jrshaul

Wasn't that recipe for burnt bread bitters yours? Quite a lot of the recipes in that thread are sadly no longer accessible due to link rot - hence my asking here. I'm also curious as to the use of boiling in several recipes. Is there an advantage over cold-infusion? Does it evaporate off undesirable flavors?

I've been making a lot of liqueurs lately, and was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction to go about producing some homemade bitters. I'd quite like to try something either in the vein of classic Angostura, or perhaps one of the various grapefruit-peel based formulations. Any suggestions as to a good starting point?

Hennessey VSOP. Here's hoping it's good - it's certainly not cheap! (Anyone know where I can get this stuff in 1.75s?)

Excuse me - I need to go find a croquet mallet and make an appointment with my younger brother....

Sorry to push the thread off-topic, but I'm very much in need of a good multipurpose frying pan and have a very small budget. The low cost of restaurant supply stuff is quite appealing, though I don't know the brands - any good ones aside from Volrath?

I've had some trouble with sugar not dissolving in the past, though this may be because I use granulated sugar instead of castor sugar. However, I do feel it has significant promise for recipes that call for caramelized sugar in one form or another, as is found in several formulas for homemade kaluha.

As mentioned earlier, the "ceramic" in Thermalon is PTFE-free. However, I genuinely suspect that it's nothing more than a sort of chemically assisted extra-thick layer of anodizing. In any case, it seems to have an awful lot of very unhappy owners - just run a search for "Thermalon sucks."

A major problem I've encountered with liqueurs is the issue of dilution. In order to dissolve more sugar than is possible at room temperature, many recipes call for a 2:1 supersaturated sugar solution or, occasionally, corn syrup. While some (such as my cranberry liqueur) benefit from the dilution, many would likely be better without it. Using everclear to compensate for reduced proof is possible , but it's expensive and can accelerate the diffusion of unpleasant cellulose flavors. I've encountered a solution to this problem while trying to rescue a botched liqueur. Trying to make a sort of caramel schnapps, I made up a heavy caramel and combined it with vodka. However, the caramel had been overcooked into toffee, and after two weeks only a minority had dissolved. Seeing as how I had a surplus of mason jars and wasn't too worried about losing the liqueur, I put the jar in a bath of boiling water canning-style and let it cook for about twenty minutes, shaking the jar occasionally to further mix the contents. The end result wasn't very good (I overcooked the toffee), but the technique works flawlessly. By placing the infused spirit and dry sugar in a canning jar, you can dissolve the sugar completely without adding water. While some alcohol may evaporate, it isn't leaving the jar, and will rapidly condense as soon as you take it out. Now, all I need is a sack of organic oranges to take another crack at triple sec.....

My definition of "rare" is many other individuals' "well done," so I suspect it will work rather well. How do you season your fish? And at what temperature do you cook it? Worms?!?!

Several of the new pans use the "Thermolon" coating ( http://thermolon.net ). The coating is claimed to be a "ceramic" formed of silicon, oxygen, and titanium offering the non-stick properties of teflon without the release of carcinogenic compounds when overheated. It's environmentally friendly to make, too. I've actually seen a very similar product used for a completely different application: Hi-fi speakers. Major retail manufacturer Infinity (you've no doubt seen them at Best Buy) uses a "ceramic" coating of similar composition on the majority of woofers and tweeters they produce in order to increase rigidity. It works fairly well, too, though not to the same degree as full ceramic woofers, which look as if Kyocera has entered the home audio market. The cause is simple: Under all the marketing buzzspeak, the ceramic coating is nothing more than an especially thick coating of hard anodization. While this works very nicely for consumer electronics not frequently heated to 400°, whacked about with a spatula, or submerged in acid, it doesn't hold up so well on frying pans. The best example would be the GreenPan line sold by HSN: Look closely, and under the thick layer of astroturfing is a large number of very cross consumers.

I just bought one of these at a garage sale (four dollars!), but have had limited success. I've tried a few recipes, and I can't get a really deep chocolate flavor out of any of them - I'm looking less for chocolate milk and more for a fluffy ganache. I also suspect they'd benefit a great deal from a stabilizer (perhaps a little gelatin?) Also, can anyone suggest an online retailer that's cheap and trustworthy? I'm told that some of the "ISI" cylinders sold online are knock-offs intended for stoners that can smell a bit whiffy.

I'll take Egullet's word for it that I should cook it as rare as possible. I'll likely go for the "heat it to 120 and wrap it in tinfoil" approach for the sake of $6/pound Trader Joe's frozen fish, but I suspect I often cook it much higher. (Best of all, I can pass off the portion I've been prodding with the probe thermometer to someone else until I get the hang of it.) I've seen some recipes that get a really nice crust on the outside of the swordfish, but I've never managed to accomplish this with any form of seafood. Perhaps breadcrumbs are involved?

I do wonder if sous vide meat has entered the wrong end of the market. A really well marbled strip steak can be cooked well done and still be buttery and delicious (as I found out the hard way), and cooking it sous vide is somewhat pointless. A $2.50/pound chuck steak, however, will benefit from the cooking technique and is likely being cooked by muppets anyway.

My family has for some years enjoyed the swordfish steaks available at Trader Joe's, and I'd like to find some new ways to prepare them. I've tried sauteeing them at varying temperatures or searing them on the stove and finishing in the oven, but the end result is very similar. (Swordfish in soup, on the other hand, is not to be spoke of again.) Can anyone recommend a new cooking method, or perhaps recommend an optimal temperature for a grill?

I made vietnamese-style pork barbecue. (I was missing the lemongrass and only had garlic powder, so I had to butcher the recipe fairly heavily.) It came out excellent, though next time I'll make real Thit Heo Nuong Xa, possibly after hammering out a fattier cut of meat.

If you're teaching comp sci in an area without a computer lab, I'd suggest going to the nearest state university and asking about their surplus department. Around here, you can pick up a dozen low-end laptops sans hard drive - say, Pentium 4 1.8s - for under $100 a unit. Identical PCs means easy disc imaging, and you can cannibalize one for parts in order to repair the others. As for food, I'd go nuts with Penzey's freeze-dried garlic - it's fairly good stuff, and keeps for ages. They also do a fairly good orange and lemon flavoring. And you can't go wrong with a big bag of peppercorns.

While my grandmother generally is not much of a cook, she does seem to do well by some fairly inexpensive cuts of beef. Papain meat tenderizer may be unsuitable for most cuts of meat, but for particularly tough cuts such as chuck steaks, it makes a significant improvement.

Can you recommend a particular variety of tinned clams or canned salmon? I've had some *bad* luck with most sardines. I've found some fairly good smoked herring for ~$6/lb, though I can't figure out what to do with it. I *am* a mushroom fan, and will no doubt enjoy many.

On the subject of bourbon vs. rum, I'll stick with the bourbon. I've tried rum both at home and in restaurants, and greatly prefer the whiskey. I'll give it a try, but I'm not sure how necessary it is - I add the butter straight into the hot sugar, and it gets flambeéd afterwards. I've not had problems with the bananas breaking down, but I'll keep it in mind. I've found a neat recipe for fried bananas... I might be doing it wrong, but I did a direct substitution of 1 tablespoon of coconut oil for one tablespoon butter, and all the oil came out of solution. I should have accounted for the water in the butter, but I ended up spooning up all of it all off the top. I like the butters' flavor better anyway, but I'm puzzled as to what I did wrong. Will do. Looks interesting.

That's a really good idea. How much coconut oil is equivalent to the fat in unclarified butter?

I've been working on my culinary skills as of late, and have been having a whale of a time playing around with flambées. Bananas foster is a particular favorite; the ingredients are cheap, bananas are available year-round, and nearly everyone I know enjoys it immensely. I use this modified form of an Alton Brown recipe: -4 bananas -1 cup sugar -1/2 cup bourbon -4 tablespoons butter -1/4tsp nutmeg -1/2 tsp allspice I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on my methodology, or variants on the recipe that might make it more interesting. My procedure is to caramelize the sugar 'till it gets dark brown, then add the butter and seasonings. I then pour the bourbon on top, ignite it, and put out any minor fires in my facial hair, before finally simmering the bananas in the mixture for a few minutes. I've been considering the following options: 1. Giving the bananas a crunchy toffee coating by covering them in sugar and using a torch. This works fairly well, though I've never been able to get the toffee layer as thick as I'd like. 2. Altering the order of ingredients. Should I let the caramel cool a bit before adding the butter? Should I add the seasonings after burning off the booze? 3. Fried bananas? I've seen some recipes that use a batter of coconut, flour, and water. 4. Some restaurants have tiny bits of toffee in the mixture. How do they do this?

I generally avoid Willy St. and Whole Foods - they're both well outside my price range, especially in the butchers' department. Copps sometimes has sales on quality meat, but the majority of what I can afford is limited to pre-wrapped meatpumped full of water, which, aside from safety concerns, never cooks properly. I recognize that my budget limits me to things like non-organic chuck steak, but I'll be darned if I can find a good one.

When was the last time you saw a 27-year-old Goldman Sachs vunderkind reading the village paper? And how many restaurants can afford to produce a quality television ad - or match McDonalds' bid for airtime? Groupon is expensive, but it's highly targeted to a demographic with enormous discretionary income. In an age where corporations own the airwaves and no one of means pays attention to neither advertisments nor reviews in local print media, it's either that or pray Google shows your hideously expensive banner ads to the right consumers.

I have a big bottle of superglue and a big bottle of catalyst. I can repair things in about forty seconds. As always, the R/C airplane hobbyists get advanced composites about six years before everyone else.

Spending $1,000 on groupons is no different than buying a $1,000 advertisement. You forget another potential source of gain - the number of people who never cash in. I had a groupon to a restaurant expire before I could use it. I'd be willing to bet this occurs fairly often amongst less accessible establishements, greatly reducing the total cost. For most businesses, this isn't practical; many are issued by less than savvy individuals trying to get in on the latest fad. The same could be said of websites ten years ago or radio last century. It doesn't make either of them any less valid.