ChrisTaylor

And, too, a Dark and Stormy. Another hit.

Mojito. Nice. Can see myself revisiting this one a bit during summer.

Just made DeGroff's El Presidente. This + liquid nitrogen would = awesome sorbet.

The vermouths and gin are sitting on the fridge. I like Tanq.--I'm not replacing it because it's shit, but because it's damn near run out. And yeah, the plan was to track down a reasonably priced, proper rye when the Canadian Club is done. As much as I know--and knew, even when I bought it--that it wasn't ideal, I figured and still think it's fine for those first tentative steps.

Flipping through DeGroff led me to the London Iced Tea. On a hot, sticky evening, this works rather well. So, a new question--what should my shopping list look like as a cocktail novice? I have to replace the gin soon but what should I be looking at? At the moment I'm figuring on a white rum (recommendations for decent 'entry-level' ones, please), a cognac (or at least a decent brandy) and a bourbon. I don't really like overly sweet things (including and maybe especially drinks) but I wouldn't mind checking out some of the orange-flavoured things in the book, either.

My collection as it stands: * A dark rum (Mt. Gay) * A single malt (Talisker) * Canadian Club * Gin (Tanq.) * Ang. bitters * Campari * Vermouth -- dry white and sweet red * Tonic water and soda water * Amaretto * Pernod Now that I've added the rum and Pernod, what can I do?

Stock?

Booze pairings going beyond 'mere' wine pairings. In restaurants, I mean. I've seen an increasing amount of cocktails, sakes, etc creeping into wine flights.

I'm going to put my money on this. Stir the stock as you heat it gently.

Funny you bring this topic up but the other day one of the newspapers down here ran a story about a bunch of high profile restaurants refusing to provide customers with doggie bags--they were scared that someone would take food home, store it improperly, get ill and then attempt to sue the restaurant. The article didn't mention if the fear was based on anything real (i.e. Would the restaurant actually be liable? Has this ever happened before in Australia?) or exactly how widespread it is. The only time I've asked for doggie bags is if the restaurant serves chocolates or something like that after dessert. I find the dessert courses in the typical degustation enough (or even too much) sweet stuff for one day. Did this at a lot of places in Sydney and no one cared. Presumably restaurants are less worried about giving away that sort of thing.

Americano. Using DeGroff's recipe.

Another dish from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook: beef ribs braised in Chimay.

Back when I first moved out of home and started cooking for myself, I cooked a lot of curries. Had bags and bags of spices. Mustard seeds and nigella seeds and fennel seeds. Star anise pods. Caraway. Several varieties of chilli powder. White peppercorns, green peppercorns. Black. A rainbow of mustard seeds. Every time you wanted something--a half teaspoon of fenugreek--you'd have to rustle through a mountain of zip lock bags. Burrow through packets of dried whole Kashmiri chillies and bay leaves and sesame seeds. And then, every so often, you'd have to clean up the mess when the seal broke down or a bag split, spilling ground turmeric or nutmeg pods or black cardamom everywhere. I used some spices, such as coriander seeds and cumin seeds, often. Others, like fenugreek, didn't get a lot of love. Eventually I'd end up with a massive pile of bags of stale spices. I'd discard them and ... start again, often--stupidly, yes--buying another bag of juniper berries or dried oregano or cinnamon before I really needed. Or hunting down and paying a lot for mastic, even tho' aside from that one recipe that called for an 1/8th of a teaspoon's worth I didn't have the slightest idea what to do with the rest of it. I'd do pretty much the same thing with other ingredients. When I discovered bean and lentil curries were nice, I stocked up on canned chickpeas and canned broad beans and canned mixed lentils like it was the End of Time and Everything Else. I'd buy packets of dried pasta, using 200 grams of this and 400 grams of that, leaving all these opened packets with 50 or 100 grams of spaghettini or penne everywhere. Condiments, too. Every so often I'd have to discard stale bottles of sesame oil (incidentally, don't ever drop a near-full one of those on the kitchen tiles when you're clearing shit out of a cupboard--the smell lasts for weeks) or fish sauce. You know, when the cupboards got to a state where you realised rats or even a whole family of gypsies or something could be living in there, right behind the three half-finished bottles of balsamic vinegar, and you wouldn't even know. I've stopped now. I promise. I really will get around to those half-finished packets of linguine and orecchiette. EDIT My housemate at the time was much, much, much worse, though. I lived with him for three years and in that time I saw him cook maybe ... twice? 'Cook' in the sense of 'place some eggs in a fry pan while consuming tea'. He'd buy these tiny little cartons of milk, God knows where you can find cartons that small (not those individual plastic cups with al foil lids, but actual tiny cartons). He'd open two and once--one to make tea with, the other to bury behind all my condiments and shit until he wound up with a stinking cardboard tub of matured cheese. He'd buy a heap of tomatoes ('dinner' was one of two things: food court-grade 'Asian' food purchased at the end of the day, when everything's being thrown out for next to nothing, or a toasted sandwich of cheddar and tomato) and just dump them all in the fridge. Sometimes he'd forgot about them or maybe just have a fortnight's worth of takeaway and I'd wind up having to get rid of a freezer bag of passata. The worst, I think, had to have been the mangoes: must've bought a couple and then just dumped them in the bottom of the vegetable freezer. I found them several months after the date of purchase during one of my semiannual kitchen blitzes. The liquid that had pooled at the bottom of that fridge looked and smelt like it was half way to home brew mango beer.

Aborio isn't bad. In Australia, at least, it's easier (and significantly cheaper) to get your hands on. The other grains are just different. The way it was explained to me by one of the ladies at my local Italian deli is that the different varieties suit different purposes--it depends on what you're putting in your risotto and what you want the end result to be like in terms of texture. Aborio also makes a decent sub. for calaspara ...

The basic loaf isn't much to write home about on day two or three. After a week, tho'? It's really good. Mixing a new batch of dough tomorrow. Won't touch it until the following weekend.

The chicken 'bouillabaisse' from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. Using, too, a loaf of Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day.

Just mixed up a Sazerac (using whiskey instead of cognac--want to try the original version when I next buy a bottle of cognac). I like it a lot.

Another first attempt: gimlet.

Sounds like a more accessible entry point. EDIT I guess I should've mentioned in addition to the spirits I have a bottle of bitters, tonic water, soda water and lime juice cordial.

DeGroff's book landed on my doorstep this afternoon. Flipped to the page on the Negroni and mixed one up. Not sure what to make of it--I like it enough to keep on drinking but I'm not sure if I want to make more. Will try a Manhattan later. Anything else I should look into? My present collection of spirits includes a single malt (Talisker), the Canadian Club, gin (Tanq.), sweet red vermouth, dry vermouth, Campari and Amaretto.

Well that's the thing. My tastes in booze are normally 'simple'--good quality beer, nice single malt, nice cognac. I don't tend to mix or order cocktails. As such I wasn't going to go all out and buy an expensive (but obviously superior quality) rye or bourbon, something I normally wouldn't drink, given there was a fair chance I wouldn't have enjoyed the end product. I'm going to pick up some Campari and sweet red vermouth (I already have some dry vermouth) to expand my options: figuring on sampling Negronis and Manhattans.

Glad you liked it. Which rye? Well, partly rye. Canadian Club.

Made (and tasted) an Old Fashioned for the first time. Essential Cocktail (DeGroff) hasn't landed yet so after reading the 'who would win in a fight--Batman or Spiderman?'-esque Old Fashioned thread I went out and bought some rye and bitters and gave Wikipedia's recipe a go (sans the cherry). Probably an inferior recipe to what the average eGulleter might use, but hey. I like the drink. I see it maybe even toppling the gin and tonic (the only other cocktail I know how to make) as my go-to summer drink (not that it's summer ... but it never hurts to start early).

Locatelli's follow-up to the amazing Made in Italy, Made in Sicily, landed today. Flicked through it and spotted a recipe for meatballs--pork and pecorino laced with fennel. I ended up using pork and veal mince (mostly because it was there), tho'. I mean, dead pig only gets better when it's joined by baby cow, right?

40 grams is a lot of seasame oil.