ChrisTaylor

What's that Spanish classic--chickpeas and spinach? I'm sure I've seen it served cold, implying it'll withstand a bit of transportation. Works nicely with roasted meats if someone else is taking care of that part.

Old Fashioned variation. Tennessee Old-Fashioned? Maybe. Needs some refining 60 mL Dickel 12/Demerara syrup/couple dashes of Bitter End Memphis BBQ bitters/dash of Angostura (felt wrong to leave it out)/3-5 drops of habanero shrub stirred and dumped into serving glass that'd be rinsed with mezcal (DM Chichicapa). One large ice cube/lemon twist.

It's specially made for something but I don't know if that something is a 'good cocktail'. Before loading up on more syrups--or even real blue curacao--maybe ask yourself what kind of cocktails you like to drink. If your idea of a good time is something like a Pousse-Cafe or one of the thrillingly raunchy orgasm-themed cocktails then, yeah, Bailey's and blue curacao will do it. If you've never tried many cocktails then you might be better off spending your money on some respectable but affordable gin (I'd argue for Tanq but others would steer you in the direction of Sapphire or Beefeater), some rye (Rittenhouse 100), a dry white rum (Flor de Cana) and a few basic modifiers: a each of sweet and dry vermouth, Angostura bitters, maybe some Campari. With that selection you'll be able to try a few big classics and start to learn your palate. How sweet/bitter do you like things? You boozy? I mean, with that collection you could hit ... MojitoManhattanMartiniNegroniOld-FashionedDaiquiriAbout the only kind of Collins you'd want to bother withAmericanoBoulevardier (well, if you sub in rye for the bourbon--I doubt anyone would be too offended by that)And a few lesser known drinks, too. From there it's relatively easy to figure out what you like and you can start to spiral out in different reactions. This beats buying a lot of random shite. There are a few threads dedicated to getting started in cocktails. Here are some I remember: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/149558-4-bottles-to-make-manly-cocktails/ http://forums.egullet.org/topic/139736-help-for-a-couple-of-cocktail-novices-part-1/ http://forums.egullet.org/topic/95811-the-ten-bottle-start-up-home-cocktail-bar/ The ongoing Drinks discussion is always worth a look, too. Here's the latest topic: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/148631-drinks-2014-part-2/

Can you post a photo of these 'syrups'?

Open this one and you get knocked over the head by sourdough starter. It throws you in a bakkie and hauls you off somewhere to do bad things. This one's really ... different. There's fermentation on the palate, too. The sour funk of raw bread dough. At least, the way I'd imagine raw bread dough to taste when I open the plastic box after setting aside my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day dough for a couple of weeks. There's also ... tonic water. Like, ja, gin and tonic. Fukui Shuzo's junmai. Another 'prestige sake association' drop, incidentally.

So, hey, in a moment of stupidity ... don't forget to actually squeeze the lime into your Mai Tai. Stirring it into your too-sweet glass of grossness just isn't the same.

Playing with the Daiquiri. 1.5 Banks 5/0.5 La Favorite Vieux/0.75 lime/scant 0.5 simple/dash Scrappy's lime bitters. Workable.

I made the drink when my only mezcal was some cheap shitty stuff with a dead worm in it. From memory I went for 1.75 tequila to .25 mezcal.

See above. See Eric Bordelet's Calvados. Crazy expensive but good. EDIT In my admittedly limited experience, Calvados is not like, say, bourbon or regular brandy. You can get cheaper examples of regular brandy that taste just fine. As complex as the great stuff? No. But still good. Most of the cheaper Calvados I've had has been shit. The only one I've been truly blown away by was expensive.

I chose this one because the logo looks kind of cool. Like something you'd get on a Uniqlo t-shirt. Simple but cool. Dig, too, that it's another 'premium' sake. I have a couple more bearing this sticker. I'm not sure if it's a thing--as in a proper thing (made in a specific way using specific ingredients to some supposedly objective standard)--or just marketing pish. You know, the way damn near every second bottle of wine you buy bears stickers suggesting it won a gold medal in some category of some competition you've never heard of before. Wakaebisu Shuzo Co Ltd's Gizaemon. This is an interesting sake. There's a real tang to it. And a certain robustness. It's ... shit, let me step away from my comparisons to sexy women in sexy dresses for a moment and use the image of a dude from a romance novel cover. Big muscles. Manicured chest hair. Big arms that envelope you. You know, a dude that looks like that mantastic werewolf guy in True Blood. Woo ... Aside from the tang, which isn't a sour tang but more the kind of tang I associate with Lay's Light and Tangy crisps. Aside from that, yeah, no one flavour dominates. This is like one of those whiskies or wines or ... whatever that's just too fucking good for you to want to deconstruct. It's just nice. Like that werewolf guy.

No. You'll read and hear all kinds of arguments about what else you can put in there. You'll see some curious variations on menus. Duck confit is the constant, though, serving to season and flavour the dish. Without that you've just got fatty pork and beans. Not that you or anyone else should be unhappy with that combination ... it's just that you wouldn't have cassoulet. And, yeah, I've tried it. Bad idea. Particularly when sous vide turns confit into a 'set and forget' proposition.

Cooper Union. An Irish whiskey-based Saz variation. St Germain as a sweetener. Orange bitters. A Laphroaig rinse (they called for 10 but I only have Quarter Cask). It works. A Ristretto Coffee & Cigarettes is superior to an Illy one. A half ounce of liqueur is enough: the whisky stands at the front and the espresso is in the background where it belongs. Still, if you only had access to <some other coffee liqueur> and didn't feel like buying another, you could make a good--but different--drink by carefully increasing the liqueur content in the drink. Says I, anyway. Disclaimer: my System D shortcuts might get you fired from an actual bar and/or see you lose the respect of the more knowledgeable eG smoke hounds.

A blogger's review of the 'create your own burger' setup: http://gourmanda.me/2014/10/06/review-create-your-taste-mcdonalds-castle-hill/ Photos of the kiosk and a finished burger but none, unfortunately, showing the ordering process. tl;dr version: Surprisingly satisfying burger. At least according to a blogger that claims to not be a big fan of the usual offerings served up by McDonald's.The ordering system is a little complicated. Maybe the person's a total chicken head, but they spent ~5 minutes creating a burger. System seems inefficient: can only order a slice of cheese, can only get a single burger per order.The burger can be purchased as part of a meal deal. The 'gourmet' setup doesn't extend to sides and beverages, altho' the fries are served in a little metal fryer basket. If we're crossing the $10 threshold I guess you can't serve them in cardboard any more. >_>The blogger claims it is cheaper than other fast food establishments that offer 'gourmet' burgers. Based on the listed price, I disagree. It seems on par, damn near to the dollar, with local chains such as Grill'd and food trucks such as Mr Burger.

No, I didn't try it prior to microwaving it. After the prescribed time the sake was warm. Certainly not hot.

Oh. Right. Well, maybe I do need another coffee liqueur. Thanks for the pointer, Adam and Rafa.

Coffee & Cigarettes. The book calls for Galliano's coffee liqueur. I have two coffee liqueurs--an ancient bottle of Kahlua (from my very first cocktail shelf--which included a bottle of vodka, which is still 70% there, and Canadian Club as a stand in for rye) and a bottle of Illy. The Illy's been there for ages, too. The last thing I want is another fucking coffee liqueur. Certainly not from that end of the market, anyway. Mr Black? Maybe. Illy it is then, right? I'd read, when looking to see if Ristresso approximated Kahlua, that Ristresso was somewhat more restrained. I wondered if half an ounce of Illy would be overdoing it. If anything, it's underdoing it. The Coal Ila kicks the shit out of it. It's still pleasant enough but next time I'd try .75oz worth of Illy. Or maybe keep it the same and whack in a dash of my overpowered homemade coffee bitters.

Shirataki Sake Brewery's Jozen Junmai Ginjo. The nose reminds me of vinegar. Not in a repulsive way--we're not talking salt and vinegar crisps in a fish and chippery here--but it's there. White vinegar. A little bit of stone fruit on the palate. A sweetness. A little bitterness on the finish. There's subtle and there's ... bland.

So I revisited the Naked & Famous with the prescribed yellow Chartreuse. It's a very different drink. Still not a big fan but I like it a lot more than the previous version. Needs more crushed insects ... >_> EDIT Thus far my main takeaway from the book has been mixed bases. I mean, I've made the New York Sazerac and American Trilogy before, but the idea of splitting the base spirit two, three, four ways--tiki-style--is relatively new. At least, it's not something I'd actively thought about. The Conference is really something. The Martica is a beast. I'm keen to play with this idea in relation to my go-to drinks the Negroni, Old-Fashioned and Manhattan. And, yeah, I'm tempted to revisit N&F again with a 50:50 split of Aperol and Campari. EDIT 2 The drink is growing on me but reminds me, I guess, of drinks in that Paper Plane category. Despite loving The Last/Final W(o/a)rd, there's something about it that doesn't work for me. Maybe I'm more attached to maraschino than I realised.

More sake.

One that I made long before the book came out: Oaxaca Old-Fashioned, page three (and 273). Still brilliant. I used Del Maguey Chichicapa and Don Julio reposado. I don't know a whole lot about agave-based spirits but the combination works for me. A cocktail that, in its simplicity, celebrates the deliciousness of good ingredients. As an aside, I purchased some yellow Chartreuse today. I haven't re-made the Naked and Famous yet but I did taste some straight. It's, yeah, very different to the boozier green stuff. Evoked Strega, almost.

It's either early or late, depending on what you're doing. Here is part of what will eventually be dessert: Christmas pudding. The fruit (glace cherries, mixed peel, raisins, sultanas, currants) has spent about a month bathing in stout and brandy. Today I added just enough batter to hold the boozed-up fruit in place.

Yeah, based on a flip-through of the book I think I'll need to add a bottle of the yellow stuff to the collection. I managed to get away with it, I think, with beta cocktails but D&C's book doesn't seem as focused on monster drinks (of the sort that can tolerate an ingredient somewhat beastlier than what the recipe calls for). I'm starting to wonder if yellow, in general, might prove more versatile. Now if anyone can direct me to a non-shit version of Aperol ... >_>

Can't it be a little bit of both? In Melbourne we have many popular restaurants that deliberately adopt a 'club'-like atmosphere. The music is loud. The diners are loud. Small, tightly-packed tables. There's no attempt to deaden the noise. These places aren't fine dining: merely casual places. If you want to eat there the lunch/early evening is usually pleasant enough--even serene, for want of a better word--but as the crowd pours in the music is cranked. The atmosphere is clearly intended to be part of the appeal. And, you know what? It works in Melbourne just as well as it works in New York and DC and (probably) everywhere else.

You raise a fair point. Although I wonder if my aversion to the drink had more to do with the Aperol than with using the wrong kind of Chartreuse. Anyway. Here's one where I did follow the recipe, bar the Carpano/Punt sub. Martica. Page 218. Cognac and Appleton w/ vermouth, a little maraschino and a dash of Angostura. Rich. Robust. Oaky. Molasses in a big way. Very good.