vice

The fine folks at Fratelli Branca would probably disagree on this point.

I did see that his brine recipes do give weights for salt, but not for other seasonings. Most meat/poultry/fish dishes seem to include approximate weights for the main protein, but not for anything else.

I couldn't decide whether to post this here or in the Ad Hoc at Home topic. In the opening pages of , Keller lists what he considers to be four essential counter top appliances: vita-mix stand mixer scale food processor Scanning through the recipes, I've yet to find one that gives weight-based measurements. Why oh why would you explicitly tell people to go out and plunk down for a scale and then just as explicitly prevent them from using it to cook your food? It's even more frustrating given that most (all?) of the previous Keller books have given measurements in both units, so presumably he can twist an editor's arm.

I recall hearing long ago (can't remember where) that the shiny side reflects more heat than the dull side. Thus, shiny side faces food when you want to concentrate heat; shiny side away when you want to deflect it.

Can you use La Laiterie's glassware? They must have plenty of wine glasses, so you could portion out samples in wine glasses (ordered left to right, say, in order of tasting) a la BarSmarts. I guess that could encourage oversampling compared to dosing with straws.

Peter, how much cream do you add for a given quantity of duck liver?

Just came across this in the November Harper's Index: Bang up job for WT. It would be interesting to know what 'specialty' implies. eta: wayward parenthesis

Working my way through the Twin Peaks box set tonight and in need of a nice nightcap to go with. I turned to the Racketeer: 1 oz rye (rittenhouse bonded) 1 oz mezcal (los danzantes joven) 1/2 oz benedictine 1/2 oz carpano antica (1:1 m&r and punt e mes) 1/4 oz yellow chartreuse 3 dashes peychaud's laphroaig rinse a Vieux Carre sent back from another world. Fantastic.

What exactly determines how effective one's washing process is? Is there an established protocol?

What's the approximate yield of butter per unit volume of cream?

Unpasteurized cream is just starting to pop up on shelves here, at $12/pint (Not having tasted it) I find it hard to think of an application that would be worth such an expense. If there is, it might be butter.

So, like, Campari, creme de cacao and cream? I can almost see it working. Cocoa solids are quite bitter. Maybe it will taste like a bar of 70+% dark.

I've been looking to try my hand at some of the pork terrines in the book, and now that the weather has turned cool it seems an ideal time. I have, however, hit my first snag before even getting started. Where oh where do people find their pork livers? I've been to two Whole Foods analogues and two ethnic joints - not a one stocks or will order it. I'll try a wholesaler tomorrow and a few vendors at the farmer's market on Saturday. Any suggestions before I turn to chicken liver?

Not the Dave you were asking, but the Both Indies is given here as

Has anyone played around with brandy/orange liqueur combinations to recreate the Mathilde?

Has anyone tried A Moment of Silence yet? I can't recommend it enough. 1.5 oz rye whiskey 1 oz marie brizard apry (I used R&W) 0.5 oz averna 0.5 oz angostura bitters 0.25 oz laird’s bonded Rinse a rocks glass with campari. Stir and strain over fresh ice into rinsed glass and garnish with an orange twist.

I bought up a bunch of pomegranates yesterday and set to squeezing for a trial run of ice wine grenadine. Here's the recap: I needed 2 small and 3 medium pomegranates to yield a hair over 16 oz of juice (I used a hand juicer with halved fruit). This was frozen overnight and left to thaw for a few hours today in a perforated deli cup until I recovered 8 oz of concentrated juice. Pre-freeze, the juice was around 18 brix. This increased to about 26 brix in the concentrate. My increase was a bit less than bostonapothecary reported, but my start and finish values were higher as well. The left-over portion had a brix around 10. I forgot to keep track of the amount of sugar required to bring me up to 40 brix - will do this with the next batch. As of right now, I haven't added any additional flavorings, but I may portion it out to compare how the additions of orange flower water and/or vanilla work. I suppose the cat's out of the bag with the mention that there will be a next batch. I really like this compared to other commercial or homemade grenadines I've tried. I was spurred to try the freeze-concentration route because I've found myself increasingly put off by the cooked/candy flavors of most bottled pomegranate juice. I would guess that this product is fairly untraditional by grenadine standards, but the fruit comes through so much better that to me it's a vast improvement. And the color really is stunning. Thanks to bostonapothecary for the inspiration.

vice, do you make the dough by hand as opposed to machine also ? I am wondering if I can make it a mixed with a dough paddle ? It's a pretty stiff dough compared to a bread dough, so I doubt the dough hook on a KA would be effective (and could possible overwork the motor or gears). Something like the Electrolux DLX may be another story. Perhaps someone who has one and has used it to knead pasta dough will chime in. That said, I like the hand-kneading. The transformation of the dough from a sticky, shaggy mess to a silky smooth ball is rather remarkable. Also, for what it's worth, Ruhlman seems to knead considerably less than Keller recommends, usually calling on his blog to "knead just until it comes together". I've never done a side by side, but I'll try to the next time I make fresh pasta.

On the subject of preservation, has anyone tried these Foodsaver bottle tops? I imagine the vacuum produced by a machine removes more air than the Vacuvin hand pump. All in all, refrigeration would probably make more of a difference, but for those of us with 19 cuft refrigerators, food storage is more of a priority than bottle storage. Anathema, I know...

I use Keller's TFL recipe (found here). So simple, but the texture is so luxurious.

searching over the bottles i haven't picked up in a while, i came up with this: 1 oz cognac (dudognon) 1 oz fino sherry (lustau) 1 oz sloe gin dash peychaud's stir, up, lemon twist i like what the sherry and sloe gin are doing together, but the cognac is somewhat lost and bitters with a bit more spice would be an improvement. all in all, needs work but not a total loss...

Weight - for a dough that is 70% hydrated, it's 700 g water to 1000 g flour.

Either they've just appeared or my eyesight has been going, but however they've slipped under the radar for a couple years, white grapefruits are finally readily available at the farmer's market, and what a difference they make. Given California's cool weather of late, I've turned to whiskey and have been enjoying them in Blinkers - for the time being - but there are others I can't wait to revisit with this paler pal to the ruby red. Tonight, however, a fresh bottle of Punt e Mes, and this: 3/4 oz Los Danzantes joven mezcal 3/4 oz Punt e Mes 3/4 oz Tequila por mi Amante stir, strain over rocks, orange twist The oily, smokey mezcal is a nice foil to the tpma, bringing complexity with the Punt e Mes to the one-note strawberry. I still think it could use a little something else like a dash or so of curacao.

Unless you've bought it up in the past couple weeks, there is still some on the shelves at Joyal's. If I had been checking luggage on my way home, it would have been coming with me.

Taylor's specs have it going up to 626F. Since there's no self-cleaning cycle to tinker with in my oven, that would cover me even for pizza. Deciding between this and the Thermoworks combo I linked above probably comes down to how much one wants the ability to use other thermocouple probes.