ChrisTaylor

I was all set to try a Corpse Reviver 2 for the first time. Then I saw that. I think it's time to open the Inner Circle again. EDIT I just made it with .5 oz Inner Circle Green and 1 oz Appleton. Ended up adding in an extra .5 oz of ICG as I thought the pimento dram dominated a bit too much. But that could just be because Appleton isn't as gutsy as IC: maybe next time I should use 100% IC or 1 oz IC and .5 oz Appleton. But, yeah, for something just knocked together, it's good. I mean, I like it. Let me know if you make any modifications to the formula, as I'm keen to try them out (obviously subbing IC for Smith and Cross due to the shittiness of geography--if it wasn't for customs, I'd offer to trade a [new, obviously] bottle of IC Green with one of you guys for some Smith).

I tried the video recipe w/ Inner Circle Green instead of Appleton 12. I liked it a whole lot but my partner thought it was a step too far. 75% Inner Circle and 25% Appleton will form the basis of my next attempt, I think, unless anyone has any better ideas.

A second attempt at the Don Draper: 40mL Rittenhouse rye, 20mL Perique, Peychaud's, Fee's Orange and brown sugar. Superior, I think, to the bourbon original.

I tried the recipe from the 'doing it wrong' video using straight Appleton 12, as I don't have El Dorado Anything. Will maybe make another with, say, all or maybe 50:50 Mt Gay E/O next time.

I didn't find the mixture to be runny at all. You can very easily shape it into meatballs and it holds its shape nicely.

I just made a batch of the Beacon mixture for tonight. Quickly fried a meatball for QA purposes. Very light. Very good. Keen to see how they'll evolve over the course of a hour in the oven.

Just went to knock together a Kingston Negroni then, half way through the process, realised I didn't have any normal red vermouth. Only Punt e Mes. Oh well. In it goes. It's different but it's still okay.

Yeah. I forgot to mention the bitters but I did use them. Fee's instead of Angostura, tho', purely because that's what I have on hand. I didn't think it was too sweet. I mean, I dislike overly sweet things.

The 'seven vegetable soup' from A Girl and Her Pig. The seven vegetables (count them) are onions, fennel, potatoes, celeriac, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and turnip. I guess maybe Bloomfield doesn't count onion as one of the holy septity. Maybe. But whatever: this soup, which is really just made from those vegetables plus chicken stock, a squeeze of lemon juice, a couple 'glugs' of olive oil and some ground up Pequin chillies is very good. Assaulting it with a stick blender wasn't something Bloomfield said I should do, but I felt it was a good idea. I left some bits and pieces whole, tho'. The boneless lamb shoulder was seasoned then put in the smoker for a couple of hours. I then wrapped it in foil and moved it into a slow oven, where it stayed for the duration of the afternoon.

Something I found in one of the rum threads: a dark and orangey. 2 oz dark rum (I used Appleton 12), 1 oz Cointreau, 1/2 oz Domaine de Canton and 1/2 oz lemon juice. Not bad.

I've been enjoying A Girl and Her Pig lately. The recipes are very accessible and most are suitable for mid-week meals. Basic fare--you could give this, probably, to a friend or relative who normally works from the likes of The Naked Chef and Cook with Jamie--but I've been happy with everything I've attempted so far. Making the 'seven vegetable soup' tonight. Marque is unsurprisingly good but very complex. So far I've made a couple of semi-bastardised versions of his dishes. I think I'll need to wait until a weekend or the holidays before attempting some more.

Went to Der Raum last night. Der Raum is a cocktail bar in Melbourne that's highly-regarded and serves what you could describe, I guess, as modernist cocktails. The layout of the menu was inspired by the Alinea menu. The top, left, bottom and right sides of the page represent (respectively) sweet, sour, dry and spicy. And as you can see drinks are listed by flavour profile (note that it's just the flavour profile: the New York Minute might not actually contain anything coffee-related) rather than ingredients. The idea being that some people who think oh, I dislike the (cheap) tequila I've had, therefore I won't order drink x, y and z (looking at the menu, tho', I think tequila is a bit of a workhorse spirit for them). I figured I might be able to pick at least some of the ingredients based on the profile. With the caraway element of the Fuck the Subprime, for instance, I figured it'd be aquavit. Wrong. It was kummel, something I've never seen anyone else in Australia work with or even sell. Anyway. Apologies for the hideous photos: phone camera in a very dark room. I neglected to get a photo of the freebie 'appetiser': sweet vermouth infused with rooibos tea. It came in a little medicine jar from the top of which billowed smoke. I wasn't quite sure how they achieved this (I suspect dry ice), given the effect lasted pretty much until the beverage had been entirely consumed. The Ben Shewry, inspired by the head chef of Attica, Melbourne's one entry into the San Pel. Top 100. The 'bits' at the bottom of the jar are star anise pods hit with a butane torch. The drinking vessel itself (the flask) is then placed inside the jar and the lid is closed. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on with this one--I haven't actually had absinthe before or indeed many other things in the aniseed-flavoured family (i.e. Herbsaint), so I couldn't tell you exactly what it was. The aniseed flavour was fairly subdued, tho'. It was there but it was far removed from the oft-overpowering addition of a bit of Pernod to a cocktail. My partner ordered The Snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The powder was tea, I'm pretty sure, and the foam was quite lemony (but not overpoweringly so). Fuck the Subprime and a Zombie. The Zombie seemed to be, simply, a very well-made version of the classic. The Subprime was really interesting. I'm glad I let one of the staff members steer me in that direction--I'd been leaning towards the coffee one. A nice touch was that both the Subprime and Zombie allowed the drinker to adjust the sweetness of the drink somewhat: in the case of the Zombie, my partner was directed to flip the piece of passionfruit half down (I didn't get a chance to see if it was just passionfruit pulp in there or some sort of mixture involving sugar before she flipped it over) and in my case I was told to move the orange twist around, which would take some of the sugar from the side of the glass and put it into the actual drink. I didn't attempt this as I found the Subprime already to my liking, so I can't tell you how well it would've worked.

Are Rhum Barbancourt and El Dorado going to fill serious gaps in my collection? For context I have: Angostura 5 Appleton 12 Green Island white (almost finished) Mt Gay Eclipse (almost finished) and Extra Old Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva Ron Santiago de Cuba (white and anejo) Ron Zacapa 23

Thanks for the information. Over the past few weeks I've been building up my rum collection and found this thread to be especially helpful.

Mt Gay Extra Old Appleton 12

Please do tell us what you think. I could not tell from their website whether the nicotine has been removed. It only says "a form that greatly diminishes the health concerns associated with tobacco use." From what I understand, the nicotine has been removed. From what I understand. In the sense I've seen a blog or four or a review or five that's said, oh, we checked with the company/someone who'd know and they said there was no nicotine in beverage. I'm also fairly certain that in Australia you need a special permit to sell nicotine products in your store. And the place I got it--which is, so far as I know, the only place in Australia that sells it--doesn't have cigars, cigarettes or anything of that nature avaliable. I doubt they'd go to the effort of paying for a permit just to sell what is a fairly obscure form of booze. I like it. I was attracted to it because it sounded interesting and it was reviewed well, but held off for a long time because I wasn't sure I'd find many uses for it. It's quite sweet, obviously, but not to the point of being sickly (I dislike overly sweet things--and my definition of 'overly sweet' seems to get applied to stuff regular people think is 'maybe a little bit sweet'). It's in the same family, kind of, as Benedictine (gutsy herb liqueur with a fair amount of depth as opposed to, and I'm awkwardly fumbling for a comparison here, something as 'insipid' as the nut/herb liqueur Frangelico). It's less sweet than Benedictine, tho'. The gutsiness of the flavour profile (apologies, I'm no booze writer--I wish I could give you some detailed tasting notes) reminded me instantly of rum, bourbon and other brown spirits. It's no surprise that the Perique and some Woodford Reserve got along like old friends in a Don Draper (found via Google: 40mL WR bourbon [i mean to sub this for rye at some point--I'll report back], chocolate bitters, orange bitters and brown sugar with a 20mL Perique float). I'm keen to see how it'll go with nice rum or even a very small quantity of Islay whisky. I understand that it can be hard-to-find and expensive in the US. In Australia all booze is expensive, so ~$70 for 500mL (as opposed to the more usual 700mL, mind) wasn't crazy. I mean, it's pretty much on par with 10-12 year old single malts and some sipping rums, but is priced a good ~$20/bottle costlier than affordable-but-good bourbons such as Woodford Reserve and Buffalo Trace. If it's at that price point for you guys, including shipping/etc, then it's worthwhile, I'd say.

Purchases made over the past week or two: * Jameson's 'limited reserve' * Ron Santiago de Cuba's blanco and anejo variants * A box of 3 x 200mL single malts (Dalwhinnie, Oban and Glenkinchie) * Perique

Just picked up a bottle of Jameson's 18-year-old 'Limited Reserve'. I like it. It's simple and accessible but very good at what it's set out to do. Vastly superior to the standard Jamie (which was the first whisk[e]y I actually liked and still my favourite bottom shelf spirit), which is my go-to order any time I want whiskey but encounter a menu limited to Johnnie, Jamie and Jim (such menus still exist). Very easy drinking. I'm keen to try this one on some non-whiskey drinkers I've been trying to convert.

Fattier meat?

How do you make your stock?

Heh, this Cook-Off was surprisingly unpopular. Time to act the necromancer and dig it up, for I am making a savoury-filled ... well, it's not pastry. But it's close enough. A cousin. A riff on cottage pie: I wanted to make a full meal out of it, so I bulked up the veg factor somewhat. Started off browning the beef mince and then set it aside. Softened some onion, carrot, celery and capsicum then added garlic and chilli. When they were soft I added a can of tomatoes. Cooked it for some time (it's mid-week--'some' is about as precise as I get, unless you count ounces of liquids combined with dashes of other liquids and stirred with a takeaway chopstick as being precise) then added some red wine. Let all of that sort itself out and come to a mutually beneficial agreement and then I returned the mince plus some porcini powder (some of the pie is going to someone who doesn't like the texture of mushrooms--but I want the flavour and the umami boost) and Worcestershire sauce and beef stock. This will simmer until the potatoes have boiled enough for mashing. The potatoes shall be mashed with much butter then spead atop the mince mixture. This will be baked and consumed.

Hoegaarden's Grand Cru. A bit boring, really. It's okay. Maybe even on the above average side of okay. But it's just lacking something that makes it good. It's a step up from the standard Hoe, tho'. And probably the pick of what I picked up on my last run to the bottle-o--including the surprisingly forgettable Black Sheep Ale.

I like the idea of emergency back-up Campari. I think my zombie apocalypse grab-bag will now include potable bitters.

I like like like this. A whole lot. Need to try a version of this with Cynar. Just for fun.

A more recent eGullet discussion prompted me to dig up this fossil. The intent was to make pho but I wasn't going to tie myself to any particular set of rules. I made a broth using beef short ribs, beef shin and pork 'soup bones'. I wanted to add some oxtail to the mix but the butcher was all out. The broth was seasoned with the obligatory blackened onions and ginger, as well as star anise, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cloves and cinnamon.Once the meat was tender I removed the bones and strained out the aromatics. Vegetablewise, I went with spring onions, bok choy, choy sum, bean shoots, carrots and chillies--all added right at the very end (the greens before everything else, as I wanted them to wilt). Noodles took the form of rice vermicelli. It was okay. I really should've added some raw/rare meat at the end. If I could get them, I'd want neck bones instead of random 'soup bones'. The pork is very much something I want in there, tho'.