mkayahara

Chris, as far as I can tell, there are few to no great cocktails that involve chocolate as a predominant flavour. I'm not a fan of the Twentieth Century (mostly because I don't like the combination of chocolate and lemon), and while I like the Fox River just fine, it's not likely to convert Chocolatini drinkers. (Unless you use Canadian whisky? It's actually not bad, that way.) Alexanders (brandy or otherwise) are good, but the cream may be a tough sell. The cacao-bearing version of the El Floridita isn't bad, but I'm not sure I'd say chocolate is a predominant flavour there. The best drink I've had lately with chocolate in it is the "2 If By Sweet" from Food & Wine's 2009 cocktail guide. Tequila, cacao, Cynar and mole bitters. Not an easy sell to Chocolatini drinkers, but quite worthwhile for the rest of us! Of course, I'm also willing to accept that the problem here is the quality of my creme de cacao...

I'm no expert, but that sounds about right to me. I've made okonomiyaki with cured but unsmoked pork belly, and it tasted fine.

Except that your cup of flour and my cup of flour are two different things. Or - more to the point - my cup of flour and the cup of flour in the recipe I'm reading are two different things.

It figures: when the event is taking place, I'll be in Japan.

It's interesting to hear you say this, because I've never understood what "citrus in large volumes increases in sourness" was supposed to mean. I would think that a 10 ml sample of citrus juice from a total volume of 25 ml would be no different in its acidity (actual or perceived) from a 10 ml sample drawn from a total volume of 5000 ml, except that in the larger volume, you're averaging the sourness of many fruits, while in the small volume, you're working with the natural sourness of the one fruit. Glad to hear others voicing what my instincts have told me, but I'd be curious to know where this notion comes from.

Or you could just use Fernet Branca, which has eucalyptus notes. Maybe combine it with some Inner Circle rum?

Bumping this question: Because this remark: ...is so true. So I need to find a better option than making special flights out of the country for the express purpose of picking up a litre of Tanqueray at duty free. Anyone have any thoughts on whether Beefeater 24 is worth the $40 price tag? Or is it, in fact:

Wait, are potato chips cause for shame? If so, then count me in. Actually, there's one particular kind of chips I am ashamed of liking: Tostitos "hint of lime" tortilla chips. They're totally artificial, but when they're in the house, I have to get my partner to hide the bag, lest I eat the whole thing in one sitting. We refer to them colloquially as "crack" around here.

It's sealed in a bag along with the water it's intended to flavour.

I, too, believe in the power of soaking. I also find that it's usually best to soak promptly. If you let the crust dry on the pots for too long, a multi-phase soak-and-scrub process is sometimes needed. But if you soak the pots as soon as you've removed the food from them - like I did with my oatmeal pot this morning - you have a much better chance of simply being able to rinse the residue right off.

In particular, I just read this blog post comparing different methods of making kombu dashi. The verdict: the best-flavoured dashi was made from 10 g/l of ma kombu, sealed in a vacuum bag and heated at 65C in an immersion circulator for 1 hour. I don't know what you're supposed to do if you don't have a chamber vacuum sealer or an immersion circulator. Also, I recently read that the glutamic acid in kombu is best extracted in water that has less than 60 ppm of calcium. (I believe Hiroyuki mentioned this before, too, either here or on his blog.) We have very hard water where I live, and I've recently made dashi with both tap water and bottled, de-mineralized water. The dashi made with bottled water was markedly superior. I feel bad buying bottled water, but you can't argue with the results!

Fair enough. I guess I was reacting more to your initial comment: What I'm saying is that, in some markets, they are second-tier products - by definition, because the 40% version of Tanqueray is a full step down from the full-proof version - which might account for some of the times you hear it said. Like "flavoured vodka"? Agreed, especially in many of the most recent cases. I'm not sure I feel that way about a product like Hendrick's, which to my mind is a flavourful, but idiosyncratic, gin, but certainly it's true of New Amsterdam.

Again, I hasten to point out that this may be true in places where you can get full-strength Tanqueray and Beefeater, but here, where they're both watered down to 40%, Plymouth is both brighter and fuller flavoured than either one, which is why I stock it as my standard go-to gin. The fact that the price difference is less than a dollar only makes that decision easier. Isn't the lack of a juniper-forward flavour what makes it a "new generation" gin? I mean, if it were a real juniper bomb, it'd just be a London Dry. For instance, where would you class Junipero? I've only ever tried it once, but I seem to recall finding it pretty juniper-forward at the time. My suspicion is that too many "new generation" gins are intended to be used in Martinis - and "point the bottle in the direction of France"-style Martinis at that - so they tend to get lost in anything where there are other flavours involved. It's a shame, really.

The way he describes it, the item the diner is eating is flavoured with both cinnamon and vanilla, so when you inhale the concentrated aroma of one or the other, you acclimatize to it, which brings the opposite flavour to the fore on a subsequent bite of the food. And yes, Blumenthal does use atomizers a fair bit; they're mentioned at least three times in The Fat Duck Cookbook, and at least twice on the In Search of Perfection show. So that would definitely be a good place to start.

Well, to my mind, there are three mains you definitely need to offer: roast chicken, pork chops (with applesauce; bonus points if you serve it in a Mason jar), and beef stew. Roast beef, pot roast and lasagna are also high on the list. And given your location, I assume you're offering cretons somewhere on the menu? For desserts, I think brownies and apple pie are both must-haves.

How about Heston Blumenthal's Black Forest Gateau? As I recall from the TV show, he fills an atomizer with kirsch to spritz around the room as you're eating it. Edit: Fix link.

When I first learned how to roast a chicken, I did the "halved lemon in the cavity" thing, too. Then I moved on and started using Keller's method, no lemon required. Then, one night, I had some extra rosemary kicking around, so I tossed a couple of sprigs into the cavity. Whaddayaknow! The meat came out lightly scented of rosemary, and the stock I made from the carcass was so heavily rosemary-flavoured that I figure the only thing I could use it on is a sauce... for lamb. (Said stock is still languishing in my freezer.) Anyway, I'm willing to believe that lemons don't do much, but I did find that rosemary made a difference, at least in this one case. I do tend to think the beer-can approach makes little to no difference to flavour or moistness, but it does a bang-up job of keeping the chicken off the grill!

My advice on the Barbancourt would be to avoid the white for this particular application, and avoid anything older than the 8-year (five-star, "Réserve Spéciale"), because they tend to get too oaky after that. The 8-year is a good choice, though. If anything it smells a little richer than the Saint-James. (Yes, I'm sitting here sniffing the bottles as I type this.) For curacao, you're almost certainly in a better position than me: Ontario doesn't stock any curacao at all unless it's tinted blue. So I use either Cointreau or Grand Marnier in all my drinks. The Cointreau serves me just fine in a Mai Tai.

I would argue that, in a pinch, you could substitute Barbancourt. Others might disagree.

Pray tell, which one did you get? This one. I swear, it's changed my life.

What's the effect of shaking with crushed ice and pouring unstrained, versus blending with crushed ice, versus shaking with cubed or cracked ice and pouring over crushed ice? I assume dilution may be greater by shaking with crushed ice than cubed ice (though I realize, in light of the recent Cooking Issues blog posts on dilution, that the jury is still out on this). When making Tiki drinks, I often find that the amount of crushed ice called for in the recipe isn't enough to fill the glass, so I end up topping up with more to make it look pretty. I'm always tempted to just shake with cubed ice and fill the glass with crushed ice separately. I guess that uses more ice in total, but my gut instinct is that it would keep the drink cold longer. By the way, I got a manual ice crusher for my birthday last month, and it's one of the best bar presents I've ever received. It's so much easier to use than a kitchen towel and mallet! I'm even finding myself looking for excuses to make crushed-ice drinks now.

This is a fun topic, but what makes it especially great is that I've already accomplished it! I've been on a big Japanese cooking kick this past week, and have taken the opportunity to make several dishes I had never made before: okonomiyaki, chawan-mushi, mochi, kouhaku namasu and, tonight, yaki-udon. I guess this means I should make a list of the next five dishes I need to finally get around to making...

With an upcoming trip to Japan for me, I'm assuming - and hoping! - that I'll be exposed to many new tastes this year. But the one that's at the top of my list is natto!

That looks closer to my coffee grinder. Thank you! I'll try it with that.

I have a question about goma-ae, and this seems like as good a place as any to put it! I'm sure this comes up a lot, but: I don't have a suribachi, and my mortar and pestle is very small, since I bought it only for small quantities of spices. What's the best way for me to make goma-ae? Food processor? Coffee grinder? Thanks!