haresfur
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Posts posted by haresfur
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Picked up a bottle of Ikea elderberry syrup when in Seattle last week and just compared it to the mini-bottle of St. Germaine I picked up a while back. They are very different IMO. Interestingly the St. Germaine tasted sweeter and had sort of a melon flavor to me. The Ikea syrup was more acidic with less of a flower taste. I'd have to say that the St. Germaine taste was more interesting but both should be mixable. Needless to say, the Ikea price is more attractive.
Oh, and thanks Chris, the New Old Fashioned is quite tasty but I had to sub in Peychaud's bitters.
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No. Accidental, error-based differences are not "part of the art" of making a cocktail. This is not skilled "variation on a theme." Rather, it is variability based on a lack of precision in measuring. The busy Friday night bartender should be able to make the drink exactly the same as the slow Wednesday night bartender. Would you think it was "part of the art" if you went to a restaurant on a slow Wednesday night and got your steak exactly medium-rare with a perfectly calibrated sauce, and then when you went there on a busy Friday night the steak was cooked medium and the sauce was less salty and more acidic? Of course not.
I partially agree with you. I think it depends on what is within tolerance and what it outside tolerance. I question your idea of a 50% error - at least for the major ingredients. I'm no expert but I suspect a practiced bartender can free-pour many drinks within my tolerance. I tell people (on the rare occasions it comes up in conversation) that a good chemist is one who knows when to be "sloppy". Ironically, the greatest % errors are in the small additions - where you find dashes instead of micro-pipettes. But my point is that it may be possible to emphasize precision to the point of losing soul.
Since classical music is my business, this makes perfect sense to me. What I want is for the piece to be rehearsed, and for the performance to reflect that rehearsal. I don't want my aria to start and for the conductor to make an error and go 50% slower with twice the volume from the brass. I don't want my cocktails to be like a bunch of guys in their garage thinking they're the next incarnation of the Grateful Dead.Well maybe that's the difference between classical music and the Dead. How much room do you make for improvisation? It can be there in both. I just just don't have the expertise to tell when you guys are deviating from performance to performance. I agree, for drinks or any art, the changes should be mostly deliberate, but I don't mind leaving a little room for serendipity.
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...snip...
But it is a false argument to assert that jiggering and robotics are fundamentally similar. You want the creative element, sure, but you also want reproducibility. I may want an architect to design my gallery by inspiration, but I want the guys building it to use measuring tools. I am the first person to say that a bartender can create a great drink using the "little bit of this and a dash of that" freepouring method. But if he has no real idea how much of this and that he put in the glass, there is no way he will be able to make the same thing next time around -- much less help another bartender at the bar learn how to make it. And if I go into a bar wanting their Such-and-Such Cocktail, I want it to be the same as I had last time. I want it to be the one I like. I don't want that "just barely there" subtle hint of Chartreuse that your friend made me on a slow Wednesday night to hit me in the mouth when you make it on a busy Friday night because he poured 4 ml of Chartreuse and you poured 7 ml (both thinking it was 5).
Hmm, I'm not so sure about the above. Part of the art may be to allow for human variability. Your example implies that there is a "right" way for a drink to taste. Maybe it would be more interesting to have multiple similar but different variations on a theme.
Think about wine: part of the fun is that a 2002 Chateau de Pompous is different from a 2003. And maybe a slow Wednesday drink should taste different from a busy Friday one. Bonus points for matching the drink to the ambiance and double bonus for matching it to an understanding of the customer's mood. Just a thought.
I'm sort of coming at this from a pottery background: You can use various sorts of machines (like jiggers
) to make pots uniform but IMO you risk losing their "soul". Or if you prefer a musical analogy, would you want a live concert to sound just like the CD? -
So sadly, no spiced changed phase jack rose like cocktail for me this month.
Well, the good thing about the internet is that the idea counts. The virtual cocktail sounds tantilizing. Hope you continue the R&D and report back.
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One thing though that hasn't been mentioned here yet is that a key difference between most cooks and servers is that cooks love what they do and are working their way up towards a real career, whereas I've never yet met a server that loves waiting tables.
What is it about liking your work that means you don't deserve decent compensation? I know that isn't what you believe but it's effectively what people think about a lot of jobs - school teachers, scientists, ministers, etc.
I'm not in the industry, I go to restaurants for good food. Good service is a bonus. If I get good food and lousy service, I'll probably come back. If I get lousy food and good service, I probably won't. If I get lousy food and lousy service I won't be able to complain about the lousy food and have it made right and I surely won't come back.
The consumers would probably be better off if we were charged a base amount for serving the food and were expected to tip the kitchen.
It's not that I don't appreciate good service but I suspect that the tipping system doesn't improve the quality. If I get poor service, my tip is likely different from someone else who got the same. And I suspect that if I tip low it is mostly it is written off as my being a lousy tipper in general. I could talk to management but frankly, if I am disappointed with my server, I more than likely just want to get out of there and don't feel it is my obligation to bitch to management.
Unfortunately, under the current system it is pretty difficult to justify tipping the kitchen fairly. I'm already paying about 15-20% more for the meal than its cost (for average service). I really think it is only reasonable for the tips to be split with the kitchen if we are to have a tipping culture. And this stuff about management increasing their take-home by offsetting tips with reductions to hourly wage is total BS.
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What about peaty single malts? Does that fall under "funky" or is it something else?
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I can get a nice grenadine at the local Middle Eastern market that's not too sweet and not loaded with HFCS. Has anyone tried a homemade grenadine against a product like this? Given how little is used in most drinks, is the homemade grenadine adding enough flavor to justify the hassle?
I haven't done the comparison in your first question. But with regards to the second question, for me, there is enough grenadine flavor in most drinks to justify the hassle of homemade.
... But there is very little hassle. I used Katie's half-hot half-cold method and it turned out great.
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Pineapple-infused rum and cranberry juice on the rocks with a couple of dashes of Fees orange bitters on top. Just what the dearly beloved ordered. I put some brandy in mine which wasn't really an improvement.
The pineapple upside-down cake made with rum-infused pineapple turned out pretty well, too.
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This isn't quite what you're looking for, but I wonder how cocktails made with Delia Smith's Pineapple Cooler would taste. I remember seeing her make it on her TV show years ago, and always wanted to try it.
As for cutting up a pineapple, although it takes more time, I cut out the eyes using the little loop thing on my vegetable peeler. If you look at this peeler, you can see a good example of the loop thing. And when the peeler doesn't work, I pinch the eye with my fingers and give it a little twist. The eye will usually twist right out. I always take them out because they make my tongue itchy, but if they're being pureed, anyway, I don't know if they have the same effect.
Interesting I guess this cooler ferments with wild yeast. Wonder if it is imported on the skin or just from the air. Sounds like it is worth a try since it wouldn't cost anything if you were buying a pineapple already.
Chris, I'll have to look for the little cans of juice. Somehow I thought pineapple would just juice up like an orange.
Off to infuse some rum...
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I think maybe a topic to discuss all drink-things pineapple is in order.
Just made some not very good zombies last night. Probably had something to do with not having any orgeat and a lot of issues getting the sweetness right. But my main questions right now have to do with pineapple for drinks.
First, do you make your own pineapple juice? How? I cut a bunch of chunks and ground the heck out of them with the mini-processor that attaches to my immersion blender. Ended up with pineapple sauce. Strained what I could through a tea strainer and got about half juice, half foam. Made do with that. Should I have just gone with a can of frozen concentrate?
Second, I was using a Delmonte Gold pineapple. This is a pretty new variety with more sweetness and less acidity than others. The spears were pretty tasty after sitting in the drink but this can't be true to older recipes. Do you find you have to adjust for the acidity in your pineapple juice? How would I go about it? Are there other varieties that are preferable for mixing drinks?
Finally, given the tastiness of the spears and the other half sitting in my fridge, I was thinking of soaking it in rum or something for eating/garnishing. Any recipes you would be willing to share?
Oh yeah, any hints for cutting the things up without losing half the fruit trying to get rid of the last deep brown nubbins?
Hope that's enough to start but please add anything else regarding the finer points-pineapple.
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In an attempt to make a night out a bit more affordable in these tough economic times, Chick's is starting Panini Tuesdays tomorrow evening, Tuesday 11/18/08
Recession Proof $5 Panini sandwiches. Your choice of:
- Smoked Mozzarella, oven roasted Tomato, Basil
- Truffled Wild Mushroom and Taleggio
- Fig, Gorgonzola and Carmelized Onions
- Serrano and Mahon with Dijon
- Chicken, Brie and Pear with Membrillo
Add a soup or salad or fries for $3.
I'm off on Tuesdays and will likely be on the other side of the bar for some of those sandwiches! That's even easier than cooking dinner for myself.
Not really affordable if you factor in the airplane ticket ... but tempting!
Maybe FedEx...
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Here in France we recently saw an item on a pizza menu translated as Salmonella Pizza.
I wanted to be kind and explain to them the difference between salmon and salmonella but I was laughing too hard. And ordering something else, of course.
You mean salmonella isn't a little salmon?
One of my family's favorites is the restaurant in Italy that translated spaghetti into three other languages: "spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti."
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The guys at Sazerac (the company that owns Buffalo Trace) were just great to work with--really enthusiastic about the whole thing, and determined to pull it off, despite numerous problems with the ATF who kept kicking back the formula saying it was too "potable." (In order to get approved as a bitters which, in the USA, makes it a food product despite the 45% alcohol by volume, the bitters must be deemed to be non-potable by the ATF.)
Ok, I'm way behind the times on this but I'm trying to imagine how ATF determines if something is potable or not? I mean, what poor SOB gets the job of seeing if he can hold the stuff down???
Great product BTW.
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I want to thank you for this thread. It opened my eyes.
I went to the all night restaurant for breakfast at 4:30 this morning before work, sat at the counter and chatted with the staff as I ate. After I settled up I handed 10 % through the pass through to the cook - a pittance really. Man, if it were always that easy to make people happy, I'd be tossing bills all over the place! Clearly it was the thought that counted. I thought the waiter had left at the end of his shift but he saw and made a point of thanking me for making the cook's day.
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Assuming there is some truth to their marketing, Fris vodka uses a combination of distillation and freezing.
I could see that a combination of methods might have advantages but that would have to be borne out by testing.
I bought a bottle for my ginger infusion and it did seem to have a decent mouth-feel, not that I'm any sort of vodka expert. Actually some of the infusion recipes on their website look interesting.
This technique is probably better described as "fractional freezing" than "freeze distilling." Distilling required boiling as a matter of definition. I don't think it has ever been particularly significant once people were able to get a proper still knocked together. One reason for this is that fractional freezing does not offer any way to get rid of the impurities, congeners, fusel oils, etc. that are removed or controlled through careful distillation.A lot of this is discussed over in the applejack thread where Doc had this to offer:
Applejack was called applejack all the way by in colonial times and did not really differentiate between distillation methods. As a matter of fact, even back then, steam distillation was highly preferred. Cold distilling makes a gut-wrenchingly awful product and was only used at times of dire necessity.I later offered this quote from a NYT article:
By the 1670's, according to the Laird archives, almost every prosperous farm had an apple orchard whose yield went almost entirely into the making of cider. Hard cider - simple fermented apple juice - was the most abundant drink in the colonies. Much of it was made by leaving apple cider outside in winter until its water content froze and was discarded. About 20 years later, farmers began to distill the hard cider into 120-proof "cyder spirits," which soon became known as applejack.So, to sum up: distillation (separation of substances based on differences in boiling points) is preferable to fractional freezing, and was practiced in the rural US extensively by the late 1600s.
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They're herrings that have been gutted, opened up like a butterfly then cured with salt and smoke.Peter,What are butterflied Digby Chicks? Do they mean cheeks?
The Digby chicks would be a great name for a country band.
Ours have better health care but theirs get to carry guns.Are the lobsters you get in NS, the same lobster they get in Maine?
Same species Homarus americanus.
So can you confirm the story that in the old days, if you were really poor in the Atlantic Provinces, you went out after a storm and picked up lobster off the beach... and hid if you saw anyone so they didn't know you were reduced to eating lobster?
... then again, maybe I don't want to know because it's so good a story I'm going to keep telling it anyway.
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So do cherry leaves leave a cherry taste??
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Got a message from a geologist friend that Thursday is mole day:
What is Mole Day?Celebrated annually on October 23 from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m., Mole Day commemorates Avogadro's Number (6.02 x 10^23), which is a basic measuring unit in chemistry. Mole Day was created as a way to foster interest in chemistry. Schools throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Mole Day with various activities related to chemistry and/or moles.
For a given molecule, one mole is a mass (in grams) whose number is equal to the atomic mass of the molecule. For example, the water molecule has an atomic mass of 18, therefore one mole of water weighs 18 grams. An atom of neon has an atomic mass of 20, therefore one mole of neon weighs 20 grams. In general, one mole of any substance contains Avogadro's Number of molecules or atoms of that substance. This relationship was first discovered by Amadeo Avogadro (1776-1858) and he received credit for this after his death.
Here's how I replied:
Ok, to celebrate I figure that:
1 mole of ethanol is 46.06844 g and the density is 0.789 g/cm³.
So 1 mole of ethanol is 58.39 cm³
My single malt scotch is about 80 proof or 40% alcohol by volume.
So I should toast mole day with 146 cm³ of Scotland's finest.
Now this neglects the partial molar volume of ethanol in water, which is negative so we had better round up to 150 ml.
That makes for a 5.07 oz drink or about a double and a half.
Oh, and I'd better hurry home from work to toast Mole Day on time.
... the things I do for science...
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The closer to spherical, the lower the surface area to volume of the teapot so a Brown Betty won't lose heat as fast as other shapes. Also they are earthenware, right? The more porous clay will tend to insulate better than a stoneware. The downside is that earthenware will depend on the glaze to keep water from seeping into the clay or even through onto your table. So crazing can be a problem with earthenware. Also it is somewhat more difficult to formulate a durable earthenware glaze that doesn't craze. Lead was wonderful for helping glaze fit but has pesky health issues.
Personally I wouldn't worry about the crazing unless tea is weaping through the bottom of the pot. Other people worry about bacteria growing in the cracks but, heck if you just use it for tea and just rinse it out, it wouldn't seem to me to be any worse if it is crazed. I read somewhere that in India there are tea shops where you pay more for tea brewed in a really old pot. Can anyone confirm?
I suppose the big advantage to a Brown Betty is that you can't see the ... er, patina built up inside.
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My "pasta a la Costco" (or should it be "au Costco"?). Cook spaghetti. Toss with black olives, green olives, artichoke hearts, possibly bruchetta topping, maybe even some bean salad - anything that suits my fancy out of those huge Costco jars cluttering up my fridge. Add grated Parmesan or Romano from the plastic container in the freezer and some olive oil. Leftovers were nice for lunch today.
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I'll have to admit I hated Earl Gray tea until recently. I think that's because I almost always drink my tea without milk, cream or sugar. A month or two ago I finally tried an Earl Gray Imperial from The Cultured Cup with milk and liked it just fine. This was a quality Mariage Frères loose leaf tea, with a First Flush Darjeeling as a base tea and perfumed with bergamot oil from the rind of a Mediterranean citrus fruit. I got several steepings out of it.
Unfortunately, many flavored teas are made with low quality tea leaf, which is covered up by whatever flavoring - natural or artificial - is used. These have an underlying bitterness (not the often desireable astringency of teas) and do worse after the first steeping.
So what flavored black teas have you explored? Great, good, so-so, poor, really bad?
What can you recommend to us?
I prefer Earl Gray with sugar but no milk. Your basic black tea, I drink either way but avec milk has an edge. For Earl Gray, Murchie's turns my lips satisfyingly numb when fresh - a good reason not to hoard it.
My go-to tea, when I have it around, is Murchie's No. 10 blend. Don't know if it is what you would consider a "flavored black tea" but I believe it is a black/green tea blend. It has a nice amount of floweryness (hey, I never said I could describe tastes well) without being too refined, although their fancier blends are nice on occasion.
While I'm at it, for purely black tea, Murchie's Afternoon Blend (do you detect a pattern here?) is on the top of my list. I believe this was their old Empress Afternoon prior to parting ways with the Empress Hotel. Although the Empress still does afternoon tea, last time I was in Victoria we went for the Indian Buffet in the Bengal Room, instead. Super!
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Should I feel guilty? I suppose so, but when your SO lives in a drafty, cold, grad student apartment in a converted carriage-house, there is nothing better than hot chocolate with rum. Now years later, as fall approaches, this not-so-young man's thoughts turn to liquid comfort.
So give me Swiss Miss and Meyer's - I'll ignore your sniggers. But if you like it fancy, I also like real milk, cocoa, and sugar. Add 1 oz Gosslings Black Seal and 0.5-1 oz Gran Galla, depending on how sweet you like it and how much sugar you add. Put it in a favorite hand thrown mug with a well balanced handle. And go ahead, put some whip cream on top.
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Sorry to be such a bummer, but i am curious how the current economic climate is affecting what people are drinking when they go out, your choices as a bartender or your personal drinking habits?
for me, it is mostly making more drinks at home and not going out as much
This country has drunk its way through the Great Depression and many recessions since....
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Never too late to talk about ginger beer, right?
I know I'm in the minority but I'm not a big fan of Reed's. Natural Brew ginger beer is my go-to for drinking straight or dark-and-stormies.
Never liked Vernors ginger ale either.
What about Natural Brew do you like, rather than Reeds or Vernor's, if I may ask?
Well, I'm not a great taste-analyst but I guess I like that it tastes like ginger. Reeds has a citrus flavor that isn't quite right IMO. I'll add my own fresh lime, thank-you. And Vernors has some sort of weird unidentifiable taste to me - but it ain't ginger. I prefer Canada Dry to it. I think Natural Brew has the right amount of ginger flavor, bite, and sweetness.
The One Inviolable Pizza Topping Rule
in Ready to Eat
Posted
Pizza is a blank canvas and no academy should determine what to paint on it. IMO anything goes (not that I like everything, but it is great that the only limits are the cook's imagination).
For a good time check out the Japan forum pizza thread.
Pizza in Japan
On the other hand, I could be talked into banning overly doughy crust; yuck!