mkayahara

I fell in love with iced oolong on my trip to Japan last year, but it never seems to be tasty at home. In particular, there seems to be nothing I can do to make my tea clear.

Thanks for putting up with my slowness on IP law issues. I actually should have known about prior art being patent law, not trademark. But there's something about trademarking a name you didn't come up with for a drink you didn't invent that just seems wrong to me somehow. (Edit: Wrong morally; obviously they're in the right legally.) Am I correct in understanding, though, that PKNY will be able to continue serving their drink without Pusser's rum as long as they don't call it a Painkiller? What if they called it an Analgesic instead? (Or a "Pusser's Made Us Change the Name of This Drink"?)

Thanks for clearing that up for me, daisy17. Does prior art enter into it here, given that the drink was apparently invented and named before Pusser's bought it?

Another "cocktail copyright" case: Looks like Pusser's rum brought a case against the New York City bar formerly known as Painkiller - and henceforth known as PKNY - because they hold rights to the term "Painkiller" as an "alcoholic fruit drink with fruit juices and cream of coconut and coconut juice". Interesting case that makes me wish I knew more about IP law. I take it the bar couldn't get around it simply by spelling it as two words: "Pain Killer"? How do you even trademark an everyday word anyway? Anyway, there's obviously some anger against Pusser's, expressed in the only way that people seem to know how anymore: a Facebook group for "Bartenders against pussers [sic] rum".

It's a fair question in restaurants where the menu structure is not intuitive. I've eaten in many restaurants, but even still, I find menus where, for example, there's no clear division between appetizers and mains, and so I have to ask the service staff for guidance on putting together a meal that will be neither too big nor too small. (I'm looking at you, Black Hoof.) Obviously, if the menu is structured like most menus, this question can certainly come across as patronizing. Then, at the high end, you've got restaurants where the computer system can tell them whether or not you've been there before, so they can greet you appropriately with "welcome" or "welcome back".

So... after leaving this project on the back burner for way too long, I finally got around to measuring the specific gravity of Martini bianco vermouth (it's 1.050) and using the info provided and linked to by bostonapothecary in this thread to calculate how much sugar I needed to add to get to Francisco Migoya's recommended 25-32 degrees Brix for a sorbet. I ballparked it into the middle of the range (aiming for about 28° Brix), as well as diluting it down to 12% alcohol with plain water. I also added some citric acid for flavour and a touch of xanthan gum, figuring it would help with any free alcohol, but I'm not convinced the latter was a good idea. The final result is still a touch softer than I'd like - it slumps on the plate, rather than holding its form - but it's a heckuva lot closer than my first try. The flavour is fine, though the bitterness of the vermouth may be a touch more evident than usual. Anyway, if anyone is interested, here's the formulation I used, with some notes for what I'd try in future: 500 ml Martini bianco vermouth 167 ml water 88 g sugar [should go down] 1.97 g xanthan gum [maybe omit?] 1.3 g citric acid [maybe raise] [Maybe add a pinch of salt?]

The Kitchen Manual is not a complete index of the books; the index is in Volume 5. I suspect the reason the Kitchen Manual starts with Chapter 8 is because there are no recipes in Chapters 1-7.

How long did you chill the base before churning?

Never having heard of this "Ptomaine" bacterium, I just went to look it up, and after consulting several trustworthy sites, I feel like I can pretty much guarantee you your friend did not have Ptomaine poisoning. As to the OP, I agree with what everyone else has said: you're almost certainly fine in terms of food safety, but your peace of mind may be worth the expense of a new jar. That's just what he told me. He did have his stomach pumped and never again ate mayo. I know that much. I don't doubt those facts! All I meant was that ptomaines appear to be a discredited theory of foodborne illness - one I'd never heard of before. I also just realized I misread your post initially: if the jar of mayo was opened and unrefrigerated for any length of time, I wouldn't have hesitated to throw it out. It's just not worth the risk.

Never having heard of this "Ptomaine" bacterium, I just went to look it up, and after consulting several trustworthy sites, I feel like I can pretty much guarantee you your friend did not have Ptomaine poisoning. As to the OP, I agree with what everyone else has said: you're almost certainly fine in terms of food safety, but your peace of mind may be worth the expense of a new jar.

In addition to Rusty Nails, I've enjoyed it in the Tabard. It seems to go remarkably well with tequila.

Thanks for the recipe, pazzaglia. Why both a trivet and a steamer basket?

'Twas brown.

Yes and no. Asking this question is a bit like asking "is salt added to a dish to make it salty?" Well, yes it is added to make the dish salty, but it also does a whole lot of other things that you might want. The salient point is that, if you add "salt" to a dish, you are always expecting that you are adding "saltyness" along with whatever other reasons you might be adding salt. Similarly, when you add bitters, the expectation is that you are adding bitterness along with whatever else it is that you're adding. Thanks, Sam, that analogy makes a lot of sense to me.

Are non-potable bitters added to a cocktail in order to make the cocktail bitter?

Thank you! I'll give them a try.

Hehe. Yeah, I was actually wondering about transferring the condensed milk to a Mason jar, sort of along the lines of the Modernist Cuisine onion soup, and adding a touch of baking soda to it to promote the caramelization reactions. If possible, I'd prefer to start with fresh ingredients, but I recognize that condensed milk has a long history of being turned into dulce de leche at home.

Kerry, I just remember the bonito flake caramels that were mentioned at the conference... have you posted the recipe somewhere here on eG? If not, could you?

As I finished off a jar of dulce de leche yesterday, I thought to myself that pressure cooker seems like the perfect tool for making your own. But I've never made my own dulce de leche, so I don't exactly know how to go about it! I checked in Modernist Cuisine, and came up empty - no surprise, given that it's explicitly not a pastry book. Anyone have any tips?

I don't know about remotely, but I agree that there's nothing significantly bitter in there.

With respect to rhubarb? Can't it be both? Edit: To clarify, I don't think rhubarb is likely sufficiently bitter to constitute a bittering agent on its own, so the recipe at hand is probably flawed from that perspective; as I say, I don't have it in front of me. I'm just curious as to where the boundaries of "bitters" lie, and to what extent (if any) they overlap with "tinctures" and other non-potable extracts.

Rhubarb tastes bitter to me. This is an interesting point, because rhubarb tastes bitter to me, too. (Admittedly, it tastes more sour than bitter, but there is definitely a bitterness component to its flavour.) Which raises the question of what constitutes a "bittering agent"? Certainly we've seen some unusual bittering agents in this very thread (burnt toast comes to mind). I agree that bitters should taste noticeably bitter - at least on their own - but just how bitter is bitter? Would lime peel or bitter orange peel be an acceptable basis for a "bitters" without further bittering agents? This question is complicated by the fact that different people have different bitterness thresholds and sensitivities, so something that tastes unpalatably bitter to my brother might be perfectly pleasant to me. And, by the same token, I actually do find the Fee Brother's orange bitters to be bitter, which it seems many people don't. My working definition of the distinction between bitters and tinctures also accounts for complexity: to my mind, a tincture is based on a single aromatic, while bitters tend to be more complex mixtures. I don't have the new issue of Imbibe yet, so I'll be interested to see what other ingredients are in the recipe in question.

He did? I thought he talked about umami several times on GE. What am I missing? Check out this blog post, which links to an episode where he suggests that the concept of umami is nothing but marketing hooey, and explicitly calls umami "all smoke and mirrors." Has he revisited the issue since that episode? As I said, I haven't watched the show rigorously.

Maybe not strange, but it is potentially lethal! How so? I remember looking into it once, but nothing suggested that it poses an actual problem. New information out there? I mean, it's probably not a real danger, especially if you're swallowing them whole and not crushing them. I don't balk at using small amounts of cherry pit as a flavouring, but I would personally draw the line at swallowing significant numbers of them whole. Better to look unladylike than to risk a trip to the hospital, IMO.

Yup, sounds like oral allergy syndrome. Doesn't affect me, but it does affect my partner. Maybe not strange, but it is potentially lethal!