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John Rosevear

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Everything posted by John Rosevear

  1. A Weber Performer gives you a 22.5" charcoal kettle grill (which can do all kinds of grilling and bbq'ing) along with a pushbutton propane-powered lighter system (which might appease your wife) and a handy side table, and you can probably find one for under $300. I have no experience with the Char-Griller stuff but I am suspicious of grill rigs of that type generally and would worry about it lasting more than 2-3 seasons; I am serenely certain that the Weber would give you fine service for a decade or more -- mine's 7 or 8 years old and works just fine. Having had a lot of experience with grilling and bbq'ing (and with brands of gear) over the last 20 yrs, I have come to the conclusion that the best advice I can give to 99% of people looking to buy a grill or bbq in the US is "buy a Weber", period. They cook better, last longer, and the company's customer service is excellent -- and unlike a lot of department-store-special brands, Weber will have the parts you need in stock when you need them a decade from now.
  2. What rum(s) do you use in Mai Tais? I just made one like this: 1 oz El Dorado 15 1 oz Smith & Cross 1 oz lime 1/2 oz curacao (Brizard) 1/4 oz orgeat (Monin... yes Chris, I know, but it's what I had on the shelf) 1/4 oz simple (I use a 2:1 with a bit of vanilla) ...and it's sublime. I mean, significantly decidedly better -- richer, more nuanced in complementary ways -- than my longtime combo of Appleton Estate 12 and Clement VSOP, which served me (and a whole lot of guests) well for ages. I may never make one of those again, unless to prove a point. So, my question: What other rum(s) should I be trying in a Mai Tai?
  3. I have an Ice-O-Mat too -- it sits on the counter next to the juicer, actually. Mine's the funky barrel-shaped model where the mechanism sits atop a little chrome pail. It gets a similar amount of use -- all those tiki drinks really are better with crushed ice. I also have a Can-O-Mat, but that's currently languishing in a drawer.
  4. One wonders how Alton Brown brews his coffee. My favorite unitasker is my c. 1940 Juice-O-Mat, a deco-streamliner-heavy-chrome lever-operated citrus juicer that has pride of place on my counter and is "only" used for juicing lemons and limes for cocktails... which is almost as common an event as my neighbors would like.
  5. It arrived (from Amazon) and it works... fine. Not quite as wok-torchingly hot as I think I expected, and the wind shielding could be better, but it's good and it's hot and I've made several excellent meals with it. I haven't quite settled on a wok to use with it... I have a 14" carbon steel pao wok and a 16" Cantonese-style cast iron wok, and I've gone back and forth between the two and while both work, neither seems quite right. I suspect a 16" carbon pao wok would be better than either and I'll probably order one shortly. The 22" wok that came with it is kind of ridiculous... I haven't managed to properly season it yet, but I'll do so and play with it eventually.
  6. Pimm's "Winter" (aka No. 3) is done with brandy and spice, I think. I keep meaning to get some during the holiday season. There's also a vodka-based variant -- Pimm's No. 6. I don't think either is officially available outside of the UK, but of course the internet will provide.
  7. I wouldn't say "blows it out of the water" so much as "complements it beautifully"... try 1/2 oz of each in a Mai Tai with 1 oz of Clement VSOP or your preferred Saint James variant (or El Dorado 15, for that matter). I'm really liking S&C as a way to augment modern Jamaican rums in tiki recipes.
  8. I ate at the Beacon Hill Figs (English's foofy pizza joint) a couple of times shortly after it opened years ago. It wasn't awful, but I wouldn't hold him up as any sort of pizza-making eminence. And yeah, Providence deserves way more respect as a pizza capital.
  9. Best place found so far: Uncle Cheung's, on Rt 9 (eastbound side) in the midst of Framingham/Natick retail hell and right across the street from Sichuan Gourmet (266 Worcester Rd in Framingham if you're GPSing). Solid Shanghainese menu (see their website), well-executed. (They also have a second, more conventional menu with the typical Chinese restaurant standards, also well-executed if not particularly extraordinary -- the Shanghainese menus have green bindings, the other is red. Ask for both.) They are willing to make any menu item gluten-free, aside from the obvious (lo mein, etc.) Service was very good and seemed scrupulous about the gluten-free thing -- and I felt fine later, which is good. They have a sign out front that says "Gluten-Free Options", which has apparently brought in a ton of new customers in recent weeks. Perhaps Sichuan Gourmet will follow suit...
  10. Cocktails+ and Flip'n'Drink are my go-to boozing apps. (Also Tiki+, which is best-of-Jeff-Berry app done with his involvement, but that appears to be no longer available.) I like Epicurious's app and Weber's On The Grill app (which has recipes from Jamie Purviance's books) for hunting up recipes while standing in the grocery store. Open Table is very useful when out-and-about in town. Yelp is also worth having.
  11. Polar's bitter lemon is okay -- it works fine with Pimm's, for instance -- but it might be a little sweet for this. Worth a shot, though.
  12. Sangria: 1.5 l young red wine with some body (I use Black Box's cab), 48 oz orange juice, juice of 2 limes, juice of 2 lemons, 1 cup triple sec (I use Bols), 1 cup brandy (Christian Brothers or E&J works just fine, don't use good stuff), 3/4 cup sugar. Serve over ice in a pint glass, garnished or not as you like. Makes one gallon. Just sweet enough, nicely bracing.
  13. A gorgeous streamlined chrome Rival Juice-O-Mat, circa 1940. It is lovely to look at, but it's not there for decoration.
  14. Well, I finally ordered the Big Kahuna kit with the huge carbon steel wok. I occasionally cook for crowds so the big wok will see some use, but for day-to-day stuff I've got a 16" cast iron wok that should work pretty well. Can't wait to break it in.
  15. If you can't get Saint James, I'd urge you to look around for Rhum Clement before trying Barbancourt. For that matter, for a mai tai, I'd buy the Clement VSOP over the Saint James ambre, and at least in my neighborhood, the Clement is easier to find.
  16. The number of fancy-pants bacons that have turned up in recent years is amazing... and the (much, much) smaller number of them that actually represent an improvement on $4/lb Oscar Mayer is also amazing, and amusing.
  17. So there is! I hadn't seen that before. Has anyone here used it?
  18. I have never had a salad spinner -- from any maker, including OXO and Zyliss -- that lasted more than 6 months or so. I just bought another OXO, and it seems even flimsier than the last one we had a year or two ago. If it lasts through the summer I'll be pleased (also surprised). I would love to find a professional-quality spinner sized for home use. And frankly, if All-Clad or somebody were to introduce a $200 stainless steel and glass model that looked like it would last several years... all my friends would laugh at me, but I'd buy it.
  19. I know where to get lousy gluten-free Chinese food: PF Chang's. I also know where to get thoroughly mediocre stuff: Nancy Chang's in Worcester. I'd like to find some better options, preferably with a Sichuan or Hunan focus. The trick is to find a place that is very good AND both willing and able to work within the gluten-free limitation. I am tempted to call Sichuan Gourmet in Billerica and walk them through the requirements, but before I do, does anyone have any recommendations within an hour or so of Providence or Boston or Worcester? They don't need to have a formal gluten-free menu, just a demonstrated willingness and ability to accommodate a patron's gluten sensitivity.
  20. Much of the historical... mythology, perhaps... around the diet is inferred from observations of surviving modern-era hunter-gatherer societies. But when you say the health effects are "wild speculation"... it is hardly unstudied speculation to say, for instance, that removing sugar and gluten from the Standard American Diet and substituting high-quality, organic meats and oils for factory-farmed equivalents would be anything but a very good thing. I mean, is that what you are arguing? That those sorts of changes are just wild crazy ideas? That there's no data? I sound like a broken record in this thread, but do read Gary Taubes.
  21. Not quite wild speculation. There's actually a considerable body of actual peer-reviewed research on precisely this topic. Really, thirty seconds with Google -- or simply a look at some of the secondary sources cited in this thread -- would tell you a whole lot.
  22. There's a farm about 2 miles from my house that has superb fresh eggs from pastured hens. I eat scrambled eggs or an omelet for breakfast nearly every morning, often with good bacon or sausage. I was always kind of indifferent to eggs, but eating these is definitely not a hardship.
  23. I've seen letters to editors written by people who felt like they got screwed by a reviewer, and it is very, very hard for the writer to avoid coming off badly. The reader's presumption will always be "sour grapes", and the letter that can overcome that is rare indeed.
  24. If you really want to feel virtuous, get beef suet from your local grass-finished beef operation and render that into tallow for deep-frying (chop into little bits, put into a shallow pan in a 200F oven until it's liquid... can take several hours). It tastes great and it's full (relatively speaking) of omega-3s. Tallow -- from whatever source -- is the stuff to have, as far as I'm concerned. As others have said, if I don't have tallow I use the good peanut oil from Chinatown -- Lion & Globe is the brand I look for. Corn oil works fine in a pinch. And with any oil, I almost always add a splort of bacon grease, which just seems to make everything work better -- probably that soap thing. Tip: I have a small, very fine strainer that I sweep through the oil between batches. Crumbs and bits of coating get loose in the oil -- sometimes a lot of them -- and if left in there while reheating for the next batch, they can burn and give everything an off flavor. I never get it totally clear, but removing 90% of the junk eliminates 90% of the problem.
  25. "Criminal"? Under what law, exactly? Reviewers can write whatever they want as long as the facts are accurate. Their opinion is their opinion and they get to express it... and you don't get to stop it.
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