vice

Well, we've talked dashes before, and a lot of us have moved our bitters and frequently dashed liqueurs to dropper bottles for consistent measurement. As for jiggers, you're unlikely to hear complaints about the Oxo mini.

Long answer: Lower your expectations now, or grow accustomed to disappointment and frustration. To my knowledge, no one in Santa Barbara stocks Laird's Bonded. Lazy Acres has a small but decent liquor selection (they do have the 80 proof Laird's). I'll shop there, Trader Joe's, Smart & Final, BevMo and the Italian Grocery on De la Guerra - each for very specific items. Aside from S&F and TJ's, prices are pretty high across the board. The Bottle Shop is a wonderfully trippy place to wander through but I rarely buy anything there (although they recently picked up the Haus Alpenz line and Scarlet Ibis was reasonably priced on my last visit). Short answer: find reasons to drive to Hollywood (K&L) or Costa Mesa (Hi-Time).

More non-authentic pork cookery: Bittman's take on pernil. Finish thick slices of that under the broiler to brown slightly. Serve with whatever Latin-inspired sides you fancy. And why not burgers? Cast-iron's as legitimate a cooking surface as the grill.

If the oven, racks and broiler pan are clean of grease and grime, broilers generally don't produce too much smoke. Right, There is a pretty damn tasty, and I shudder to say this, Alton Brown "method"/recipe that I've doctored a bit and used with great success. Yep, I started with that AB recipe way back when. It's super versatile, of course, and did we mention that most everything can be done well in advance?

Pork ribs, wrapped in foil with a small amount of liquid. Cook slow til tender then finish with a coating of sauce under the broiler. It's not barbecue but it is delicious.

Yep, that recipe's pretty standard. Though there's not really discussion of different forms of sugar, I did get a lot out of this Laiskonis post on formulating ice cream recipes (credit where credit's due: I finally found my way there after reading many of paulraphael's posts citing Laiskonis in our various ice cream topics).

Because you're having trouble staying asleep -- rather than falling asleep -- you may actually want to pass on the nightcap (er, morningcap). The government says:

This preparation of conserved tuna is pretty versatile (links therein for a salad and a pasta dish). I'd bet you could substitute salmon or any other large firm-fleshed fish.

I'd say swizzles are definitely tiki. What's more, Campari is really fun to play with in tiki drinks (smarter people than me were already well aware of this, of course). One of the more interesting drinks I've made that incorporates it is the Ken-Tiki: 1.5 oz bourbon 0.75 oz falernum 0.5 oz Campari 0.5 oz passion fruit juice 0.5 oz lemon juice 2 dash absinthe or pastis shake | strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice Fred's link above has the absinthe/pastis enter as a rinse, but I like to incorporate it directly if a drink's going to be served in a glass full of ice.

I've been helping a woman who makes jam - local, artisanal, blah blah, so batches are relatively small. Still, we'll plow through 20 flats or so at a time. Like most everyone else here, the process is simply to lop the tops off.

The best comeback I've heard to that query is "No, but I'm still eating it."

I'd probably stay away from the various wheat beers that are flavored with additional spices (e.g., Hoeggarden, Blue Moon, etc).

Placed my order too, but shipping isn't expected for a week or so. We'll have to reach out to those at Tales for the details. The preview on Blurb did reveal that Erik's drink (eje here) is the Ashtray Heart.

And it's here! Great to see several Society members in the list of contributors:

Definitely check out Matunuck Oyster Bar, on the west side of Point Judith Pond (Succotash for you locals). Sit out on the deck, enjoy the beautiful setting, and down some oysters grown by proprietor Perry Raso and other local oystermen. Rock solid cooked seafood dishes, too. I'm also enormously fond of Ocean View Chinese Restaurant (in the back Mariner Square plaza on Rte. 108). It's a little husband and wife joint, very shall we say, idiosyncratic. Recommended dishes: dumplings, hot and spicy chicken wings, vegetarian Thai-style shrimp (noodles rolled up to mimic shrimp, even down to the pop when you bite into them), fried scallop and shrimp with chili sauce, General Gau's chicken, lamb with green garlic. In particular, the chili sauce with the seafood and the Gau's will haunt your memory for a long while.

There's some info in this older topic.

Modernist Cuisine suggests smoking for 7h at (I think) 150F followed by 48h sous vide at 60C. I just tried that over the weekend and found the texture too soft for my liking. To be fair, my smoking temp ranged between 160-200F, so that may have had something to do with it, aside from a difference in taste. I smoked another batch yesterday and followed it up with SV for only 24h. Haven't tried those yet, though.

So a new edition of rogue/beta cocktails is due soon at Tales of the Cocktail. In honor of this exciting occasion, I decided to finally make what may be the most bizarre drink in the first book: the Scotch Cringe (aka the Lavender Cadaver). A review included with the recipe: Well, here we go: Looking at the ingredients, you'd be sane to think it couldn't possibly work. Gathering everything in front of you on the counter, you say to yourself, "This can't possibly work." Brave, you forge ahead. You will be rewarded (but in the interest of full disclosure, I'm inordinately partial to drinks that pair fruit and smoke). In the normal world, a drink with a full pour of Islay whisky and a whole egg has no right to turn out a light, refreshing quaff. In rogue world, you see yourself cooling off with this over the grill at a parallel-universe barbecue. Is it the the yolk that manages to tame the scotch? I guess so, but then it fades right into the background, not pulling any of the weird--albeit fascinating--flavor mutations common to other egg drinks (e.g., Chocolate and Coffee cocktails, Cynar flip). What you've got is near seamless fruit, smoke, luscious mouthfeel, and refreshing. Hats off to Neal Bodenheimer.

In addition to the menu, Achatz is live-tweeting pics from the first practice dinner.

Creamed corn with tarragon, from Ed Schneider via the NYT Dining blog. I wait all winter and spring to make this, and then I make it as frequently as possible.

K&L run yesterday, preparing for the coming warm weather: Cocchi Aperitivo Americano Cocchi Vermouth di Torino Dolin Blanc Amaro Ciociaro Leblon cachaca Need to go replenish the soda water supply asap.

I recently ordered from saffron.com and can confirm that everyone's glowing recommendations above are still valid.

Does it make a difference with regard to freezing that we're talking about two very different things: i.e., the smooth, spreadable pate that Chris Amirault had in mind when starting this topic vs. the meatloaf-like pate de campagne (or similar) described by Mark Muller?

I always keep a few corks from empty liquor bottles around in case that happens.

That's fascinating. Could you try and describe how you differentiate between the smell of baked goods cooking and baked goods done? I fear I'd be too eager too soon to declare them done if I relied on smell alone