haresfur
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Posts posted by haresfur
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My shipment from Small Hand Foods came in today, snow and all. So tonight was...
...a Knickerbocker, Jerry Thomas, 1862 (Imbibe! pp 104-106). I did not have the Santa Cruz rum called for, so my recipe was:
1 1/4 oz Appleton 12
3/4 oz W&N Overproof
juice of 1/2 lime (about 1 1/2 oz)
2 teaspoons Grand Marnier
2 teaspoons raspberry gum syrup
Shaken, strained over crushed ice. Garnished with spent half lime and a lovely sprig of mint (recipe calls for spent half lime and fruits in season). Very nice. I don't understand why the Kickerbocker is not more popular. It is a bit thinner in body than a mai tai, but O that raspberry. Very subtile, but wow.
I do like a knickerbocker, speaking of which, it's Australia Day tomorrow and Inner Circle works well. But I've found that it is easy for the raspberry to dominate and I cut it back. In Imbibe, Dave Wondrich says, "the Knickerbocker is the spiritual progenitor of the Tiki drink. Think of it as an 1850s Mai Tai."
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Ok, bought a small whole flathead. Now what do I do to cook it? After it's cooked I think I'll do fish soft tacos. I have no idea what would be the best way or for how long. Feel free to submit ideas for other ways of serving flathead for future reference. Thanks.
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If you really want to increase top heat for a more balanced bake, do three things.
1. Nix the brix. In this kind of setup, bricks act as heat sponges and suck up a huge amount of heat. You can offset this tendency by extending the pre-heat, but it will take a minimum of 2 hours to fully saturate them. It's not easy finding ways to support a ceiling with less thermal mass, but if you want to maximize dome and hearth temps with normal sub 1 hour-ish pre-heats, you don't have a choice. Save the bricks for a wood fired oven.
Soft firebrick will be strong enough to support the steel without having the thermal mass of regular brick and certainly can take the heat. You could also use shelf stilts used in kilns but they would be easier to knock over.
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I like my 1800 reposado. I'd like to get some more of the Kirkland anejo but Costco hasn't had it in a long time.
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I live in central NJ. My local store has McKenzie's bourbon and they used to have their rye -- I have the last bottle. I assume the store will restock it. I should have mentioned the delightful scent left in the glass. Maybe it's genetic, I was born near Rye, NY.
As to use in mixed drinks, I must say the whiskey punch I'm having now is pretty good (Imbibe! p76). True, not all the McKenzie character cuts through the rum and lemon juice. But enough. (After all, there are three ounces of it.) I like McKenzie better than Black Barrel in the recipe if only because my mouth doesn't feel like I am sucking on a block of alum.
Has anyone had McKenzie bourbon? Would it be worth trying?
I tasted the McKenzie bourbon and it was nice enough but I'm not sure it would be up with my favourites. I bought the rye and it is decent for sipping but I haven't had much success mixing with it. Something about the funk doesn't work so well for me. YMMV
ETA if I could get Rittenhouse for $27 I would be happy indeed.
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Archangel with Hendricks gin
I've been making a similar drink with Beefeater, Aperol, and cardamom bitters. The Arch is much mellower without the juniper bite, a nice change.
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Gi' Punch
Seneca Drums Gin
small puddle cane syrup
coin of lime
1 ice cube
Really nice. This is a sipping gin.
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No, I haven't tried that yet. It's not a major issue for me as I can buy unwaxed lemons and oranges (can't get unwaxed limes though).
Btw, there's a whole thread on Cleaning & De-Waxing Citrus.
I wonder if suspension would not work nearly as well with only 35-50% alcohol.
Microplane and infuse works pretty well though. When I invite a bunch of people over I get the first person to arrive to microplane all the citrus we'll use that night, and two hours later the infusion is ready to go.
I'll be fashionably late.
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I usually sous vide the chicken breast - if you do that, you can brown the breading in a really hot pan and not worry about the chicken getting cooked. But I also like the firmer texture you get without the SV step.
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It's good weather for sours, Campari, and tall drinks so I decided to revisit the Crab Malice. I modified it with a float of green Chartreuse which added some nice notes.
I'd missed the Crab Malice when it was originally posted, but will have to give this a try. With the Green Chartreuse added, it evokes the Magnolia Tree, which is probably my most frequently made Rogue/Beta Cocktail.
Yeah, a Chartreuse rinse would probably be better than a float. With all respect to Eric, the original needed a little something.
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It's good weather for sours, Campari, and tall drinks so I decided to revisit the Crab Malice. I modified it with a float of green Chartreuse which added some nice notes.
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In my view, that's pretty much how they should be. Chips golden and crisp, with a fluffy interior. A good choice of spud is important. I don't know what my shop uses, but my all round favourite for chips or roasting is Agria. Fish batter thin, also golden and crisp, no spongy bits (which are unfortunately too common in bought F&C). The fish, as I think I've mentioned before, is warehou; a good meaty, juicy mouthful.
And they have to be in newsprint. The box for the fish is unusual, but we were feeding three people rather than the usual two. Maybe it's easier for the shop to handle this way.
My local shops tend to make the chips too anemic for my taste. My favourite place usually uses boxes. I'm not a traditionalist but there is something satisfying about a football size bundle of fish and chips in paper.
I haven't seen warehou/trevalla offered since I was in Tassie. I found it very nice.
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For some reason, Dan Murphy's chain liquor stores here sells jars of hibiscus flowers in syrup. I have no idea what people use them for.
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1 oz. lime juice
1 oz. cocchi aperitivo americano
1 oz. der lachs danzig goldwasser
1 oz. portuguese grappa
swizzled with rock candy swizzle stick grown in rose water
a delicious sour. these swizzle sticks have been sitting around for quite some time so I thought I'd give them a try. previously I had been growing them in alcoholic solutions like Campari or Chartreuse and found that the alcohol hung on to much if not all of the aroma. when crystals grow they essentially purify things but I thought there might be a chance a non alcoholic solution like rose water might give up some aroma. eh not so much. I guess you have to systematically work your way through these things and this one is another #fail. there is one experiment left and that is to do it with trehalose and not sucrose which has half the sweetening power of sucrose and weird fixative abilities to reduce volatility during evaporation/dehydration. trehalose is the sugar that allows the desert to bloom after 50 years of drought and its in scorpion's blood and prevents them from dehydrating to death in sun. crystal growth is not evaporation but who knows what will happen and it will be nice to experience rock candy that isn't so sweet.
You might try growing the crystals quickly so they trap the aroma in fluid inclusions. Of course this means you will tend to grow smaller crystals. Maybe start with nice crystals grown on your sticks then put them in a supersaturated sugar-rose water solution. You also might try fructose or glucose but I'm not sure if that would help or hurt.
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I had a slight disaster with a home prepared ham (overcooked sous vide, mushy texture) so had to buy a small mass produced ham.
It had a reasonable texture and level of saltiness but there was no way that it had seen any real smoke. It also had an unusual texture on the outside from the cooking process that I decided to trim that off.
I wound up smoking it for an hour (from cold) with hickory chips in an electric smoker set to 95C.
The glaze that I used was a small amount of apricot jam, french mustard, bit of salt and a bit of sugar. Melted everything in a saucepan and then painted it on the ham with a pastry brush and baked in a hot oven for around 10 minutes. It worked very well and you couldn't really tell that it was store bought at all.
Yeah, what's up with the tough 'skin' on the outside of my ham? It's a rolled ham but it's not too pleasant even when sliced reasonably thinly. I suppose the glaze might have penetrated better if I had trimmed the outside off. I had to pierce it with a knife to insert the cloves.
BTW, according to my brother the Ukrainian definition of eternity is 'two people with a ham'.
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Scored an invite to Christmas lunch so I cooked ham for Boxing Day.
I used kumquat marmalade, Dijon mustard, bourbon, and a dab of My First Vegemite in the glaze and it turned out well. Perhaps a bit too much citrus but the glaze complemented the ham and didn't detract.
The apricot and ginger sounds good too and I'll keep that in mind.
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Loki, never put much of anything in the garbage disposal. They are a plumber's cash cow.
Or go S-L-O-W-L-Y. I generally take about a minute with the peels from about 5 pounds of potatoes. As long as I take my time I don't have problems.
Loki, never put much of anything in the garbage disposal. They are a plumber's cash cow.
Or go S-L-O-W-L-Y. I generally take about a minute with the peels from about 5 pounds of potatoes. As long as I take my time I don't have problems.
Wouldn't it be easier to toss them in the compost or even the trash?
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Recent purchases: family size Buffalo Trace bourbon (restock), a couple of High West items that I am excited to try (Son of Bourye and Double Rye), a bottle of yellow Chartreuse that was missing in my collection, and Krogstad aquavit for a Norwegian themed party I've been invited to.
Will you be my mommy?
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After walking home from work tonight I wanted a good hit of orgeat. It's 26 deg F/-3 deg C outside and it took me almost an hour. I thought (thought quite hard, actually) of an Autumn in Jersey, but I confess it doesn't feel much like autumn and I have no Laird's nor lemons -- nor limes -- but I do have meyer lemons (the purchasing of which seemed like a good idea at the time).
I'm not sure what to call this:
juice of one meyer lemon ~ 1 1/4 oz or a bit more
1 oz orgeat
3 oz Appleton 12
Shaken hard and strained over fresh ice. Angostura, about 4 dashes layered over top. (OK, I would have shaken the Angostura with the rest of the stuff, but I forgot.) Garnished with a lovely spent meyer lemon half and the prettiest mint sprig I could find.
This is good! And it is such an attractive drink! The only downside is that the recipe goes through Appleton and orgeat rather quickly (not to mention Angostura, ice, and meyer lemons). But tonight it is exactly what I needed! (W&N with a straw in the bottle might have served in a pinch.)
I commented to my coworker who used to be a bartender that maybe this should be called Autumn in Jamaica.
If you made it with Myers' rum it could be Meyer Or Myers
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'dy punch
Brandy, cane syrup, tiny lemon, ice cube
Made one with cheap French brandy and one with Courvoisier. Actually the generic brandy one is better IMO but both were quite quaffable.
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I would love to try a milk syrup old fashioned.
Wouldn't that be a milk punch?
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It seems that the best fishmonger here is a single Coles in the centre of town unless there is someplace in one of the more twee areas I don't know about. I haven't really tried them out because cooking fish intimidates me but I may take the plunge if they get flathead in again.
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Yeah, pumpkin soup. many variations - I like it with a bit of blue cheese. Or you can use it to thicken a stew. Or feed it to your dog - it stops them up if they are loose or loosens them if they are stopped up. And it is easy to see where you need to clean up after them.
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Sounds like you are on quite a journey. Maybe you could consider setting up an aquaponics system. I saw one in action and it seemed promising.
Bought a flathead, now what?
in Australia & New Zealand: Cooking & Baking
Posted
Next time I'll fillet it. I followed the advice of another friend and wrapped it in foil with some marjoram and put it on the barbie. I figured that I was going to flake it apart anyway so I took the bones out after cooking. I overcooked it a little but it was still ok. Of course we are talking about fish purchased in a small inland city so I guess I really should go on a fishing trip and try it really fresh. I'm keen to try deep frying.