FrogPrincesse

That's great. Hopefully it will be open by next year's TOTC!

B.G. Reynolds (formerly known as Trader Tiki). I bought it last summer with a bunch of other syrups, and they are still good. I keep them in the fridge.

What kind are these? Golden or red delicious? My mom used to make a nice apple tart with golden delicious apples.

An excess of citrus and a freshly-made batch of orgeat were my motivation for deciding to make a tiki drink last night - usually I look for less involved recipes for Monday nights! Looking up recipes using orgeat, I came up with Kelbo's Scorpion in Sippin' Safari. It's an eclectic mix of dark Jamaican rum, brandy and gin, plus orange juice, lime juice, passion fruit syrup and orgeat. As with a lot of tiki drinks, with so many ingredients it's hard to know based on the recipe alone what it is going to taste like. It was very tasty, a little spicy, definitely on the boozy side but smooth (and therefore dangerous), with the creamy orgeat tying up everything together. Quite impressive. For reference, stickyii posted the recipe while back on the Drinks! thread.

I made Sam Ross' Kentucky Maid last week that everyone loved (bourbon, lime juice, simple syrup, cucumber, mint). A great summer drink. Then the following day I got a request for a Margarita. To have fun, I decided to do a side-by-side tasting with various orange liqueurs. My favorite has always been Cointreau. My husband thought he preferred Grand Marnier but is now a Cointreau convert after doing this little test. The dry curaçao, which is great in other applications (daiquiri, etc), was a little out of place here. Note that I did not try to adjust for the sugar content and used the same recipe for all 3 versions (1.5 oz tequila, 1 oz orange liqueur, 0.75 oz lime juice). They were all good options but everyone preferred Cointreau in the end.

Okanagancook, You are very welcome, let me know how you like this recipe. SobaAddict70, I don't find the recipe for the basic tomato sauce in Babbo to be very complicated. I tried a bunch of other tomato sauce recipes before settling on this one that I really like because it is straightforward and has a good flavor. The recipe does not call for celery by the way, just onions, garlic, a little bit of shredded carrot, fresh thyme, and canned tomatoes. Making it takes about 10-15 min of active time and 30 min of simmering on the stove. As for Marcella's sauce, it is indeed very simple but different from what some might expect from a tomato sauce due to the amount of butter used. I like it though, and think that both sauces have their use. Lastly, I am not sure that I would consider Babbo as a good book for beginners. Most recipes are relatively involved or require hard-to-find ingredients. I actually bought it years ago and only started cooking from it fairly recently for these reasons. I am sure there are plenty of other great Italian cookbooks out there, but that is probably off-topic.

Great looking Mai Tai, Hassouni! I am in the process of making a batch of orgeat so a Mai Tai is in my near future. I will have to try one with S&C one of these days for a change. Usually I go aged agricole + Appleton 12.

I've had the beef cheek ravioli dish and it has a fantastic flavor, very rich! Speaking about ravioli, I made the "Love Letters" a while back (the recipe is available here). The filling is peas and mint, with a robust spicy lamb/merguez sauce which is based on the basic tomato sauce. The flavor was phenomenal, well worth the effort. I also made the asparagus and ricotta ravioli last year for Easter using homemade ricotta (sadly, no picture). I prepared them ahead of time and froze them between sheets of parchment paper sprinkled with cornmeal. They were very delicate and delicious.

Rye and cynar are great together - see the Little Italy. The Teenage Riot sounds like a good cocktail but I don't have the sherry so I am not able to try it for the time being. You might like the Transatlantic Giant if you haven't tried it already and have the components. It is bourbon rather than rye but is another interesting use of Cynar. Sherry is a pain as you don't use much and it won't last long once opened which is why I went for a smaller bottle. But in the grand scheme of things basic sherry is usually pretty cheap so it is not a wallet buster to buy even if you don't use it all. While I spend a lot of money on spirits (too much probably!) I tend to be a bit of a tight wad in other ways and will try to finish something off even if I don't like it. So there is a good chance I am going to drink the rest of that sherry! To waste it would be alcohol abuse... Thanks for your suggestion. For the Transatlantic Giant, I am unfortunately missing both the sloe gin - which is on my list of things to buy - and the crème de cacao, which I refuse to buy because it does not look like something I would enjoy or use very much. So I will have to pass on that one, unless someone decides to make one for me! Does sherry degrade faster than sweet vermouth if you keep it in the fridge? So far I've only used it for cooking and have not been very picky about its quality.

I tried David Lebovitz's banana bread/cake from his website. The little back specks are cocoa nibs. There is also a touch of cinnamon. It's very moist and not dense or overly sweet as some recipes are. Excellent with a cup of coffee.

jayt90 mentioned upthread cooking seafood in the pressure cooker so when I made risotto last night, I just added a few frozen shrimp as an experiment. I ran some water over them for about a minute or two so they were partially defrosted when I added them. I was afraid that they would be overdone but in the end they were just right and had a good texture. In addition to the shrimp, the risotto had onion & shallots, lemon confit, dry vermouth, arugula, parsley and plenty of Parmigiano Reggiano. The rice was a mixture of arborio, carnaroli, and a third variety, in an effort to clean up my pantry. Probably a heresy, but it came out great.

There was also this dish from the Dinner thread that I made a few weeks ago. It's a fresh locally made pasta (lemon roasted black pepper linguine) with Babbo's basic tomato sauce (recipe here). I added homemade whole milk ricotta, arugula, and parmesan. The shredded carrot in the tomato sauce is such a nice addition. You can't really detect it but it adds a little bit of sweetness.

I bought duck eggs from my favorite vendor at the farmers' market, Schaner Farms, and got a bunch of pencil asparagus in my CSA bag yesterday, so I made the Asparagus Milanese with parmigiano and a duck egg from Babbo. The duck egg yolk makes a wonderful "sauce" that coats the asparagus - it's richer than a regular egg. I love it.

Rye and cynar are great together - see the Little Italy. The Teenage Riot sounds like a good cocktail but I don't have the sherry so I am not able to try it for the time being. Last night, Audrey Saunders' French Pearl. Plymouth gin, lime juice, simple syrup, pastis, mint. So much more than the sum of its parts - I dislike pastis on its own, but with mint and lime it's delicious.

Graisserons - never heard of this but this looks delicious, like a cross between rillettes and pate. What a wonderful idea. How do you store them, in the fridge? I imagine you could freeze them too?

I had this little appetizer with a Martini the other day: Local fresh goat cheese (Nicolau), Easter egg radish, baby tomatoes and cucumbers from Suzie's Farm.

I am not a fan of Curtis Stone either, and I did not think this was a very strong first episode. I enjoyed watching Chris Cosentino in action though; his dishes seemed really good.

More classics for me this week as I am introducing a visitor to a variety of cocktails. 3:1 Martini with Plymouth gin and Noilly Prat dry vermouth, Angostura and Regan's orange bitters Red Hook (rye, maraschino liqueur, punt e mes, brandied cherry) Also, some Cocchi Americano on the rocks. Very refreshing and much less sweet than Lillet.

Beautiful salade niçoise, Dave. With a slice of rustic bread, that could be a complete (and delicious) meal. I made a grilled kale salad with fresh goat cheese and white peaches last night, adapted from this recipe. The smokiness and slight bitterness of the grilled kale worked great with the peaches and the goat cheese.

A Manhattan with Bulleit rye, Vya sweet vermouth, Boker's bitters, and a brandied cherry. The Vya sweet vermouth has a lot of fruit that works well with the spice of the Bulleit rye.

Yes, the Suze sold on the Whisky Exchange is listed as 15% ABV and has a slightly different label as compared to what i got which is 20% ABV. How much difference it makes, whether in cocktails or on its own I wouldn't be able to say having never had the European version. I suppose there is some reasoning behind changing it for the US market but that is not always necessarily a good thing. I volunteer to do a side-by-side comparison once I find the "savoir d'autrefois". I can't wait for more White Negroni experimentation!

It's good to see Suze finally available in the US. The label is different from regular Suze. Somewhere I read that "Suze saveur d'autrefois" had a higher alcohol content that worked better in cocktails. Hopefully it will make its way to the West coast in the near future.

A few of you have mentioned on various threads that you were cooking from April Bloomfield's A Girl and Her Pig. I just got the book a few weeks ago at my favorite used bookstore and just started using it. I thought it would be good to capture our creations from the book in one spot. The first thing that caught my eye was the Asparagus with Parmesan Pudding and Prosciutto. This little Parmesan pudding is the bomb! The pudding is mostly heavy cream with some milk, plenty of Parmesan, garlic (I used fragrant green garlic from my CSA) and eggs. It's easy to make and has fantastic flavor. It can be made in advance and reheated. I made it in individual ramekins so I could make a few extra ones for another meal. It's excellent with asparagus as suggested in the book. The asparagus and prosciutto are placed on top of a nice big grilled piece of bread rubbed with olive oil. We ended up spooning the pudding over the asparagus as I was nervous about trying to unmold it in one piece. It is also wonderful as a side dish with steak. What other recipes have your tried?

The tequila tasting sounds like a fun event, tanstaafl2. My knowledge of tequila is very limited, but I like the Don Julio "basic" blanco tequila a lot. Thanks for sharing your notes regarding the rest of the line. Last night, I made a Talent Scout: bourbon, curaçao, Angostura bitters. This may or may not be considered an old-fashioned variation with its use of curaçao (1/2 oz if my memory is correct). Given the amount of the debate regarding the use of curaçao on the old-fashioned thread, I reserve judgment on this issue and defer to the experts. I also made a Negroni with Beefeater gin, Vya sweet vermouth (and Campari of course). I used a flamed orange twist - after watching Dale DeGroff demonstrating this technique masterfully in the videos provided as part of the training program for BarSmarts, I just had to try it!

Very pretty cocktail - and you are using Su-Mei Yu's book as a coaster ! ;-) How did it taste with the genever?