Hassouni

Is the Belgian aspect dominating?

In New York? Nahhhh

Für den deutschen Sieg gestern, Weihenstephaner Helles Lager. Mmmmmm

I took the easy way out and saw Ikea selling French Presses for 9 bucks last weekend, and bought one. I've never used my newish Baratza grinder with a FP until recently, and it works great! Very little sediment.

Humbug! Your personal spec is the shit.

The traditional Middle Eastern applications are: Salads as a souring agent (think fattoush), sprinkled atop grilled meat, and also often as a marinade for meat before it gets grilled or roasted. In Iran, when served with kabab, sumac and butter are mixed into cooked rice (chelow) along with a raw egg yolk (delicious!) Also, alongside grilled meat, a sort of onion salad is served, which is just thinly sliced onion mixed with parsley and sumac. It's also sometimes mixed in with thyme and other herbs for za'tar mixes (the Arabic word za'tar specifically refers to thyme, but even in Arabic it more often is used for the herb mix). As someone who grew up with the stuff that's basically all I use it for

Pisco sour using the egg white left over from making mayonnaise. 2 oz Alto del Carmen reservado .75 oz lemon .25 oz white SS egg white dry shake, then wet shake, finished with drops of Angostura That, and more Caipirinhas...

My copy of the 2nd edition of Delights from the Garden of Eden came in. The content is basically the same, but the format is way better. And the photos are a great help, I would imagine, for people who don't know what the dishes should look like. I haven't really eaten today, and the pictures of dolma and kubba and kabab and rice & stew really aren't doing me any favors!

Força die Mannschaft! (Weihenstephaner Hefeweisse)

From what I've ascertained, Octomore was really created for collectors rather than drinkers.

Myself, rotuts (I think?) FrogPrincesse, many others here.

Grumble, and it ships 2 months before the ones we crowd-funded.

My friend's sister works at DC Brau and had a car full of cases of half-filled cans of their Corruption IPA that she was giving away. I'm not an IPA fan but she insisted I take a bunch so I went off with two cases. Some of them really are only half-filled, but others are nearly full. I had a nearly full one last night, and it was fine

Lately: Carioca Hawaiian Cocktail (the name of which makes no sense, until I found out the Carioca was a hotel in Puerto Rico): 1 1/2 oz light Puerto Rican rum (Palo Viejo) 1/2 oz lime juice1 oz pineapple juice (TJ's can)1 tsp white SS1 dash Angostura----shake, serve up Pretty good, light and refreshing, though the dasher top on my Ango bottle is no longer reliable and there was probably a solid 1/2 tsp of it in there... While watching the Germany-Ghana World Cup match, my friend brought over a handle of Seagram's gin and asked me to make something out of it. Not wanting to get up and make several rounds of cocktails, I improvised, making a Don the Beachcomber-inspired mojito/swizzle cross: In a 12 oz glass:1 shitload of large mint leaves from my patio1 reasonable squirt white SS-----Muddle------1 larger squirt of rather old lemon juice1 dash absinthe 3? oz gin (free pouring out of a handle, who knows, but it was a good amount)add crushed ice-----swizzle-----top with several dashes of Angostura If this doesn't already have a name, I'll have to think of one. It was damn good, if I say so myself. Plus, again since it's a Brazilian Copa Mundial, several Caipirinhas made with Sagatiba cachaça (which really is kind of vodka-y. Perhaps I should try Dillon or La Favorite for the next one...)

I'm not using nitrous for herbs, just the regular old-fashioned way

I can't get more than a few minutes of green herbs (not stuff like rosemary or thyme, but mint, parsley, etc) without it getting NASTY, and that's in 95% grain alcohol. With vodka it's even worse.

?

Charcoal! Whenever I smell real wood charcoal burning, I jump back to the Middle East, where the smell of lighting or burning charcoal is on every corner, whether it's the local kababist firing up his grill or indeed grilling meat, or the brazier full of charcoal for the nargile (hookah) cafe that an be found on nearly every block in Beirut. I don't even need to smell the meat grilling, though of course that doesn't hurt, especially if it's the scent of lamb grilling. More locally, the hot waft of Old Bay or JO crab seasoning in the air, wherever it may be, speaks of nothing but a lazy afternoon at a dockside craberia in the Chesapeake Bay area, smashing and eating one salty and spicy steamed blue crab after the other, accompanied by cold lager.

Be sure to store it in the fridge. A while back I made syrup with panela (basically the same thing), and left it out for literally no more than 3 days and it got quite moldy by then. It was pretty close to 2:1, too...

Yes - Chaldeans are Iraqi Christians (one of the two main types along with Assyrians), from the North of Iraq and also from Baghdad, so that tea is definitely Iraqi. By SE Michigan, are you near Dearborn? There are LOTS of Iraqis there, and a disproportionately high number of Chaldeans and Assyrians (and by extension, a lot of Iraqi restaurants run by Chaldeans and Assyrians).

TJ's now has back in stock not from concentrate pineapple juice in a carton, much like the 1/2 gal. milk cartons - it's in the refrigerated juice section. It is fantastic - not overly sweet, a bit tart, very light texture. Better than the cans

Mine was bought entirely on impulse, but as I anxiously await it, I'm thinking of confit possibilities too...That said, it's been said elsewhere that a typical Long Island duck will have enough fat on it to confit the legs (what's the right French verb there, confiser?)

By coincidence, I have a duck in my freezer. Wondering whether to attempt to roast it whole (consensus seems to be "don't bother") or break it down into constituent parts....and if pursuing the latter, confit the legs, or braise them? ETA, I have roasted a duck before, per Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe, which got all lacquered and nice, and not overcooked, but then hardly any fat rendered:

Barrilito is entirely atypical of PR rums, note. Don Q Añejo is not bad...and as much as I hate to support them, I've heard good things about Bacardi 8