brick oven/coal oven style typified by the classic NYC places such as Totonno's, John's, Grimaldi's etc. 2) What's your take on the culinary market there? if such a place does not already exist would there be a viable opportunity for someone offering artisan quality pizza of this type in Charlotte? (I will quite likely be opening a coffee/espresso related business after my arrival in Charlotte but am curious about other opportunities worth exploring).

Are you puting the springform pan in a water bath and then lesaving the oven door closed until it's cooled off for awhile? I've neevr made cheescake but my daughter was doing it for awhile and that's how she did hers. I don't recall seeing any cracks and she was a very inexperienced baker. I think the water makes a difference.

Not to worry - it actually cost me less than $25 US to ship to five locations - out Postal system is inexpensive and efficient. Thus far the comments I've received, which I'll summarize here or on another thread, have not indicated that it's too strong. Rather, there seems to be a consensus that the coffee is generally on the mellow side without a prominent character. One description I've heard is "it's a good beginner's coffee". This means a coffee suitable for someone who is moving into exploration of distinct varietals and stronger coffees but has not expereienced those previously. More to follow.

Those instructions are really good but I'll make a few suggestions for slight change, based on the way most Viet restaurants serve it. * Fill the tall glass with ice at the onset and have a long handled iced tea spoon available * Set the filter on a short glass allowing it to drip onto the condensed milk * Try to have a ratio of about four parts espresso to one part milk; if made with good coffee the drink can be much darker than the one pictured and more flavorful as a result * stir really throughly once all the coffee has dripped through - I use the spoon to scrape down the last bits of condensed milk that are still stuck to the inside and bottom of the glass * After stirring, pour it over the ice - don't worry about any small bit of water that's in the bottom of the tall glass where the ice has started to melt - if the drink is made strong enough that just blends in and you end up with the perfect balance I usually let mine drip through as slow as it wished, stir and mix midway through the meal and then take a few sips. I don't really drink mine until I'm done with the meal, at which point it's sort of like having coffee and dessert all in onw glass

I bought mine at an Asian grocery for about $4 - $5. They were about $1 - $1.50 cheaper online but with shipping added in it was easier to buy them in the store and about the same total price. I also love that coffee as so many of us do. Here in the US most Vietnamese restaurants either use the dark roasted coffee/chicory blend available as the Cafe du Monde brand of canned coffee or they use Community Coffee (another New Orleans LA based brand that is dark roasted but without chicory added). The absolute best Viet style iced coffee I've had has been made with the Trung Nguyen brand which is imported from Vietnam. It's definitely superior to the others. I haven't seen it in Asian stores in my area but believe it is available online and in some larger cities. It's worth seeking out.

Not necessarily. A slight but agreeable sourness might be an inherent quality of that particular bean but is not necessarily associated with Robusta varieties. When coffee is produced by the espresso method (i.e. in a commercial espresso machine vs. a stove-top Moka coffee maker), improper extraction or brewing temperatures that are too cool can cause sourness but it's generally not a pleasant one. High quality robustas are often used in Italy and sometimes in the US as a component in espresso blends. They add a prodigious amount of crema to espresso shots (which most people desire as the crema is where the crucial flavor components are most evident and it adds to the pleasant mouthfeel of a shot). Robustas can also add a hint of bitterness in the flavor that is for many people's tastes a desirable things in that it adds to the complexity of the flavor profile. Robust also has a noticeably higher caffeine content that Arabica beans. Here in the US, home roasters can easily find access to one each of various Indian, Indonesian and African Robustas but there are rarely more than 4 - 5 varieties in total to choose from. I've been told that many of the highest quality Robustas are snagged at auction by the Japanese brokers, who will often pay the highest price. Regrettably, Robusta has a bad reputation in this country among much of the serious coffee drinking community because so much low quality commodity grade Robusta is used by the big food conglomerates to make the supermarket brands such as Folger's, Maxwell House etc..

I'll see your Halibut flavored lollypop and raise you a Beef Pop I like mine with pepper on it but I'll grind it myself please

I presume we can account for the difference in calories between differing forms of alcoholic beverages as being accounted for by what they are distilled from. What I find a bit puzzling is this Alcohol Calories Chart Not that it's from some esteemed scientific source or anything but it shows "Rum" as being 220 calories per 100ml and then further down in the same chart lists "Bacardi" as being 118 calories per glass! What's up with that? What Bacardi product are they talking about? Bacardi's recent efforts to promote Bacardi and Diet Coke as a low calorie Atkins friendly drink claim that Bacardi has 66 calories per serving/drink (I assume this is a one ounce portion).

Your specific circumstances being what they are and human nature being what it is... stick to the bean to cup option. I've tasted some surprisingly pretty good coffee from those little plastic sachets but a good superauto can beat it and offers far lower cost per cup, not to mention greater flexbility in choice of bean type, roast level etc.

I think perhaps we should discuss giant cheese graters instead - maybe they'll arouse less controversy. I haven't seen them in any restaurants yet but have seen them touted in some online store as the perfect complement to thos three foot long peppermills. This cheery thought from Ruminations.com puts so much in perspective for me:

Apparently you haven't eaten at my mother's house Actually.... the only thing I generally put pepper on in restaurants is certain salads, the occasional baked potato (a rare occasion for me to order one) and, if out to breakfast on grits or eggs.

I live in an area (central NY state) which, if forced to rely on locally/regionally grown berries, would have a strawberry season of about 2 -3 weeks in length and the rest of the year we'd be forced to do without. I agree that the Driscolls are horrible but still try to make do on occasion with them by marinating them to add some juiciness. It's an illusion of sorts but sometimes the color and taste are still desirable, even though lacking.

Thank you spaghetttti! Fascinating story and wonderful pictures (I especially like the way they are so artistically framed and arranged - where'd you learn how to do that? ). Everything that you show us about that operation is so appealing aesthetically... from the building to the equipment and even the coffee storage bins. I'm a a bit puzzled but also intrigued by the exceptionally long storage times you mention for green beans. Does he use a special method of temperature and humidity control? There seems to be a prevailing sentiment among commercial coffee roasters here in the US that the current year's crop is generally desirable (beans no more than 12 months old) and that beans up to two years in age may often be used successfully but there are concerns about using beans older than that. Would you be kind enough to pose a few questions to Mr. Widya for us? - What does the centrifugal separation process do for the beans prior to roasting? - Is the outdoor sun always consistent enough to allow the 7 hours of drying before roasting? - Is this additional drying done on nets or on concrete or in bins of some sort? - Are the beans intentionally aged to develop richer, more unique flavor profiles? - Is the Flores variety one from Indonesia or a nearby region? I'm familiar with Flores Guatemala but it's not in the prominent coffee growing area of that country. How interesting that there are multiple varieties of aged coffee available. Aged Sumatran and Sulawesi are often available through specialty bean importers and brokers here in the US but rarely do I see other aged varieties listed. Also - it's very rare to see a cafe or coffeehouse offering an aged coffee. Are aged coffee fairly popular among the general population of coffee drinkers in Indonesia? Lastly... in light of the fact that you have some high quality Robusta varietals there... are they popular for consumption as straight varietals or are they used in blends or for espresso coffee (not even sure if espresso is consumed to any extent in Indonesia but I am curious). Thanks again for a great report!

Interesting that you mention the wa-shoku. I made a pot of the Flavorcoffee "Mocha based blend" yesterday and shared it with a few co-workers who both enjoy coffee. I didn't get into terribly precise measurements as I have no scale at work (I weigh beans when making vacuum pot coffee at home). I used one full cup (US measurement cup by volume) for a ten "cup" pot of water (that's about 60 fluid ounces or so). We all found that batch of coffee to be on the bland side. It was not grassy tasting as under-roasted coffees usually are but on the positive side it had absolutely no detectable bitterness. The color of the brewed coffee was not pale, thus it appeared to be the right extraction, yet the taste was, by our standards, on the weak or bland side. As a point of reference we compared it to a coffee I had brewed here in the office the previous day. That coffee was a blend of about 4 parts Colombian beans air roasted to 454 degrees bean temp, 3 parts Colombian roasted to a 445 degree temp and 3 parts Brazil roasted to 447 degrees. I used approximately the same amount of coffee as I did with the Flavorcoffee mocha-based blend but this coffee was robust and very full bodied. Regrettably, I had to grind the Flavorcoffee beans with the cheap whirly-blade grinder that I had in my office, thus particle size was inconsistent. The Colombian-Brazil blend I mentioned had been pre-ground an a commercial Ditting grinder and had complete uniformity among the particles sizes. In the office we used a Bunn brand "pour-over" style coffee maker. It always keeps a full pot's worth of hot water in it's stainless steel reservoir and that water is displaced by the incoming cold water that is poured in. The Bunn maker is very common in restaurants and offices and brews with a high enough temperature, unlike the great majority of automatic drip coffee makers that are popular in American homes. Melkor is 100% correct about auto drip makers. Although serious coffee drinkers often use French Press pots or Melitta/Chemex style manual drip systems at home and some of us even use vacuum pots, I'd guess that 95% of the coffee drinking population uses cheap drip makers that take too long to brew and do it at too low a temperature. As for roasting methods... the huge conglomerates that produce coffee for the grocery store mass market (Maxwell House, Folger's etc.) use mostly the cheapest commodity beans such as the steam treated Vietnamese robust and other low grade beans. They roast with hot air (fluid bed) on conveyor systems that roast in 3 - 4 minutes time - far too fast. Most independent operations and others who produce higher quality coffees for the more discerning market utilize drum roasters of varying sizes and designs, with Probat and Diederich being among the most popular. The original patent holder of the fluid-bed roastign design utilized by the mass market producers is Michael Sivetz. He has for many years been selling his own line of fluid bed roasters targeted mostly at smaller producers. There is a small but loyal contingent of roaster who favor hot air (fluid bed) roasting but they are a distinct minority. There has been a debate for years that will likely continue, in which people argue the merits of fluid bed vs drum roasting. I'll leave detailed discussion of that for some other thread but my instinctive feeling thus far is the the superheated steam method yields a result closer to air-roasting (fluid bed) that to drum roasting. I gave my last remaining sample of the Flavorcoffee dark roasted Guatemalan to one of the baristas at the cafe where I do the roasting. She was a bit taken aback by the very oily appearance of the beans but noted with interest, as did I, that there was no detectable burnt smell. It was an oily dark roast but without the burnt flavor artifacts that typify dark roasts such as Starbucks. She was very impressed with the coffee here are her comments:

I haven't but I'll look for them. I really, really like their espresso soda although I find the Italian Moka brand a bit more to my liking. If these new drinks resemble the bottled Starbucks Frappuccino but with sugar instead of HFCS and a less cloying seetness, I'll stock up on them in the warm weather months. I often find a desire for something quick and easy in a bottle that is like an iced cappuccino but without too much sweetness.

You BBQ nuts are way behind us espresso fiends but appear to be catching up. Many espresso machine hackers have been adding PID controllers (Proportional Integral Derviative) to their machiens to control temp swing during the brewing process. It can fluctuate by many, many degrees and profundly affect the taqste of the nectar. The newestt PID's on the right commercial machines keep the temp swing to no more than 1/2 degree F throughout the 25 - 30 second shot cycle. Apropos for eGullet is a comment from David Schomer, famed espresso pundit, owner of Seattle's Caffe Vivace, who has long posited that espresso production would never gain status as a true culinary art until the 1/2 degree temp stability issue was conquered. It looks as though we may be there.

Joe's is closed. Sniffle... sniffle... teary eyes. I loved that place. I have no idea what happened but they are totally out of business and the building is empty. I never got seated there without waiting at least 30 minutes for a table, even on a weeknight. I was once even told that they were, at one time, on the list of the 300 busiest restaurants in the uS (based on volume I imagine). Can't imagine what caused their demise but I miss them.

Sixteen years and a few months. And counting. It's not religious but I used to drink religiously

Hormone, antibiotic and ethical issues aside.... brining fixed all those issues for me. Now that I finally got on the brining bandwagon my chicken consistently comes out moist and juicy - even when I just split it and throw it on the gas grill.

I think it's probably a new genetic hybrid that has crossed a chicken with a squid and yielded tubular boneless bodies on chicken. Yum. Just think of the possibilities. I don't bother with onion rigns that don't have real whole rings of onion in them but then again... I rarely get fast food and that's most likely why I don't encounter them. I typically get onuion rings when getting food at oen of our local independent fish fry places. They all use real rings of onion.

I know what you meant but it's not what I thought. Just be happy that the giant phallic thing is not being brandished directly in your face I'm in agreement with all that a small pepper grinder on every table scores huge points. My mother often asks why I frequently put pepper on my food before I taste it. The answer is easy: because I know it needs it.

So I'm not alone and not crazy. Perhaps I'm both but for different reasons. Andiesenji's explanation makes great sense to me. I'm fortunate enough (depending on how one looks at it) to be close enough to "the sticks" that I should be able to locate a source for better birds than the local grocery sells as "free range". Our local farmers market has a vendor selling grass fed beef (locally raised with no hormones, no anti-biotics etc.). She also has heirloom turkeys - I'll look into what other poultry may be available. Our only local Kosher meat market closed years ago but I'm sure Wegman's has Kosher chickens - can't believe that our local Orthodox community is driving all the way to Rochester for chicken.

I'll confess to only having "free range chicken" on two occasions. Once was when I paid through the nose for some at a Wegman's Grocery and used it for a Thai influenced dish (albeit not spicy). I wanted to really impress a woman I was cooking for a dinner for and it worked but not because of the chicken. The second time was at a picnic lunch/dinner at the home of an eGulleteer. On that occasion it was eaten cold, having been cooked the previous day. I identify with and understand the rationale behind supporting smaller farmers, sustainable agriculture and more traditional (and more humane) animal husbandry methods. No need to debate those issues here. I'm more interested in the actual taste and texture. I recognize that some grocery store chicken is better than others but I've brined and grilled some chicken this summer that tasted every bit as good as the free range chicken I've tried. So..... what is it? - My palate just isn't discerning enough (I can readily accept this) - I didn't have the right brand. Some free range chickens are more free than others - I didn't do a true blind test A/B comparison but might taste the difference if I did so - The Emperor's New Clothes syndrome - people just think it tastes better - It's an ethical choice that people feel comfortable with now that the nature of "factory farms" is widely understood - It either is or is perceived to be "healthier" Or is it it something else?