ScoopKW
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Posts posted by ScoopKW
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It's stories like these that influence the "Servers who don't write down orders" opinions.
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The water that is drawn from the tap in Clark County, Nevada, is horrific--fully of minerals yet flat tasting. Awful. And a thin little slice of lemon won't help it. It was at that point that I realized I shouldn't ruin a $150 meal on the taste of bad tap water.
Because of my job, I know quite a bit about Clark County tap water.
Suffice to say, I have a whole house Reverse Osmosis system. That way I don't even have to brush my teeth with the stuff. RO gets rid of pesky contaminates, like URANIUM and RADIUM.
On the following link, Nevada has three of the 10 worst municipal water supplies in America.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41354370/ns/business-going_green/
And that isn't the worst of it -- water in Vegas comes from Lake Mead. Effluent is treated and returned to Lake Mead. But water treatment isn't getting everything, Lake Mead is contaminated with pharmaceuticals -- ingested by the population and passed into the supply through urine and feces. And recycled back into Lake Mead -- over and over and over again. Remember, none of this stuff evaporates. It concentrates.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16397-top-11-compounds-in-us-drinking-water.html
I've read similar stories about radioactive and pharmaceutical contaminates in the Las Vegas Review Journal. But slogging through a few pages searching for "water contaminate" didn't yield anything relevant.
Basically -- pay for the bottled water. I'm also OK with carbonated water off the soda dispenser because it's filtered -- and that will get rid of the heavy elements.
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Why not just order the drink the way you want it made?
"Please ask your bartender to make me a shot of silver tequila, some orange liqueur and lime juice, shaken with ice and poured into a salt rimmed glass."
Seems easier to me than asking for an "unblended margarita without sweet and sour."
Sounds simple, doesn't it? In fact, doesn't it sound simple enough that I might have tried it a time or two? And for the most part, it doesn't work. These bartenders in many of these restaurants have a formula that they are expected to follow. They don't seem to know how to "wing it" when it comes to many drinks, and they're busy and they're not willing to try. Or, they don't have any fresh lime juice, and aren't willing to squeeze some. Or they don't have any orange liqueur. Or something. At best, they'll pour in a shot of tequila, and then add their pre-mixed stuff. At worst, they just want to pull a lever on their frozen margarita machine and call it a day.
No need to get all harsh -- I wasn't trying to be condescending.
Maybe it's the restaurants I go to, but when I spell out how I want a drink to be made, I 100% expect them to either make it my way, or tell me that for some reason they cannot do it.
If I gave the above margarita instructions at a restaurant and was served a sweet and sour slushie, I'd get up and leave. And then I'd find a restaurant where the bartender knows how to fix a drink.
If their answer was, "Sorry, Señor, we only have the margarita machine," fine. I'll drink a slushie if need be.
If their answer was, "Sorry, Señor, we have no fresh lime juice," I'd be very suspicious. What sort of Mexican joint doesn't have limes? Either they don't, and I wouldn't eat there. Or they're lazy, and I wouldn't eat there.
But if I'm paying full price at a restaurant with a reasonably stocked bar, they can damned well make the drink the way I want it. Or they can kiss my ass goodbye.
I guess I'm conservative in that respect...
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I agree that it would be nice to have both but if given the choice for just one, I'd pick PDF.
I think you're probably alone on PDF. I HATE having to open a PDF when simple text will do just fine.
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I have devoted more time and energy to popcorn than I probably should.
I own a microwave popping gizmo that sucks*, an air popper that sucks**, and a Whirly-Pop.
Whirly-Pop all the way for me.
* The kernels that pop first invariably scorch. Or I have to cancel cooking when 1/4 of the kernels are still unpopped.
** Unpopped kernels fly out of the machine into my bowl, then pop, resulting in popcorn EVERYWHERE. I still find kernels around the kitchen, and it's been two years since I've used the thing.
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Why not just order the drink the way you want it made?
"Please ask your bartender to make me a shot of silver tequila, some orange liqueur and lime juice, shaken with ice and poured into a salt rimmed glass."
Seems easier to me than asking for an "unblended margarita without sweet and sour."
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I forget who it was, but I remember some comedian a few years ago calling the pepper-grinder guy "the peppier," pronounced "zee peppeeyay," of course.
I remember this skit -- "the peppier even moves from restaurant to restaurant"
I'm pretty sure it wasn't SNL. Almost Live, perhaps? Kids in the Hall? Couldn't find it with a quick Google.
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Salad season is basically over here in Las Vegas. My romaine is seeding right now. But it's been a good spring for crunchy fresh lettuce tossed with homemade Caesar.
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What am I conservative about? ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN' NUTHIN'.
I don't mind enjoying the classics. But if someone hands me a vodka avocado cumin martini and it tastes good, I'll say it tastes good and ask for another. Lobster in mac and cheese? Sure, I'll try it.
Most conservatives annoy me. Some a little, some a lot. But I'm sure I annoy them right back.
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Sour beer is also the current "in" beer, just like all Belgian beers (of which, many are sour) was the thing about five years ago.
I both drink and brew the stuff. I intentionally sour a beer by adding a fermentable agent -- usually fruit, but often just simple maltose or unfermented wort -- and then a strain of Brettanomyces. My current sour is fermenting with B. Claussenii. I give it a little oxygen by barrel aging it, or tossing wood chips into the fermentor -- depends on how much time or money we're willing to spend on the sour beer.
In my opinion, the best example of the style, readily available to the average U.S. beer enthusiast, is La Folie Flanders Red Ale by the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO. I don't just consider it one of the top sour beer, I consider it one of the best beers period. (Although, I'm only good for about six ounces at any given time. It's quite tart and very complex.)
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My light saber -- aka, the Tadatsuna 11" gyuto. Doesn't make the "woosh woosh" sound, or cut through solid rock. But otherwise identical in function.
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And if you give it a little more hops after racking* (if appropriate for the style, naturally), all the better from an anti-spoilage perspective.
*I'm assuming most people here don't have conical fermentors.
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I always add fruit after primary is finished -- or at least slowed down considerably.
I haven't found a fruit yet where the flavor is improved by boiling.
EDIT -- And brewing with fruit is a lot like sculpture -- you have to really think about what's left, flavor-wise, when all the sucrose has been removed.
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He demonstrates boiling the steeping grains, which are going to release lots of tannins and is not a good technique.
Just wanted to come back and say -- yep, bad. I watched the youtube video of this episode while brewing. "Ok, he's doing a mini mash. (Off to do stuff in the brewery.) Ok, he's pouring it all through a colander. (Off to do more stuff.)" I should have paid more attention.
Boiling grain is a great way to make crap beer. Agreed. That's an egregious error. Deal-breaking, even. The only upshot is he's using so little grain in his mini-mash, that there won't be a whole lot of tannins. Even so, "Duuuuude, sparge first, then boil."
My, do I feel sheepish.
To paraphrase Alton -- "Kids, don't boil your grain. It's really, really bad."
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The most egregious error Alton made in the brewing episode was putting un-sanitized packaged ice directly in the cooled/cooling wort. No brewer with even the most basic level of skills would make this error. You're just asking for contamination by doing this.
This is what I do for a living.
Using ice to cool wort is sloppy and lazy. But it works. It'll contaminate one out of five batches this way instead of the 10% average. Repeat -- even at the commercial level, brewers botch about one out of every 10. The bigger breweries get around this by blending. The smaller breweries are nuts about sanitation.
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I have a polished travertine stone floor in the kitchen. I tend to move alot when cooking and have never had a comfort issue. I do keep a beach towel in front of the sink when I am working to catch drips. I also always have decent shoes on so that probably makes the biggest difference.
I also have a Travertine kitchen. What a pain in the ass -- spill acid on the floor and it'll etch in minutes. I cringe every time I juice a lemon.
Looks good. But next time, porcelain that looks like Trav. The new porcelain looks so close I can't tell the difference.
I don't have any mats, but I'm considering putting two against the island -- one on the sink side, one on the fridge side (where I do most of my prep).
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So the only "wrong" thing I can point to is the fermentation is done when bubbles are a minute apart statement. I still sanitize with bleach (diluted in water) as do lots of brewers.
Stop sanitizing with bleach. Idophor is just as cheap and there's no chance of developing chlorophenols that way. (If you've ever had a beer with a Chloroseptic throat spray aftertaste, that's bleach.)
I don't think Alton should have done a homebrewing episode at all -- it's way to "niche" for FoodTV. And there's no way to teach all-grain brewing in 40 minutes.
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Can anyone in Denmark explain to me WHY Marmite has been banned? What is the big deal about "fortified" foods?
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The episode about home brewing is a good place to start. Gah!
Yup... he was really wrong a lot on that one... It does make me wonder if his skill at quickly studying and assimilating info about a new subject and turning it into a show were as off on other subjects I don't know so well.
I just re-watched the brewing episode.
Outside of sanitizing with bleach, there was nothing horribly wrong with the information presented.
He did a mini mash, sparged through a colander, added extract to the boil, two hop additions, chilled with ice (not really a big deal, although a dedicated chiller should have been mentioned), fermented out (he said when the bubbles are 1 minute apart, the yeast is "mostly dead" -- that's wrong, of course), and then used table sugar to prime the bottles (he really should have used priming sugar).
His beer isn't going to be nearly as good as what I make. But I'd take one over a domestic "Lite" beer.
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I never liked this show and haven't watched it more than a couple of times. Alton makes a lot of declarative statements that are just shy of being right and are often dead wrong.
I'm resisting the urge to declare, "Them's fightin' words." (But I am an unabashed fan of the show.)
But I'll bite -- what has been dead wrong?
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The produce bags from the store where I shop are quite sturdy. They're useful as small trash bags in the car, for picking up dog poop (though our dog is long gone), for packing a sandwich, for all sorts of things. They perform an equivalent function to large baggies.
But. Why. 100. Of. Them?
Packing sandwiches for 100? Picking up all the errant poop in Central Park? Got 100 cars?
By my yardstick, you should have no more bags than you use in a week. (Assuming you shop for groceries at least once a week -- you can always replenish.)
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I have the opportunity to take a fairly involved cooking program (110 hours) at a well known school. My question.... is it worth it?
Of COURSE it's worth it. Keep going to school and formally learning for your entire life. I hope to still take a course or two when I'm 80, and 90, and 100.
That being said, how many ducats are we talking? What is the opportunity cost of taking the course?
I'm running through culinary courses at my local community college because 1) It isn't a financial strain and isn't particularly time consuming (I can take one weekday off without upsetting my employer); 2) It is a very well-regarded culinary program.
I would talk to people who have gone through or are going through the same program. Ask them what they're getting out of the program. (And what they're putting in.)
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He did some jury rigged versions of things like the flower pot smoker so there's no reason he couldn't have taught people about beer cooler sous vide. For most people that would cost them nothing because nearly everyone owns a cooler of some sort.
True. AB is the master of improv cookware.
I don't recall him ever using a vacuum sealer -- even a FoodSaver -- on the show. Perhaps there is some legal reason why.
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I'd be more worried about the hundred or so produce bags you're hoarding than the five-and-a-half cents* that it cost the stores when you took them. Pair it down or you'll end up like my grandmother -- with a basement full of plastic bags and lidded coffee tins. The tins were full of bags. And the tins were stored in bags. All told, I'm guessing there were a few thousand bags in a couple hundred tins. That's beyond hoarding and into the realm of "seek therapy."
And yes, I think taking extra bags qualifies as theft. But I also think if you ask a clerk first, it isn't theft anymore.
* Number pulled directly out of my posterior.
Guest Bartending a Fund-Raiser
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
Quick, everybody bone up on their ridiculously complex drinks -- like the Mongolian Mo-Fo -- and head to Providence.
"Five drinks that bartenders just HATE to make."
PS -- Good luck! I did the guest chef thing for charity at Benihana for a few years. The first year, I sucked. I got better, quick.