Hassouni

I have enough friends who have worked in the hospitality industry to know that their pay sucks. I'll do ~20% for a decent job (usually rounded to the nearest dollar), and a bit over if it's a place I frequent. I feel that most of my peers operate the same way, and if you're talking about "expectations"- it's sort of assumed among all us dining out that we'll be tipping that much. However, if I feel underserved or served badly, the tip diminishes accordingly, which I feel some of my peers don't do as much. If it's a bar where I know the barman and/or get industry discounts, then I tip a LOT more.

Kaplan & Day?

Exactly this

Question for those who've lived in Japan, or are Japanese, or are otherwise very knowledgeable about Japanese culture. One of the things I like so much about Japanese food is the concept of ichiju sansai, which means lots of variety and vegetable intake. However, I live alone and three dishes + soup is really not feasible most of the time, unless I'm cooking for others. It seems to me that *most* Japanese dishes besides nabemono and some nimono are not mixed but rather focused on a single ingredient. I'm curious how solo cooking in Japan generally goes: are there non-nabe dishes that feature a collection of ingredients? Do people tend to cook the full three dishes? I'm not cooking as much as I used to (especially not Japanese food) and really want to get back at it.

Test-driving the Denizen Merchant's Reserve, Clément Creole Shrubb, and the Dave Arnold orgeat recipe: 2 oz Denizen's 1 oz lime (scant) 0.5 oz orgeat 0.5 oz Creole S. Thoughts - the rum is nice, but the Clément strikes me as being a bit too dry for this - I pretty much always do half and half orgeat: curaçao, and this is a very dry, almost thin tasting drink. Maybe a bit less ice and a dash of Demerara syrup might make it better. Maybe it was an exceptionally tart lime. Who knows. And no, I don't have any mint in the house.

Made orgeat with slivered almonds per Dave Arnold's generic orgeat recipe in Liquid Intelligence: 230g almonds 759g hot water (1:3.3 ratio) blended till smooth in my Blendtec, squeezed out through my straining bag, yielding ~750g almond milk. This went back in the blender, to which I added 750g white sugar, and a VERY approximate <3g mix of 9:1 gum arabic:xanthan gum. Oh, and I added a few drops of almond extract and orange blossom water. Final yield was well over 1L, maybe 1.25 or 1.3. This is up there with the best orgeat I've ever tried, and also BY FAR the easiest. Start to finish, maybe 15 minutes? According to Arnold, it's fully emulsified and stabilized too, so shouldn't have any separating issues. 1.25L of orgeat will make a ton of Mai Tais.... ETA: actually, 82.5 Mai Tais, assuming 1/2 oz....

It's the same rum.

I should point out I've had a DELICIOUS Willet rye (the 2 year old). They dropped the ball on this one.

The souss is a champ. I feel like it's the cast iron of clay pots.

Señor Rafa dared me, so fuck it. I had a much-fêted special release barrel strength Willet bourbon today. I did not care for it a bit. Bourbon remains an inferior spirit - give me decent rye, scotch, tequila, mezcal, brandy, RUM any day over "decent" bourbon. Not to say I haven't had good bourbon but man is it some overrated shit.

Good stuff. MGXO has apparently been reduced a bit in quality with each bottle design change (no age statement, so legally they can do whatever they want) - but I find the stuff in that design bottle still very nice.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. After two uses (lamb shanks and on the bone chicken) my tagine smells of the spices but not of the meats/fats.

Chicken and fennel tagine http://moroccanfood.about.com/od/moroccanchickenrecipes/r/Chicken_tagine_with_fennels.htm About to cook: Finished! I was surprised to see the recipe call for the chicken in pieces, I thought the Moroccan way was to put the chicken in whole? As it was, I could barely fit all the pieces in (drumsticks separated from thighs, each breast cut in two, wings). That being said, it was quite delicious! Thoughts: the recipe said to add half a cup of water, so I did. A LOT of liquid (both water and fat) rendered out of the ingredients when cooking, and I had to suck up some oil with paper towels throughout the procedure. I thought recipes for unglazed tagines typically specify NO additional water?

I'm not Anna, but general procedure for misoshiru is to bring dashi to boil, add desired ingredients, then when done, kill the heat and use one of these to incorporate the miso into the soup: http://umamimart.com/collections/kitchen-tools/products/misokoshi It helps to really mash the miso through the strainer. Without that, the other way is to spoon some hot dash into a bowl, add miso with a spoon and dissolve, then add back to the soup taken off the heat. Miso is allegedly alive, and shouldn't be boiled, hence taking the soup off the heat. I do recommend the misokoshi though, because miso is kind of a pain to dissolve.

(1) yup (2) nope Adam E's was the first recipe I tried. Nothing against it, but if memory served KP's was easier, plus I trust him more on tiki related stuff

So is the katsuobushi added to the bag after 1 hr, or is the kombu stock transferred to a pot or something first?

I recommend this recipe http://www.kaiserpenguin.com/make-your-own-falernum/ Also very curious to know how the Bitter Truth one compares. Velvet Falernum is utterly insipid by comparison.

What's the Dave Arnold dashi method?

Busy two days: 1934 Zombies Aku Aku Lapus Colonial Cocktail from Martin's Index App (man, too much Maraschino, not enough gin...) Unnamed creation of mine: 2 oz coconut water, 1.5 oz Forres Park rum, 3/4 oz lime, 1/2 oz pineapple syrup, shaken and served on the rocks. Delicious. Daiquiri No. 3 from La Floridita

You got the Souss one right? That one is pretty sturdy and allegedly can take naked flame fine.

Ko Ri Ko !

I just finished Liquid Intelligence. This book may change my life

Ehhh, debatable, re: the former, and hell yeah! re: the latter.

As others have said, vodka and vermouth is a Kangaroo, but "vodka martini" is acceptable, and frankly more common. A generic "martini" is gin and vermouth. With orange bitters. And a twist. (Keep those fuckin' olives out of my drink. Put them on my plate!) On a slight tangent, I've found using "new American" gin [read, floral and not very junipery] a great way to make martinis for, and thus convert, people who "don't like gin"

If you insist on a cobbler shaker, I'd suggest the Usagi from CK. Everything they make is magic. Of course, I'd still recommend two metal tins above anything else.