phaelon56

Oh. A $1 billion business is based on rejecting mass society? No... it's built on figuring out how to cleverly market a decent quality mass-produced product and present the choices available as though they somehow represented a return to a quieter, slower time when quality in certian fods was far more tangible. Or maybe not. The entire article does seem rather pointless but I'm puzzled as to why Dreyer's Grand Light variety is touted as a new thing. It's been available in the Edy's brand here in the east for many years. Breyer's was in fact a well established east coat ice cream brand when Dreyer's began penetrating eastern markets. They were wise to distinguish themselves with a name that would not be confused. Breyer's used to position themselves as a premium brand but they're not even remotely close to being as good as Edy's. I used to sell networking products to best Foods. Any price quote we delivered was met by a response of "Damn.... that's a lot of mayonnaise!".

Lots of folks speak highly of Tir Na Nog - good Irish pub scene and good upscale Irish food (amazingly enough... that phrase is finally not necessarily an oxymoron). It's on 8th Ave behind the Garden - somewhere between 32nd and 35th in one of the Penn Plaza buildings (I think it might be 3 Penn Plaza). Can't speak to the wine by the glass question as I'm not a drinker but I had a very nice dinner last year at Gus's FIG restaurant (stands for French-Italian-Greek). It's a low key place with Mediterranean menu and not too pricey - IIRC the dinner entrees are $15 - $23 and apps are $6 - $10. It wasn't a huge WOW but was nice - on 28th or 27th just east of 7th Avenue near FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). If you dont' mind dropping down into Chelsea - a cheap cab ride or a ten minute walk.... there are far more places to choose from. I suggest starting a separate thread for Chelsea recommendations but best to do a quick forum search first - Chelsea options have been widely discussed in many previous threads.

I too noticed a change but hadn't thought to check the label. How disgusting is that... HFCS in soup? Bad enough that they routinely use it soft drinks, snack foods and commercial candy. This time they've gone too far. How tough woudl it be to make a concentrate at home for freezing or canning that coud be used to produce a nice cream of tomato soup. Any ideas?

I still maintain hat if they served better popcorn at a slightly more realistic price... I would always buy some at the theater. For me the issue is that in my area they serve real crap and the prices are very artificially inflated over what is charged in most other metro markets. My favorite was the time a friend of mine was working as a theater manager at a mall cineplex in Syracuse. He was called over by the ticketaker/usher, who was attempting to deal with an irate customer. Said customer wanted to bring in a huge sheet pizza in the box and refused to believe that the "No outside food or drinks" sign really applied to his situation. My friend offered to sotre the pizza in the office until after the moview so the customer could take it home with him. It was then that he looked down and noticed the grocery bag with a 12 pack of brewskies also waiting to be "smuggled" in. How subtle.

Hear hear.... that really is such a good simple meal on the cold days - especially when the outer parts opf the sandwich have a bit of a char on them that contrasts nicely with the soup. extra sharp cheddar (4X is available here if you hunt for it) is imperative. I have not tried the Campbell's "ready to serve" soups but end up getting "store brand" on sale for emergencies and those lazy days when I've worked long hours and don't feel up to cooking a real dinner for one. My gripe on the Progresso soups is a certain sameness... a bit akin to the way much urban contemporary music sounds to me these days... regardless of the soup variety (or artist), there is an overall characteristic that keeps it from seeming truly unique and markedly distinct from the other flavors. I think I need to make some homemade soup and put the Aretha box set on the CD changer now.

My most recent GF's (in a long line of distinguished and lovely GF's) swore by the Guacamole mix powder they sell in the produce department. You mash two guacamole's, add a diced tomato or two, and mix in this powder. I have to admit that although just making it from scratch is a bit better, this package stuff is pretty darn good. Key factor, I suppose, is the fact that it actually relies on real avocado.

This has been a very good thread for me, particularly now that warmer weather is arriving in the Northeast. I just found one of these Model 8100 GoGrill for $199.... supposedly it can be converted to natural gas use and also is capable of reaching close to 800 degrees internal temp. I'm gonna get me some fire brick and make me some pizzas soon.

It's always been soft drinks for me but when you buy a six pack or two... do you ask the clerk to put it in a sack... or a bag?

Will you clarify this? I'm not quite visualizing it. Did he hold the string at both ends and pull it down the length of the peel to sort of separate the dough from the peel after the toppings had been applied?

I've been using these and found some brands better than others - can anyone here suggest one that's better than average? (true confessions - I don't drink alcohol but if I get a first class upgrade when flying I order the small bottles as my "free drink" and just take them home to cook with).

High quality fresh roasted coffee is smoother and has less bitterness in many cases. This means one can use the correct amount of beans and get a really full bodied cup that is not overpowering. I make my drip coffee with a Melitta cone but had thre same experience as you when I started grinding and making drip from home roasted beans. I'm not familiar with the "grind and brew" system but if you're not using two full level tablespoons of ground coffee per six ounce cup.... I woud start there. The standard SCAA coffee measure = 2 tablespoons grounds per 6 oz water. Sounds like too much coffee to many of us but with good coffee it will taste exceptional if the brewer is doing a good job (i.e. brews at the right temp, is clean and does not brew too slowly).

Good Kona is not easy to find - so many places here in the Northeast have "Kona blend" - a dubious proposition at best as one has no idea what percentage is really Kona. One of my roasting friends buys his green beans direct from Purple Mountain and swears by them. I have to wait until my roaster is set up again to try it. I have roasted Kaui estate coffee and it was good but didn't blow me away. It's intriguing to me that the coffee could conceivably be so much better on a different island in the same general area (not knocking the Kaui beans but general consensus seems to be that Kona is much better).

I use a wooden peel and would not dream of using anything else. The edge is already tapered but I do suggest oiling it with mineral oil as you would do with a cutting board. My local so-called wholesale and restaurant food supplier (Maine's) gets $25 for a short handled peel -- I was in search of Boos Mystery oil for my butcher block top peninsula and found the best price at 'A Best Kitchen" pizza peels They were just over $12, shipped quick and also had the lowest price on the oil )which is wonderful stuff and well worth the price difference over mineral oil).

I just tried a garlic chicken recipe that I liked very much. Rub the outside of the bird with garlic infused olive oil. season the inside of the caivty with seasoned salt or your choice of pwedered spice mix. Roast in the pan (not on a rack) for the first 20 minutes with breast down, then loosen from pan, turn breast up and throw 20 full garlic cloves in and around the chicken. Roast for another 30 minutes or until internal temp is correct. Remove chicken, deglaze pan with a cup of white wine, mash in a few of the roasted garlic cloves into the wine and cook down for a sauce. My guests were so impressed they thought I actually knew how to cook. It was so easy(to fool them - also the chicken was easy to prepare).

Ahhh... the beloved Yemenin beans. The uneven roasting is typical, as is a tendency there to be significant size and shape variation among the beans. Seeing odd looking beans that might be considered a taint in other varietals are to be expected with Yemeni beans. I suggesting so that most of the batch achieves the desired roast level and pick out the few beans that are truly underroasted. If doing a blend (Yemini makes for wonderful blends - both in Moka Java and also to add a wild earthy note to espresso blends), just roast the Yemini's separately from the other beans in the blend.

Is this a blend of different beans or one straight varietal? if it's a blend then the answer is to do "binary" roasting before blending - determine which are the faster roasting and which the slower roasting beans and do them ins separate batches before blending. If, OTOH, it's all one bean type.... you might try the dog bowl method with heat gun as detailed in another post in this forum (I believe that in the post Mike Lloyd also provided a helpful link to a website where the process is full detailed. You might also consider lowerihng the heat for a bit at some poitn in the roast to slow it down without taking the beans to as dark a level. Last I can think of is that some bean varieties, Yemeni beans in particular, have a tendency to roast a bit unevenly unless taken to a fairly dark level.

I'm a non-drinker by choice and find the Ame (pronounced ahh-may) brand of non-alcoholic juice to be very good. It's not de-alcoholizedc wine - it's a fruit derived drink with a very light carbonation and some herbal essences added for flavor. Their white is not quite dry but certainly not sweet and a nice alternative to de-alcoholized wine. The red and blush are IMO less successful as an alternative but of the two I prefer the blush - the red is too sweet. It's available on-line but if there's a Wegman's in your area they should have it aslo.

The point I failed to make adequately in my post was that this gentleman, in contrast to many folks in his age group, appeared not to have suffered that significant decline in his ability to discern subtle changes in taste or texture. He had no complaints about our fish or beef - only the chicken. I'm curious as to when the real shift to the type of mass production chicken farms occurred. I refer to the Tyson and Perdue style factories in which special feeds and techniques are used to pump out "full-sized" chickens in half that Mother Nature would take to grow them. I have to wonder if, as someone else has pointed out, the feed is an issue. I've purchased and prepared "free range" chicken within the past few years and found it to little different from regular grocery store chicken. Just last week I made fried chicken livers. I have customarily used the fresh ones that the gorcery store emat department had available. This time all I could get were Tyson brand frozen chicken livers. They had distinctly less flavor than the ones I've been using previously and I dont think it was just the fact that they were frozen.

I am under age 50 but recall a comment made by a former customer of mine and am curious to get feedback on it from more seasoned forum members with developed palates who also have good culinary memories. Years ago I worked as a waiter in Syracuse NY's Hotel Syracuse - once a grande dame by regional standards but by the early 80's already fading. The hotel had several full time residents - typically people of means who were alone and preferred the convenience of hotel living despite the price. Most took the majority of their meals in the more upscale of the hotel's two restaurants. One elderly gentleman, probably in his 90's, commented several times that he missed the days when "chicken really tasted like chicken". I was raised in a household where subtleties of taste were not a topic to be considered or discussed - food was just food. My customer, on the other hand, appeared to still have an acute palate and specifically referenced "the way they raise them these days" when referring to chicken. Poultry farms were certainly not a new phenomenon byt then (the early 80's) but even I remember chicken having more flavor 30 years ago than it usually does now. When did the big change really occur? Do some of you recall a time when the chicken one typically bought in a meat market or grocery store was closer to (or better than!) the free range chickens now available in some places?

Sweet Maria's has a fairly concise description of the benefits See the Sweet Maria's Vacuum Coffee Brewers page for more details. It's in the nature of vacuum brewing that the extraction of the bean's essence is done at the perfect temperature. The nature of the process by which the water is drawn through the filter rod area, infused and then deposited in the serving carafe ensures this. I'm a much bigger fan of drip coffee than I am of press pot as my chest is already hairy enough. I do have a Bodum vacuum brewer on order and will report back here after I've played with it for a few days.

I suggest that you throw water on this love fest only if it's at or about 205 degrees Fahrenheit - the ideal brewing temp. I had a Braun grinder just like the one pictured. It did do a significantly better job than my $20 whirly blade grinder and it was a good match for my very basic $80 pump style De Longhi espresso machine. When I jumped up to a "real" espresso machine ($200 - $300 basic entry level machine like a Gaggia).... the Braun just couldn't cut the mustard... uhhh... I mean beans... The particle size was not consistent enough. As an espresso fantatic I still contend that the grinder is crucial and worth spending extra money on. s already pointed out, many in this forum don't hesitate to spend a few hundred $$ or more on a single knife. I can actually produce close to the same results with a $50 knife than I can with a $200 knife (apart from paper thin slicing and the obvious limitations of my inadequate knife skills) but there's just no way I can produce the particle size and consistency necessary for great espresso without a really good grinder. My sanity has regularly been called into question by many for legitimate reasons but never because of the high end espresso machine and grinder that sits in my kitchen. Call me cheap... call me pragmatic or call me picky.... I got tired of paying $4 at a crack for average and often mediocre lattes and cappas. Forget about buying a real shot of espresso to consume in a cafe - apart from a few isolated places in Manhattan and one or two in Brooklyn, top shelf barista quality espresso is nearly impossibel to find int he NYC Metro and tri-state area. I figure that with one cappa a day and two per day on the weekends, when all the costs are added in and amortized.... I save serious money by making espresso at home. Havign a cup or two on a wekend morning while I'm still in my bathrobe enjoying the music I pick and the breakfast I cooked? Priceless....

I can only add... in addition to the great advice already offered here... get a god grinder! I use a cheap whirly blade grinder in the office to make Melitta drip coffee but for press pot, vac pot and especially espresso, there simply is not subtitute for a really good quality burr grinder. The Solis Maestro is a deservedly popular grinder that's excellent for general use and acceptable for espresso but it simply won't offer the longevity of use that a Rocky, Anfim or other higher end grinder will. If $$ is the issue and you don't mind busting a few beads of swet, the Zazzenhaus manual grinders can deliver excellent results also.

Passing through PA last weekn on one of my regular visits downstate to NYC, I spotted a billboard that proclaimed Old Forge PA to be the pizza capital of the world. There were at least a half dozen different pizzerias listed on the sign. Having searched eGulllet I can find only a reference to the claim but no reports from folks who've been there. Have you tried the pizza in Old Forge? I'm close enough to that area once a month that I could swing by to scope it out but would leve to get some feedback on which places I shoulld try first.

Parking is unquestionably easier in Syracuse but the restaurantt itself, especially in the bar area, is likely to be far less crowded in NYC. They have live music five or six night each week at the Syracuse location - if you lower the hand holding your drink to your side you typically have to ask your neighbor to move so you can lift the hand back up - it gets that crowded. I passed on a free show by guitarist Muryali Coryell (Larry's son and a virtuoso in his own right)) this past weekend for that exact reason. There's a but more to do in NYC after dinner - my vote is NYC.

Their annual BBQ event this summer wil be catered by the Dinosaur Barbecue. Currently located in Syracuse NY and Rochester, they are slated to open a new spot late Spring up at 131st and 12th Avenue. I'm developing a Q&A session for eGullet that will feature owner John Stage sometime between now and the Beard event.