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Ktepi

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  1. Ktepi

    Easter Menus

    My Easter plans haven't been formulated yet, but I'm definitely making lamb ham, because it's already curing in the fridge: a bone-in leg of lamb cut, cured with curing salt, turbinado sugar, and Old Bay. (I have no idea if turbinado is good for curing with or not, I had just forgotten to buy white sugar.) I took the little nobby end from the cut and made a lamb broth with it, and I'm going to use that for red-eye gravy. If I'm cooking Easter dinner myself, or if I'm going somewhere where I'm not doing any of the cooking and wind up having this on a different day, I'll serve it with white grits and petits pois from Trader Joe's. Otherwise, since I'm with the northern half of my family and red-eye gravy and grits won't go over as well with them as with the Tennessee-Alabama half, I may make the Persian sour cherry rice mentioned above.
  2. Ktepi

    Candy

    I just bought a few Japanese candies from eBay, because I had some money on my PayPal account after selling a couple things. Black Currant Mentos were the reason for my purchase -- my ex spent a year teaching in China and brought everyone home Pink Grapefruit Mentos, because they had amazed her with how much they tasted like actual grapefruit, and I hoped maybe other flavors of Mentos not sold in the U.S. would share that magical property. Unfortunately they didn't. They're good, but merely good, and I've had better and truer-tasting black currant candies before. But while I was at it, since I was paying for international shipping anyway, I bought some mini green tea Aeros (tasty) and cherry blossom Kit Kats. Oh good Lord. The cherry blossom Kit Kats justified the cost of postage, honest to God. Now, I've never tasted cherry blossom anything before, so for all I know this is the worst of the genre, but it really blew me away.
  3. Ktepi

    MxMo XIV

    I usually make this with prosecco, but there's no reason it couldn't be made with champagne. Roasted Lemonade Champagne Cocktail Per champagne flute: more or less equal amounts of roasted lemonade concentrate and champagne 2 oz Bulleit bourbon (I like the rye flavor of Bulleit more than any other bourbon I've made the drink with) dash of Angostura bitters Roasted Lemonade Concentrate Eight lemons 1-2 cups of sugar Cut six of the lemons into quarters. Arrange them in a baking dish, cover with a cup to cup and a half of sugar, and nearly cover with water. Roast at 400 degrees or so until the lemons are soft and the liquid has become syrupy -- about 45 minutes to an hour. Scoop the pulp from the lemons and puree it with one or two roasted lemons, the juice of the 2 remaining fresh lemons, and all of the syrup. Adjust sweetness to taste, keeping in mind that this is a concentrate. Chill. This can be done a few days in advance. Roasted lemonade is mentioned on an eGullet thread or two; it has a thick body and bitterness like grapefruit juice -- using Meyer lemons minimizes the bitterness, but I like it.
  4. Pomegranate Chip sounds like a fantastic idea, but yeah, that really is a whole lot of noise where "hey, we thought of a cool flavor, come and get it" would do just fine. They don't carry it here -- they say they're adding online ordering in the near future, but you know, if I'm going to buy and ship ice cream online, I'm going to get Capogiro Gelato.
  5. Grapefruit juice 2 oz Ron Zacapa Centenario rum and a big scoop of passion fruit sorbet I have a feeling this is the kind of thing I would put falernum in if I had falernum.
  6. Ktepi

    Sauerkraut

    I've made sauerkraut twice since seeing this thread. The first batch came out excellently. The second, I'm not sure of: I used red cabbage, which I mention only because it was a change from the first. The room I kept it in was colder thanks to the weather, with some warm days breaking it up. I checked on it today because of that cold -- I guess it's been about ten weeks -- and the protective layer of whole leaves had a small amount of fuzzy grey mold on it. I removed them, and the kraut underneath has a strongly yeasty, beery smell. Is the kraut okay, or should I just toss it?
  7. Well, we're flying in -- she can only get one day off of work, so we're there for a three-day weekend -- but we're renting a car and we like road trips, so that would be a good excuse for one, especially if we're blessed with pleasant weather. Is it a nice drive?
  8. Sorry for the awkward phrasing, I'm not sure how to sum up my question. Wikitravel says this in an entry about Charleston: Open-pour bottles have recently been legalized in bars and restaurants, but many establishments will continue to use mini-bottles. This is important to remember, since your drinks will have an entire mini-bottle of each liquor in the recipe. Be careful when ordering. If I understand that right, when open-pour bottles were banned, minis had to be used, and used in their entirety when making a drink? Wouldn't that have an enormous effect on the drinks available to a bartender? Nevermind the Aviation, even the Sidecar and a properly made Margarita would be thrown off if a 1:1 ratio had to be used for its constituent liquors -- and while it would be easy enough to make a pitcher of Margaritas with miniatures, a pitcher of Sidecars seems unlikely. Is this some archaic blue law, something that's still enforced in parts of the country, or am I entirely misunderstanding it?
  9. My girlfriend and I are going to Charleston for a three day weekend at the end of February -- it's one of the places we think we'd like to move, but for right now we're just visiting for the sake of visiting. Anyway, I think I can cull a lot of great restaurant recommendations from the various threads. But does anyone have any recommendations for barbecue?
  10. Persimmon fudge, too. I discovered four or five farmstands I didn't know were there, once they put out their big PERSIMMON FUDGE signs. Is raisin pie an Indiana thing, an Amish (or Mennonite?) thing, or a Midwest thing? Before moving to Indiana, I'd seen it once or twice in peoples' homes -- once I got there, it seemed to be in every farmstand. (Gray Brothers Cafeteria near Indianapolis has very nice raisin pie, though it's very sweet.)
  11. That description of a Bijou as the best showcase for green Chartreuse perked my ears up, but the only vermouth I have in the house is Noilly Prat dry -- so I tried it with that, and haven't got any complaints. This is a great Chartreuse drink. The Chartreuse does seem to drown out the orange bitters, and I'm not certain I'd notice the difference in a side by side test -- it's three in the afternoon, I'm not going to go find out -- but that's okay too.
  12. Carrot tops are excellent in mixed greens, gumbo z'herbes, etc. -- they can be kind of peppery (the way olive oil is peppery), especially if the carrots are very young, so if I'm cooking them on their own I usually add them to a carbonara or other tomato-less pasta sauce.
  13. The summer I moved to Indiana, even McDonald's had a pork tenderloin sandwich (and it wasn't bad). The food I always associate with Indiana is actually jowl bacon, because I can never find it anywhere else -- but even most Hoosiers didn't seem familiar with it, and I don't know if it's a more generally Midwestern thing. Best bacon around, though.
  14. I just got a bottle of this (via Wild Harvest) for Christmas and was searching eGullet to see what people had said about it. Looking forward to trying it. I've had shagbark hickory syrup, though what I had was blended with something (maple syrup? corn syrup? I don't remember), so it was good but not as strong-tasting as it would otherwise have been. Undiluted birch syrup, on the other hand, is fantastic -- but it's also very thin compared to maple syrup, which you have to stay aware of when using it as a condiment (instead of "rolling" over my crumpet, it just soaked through the spot I poured it on).
  15. Last night: A few shots, per glass, of roasted lemonade "concentrate" A shot of Bulleit bourbon A dash of Angostura bitters Fill the glass with prosecco Sort of a cross between a lemon Bellini and a whiskey sour. The "concentrate" was just undiluted roasted lemonade (halved lemons roasted in the oven with water and sugar; pulp and two of the halves pureed and strained, with a little more sugar and fresh lemon juice), which has a body like pulpy white grapefruit juice. Easy to drink a lot of those.
  16. Moving to New Hampshire has changed my drinking habits, because domestic stuff is SO much cheaper than any imported brands -- which means fewer Negronis for me, and more Old-Fashioneds. Oddly, although I have a better whiskey selection than I had in Indiana, I can't get Blanton's. But my top five this year: 1: Knob Creek. You know how Cook's Illustrated breaks down their product comparisons by category? This pan's best for omelettes, but that one's best overall? This is my workhorse bourbon. Eggnog, sours, Old-Fashioneds, whatever, it's always just right. It's not always Best In Category, but it doesn't suck at anything. 2: Bulleit. I don't know anything about Bulleit, I don't know what its "frontier whiskey" subtitle indicates, and I don't know if it has an unusually high rye content -- but it's the rye-est tasting bourbon I've had, it makes a great Sazerac, and it's my favorite whiskey to try out a new bitters with. It's also my favorite to drink on the rocks, other than Blanton's. 3: Eagle Rare 10 year. Still the best buy, even here where everything's cheap. 4: Booker's. Damn fine sippin' whiskey. 5: Maker's Mark. This will sound like faint praise, but the best thing about Maker's is that you can get it at virtually every bar in the country.
  17. In a glass rinsed with a few drops of green Chartreuse (like the absinthe in a Sazerac): A couple dashes of Regan's orange bitters Rich simple syrup infused with vanilla bean 1 1/2 oz Laird's applejack (not the bonded, because I can't find it)
  18. I haven't made hot buttered rum with either of those rums, but I've drunk them both and my instinct would be to use the Gosling. I love hot buttered rum, especially in very cold weather (which we aren't getting here right now). This is the recipe I use -- I probably found it on the internet (which is also full of recipes using ice cream...): For two large mugs (most of my mugs are the large mugs from CafePress): 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons butter at room temperature dash of salt (I leave this out if the butter I'm using is especially salty) spices to taste -- usually I use Penzey's baking spice, sometimes just a dash of cloves or ginger Cream ingredients together while bring water almost to a boil. Divide in half between the two mugs, add hot water, and pour in 3 ounces of rum per mug, stirring until everything is incorporated.
  19. Hot Pockets and other microwave food like that. Convenience foods in general. I think the only heat-and-eat or mix-and-eat entrees I buy anymore are canned hash and Velveeta macaroni and cheese (sure I make homemade macaroni and cheese, but sometimes it's not what you want). Poche's boudin, if that counts. It wasn't a conscious decision, I didn't notice until this thread. Just one of those things. I may not always have time to cook, but for someone without kids, it's not hard to accumulate reheatable leftovers. Oh, and fast food. Sort of. I don't drive, and I moved in May so I live miles from any fast food joint now, and don't even pass any on the way to friends' houses, weekly shopping, etc. I'd have to go out of my way to even find one. Again, not a conscious thing, but other than Popeye's and Sonic, I don't miss it. And they don't have those here anyway. I'm not sure I'm actually eating healthier -- I have a cocktail and a Coca-Cola every day, I'm probably having knockwurst for lunch today and I had chicken wings yesterday, and the eggnog I just put in the back of the fridge is equal parts Half-n-Half and rum. I made Tollhouse cookies with cranberries last night. But my sodium intake's probably way down compared to a couple years ago.
  20. Luxardo maraschino, Abita root beer, a bushel of fresh tart cherries, and a wedding cake snowball.
  21. Last night I had a Cabaret Cocktail Variation, which was terrific, something I'll make a lot of in the future. Tonight, with half of the 1/2 oz of Garnier Creme de Violette I picked up on Ebay, a "half serving" of a Blue Moon. I was nonplussed when I tried a tiny sip of the Creme de Violette by itself -- I didn't pick up anything but sweetness. But with the gin and the lemon juice, this is really something. I don't know if violets would be the first thing to come to mind if I didn't know what I was drinking, but this bottle is old and half of it had evaporated away. The drink has this deep floral, but non-cloying, nose that makes me want to just sit here smelling it, to be honest. I feel a little silly. But I feel the same way about Sazeracs.
  22. Garnier was (is?) a rather well known french maker of spirits. Along the lines of Brizard. I seem to remember Charles Baker name checking them in the South American Gentleman's Companion and remarking on their quality compared to American liqueurs. Aside from an overall better than average quality, they were also known for packaging their liqueurs in unusual and collectible bottles. Though, "imitation flavor" seems like a red flag to me. ← The collectibility of the bottle is why this mini is still around, I think. The "imitation" bit was a red flag to me, too, but it wasn't expensive since it's a mini, and I figured I'd give it a try. I'm going to make a Blue Moon with it tonight or tomorrow night ... I tried a touch of the Garnier straight and I don't taste a whole lot besides sweetness, but maybe it'll better make itself known in greater quantity.
  23. I had a Sputnik earlier -- I don't know if the proportions are exactly the same, but I think it's fair to call it a Lemon Drop with the addition of Fernet Branca -- and am now having a Monkey Gland, which is even better than I thought it would be.
  24. Is anyone familiar with Garnier brand creme de violette? (The label actually says creme de violettes; it also says it's "imitation flavor," from Paris, 60 proof. Sorry, no camera right now.) I just bought a miniature of it from ebay -- half of the bottle has evaporated, and the bottle looks at least a couple decades old (oh, the auction page is still up, if you want to see the bottle). It was only a couple bucks, so I figured this way I at least get to try one drink -- planning on a Blue Moon.
  25. I happened to look at eGullet before deciding what dinner would be (a grilled cheese sandwich was a frontrunner), so on the stove I now have: Chopped turkey breast Minced fresh ginger Diced piri piri chiles Peeled chopped garnet yams 1/2 link smoked chaurice sausage a cup or so of shredded beet greens Smuckers Natural peanut butter (chunky) turkey stock allspice, cumin, ground Tabasco chile, black pepper, salt I'm out of: cinnamon, tomato, onion, garlic. Almost used Peppadews instead of the piri piris. Normally I'd use dark meat instead of white, but the week before Thanksgiving I had made confit with the thighs and wings, stock with the drumsticks and carcass, and had frozen the breast meat -- so it's what I had on hand. The chaurice ... well, I got my annual Poche's order the other day and happened to have half a link in the fridge. It makes it sound a bit like peanut gumbo, which is why I resisted the urge to add okra or bay leaves.
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