FrogPrincesse

Tonight I made the version of the Army and Navy from Bartender's Choice (which contains gin, lemon, orgeat, angostura) with my homemade orgeat. It's really excellent; the orgeat offsets the acidity of the lemon and gives body to the drink.

Catching up... Last night I was looking for a rye sour in the Bartender's Choice app and found the Adderly (Sam Ross): rye, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, orange bitters. It is described as a rye version of the Casino, which uses gin. It was good but too tart for my husband, who is not a fan of sours in general, unlike me. So for him I immediately thought of the Final Ward (Phil Ward) - the same ingredients, minus the orange bitters, plus green Chartreuse (it is equal parts rye, maraschino, lemon juice, and green chartreuse). He liked it much better. The chartreuse of course completely transforms the drink and gives it an incredible finish. The Bartender App also contains a variation of the Final Ward with yellow chartreuse (with adjusted ratios) which looks interesting. I will have to invest in a bottle eventually.

You are right, a full ounce is a lot of Fernet. Reducing the amount sounds like the way to go for me, at least for now!

I made a Queen's Park Swizzle for my husband last night (he is not a fan of my homemade fermented ginger beer), the version from the Bartender's Choice app. I believe that it called for white rum though, but I wanted to use the Appleton. I like the layered look, although it's partially obscured by the frost and the pattern on the glass I used. That version uses a couple of dashes each of Angostura and Peychaud's bitters. It never occured to me to buy a swizzle stick when I went to Martinique a couple of years ago, and I spent a lot of time looking for one since then. I found mine at Cocktail Kingdom.

Last night I had a Jamaican Firefly (Audrey Aunders): Jamaican rum (I used Appleton 12 yr), homemade ginger beer, lime juice, simple syrup. Although it's mentioned in the first post of the thread, I had never tried it. It's really lovely. I need to remember to buy some candied ginger for the ganish. Replace the rum with gin, reduce the amount of ginger beer by half, add mint, and you get the Gin Gin Mule which is already part of my rotation.

It looks like this book is available through iTunes for $3.99. This is very tempting.

Not exactly a book, but Sam Ross from Milk & Honey just came up with an iphone/ipad app, Bartender's Choice. It allows to search for cocktails by base alcohol, "sensation", and style. It includes several of Sam Ross' creations and also a few by Anthony Schmidt, San Diego Noble Experiment's head bartender. Of course I had to get it, and I will be playing with it in the very near future.

I bought The Essentials of Italian Cooking a few weeks ago and started to cook from it. Last night, with a pastured chicken I prepared the Fricasseed chicken with rosemary and lemon juice. The most challenging part of the recipe for me was to cut the chicken into 8 pieces. This was a first for me, but I did relatively ok. After that step, the recipe is very straightforward - brown the chicken in oil and butter, add garlic, fresh rosemary s+p, deglaze with white wine (I used leftover Californian champagne that had gone flat), cover and simmer for about an hour total. The breasts are removed and added at the end so they don't overcook. At the end, the lemon zest and juice are added. I served the chicken with white rice to soak up the juices, and sugar snap peas. Last week I made the Grilled fish Romagna style (from the Dinner thread). The fish - I used a large snook fillet - was seasoned and marinated for a while in olive oil and thinly sliced fresh rosemary, and coated with breadcrumbs (I used panko). Then I cooked it on the grill, adding a few bay leaves to the charcoal for the aroma, which was subtle but noticeable. We had the fish with pencil asparagus.

Sometimes going in the opposite direction works when picking ingredients. Since you already have an overwhelming amount of cucumber flavor (or aroma) from the cucumber itself, picking a gin with complementary contrasting botanicals might work -- maybe a classic juniper-forward London dry? Until the price went from "too high" to "insulting", Plymouth was my choice for pairing against cucumber. I made this drink again last night (3 parts cucumber lemonade, 2 parts gin) with a London dry gin (Beefeater) and Plymouth gin, side by side. Both versions were good, with a preference to Plymouth. The Beefeater had a sharpness at the end that did not completely harmonize with the drink, while the Pymouth resulted in a more cohesive drink.

One nice thing about buying books in a used bookstore (other than supporting local stores) is that sometimes you have a nice surprise. The Hawaiian cookbook had been signed by a couple of the chefs. Now I just need to gather the other 10 signatures to complete the collection. I also just got White Heat by Marco Pierre White, thinking it was his autobiography. It was the wrong book but now I am fascinated with the recipes...

I am adding Blue Ribbon Pizza (Encinitas) to the list of good spots. I finally went there last night after hearing a lot of good things about it. It's a tiny place that gets really packed. We had a table by the wood burning oven which is operated by chef/owner Wade Hageman, formerly of Blanca. The pizza was flawless - my favorite was their signature pizza with mozzarella, ricotta, lemon zest, red onion, and fresh basil with a thin and very flavorful crust. I also had a great burrata salad with arugula, served with toasted rustic bread on the side. The butterscotch pudding with caramel sauce, which is the only dessert on the menu, was really good too and devoured in a few seconds.

There aren't that many serious cocktail bars in Paris. We had a really good time at the Experimental Cocktail Club (37 rue Saint Sauveur, in the 2nd arrondissement) last year. It does get very crowded but the cocktails were excellent. Other bars that were recommended to us but that we did not get a chance to visit are Curio Parlor and Prescription Cocktail Club.

A Mint Julep with mint from our garden and Elijah Craig bourbon. And a great excuse to use my new swizzle stick.

You could try the Rio Bravo from PDT. It calls for cachaça but rum should work too, and it would be a good drink to showcase your homemade orgeat. 2 oz cachaça 0.75 oz lime juice 0.5 oz orgeat 3 slices peeled ginger orange twist garnish Muddle the ginger and orgeat in a mixing glass, add the other ingredients, shake with ice, strain, add the garnish.

Kim - your stir fry looks wonderful. I went with something very simple tonight: grilled fish Romagna style (recipe from Marcella Hazan), green asparagus. The fish (I used a large snook fillet) was seasoned and marinated for a while in olive oil and thinly sliced fresh rosemary, and coated with breadcrumbs (I used panko). Then I cooked it on the grill, adding a few bay leaves to the charcoal for the aroma, which was subtle but noticeable. I served the fish with green asparagus seasoned with olive oil, balsamic, and fleur de sel.

Continuing to explore ginger cocktails to use my homemade ginger beer. Eva Péron 1 oz fernet-branca 1 oz sweet vermouth 1 oz ginger liqueur 1 oz lime 1 oz ginger beer It's a acquired taste... It grew on me as I was sipping on it, but I've never been a huge fan of Fernet.

Looks like Monaco on the street picture (especially given the number of surveillance cameras!). So I also think that it's Franci.

I looked for a thread on Brooklyn variations but did not find one, so I am posting this on this general Drinks thread. Very tasty Brooklyn variant created by Philip Ward: The Rojo Bianco. 2 oz reposado tequila 1/4 oz white vermouth 1/4 oz maraschino 1/4 oz campari 1 dash angostura bitters It tasted like a slightly spicy Brooklyn. Really nice.

The vegetation with what look like olive trees in the background could indicate Southern California (or Australia, but it's not the right season). But I don't think it's San Diego.

I made him a Red Hook tonight, a cocktail that is on our regular rotation. For me, a Gin Gin Mule with my homemade ginger beer. The spices in the beer (coriander, fennel, celery) gave a nice little twist to the cocktail.

Linguini with shrimp scampi

Personally, I never understood what the big deal was with In-n-Out. There is one down the street from where I live, and I don't think it's anything special. Sure, it's better than McDonalds, but there are better options. And I really don't care for their fries either. Locally we have Burger Lounge which I really like. The grass-fed beef that they use has a great flavor, and they use good quality freshly-baked buns.

I read the sample chapter last night (through ibooks). I will probably end up reading it but I am waiting to read more reviews.

I made my first ginger beer this weekend at a cooking/mixology class. The recipe and process are quite similar to what Jeffrey Morgenthaler posted on his blog here. Some differences: we used lavender to infuse the simple syrup. The ginger juice was rendered using a Vitamix. We also added some spices: coriander, celery, and fennel. The stained mixture was fermented for two days with Champagne yeast. It is now very midly bubbly. I wished we had done one version without the spices because they are a little strong and it would be good to try the ginger beer in its own. I tried it in a Dark and Stormy tonight with black strap rum. The ginger recipe needs some tweaking but seems very promising. I would also like to try a non-fermented ginger beer for comparison purposes to see if it's worth going through all the trouble (it's quite a bit of work for the fermented version).

For the polenta. Why you don't like how your polenta turns out? Everywhere you go they have a different preference for polenta and they like a different variety. Hi Franci, Good to see you on the Dinner thread. The polenta I've been experimenting with is Moretti white polenta. I made a gratin with it and was supposed to cook it "until it is no longer grainy" which never happened, even after an hour on the stove.