mkayahara

I tried this out tonight, and would characterize it as having been a qualified success. The outcome was distinctly allspice flavoured, but not nearly as strong in flavour as the St. Elizabeth product. Then again, I've never made my own pimento dram before, so that may be normal. I'd be curious to hear whether anyone else has tried this and can compare more directly with other home infusions.

Yeah, that's what I was aiming for, too. It sounds like you do them at a slightly lower temperature than I was using, so I guess I'd just have to try it again at 57C instead of the 60.5C I was doing them at. Thanks! (Bacon grease sounds like a nice touch, too.)

I recently got a PolyScience Sous Vide Professional, and I've cooked a couple of different things in it so far: first, a 64-degree egg, which I thought was pretty great. Then I did boneless pork loin chops, which I cooked for an hour at 141F, after brining them for an hour. I wasn't that impressed with the result; they just didn't seem markedly different from pork chops cooked in other ways. One of my friends has suggested that pork chops just aren't that great done sous vide. Has anyone here had more success with them?

Mine too.

To me, one of the most interesting comments on Dave's post is that some of the tasters thought the 4-hour lime juice tasted more acidic. I've always been suspicious of the rule of thumb that lime juice in batched drinks tastes more acidic because of the volume - that never made sense to me. But if this finding is true, then it suggests that it's not the volume of juice in batched drinks that changes the balance, but the age, since batched drinks are almost by definition prepared in advance.

If you really want to get into the technical details, the standard reference seems to be the Handbook of Hydrocolloids.

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking for. "Molecular gastronomy," a problematic term at the best of times, isn't just one thing. Can you be more specific? What exactly is in this "kit" you've ordered? If you're just looking for information on using hydrocolloids, you could do a lot worse than Martin's recipe collection found at his blog Khymos.org.

Properly dried, I would think they would last indefinitely without harming. Whether or not they still have any culinary value is another question, though; powdered foods tend to oxidize quickly. (Think of powdered spices.) If they still taste good to you, then I'd go ahead and use them.

How about we just call it a Red Heering and be done with it?

That's similar to a drink our bar manager, Hannah Kirshner, created that's on our menu as Green Velvet: 2 oz Henry McKenna (or Bulleit) 1 oz Cherry Heering 2 dashes Fee's OF bitters I try not to be too much of a purist about drinks, but I'm curious: at what point do these stop being "Old Fashioned Cocktails" and start turning into something else? I'm on board with the whole "plain, fancy, improved" thing, but those seem to involve only dashes of liqueurs. Once we get into a whole ounce of liqueur, doesn't it become another class of drink entirely?

IMO, your best bet in Ontario to approximate American rye is to buy a bottle of Bulleit Bourbon.

Naturally, this being a "best of" list, some of the entries are ridiculous. The best place to eat "Algerian food" is in Algeria? You don't say! Next you'll be telling me the best place to eat French food is in France... though, of course, no one would ever use a term as reductive as "French food." The one that really baffles me, though, is #19. The best place in the world to eat "Nordic food" is Olo in Helsinki? Maybe I've just been won over by marketing hype, but I think I'd sooner be booking dinner at Noma.

I've often wondered whether Achatz got the inspiration for his black truffle explosion from eating Chinese soup dumplings.

No love yet for David Wondrich's Punch book? Currently slated for release on November 2! I'm sure it will be fascinating.

I'd be curious to know who they think the target audience of these videos is.

Thanks to you both for your replies! I made the tart with Bosc pears, and it turned out very well.

Verdict: success! Tried it with the prunelle last night (and Rittenhouse bonded for the rye), and it seemed to work very nicely. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Portuguese almond liqueur you've been using has a little less sugar than this prunelle, but the aromas were all in the right places. I could see how amaretto would be far too overpowering. Will drink this again. Does it have a name?

I'm looking to make a free-form pear tart this weekend, and the recipe I have calls for Anjou pears. All the local farmers seem to grow only Bartlett or Bosc, though. Is there one variety that would be better than the other to substitute for Anjou, in terms of holding its shape but not turning to mush when I bake it?

In a broad sense, I think the opposition to GMOs is based largely on the feeling that they haven't been sufficiently tested. I mean, think about it: we can hardly figure out with any certainty the effects on the human body of foods that haven't been modified on the molecular level (take HFCS, for example), and sometimes those effects don't come to light for years, or decades (see "trans fats"). So for a lot of people, there's a cautionary principle at work. And that's not even getting into the potential religious implications...

I've never made pimento dram; my half-bottle of St. Elizabeth has always been enough for me. So I'm not entirely sure; assuming that it's really nothing more than sweetened, allspice-infused rum, I see no reason the N2O approach shouldn't work! Edit: Plus, of course, one benefit of nitrogen cavitation is that the barrier to entry is really low, if you already have a cream whipper.

This sounds interesting, and I can probably fake it up with stuff I have on hand. Obviously, I don't have the almond liqueur... how would amaretto compare? Or creme de prunelle, maybe?

Enjoying an Adonis tonight, with some Amontillado and M&R sweet vermouth. The Amontillado makes it a bit too rich, but as I've been drinking it, I keep thinking to myself that this seems like the kind of drink where celery bitters would work beautifully. (Too bad I don't have any.)

Terra Spice Company sells mono and diglycerides...

Oh, I don't deny that smoothness is a perfectly legitimate term for describing spirits! It's just not one that I understand - or, to put it in geekier terms, not one that I grok. This discussion is certainly helping me come to grips with it: I'm getting the impression that alcohol heat (for which I have a pretty high tolerance, I think) has a lot to do with it, and that mouthfeel, bitterness and the cut of the distillation are probably involved. I fully accept that I may have to do some hands-on homework to get a better sense of it, though I don't have access to Smith & Cross. (Other rum suggestions, or Scotch suggestions, even for those that could be described as "rough", gratefully accepted.) One of the reasons I'm interested in this is that Canadian whisky often seems to be described as smooth, which I've always taken to mean both "lower in alcohol than" and "not as flavourful as" American whiskeys. On the other hand, the first time I convinced a friend to make a Martini in 3:1 proportions with a fresh bottle of Noilly Prat, he was amazed at how "smooth" that was...

Can you explain what "smoothness" actually means to you, then? I'm intrigued by this concept that any spirit can be graded on its smoothness or lack thereof. Unless we're talking about glycerin content or somesuch...