mkayahara

I haven't been myself, but for special occasion dining, I hear L'Initiale is pretty great.

Where'd you get the recipe for the kanom jeen?

I can't get over how clean that oven is!

I'm a strong convert to the Morgenthaler ratio for the Daiquiri. I find it works well with a variety of rums.

Check out DeGroff's Essential Cocktail: there's a handful of foam recipes in there.

There's your problem right there.

My thoughts exactly. You're both just hanging out with the wrong crowds. Though, admittedly, in the crowds I hang out with, they buy me shots of Jameson's, and I buy them shots of Fernet Branca.

Good call, FrogPrincesse: that drink has been on my mind a fair bit lately. I see one in my relatively near future.

I agree, Tri2Cook. The conclusion I've finally reached is that, unlike the rest of us, Kerry doesn't actually need sleep. Case in point: I picked up one of those Thai rice steamer baskets at the same time as Kerry's (back in December), and I still haven't used mine...

Replenished my supply of Cynar today, so I made up Dan's Wedderburn or Bite. Truly fantastic drink!

For garlic scapes, we like them simply grilled, served as a vegetable side dish.

In order to get the appropriate emulsification for my vinaigrettes, I'd have to use more mustard than I'd like - the resultant vinaigrette tastes too mustard-y. America's Test Kitchen found the same to be true, therefore, they added some mayo as well as mustard to their vinaigrette. You can also just use an egg yolk, though at that point, you're technically making a really thin mayonnaise, not a vinaigrette. I've been finding lately that I enjoy balancing out the sharpness of the mustard with a little bit of sweetness, from honey or maple syrup or the like. It helps to keep the mustard from being overpowering.

I'm pretty sure they were parsnip chips. Those are quite popular around here as a garnish on various things!

If you don't want to fight with gum arabic, and don't mind playing with thickeners, you might try the locust bean gum syrup to be an interesting approach. I also suspect, though I don't have any real basis for this, that glycerin plays a role in the mouthfeel of some liquors.

I'm curious, how did you make the tamarind syrup? Coincidentally (great minds, and all that), and at Chris' prompting, I made the T&T again last night with Del Maguey Chichicapa mezcal and Casa Noble tequila, and I still found the tamarind got a bit lost. That said, it was orders of magnitude tastier than my prior attempt. No leftover tamarind paste for me, though; I used the rest in the Pad Thai I made for dinner last night.

Reading this thread, I'm thinking I need to go buy myself another bottle of Cynar real soon...

As the online shaming of bakeries that have the gall to make Cronut "knockoffs" continues, I can't help but wish that 19th-century bakers had had the intellectual property foresight of today's pastry chefs. I'm sure the Tatin sisters' estate would have a thing or two to say about Dominique Ansel offering a tarte Tatin "knockoff" on his menu.

Dammit, I was just in NYC, and found myself wondering whether Cocktail Kingdom had a retail space... I guess I should have looked into it more thoroughly!

Oh, I have tried this before. Even with cheaper ingredients it is a lovely cocktail. Problem is I still don't have access to Smith and Cross You can always try it with J Wray white overproof!

His list of newer research papers is here: http://tippingresearch.com/most_recent_tipping_papers.html. There's a link at the top of the page to his older research as well. The paper under discussion is likely this one, based on the abstract: http://tippingresearch.com/uploads/customer_racial_discrimination10-30-06.pdf. I have a hard time believing that any court would find the evidence sufficiently conclusive to actually ban the practice of tipping, but I've been surprised by the courts before!

Absolutely, Chris, and I'm looking forward to remaking it with that bottle!

Apart from Rittenhouse BIB, what are people's other favourite rye bottlings these days? I'm going to be visiting the US soon, so I thought I'd pick up something different to try.

Indeed it would. Heston Blumenthal comments in The Fat Duck Cookbook that ice cream bases should be held at fridge temperature for 8 to 24 hours to allow the milk fat droplets to crystallize - which is an important factor in whipped cream.

I've always assumed their purpose was to save stores from having to train their cashiers to distinguish between Granny Smith and Mutsu apples on sight...

I had some extra tamarind puree kicking around from some Southeast Asian cooking I'd been doing recently, so I thought I would give the T&T a try. Obviously the trick here is getting the tamarind puree to the same consistency/tartness as the original. I was using the plastic-wrapped bricks of tamarind, which I soaked with an equal amount of water and then pressed through a sieve. I didn't actually have 1.5 oz of it left, so I thinned it out with some more water. It ended up getting pretty much totally lost. It also didn't help that the mezcal I was using was Monte Alban; I'm trying to use it up, having bought it many years ago. On the one hand, I think people are probably too critical of it: it's not exactly bad, though I have a sneaking suspicion there's some pretty tremendous bottle variation out there. On the other hand, it seems to have a tendency to clobber anything else it's mixed with, which happened here. I'm of half a mind to try substituting it for Islay scotches, it's so smoky. Or maybe I'll just use the rest of it to flambé some crêpes.