trillium

It depends on how sweet they are to start with, and how sweet your brandy is. I use about a Tablespoon of sugar for a pint of the sour cherries I get around here. I also add a little bit of water to mine as well. That way they don't get too wrinkly. I'm a leave the pit in person, I love the taste the pits give to the cherry flesh and liquid. regards, trillium

The Yeo's brand is a Singapore/Malaysian version, so it's a little different from the Dragonfly brand. It's mainly just whole fermented soya beans, where the Thai "sauces" in bottles are more mashed up. There is a little difference in saltiness between Healthy Boy brand soya bean paste and the Yeo's (the two I use), but you're cooking to taste anyway, right? Healthy Boy is a little more fermenty tasting, and a little less salty. Most Thais I saw cooking just added it directly to the dish without any rinsing. If you use Yeo's in a Thai dish, then you can mash it up a little with some of the liquid to make it more like the Thai style sauce, or not. I don't think it really matters that much. It's just like fermented black beans, you can do it according to mood and dish. Sometimes I really like "little salty pellets of salted beans" in something, instead of an underlying flavor profile. regards, trillium

I'm sorry I didn't get back here soon enough but I looked it up and here it is: 4 c pitted sour cherries, drained 1/2 c juice from draining 1 c sugar 2.5 T tapioca 1 T flour juice and zest of half a lemon I think she also says to dot the surface with butter but I never do that. I also cut down on the sugar, depending on how sweet the cherries are. I use the crust from Baking with Julia and do it as a lattice. I put the pies over a rack that has a baking sheet that has a silpat on it in case of spills. I don't take them out until the middle is bubbling. This always turns out just right in terms of thickness/runniness. I'm not sure we'll even get a pie this year, all the farmers I talk to say that they won't have any. The weather was pretty hard on fruits this year, I think even the apple crop will be way off. regards, trillium

You don't have to use alum, if you do it right, the cherries stay firm for quite a while. I brandied and bourboned sour cherries last year and I followed the instructions in Chez Panisse Fruits and the Zuni Cafe cookbook (which were about the same). They stayed wonderfully firm and even somewhat crunchy. The best advice is to pick perfectly sound cherries without any oxidation spots, do a combination of your booze of choice and water and sugar. I don't remember the exact ratios. You let them sit at room temp for a while and then store them in the fridge (I think this is the key to firmness). I left the pit in as they suggested and after eating them realized why maraschino cherries taste like almond extract. It's a clumsy way of trying to mimic the wonderful taste the pit imparts on the cherry and the liquid after aging. regards, trillium

Dessert wine? Hmmm...I've only drunk it as an apéritif, it's a great match with something salty and briney, like anchovy or olive toasts. The tannins will kick in, and things taste less sweet when they're chilled. I like mine chilled and poured over a couple of ice cubes. All that aside, I usually cut back the sugar in ours because I like it more on the bitter side of bittersweet. regards, trillium

I don't think the brownish spots are a problem, as long as they still smell ok. If you don't want to make something alcoholic, peel the nuts and lightly pickle the nutmeats to eat with charcuterie. regards, trillium

You can always make rote grutze with red currants too. The way I learned it from a friend is to use 2 parts currants to one part raspberries and one part sour cherries. You cook them with sugar to taste (and a splash of water to get things going) and thicken with corn or potato starch. His family eats it with cream or a creme anglaise poured on top. It's very tasty. regards, trillium

Just don't try to take one in your carry on baggage. I had to mail mine home. They also didn't understand why I'd have an ice crusher in my backpack, they found it very suspicious. Cretins. regards, trillium

Last time I checked Rhode Island and Arizona were in the same country...believe it or not... hee hee. regards, trillium

Another tip that took me ages to figure out, for the second toasting, you don't need to lie them flat. The can be toasted standing up, and that way they toast more evenly on both sides at the same time. regards, trillium

I always had trouble with my sour cherry pies being too runny or too rubbery until I started using a friend's recipe. She said it was from Martha Stewart but I can't find it on the website. I remember that it is 4 cups of pitted sour cherries, 1/2 cup of juice and a combination of both tapioca and flour for thickener. I really like how it turns out-- not too runny, but not gummy at all, still juicy. If you like, I'll look up the amounts at home and post them. regards, trillium

A Camp Chef 70K btu burner works very well for those of us that don't have the btus or ventilation for that kind of cooking indoors. Plus you get to use a bigger wok, and you don't suck down as much cancer-causing vapors. It just gets a little tiring to hold the wok and do the flipping around thing. I see that they sell wok rings for the burners now, but they seem kind of flimsy. When we were in Thailand we were very enamored with these stands that were built to be plugged into a propane tank. They had a wok ring already built in so both hands were free and the flames came out of the ring, plus the ones below the wok, it also came up to a more comfortable height. I wish we had taken pictures so we could get someone to rig one up here. regards, trillium

I like Pimm's in the summer too. My favorite way to drink it is with the limonata from San Pelligrino or Reed's ginger beer. I've been thinking about making the homemade version for this summer, the recipe has been posted a couple of times. regards, trillium

I think Ed's rhums are finding their way over to the West Coast, or to California at least. If you can't find any rhum agricole blanc, Barbancourt white from Haiti has many rhum agricole-like qualities and much better availability. ← There's Washington, Oregon and California. Of the three, only Cali is enlightened enough to let you buy your booze where ever you want, and you can pretty much choose from what ever gets imported to the US. OR and WA still like to tell people what they can drink and where they can buy it. At least in WA you can special order stuff, but not here! It could be a local demand thing too I guess, when I asked about Italian bitters at one place they pointed out the Amaretto to me! Noilly Pratt is just now showing up in some stores, and they want $12 a bottle for it! That's why I mail order from Sam's Wine most of the time. Last time I checked they didn't have any rhum agricole, so I'm happy to see they do now. regards, trillium

So if one lives in a state still in the dark ages when it comes to alcohol consumption and one wanted to mail order some rhum agricole, what and where would be the best bet? regards, trillium

Are you talking about the stuff in the cans that is called young coconut in English? It's the clear coconut water with chunks of young coconut in it. The combo sounds really good and easy. I like mixing the canned guava or soursop drinks with rum and a little soda water in the summer too. regards, trillium

Sorry to have bothered you, I'll try to explain better without getting myself into trouble with people who think about chemistry all the time, unlike me these days. I guess at the atomic or molecular level you could say all things have pores. However, I think the whole point of heating oil on a reactive iron surface (carbon steel or cast iron) is to cause the oil to undergo polymerization and adhere by forming bonds with the reactive substances in the iron (maybe iron oxide if I had to guess), in effect sealing off the reactive part of the metal with a thin sheet of polymerized oil. I think the heat is working more to change the structure of the oil in the presence of the metal, and not as much to change the structure of the metal itself. That's what I was trying to say, but maybe I should have just kept quiet. Anyhow, oil and heat on reactive iron is a good thing! regards, trillium

Just a quick nitpick that is driving this former chemist crazy... carbon steel is not porous, it's reactive. That is, it's easily oxidized. Heating the pan up does not open up the pores in the metal, to change the metal at all you'd have to go to much, much higher temperatures. On a stove top you'd change the chemical structure of the oil before you change the structure of the metal. regards, trillium

Maybe because he could make a good slushie and a Martinez, not just slushies. Maybe because they weren't the only things included in his book, but were just a part of it. Or maybe because his slushies taste a lot better then the ones you can order at TGIFriday's or most modern bars. regards, trillium

Thanks for the tips. Maybe I should make both kinds of dough and just spend the whole day doing it and decide which one we like better. It's true, you can't have too many curry puffs, and I owe him. Last night he cooked his own birthday dinner... nasi lemak... since it was a celebration, he even fried the ikan belis instead of baking them like he normally does. The cats went nuts, but we didn't share, it was too good. regards, trillium

I almost always do a garnish. To me it's not a cocktail without one. I love the smell and visual appeal of a nice twist, or the way the candied amarena cherry looks in the bottom of the aviation, or the yummy fizzy taste of an orange slice soaked in Campari and soda. Last summer I tried brandy-ing and bourbon-ing sour cherries for my cocktails. I followed the methods put out by Judy Rodgers and Alice Waters (mostly be very very careful and only choose perfectly sound cherries, then guess on the sugar/water/booze ratio you want, leave a room temp for a certain amount of time and then put them in the fridge). They were a revelation and a half. I was expecting mushy boozy fruit, but what I got was a wonderfully crisp cherry with lots of aroma and flavor from the pit and a nice boozy after taste. This summer I'm making double the amount. Maybe I should try some in maraschino too. regards, trillium

Those look very tasty, but the parnter has nixed the puff pastry idea. He wants the old school Singapore type, where the dough is more like a samosa or empanada dough and the chicken and potatoes are in chunks. And deep fried! Like Old Chang Kee before it was huge. Birthdays come only once a year, so I'm going to do my best. regards, trillium

I came of drinking age in San Francisco in the early nineties. I had my first legal cocktail at Trader Vic's (a mai tai of course!). It was a great time and city for cocktails. I drank Irish coffees in the fog at the place it all started, Buena Vista, negronis and picon punch in seedy bars in North Beach, martinis at Zam Zam or the Latin America Club while we'd wait to eat at Esperpento (back when the Mission was a slightly seedy place), sangria at Cha Cha Cha, and all kinds of great drinks at this place in Emoryville after we'd go listen to jazz. Then I moved to Chicago and followed the weekly articles Paul Harrington wrote on hotwired (and he'd even answer emails). It turned out he was the guy working at the bar in Emoryville. I didn't even know that some people thought a martini was made with vodka instead of gin until I moved out of SF. Sigh. regards, trillium

I've burned through 3 of the yellow ones (keep returning them to Sur la Table) before I gave up and used the nail to hold it together. They break really easily, even when you trim the bumpy part off of the end of the lemon. regards, trillium

Sorry, I wasn't quite clear. I make a vin d'orange similiarly to the vin de pamplemousse, but I use sour oranges, for the fortifying part I use brandy, and for sweetner I use brown sugar. I've thought about making one with bergamot too, but I ran out of vessels. I use 1 kilo of sour oranges, sliced, 500 ml brandy, 500 g sugar (we like it on the tart side), a vanilla pod and around 5.5 bottles of white wine. If I happen to have any orange leaves I throw those in too. I let it sit for 3 or 4 months and then bottle it. It doesn't age well, unlike the vin de noix, you're supposed to drink it that summer. regards, trillium