ChrisTaylor

I guess, yeah, it's a cost vs effort thing. To be honest, a product would have to be reasonably expensive before I'd bother going back. If I didn't notice it in the store--and if I had, I wouldn't have purchased the product--then returning it involves walking or driving back to the shop. Only to talk to a fifteen-year-old kid, stand around while the manager is dragged out from the office and get, what, maybe $2 back? Maybe a replacement? An apology? Perhaps a very small voucher or something of that nature? As much as it'd be nice if the IGA or Coles or green grocers or whoever didn't sell shitty 'fresh' produce, actually getting into a confrontation over it just isn't worth the time or effort from my perspective. I mean, most retailers drop the ball once or twice every now and then, I guess--you might remember that one disgusting lettuce, but you probably don't remember the dozens or hundreds of acceptable ones you purchased there-but if they drop the ball too often it's easier to just vote with your wallet. Shop somewhere else. I'm unhappy, mostly, with the quality and range of produce at my local supermarket, so I just shop at the grocer next door. If I get out of work late, when the grocer has closed, I'll go to another supermarket on the way home. The fifteen-year-old kid and perhaps even the store manager, if it's a chain or franchise, probably don't have that much influence over the quality of the lettuces. They might bother to lodge a complaint ... which is just an electronic ticket floating through a system somewhere. A large company probably won't overhaul its stock-handling procedures because someone at some minor store thought the latest batch of lettuces or avocados or whatever to come through contained more than its fair share of duds. EDIT And there's that. Say I buy a fillet of fish that looks just fine in store. Chances are, the next time I'll see it--after it's been wrapped by the fishmonger--is when I go to cook it. Say I then notice it's full of worms or zombie plague or whatever. By that stage the fishmonger is likely closed. And what am I going to do? Leave it sitting around on the bench? Return it to the fridge? Or just decide to forget about shopping there in the future and go buy a pizza? It's annoying and it shouldn't happen and, gee, I wish some stores would take just a bit more care with their produce--I mean, as well as being a give-customers-what-they-pay-for issue it's also a make-sure-your-products-won't-poison-your-customers issue--but some just don't give a shit. So maybe they should go out of business.

I'd hit the area with a mould remover spray. Open all the windows, too. Just clean the surfaces afterwards--you don't want leftover residue.

The End of the Road--equal parts Laphroaig (I used the 18 instead of the 10, as it's what I had on hand), Chartreuse and Campari. Another monster. Also good.

Pegu Club using the 4:1:1 ratio. When I first tried this I used, for some reason, Cointreau. This time I used GM. Better choice. Tanq. for the gin and Regan's instead of Fee's for the orange bitters component probably helped out some, too.

Transatlantic Giant: Buffalo Trace and Inner Circle Green (no S&C) and sloe gin and Cynar and creme de cacao and Angostura. A monster. I like it.

A dill-heavy braise of lamb shoulder and green beans is one of the nicest, er, dill-heavy recipes I have floating around. That I can remember, anyway. Can retype/find/etc if you want.

You can smoke all sorts of things--vegetables and ingredients such as oil included. You can par-cook things in there, as in the Momofuku wings recipe. Ribs, et al are lovely but don't limit yourself to the standards.

With boerwors you just (sometimes, anyway) secure the coil with a couple of skewers. It also makes it easier to flip the beast carelessly.

Book landed on my doorstep this evening and I decided to open with A Moment of Silence. Used Marasaka instead of Marie for the apricot component and Amaro Montenegro instead of the Averna because, well, I don't have Averna.

Adapted the beef rendang recipe so I could leave it in the slow cooker while I was at work (i.e. put in a little bit more liquid). I was very happy with it.

Recent toyshopping has allowed me to, I think, reach a point where I'm happy with tequila-based Old Fashioneds. Patron Anejo (found a mini--figured it was a nice way to sample the tequila, which I think I prefer to the Don Julio), agave nectar (found a bottle at random) and Fee's grapefruit bitters. I like this a whole lot.

A recipe I found in, I think, the Strega thread. Equal parts rye (Ritt), Strega and Fernet Branca. Rocks (or, maybe, just one really big one) and an orange twist. Despite Strega having a pretty strong taste, I think the Fernet (unsurprisingly) kicked seven varieties of shit out of everything else. And, I mean, Fernet tastes really fucking great, so this is all acceptable ... but maybe next time I'd go 1 oz Rittenhouse, 1 Strega and .5 Fernet.

I had this |---| much left in a bottle of Campari and figured, hey, I may as well make an Americano to finish it up, right? Poured it into the glass and, oh, man, I guess that's about 60mL. Deceptive bottle shape and all that. So in went 60mL Punt and however much juice I managed to squeeze from a ruby grapefruit (didn't measure it). And then, yeah, that other ingredient. I leaned in all close-like and whispered the words 'soda water' over the drink.

Wanted to test out at least one of my new bitters. Opted for the recipe on the label of the Dandelion & Burdock bitters: 50mL reposado (Espolon), couple dashes of dandelion bitters and some green tea-infused simple.

Altho' it's also a nice touch, I think, if you're the host and all, to have some charcuterie or pickles or snacks of some description, that way if other people are late/some last minute task becomes a last-30-minute task, then it's not such a big deal. Altho' that, like the capacity to plan ahead, accounting for the time it takes to preheat the oven, plate dishes, etc is something you learn from experience.

Er, maybe. I mean, life can get in the way, even tho' preheating an oven takes 2 seconds worth of effort. If I arrive at someone's house expecting dinner to be served at, I don't know, 7PM but it doesn't land on the table until closer to 8PM, I'm not overly concerned by this. I'm assuming you're referencing a specific incident or maybe a person who does this all the goddamn time, tho'.

Have cooked a couple of dishes from Zak's book so far. Good. Currently have some short ribs marinating in the fridge for his beef rendang.

Last night I tried a Racketeer c/o the beta cocktails thread (that thread inspired me to order the book, too). Anyway. This one's an interesting one. Talisker rinse, then equal parts rye (Rittenhouse) and mezcal (Monte Alban) with sweet vermouth (I use Punt e Mes in these applications, purely because I don't use vermouth fast enough to justify keeping two bottles open), Chartreuse (green instead of the specified yellow), Benedictine and Peychaud's bitters. Just setting all these bottles out on the bench reminded me when, as a student, my housemate would go on monthly trips to the bottle-o and return with shit like cheap butterscotch schnapps and black sambuca and Bailey's. And then, er, make cocktails with equal parts of everything we had, based on the advice of dodgy 'mixilator' sites. But that association aside, the Racketeer is an interesting drink. And interesting in the positive sense of the word. EDIT Oh, shit, I thought this was the 'drinks' thread. Anyway. Yeah. Now you can make this, I guess, assuming you own Benedictine (which opens up a handful of interesting things), rye and mezcal, too. I only bought the mezcal yesterday, mostly for the sake of buying this drink and because I kept seeing mention of it in the beta cocktails thread (and maybe PDT, too, which I've also ordered). Didn't have a huge selection, at least not locally, and the only two I could find with decent-ish ratings were the Monte Alban and Don Juan. Haven't tried it straight yet. Might wait until I have something resembling a palate for tequila--it was only a couple weeks ago I was really tempted to upgrade my Espolon reposado to, say, something like a Don Julio anejo, then I actually tasted the anejo ... and it was nice enough, I guess, but to me it just didn't seem like such a big step up from the Espolon (sadly I didn't have the chance to taste them side-by-side) to justify spending, literally, 2.something times what I paid/can pay for Espolon, which has thus far worked just fine in things like tequila-based Old Fashioneds and Margaritas. I'd rather spend the money on nice bourbon. And I did. Russell's.

Too, now that you have Cynar, I think you need to make an Art of the Choke.

Last Word and Final Ward. Tipperary.

Probably not, unless you got very old stock. The Bitter Truth made (past tense) Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters under contract (which ended a while ago) in their usual dasher bottle. TBT now makes a chocolate bitters of their own, which I have not had but I understand to be pretty chocolate-forward. Bittermens now makes their own Xocolatl Mole bitters (blue dropper bottle). The current version uses the authentic Bittermens recipe; the The Bitter Truth version had some changes (one might say compromises) required to be able to manufacture it in their facility. A bit more detail. Which one did you get? I'm very vond of Xocolatl Mole bitters -- complex, deep, and not overtly chocolate. Works great with tequila, of course. So far as these things are concerned, I'm in the Gobi desert, remember. Chances are, any non-Angostura bitters floating around are old stock. The label says 'Bitter Truth Bittermens Xocolatl Mole'. I've only had used it once so far (Don Draper #2: Woodford Reserve, Perique, Regan's orange, Bittermens Xocolatl Mole) but it didn't seem anywhere near as chocolate-forward as the Fee's Aztec Chocolate.

The roast goat leg from Zak Pelaccio's book. Maybe took it 5 degrees © too far. It was nice enough, I guess, but if I hadn't fucked that up and had maybe made the effort/paid the cash to go off somewhere and find good quality baby goat, as opposed to accepting what was avaliable down the road, I would've had a nicer dish, I guess. The potatoes were just chats roasted with some rosemary and whole chillies and the sprouts came from Zak's book, too. Brussels sprouts with horseradish cream. Remind me not to make that until I can find fresh horseradish locally. The stuff in a jar is fine for some purposes--a sandwich, say--but is unsuitable for this dish.

Amaro Montenegro. Wow. Pretty much a blind purchase, this one. I mean, I had a vague idea about what it was, but it wasn't like I'd tasted it before or even nosed it. Good choice. It's very good. Reminds me, odd as it sounds, of musk sticks--you know, those pink lollies. Possibly I'm dead wrong on this, but I suspect it might work well with Perique. Only one way to find out.

When I saw the recipe for a Sazerac Improved Brandy Cocktail (cognac, absinthe, simple, bitters, lemon twist) on the label I figured that. Oh well. I wished I'd maybe bought something else instead but then, really, I'm going through the Peychaud's faster than the Angostura or the others bitters I've had since the start, so maybe I'll just set it aside as my replacement Peychaud's.

Bitters, bitters, bitters. Friend of mine was, through work, able to order in some bitters at a reasonable price. Normally in Australia non-Angostura bitters are hard to find (a handful of shops sell Fee's bitters and I know of one place that sells $40 bottles of Bittermans). The only problem--and I use the term loosely here, as I like bitters--was that I had to order 12 bottles. Oh. Well. * Angostura orange * Regan's orange * Fee's grapefruit * Fee's peach * Fee's whiskey barrel aged * Fee's black walnut * Bitter Truth Bitterman's chocolate * Bitter Truth Creole * Bitter Truth lemon * Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas' Own Decanter * Dandelion & Burdock * Boker's Will need to figure out what to do with ... most of these. Open to suggestions.