FrogPrincesse

I will have to try Averna neat to see if I can detect this too. I am curious now. Or maybe it's the combination with the apricot liqueur that is creating this sensation?

I occasionally get rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods or Bristol Farms. Similar to what others are doing, I keep the carcass (in the freezer if it's more than a couple of days) and make stock using my pressure cooker. I get the chickens with just salt on them or lemon/herbs. I prefer the flavor and the light seasoning does not interfere with the stock. No, but I noticed that the quality of the rotisserie chickens varies widely depending on where you buy them. Costco has them very cheap but I don't care for the texture. I prefer leaner chickens with more taste.

Menthol from the Averna? I am asking because it's not something I have noticed before (but I have never used Averna as the primary ingredient).

I am glad that you appreciate it. I wish I remembered to post on this thread more regularly. I read it much more frequently than I post on it. Lots of fantastic ideas here! It's always a good place to look for inspiration.

ScottyBoy has one very lucky roomate! Shane's pizza looks quite spectacular. I am not usually into deep-dish pizza but could be tempted by this one. And I like anything with coconut in it, so MikeHartnett's Burmese noodles look great as well. Here is my November dinner recap. Speaking of coconut, the first dish is a coconut and saffron shrimp curry with grilled coconut kale (both recipes are from Vij's). Simple and comforting. Halibut with lime ginger beurre blanc, cauliflower "couscous" and bok choy. Grilled bourbon sausage and roasted spaghetti squash (sprinkled with parmesan for him (front) and with goat cheese for me). Pasta bolognese (recipe from Marcella Hazan). Clams with vermouth and fennel. Grilled ribeye, roasted squash. Tandoori shrimp, roasted cauliflower. More Bolognese - this time using fresh lemon-thyme pasta shells. The sauce gets better over time.

In the colder months, I really like salade de chèvre chaud. The crottin de Chavignol (smuggled from France) is put under the broiler for a couple of minutes with a piece of bread until it starts to melt, and used to top the salad. I sprinkled a little bit of herbes de Provence on top. I like a dressing with plenty of red wine vinegar and chives with this.

Sam's Fitzroy is a Rob Roy with a Islay rinse -- the Gibson of the Manhattan family, I'd say. You are right, but the Islay rinse makes quite an impact. I've never been a fan of the Rob Roy and liked this variation much better.

I just found out that there was a free cocktail app by Food and Wine that includes their guide to America's best bars, together with a few original recipes from these bars. It seems similar to the little guidebook that they published earlier this year.

Your cocktail, Katie, looks really good, but note that is another cocktail named the Fitzroy, created by Sam Ross (and mentioned by Toby Maloney here, together with other Manhattan variations that use a Laphroaig rinse). (Fitzroy happens to be the name of the neighborhood in Melbourne where Sam Ross' first bar the Ginger was located). I had it a week or two ago. It's (blended) scotch (I use the low-end Glenfiddich which does not have much personnality), sweet vermouth, angostura, and Laphroiag rinse. A smoky Manhattan variation. Here it is.

I was in the mood for eggnog the other day and decided to try Jeff Morgenthaler's recipe that a few people already recommended in this thread. I used Courvoisier V.S. for the brandy and Kraken for the spiced rum. I thought that the flavor was right on, but the sugar content was too high (as Keith Orr had noted upthread). I will decrease it by half next time. The eggnog tasted great right after mixing, and was even better the next day. I had made a large-ish batch hoping to see how the flavor would develop over the next few days/weeks, but when I was invited to a party at the last minute I decided to take my extra bottle with me, which was very well appreciated. I thought using spiced rum was a good way to introduce a lot of flavor and will be making another batch soon.

I made a Juniperotivo the other night when I realized that I had a bottle of pomegranate molasses that I had bought a few weeks ago and never used. I liked the astringent character of the drink, which reminds me of Campari-based cocktails. It's a very approachable aperitif cocktail. It's interesting how the pomegranate seemed to temper the Junipero quite a bit. I imagine that I milder gin would get completely lost in this cocktail.

This has made the show so much more watchable! ... She was insane! She liked drama and attention, for sure.

Last night I made the Linguine with Clams from Holiday Food. After frying sliced garlic in olive oil until golden brown, the clams were added and cooked (lid on) with white wine and chopped canned tomatoes, together with the juice of the tomatoes and some red pepper flakes. I used fresh squid ink linguine which I boiled for a couple of minutes, and then cooked for an additional minute with the clams over high heat. I added chives at the end because I did not have any parsley on hand. It was delicious and ready in 10 minutes or so. If I remember correctly, the recipe called for only 1 pound of clams for 4 to 8 people. We love clams and had this as our main course, so I increased the amount to 2 pounds for the two of us. We were happy with the portion size.

This cocktail looks good. If you are still looking for the exact recipe, it was posted a while back in another thread (see below).

Here is the Tuxedo No. 2, a very nice martini variation. 2 oz gin, 3/4 oz dry vermouth, 1/4 oz maraschino liqueur, 2 dashes orange bitters, absinthe rinse (I used pastis), lemon twist. Lots of pleasant herbal notes from the dry vermouth and the absinthe. There is just enough absinthe/pastis to add a little something intriguing without overpowering the cocktail (I use a little spray bottle). I think the new (original) formula Noilly Prat works great in that drink.

Thanks for the information, pastrygirl. It's a mystery at this point because if it's a measuring error, it looks like I managed to make the same error twice! The Anne Willan recipe that I am using has 1 cup liquid for 125 g flour and 110 g (1 stick) of butter. You are using 3.75 cups liquid for 540 g (19 oz) flour, or 1 cup liquid for 144 g flour, so slightly more flour. But that should not make that much of a difference. I will double check my measurements next time.

Thanks. I haven't had a chance to try the New Amsterdam #485, but based on what I could find, it seems light on the juniper (mostly citrus/floral).

I have proof now. Purple potato soup changes color with temperature. Cold it's blue (sorry, it's not particularly appetizing). As you warm it up it mutates to lavender/purple grey, even yellow (that's a hot spot, not butter). Cold soup in the tupperware on the right, for reference. The heated soup, with cold soup in the middle. The (reversible) effect of temperature on anthocyanins. Very cool!

I've been making gougères and chouquettes (their sweet counterpart) for a few years now. I use the recipe from Anne Willan in the Country Cooking of France which has been foolproof. However, a few days ago I decided to double the recipe for a holiday party I was invited to. I boiled my water + butter mixture and added the flour. Instead of instantly forming a ball, it made a very thick soup. Then I remembered a similar failure I had last year with chouquette, also a double batch. At the time I had tried adding flour and had proceeded with the rest of the recipe, but had ended up with little lead balloons. This time I tried adding cornstarch but was not able to rescue the batch. I still had some butter and plenty of flour (good thing because the party was only 45 min away...) so I just made a regular-sized batch which worked great. I am not sure what was going on with the double-batch though; that still puzzles me. I mixed the dough for a longer time with the pot on the burner, but it never formed a ball, even after the addition of corn starch and extended/energetic mixing. Here is the recipe that I use (standard size): 250 mL water 1/4 teaspoon salt (reduced from 3/4 which I find too salty) pinch espelette (my addition) 110 g butter 125 g flour 4 eggs 110 g cheese (this time I used a blend of gruyere, toscano and pecorino) 1 egg for glaze (I skipped that time due to lack of time in the photos below) 400F/200C oven, 25 minutes The failed batch had the consistency of a very thick soup. Here is the successful one. After adding the flour and mixing (before adding the eggs and cheese)

I started writing here but ended up responding in the Vesper thread.

(from the Martini thread) I've always found the Vesper to be a difficult cocktail to get right/balanced. What gin & vodka combo did you use? I was served a version that was surprisingly pleasant a few months ago at a seminar by Richard Boccato at Tiki Oasis - 1.5 Hendrick's gin, 0.75 Lillet, 0.5 Stolichnaya vodka, lemon twist. The Vesper seems like an anomaly. I am not aware of other cocktails that dilute gin with vodka (ok, maybe one, but it's an abomination - the Long Island Iced Tea). Also the use of Lillet instead of dry vermouth may seem odd at first glance; however there are examples of Martinis with Lillet predating Flemming. The Savoy Cocktail Book has the Richmond Cocktail (2/3 Plymouth gin, 1/3 Kina Lillet, lemon twist) and Bich's Special, aka the Great Secret (2/3 dry gin, 1/3 Kina Lillet, dash Angostura bitters, orange twist).

Nice collection (I like how you call it your "cocktail ingredient library"). I can see that you made every effort to ensure that you would not run out of LH151 or Rittenhouse rye! 250 bottles or so?

Continuing with an Ivy League theme, here is the Yale cocktail, a dry Martini with a touch of Maraschino liqueur (an "improved" martini?). Same ingredients as the Martinez from the Savoy Cocktail Book which uses dry vermouth, although the more commonly accepted version uses sweet. Add an absinthe rinse and you get a Tuxedo No. 2 or Turf Cocktail.

Here is a dry Manhattan variation (bourbon, dry vermouth and orange bitters), the Brown Cocktail, named after the University. I've been doing so many sweet Manahattan variations lately, sometimes it's good to change things a bit! For the orange bitters I like to do one dash each of Regan's and Angostura.

I gave up on Coronado Brewing long ago - their beers are not especially interesting. I tried a bunch of them a while back at their brewery.