mkayahara

With that Genever, you could do worse than a Devil's Playground.

You could probably fix that with a dash of grapefruit bitters.

For what it's worth, I think he was using an iRoast2, with dryer hose connected to the top to vent out the window. That's a bit of an investment, though.

A friend of mine who will soon be roasting commercially got started in his Manhattan apartment, Mitch. You've got no excuse. Personally, though, I roast outside on my back patio.

I just pulled the trigger on an 8-pound sampler, so when it gets here, I'll be happy to join this conversation.

When you say you're using "spring water," what's the mineral composition like? Ideally you want somewhere above 20 ppm of hardness, but below 80 ppm, based on my readings. What kind of water did your brother use? Edit: typo

That's depressing.

Thanks for all your hard work over the years, and best of luck in the new position! I know you're leaving the shop in highly capable hands, but it won't be quite the same here without you. Do be sure to come and visit as often as you can.

Sounds good; I need to go buy some additional ingredients and get back to this book. I noticed that they do talk about roasting the shrimp paste in the ingredient glossary, but don't mention it in any of the individual recipes, which I think is an oversight.

David Thompson's Thai Food is probably in this category. Some of the high-end kaiseki cookbooks don't bother with substitutions (I'm thinking of the Kikunoi book, for example; if you can't find kinome, that's your problem), though these are usually highly selected recipes, not a comprehensive look at a cuisine.

You'll have to pick up another bottle in Montreal this summer, then.

Yeah, I'm all for tweaking recipes to accommodate ingredients that aren't on hand, but I don't think Aperitivo Americano is close enough to a potable bitter to qualify this for the "Negroni" moniker. This variation sounds like a good drink, but it deserves its own name. Also, thampik, I would encourage you to pick up some Cointreau and some absinthe or pastis and try the Corpse Reviver again. Grand Marnier might work (I've never tried it), but absinthe is what really brings the drink together, as far as I'm concerned. Personally, I think the Corpse Reviver No. 2 is one of the greats.

I don't use mine for spices, but I've seen it used for them. (Bizarrely, the kitchen in question didn't have a pepper grinder of any description; when they need ground pepper, it goes into the Vita Prep). It does cloud the container, though.

Thanks to Chris' help, the burgers I made last night came out beautifully. I used just some great blade (= chuck) steaks with a good amount of fat, double ground, adding the 0.75% salt and 0.25% pepper for the second grind. (Conveniently, I was working with exactly a kilo of meat, which made the calculations easy.) Lightly formed into 6 patties with a dimple in the middle, and grilled to medium. They didn't contract, they were just as moist and fatty as they should be, and they just tasted all-around great. I ate two. I'm a little worried that I've set a precedent here for summer grilling.

Australian whisky? Did I miss that upthread? Tell me more...

Awesome, thank you!

Ah, yeah, overcooking makes sense in terms of contraction. I've been guilty of that more than once. Do you use a particular ratio for seasoning? Thanks for the pointers!

I don't make hamburgers very often, I guess mostly because I'm never that satisfied with them when I do. (To my mind, nothing could ever top the incredible-in-my-memory griddled hamburger from the greasy spoon I frequented in high school.) But I have a hankering, so I'm wondering if I can get help with two items in particular: 1) Do I season the meat before/during grinding? Or just season the finished patty? (I assume seasoning the already-ground meat is out, since distributing it then risks overworking the meat.) 2) I always find that my homemade hamburger patties tend to contract as they cook, so that what started out as a flat patty tends to end up more like a flattened meatball in shape. What am I doing wrong? Overworking the meat? Not giving them a sufficient width-to-height ratio in the first place? Edit: I think it should go without saying that I'm not feeling up to the whole Modernist Cuisine align-the-meat-strands approach here. I want the second-best technique, please!

Nah, it's just a sign of too many stagiaires and not enough menial tasks to go around.

Well, to be sure, I haven't seen the book myself; I was merely referencing the Art of Eating review from memory. And faulty memory, at that: I just re-read the review, and it's decidedly more positive than "mixed." It does observe that there are a couple of minor errors, but calls it more valuable than not. Enjoy!

They're wheat flour tortillas, though, not masa ones.

Loving the cauliflower on the pulled pork dish, dcarch!

You'll have to let us know what you think of the Dictionnaire universel du pain, Mick. It got a mixed review in Art of Eating magazine.

This, of course, is why systems like AOC and PDO get invented. I don't think it bothers me in the abstract, as long as no one is trying to pass off imported crab as Maryland crab.

Lard! I rendered it myself, essentially using the pressure-rendering technique (including the 0.4% baking soda) in Modernist Cuisine. In a canning jar with some water, 4 hours at high pressure in my Kuhn-Rikon.