melkor

It is very hard to get a mellow roast using an air-roaster, the faster the beans roast the brighter/sharper the coffee ends up. If you can slow down the roast you can reduce the brightness, see if you can find a rheostat at a hardware store and run your air roaster at 75% power. My preference is for the roast to take about 15minutes. If you have a gas grill and a rotisserie you can make a drum roaster for about $7 worth of parts and half an hour of your time. If your interested let me know and I’ll post plans.

The Napa market is Tuesday mornings from 7:30am until noon in the south lot at Copia. You and I have similar options for farmers markets: Tuesday - Napa (morning) or Sonoma (evening) Wednesday - Yountville (evening) Thursday - Fairfield (evening) or Benicia (evening) Friday - St Helena (morning) or Sonoma (evening in the square) Saturday - Vacaville (morning) or Vallejo (morning, one downtown one at the fairground) Of the bunch I prefer the Napa market, from time to time I'll drive down to Vallejo and take the ferry to SF on a Saturday morning for the farmers market, it's even more convenient now that its at the ferry building.

I didn't split it down the breast, I roasted the backbone and trimmings in a pan on the rack under the chicken and then made gravy with it and the drippings. Though that photo sure looks like the bird is split on the wrong side... I could just me be losing my mind

So I broke down and ordered a WSM from amazon a few weeks ago. It showed up last week when it was 100 degrees out, but that didn't stop me from smoking this chicken in it the day it arrived: Damn was that chicken good. Over the weekend I smoked a chuck roll, it came out fairly dry but I suspect that is because I trimmed it. Next time I'll plan ahead and find a brisket rather than buying whatever I could find at the last minute at safeway and no more trimming. I took pictures of the whole process and posted them here. Again I'd like to thank all of the eGulleters who have caused me to purchase yet another gadget in the pursuit of better food.

?? Your mileage may vary.

we're looking at one of the big reasons why so many are afraid of german wines. Bah... Look for Kabinett or Spatlese on the bottle, it'll be off-dry but not sticky sweet and should be reasonably priced. BA/Eiswein/TBA's are all likely to cost $75 for a 375ml bottle, its unlikely that someone would pick that up without knowing anything about it to have with their meal.

The only reasonably good turkey burgers I've ever made I tossed some ice shavings in the mixture right before forming them and then threw them directly on the grill. The idea being that the ice keeps them from drying out so quickly.

Eisweins are usualy harvested in November and are infact the last fruit harvested. In California where we don't actually get winter wines like Eisrebe from Phelps are made by tossing clusters of grapes into the freezer and pressing them once they are frozen solid. Eisrebe lacks the acidity of its german counterparts but is still quite nice and much more affortable.

Glad to help

A cow

I'll eat at Taylor's any time.

Because I drink a lot of it, have been for a long time, follow each vintage closely, talk with distributors, importers and a few of the winemakers about their product each year, and know to expect a very different wine from Zind-Humbrecht than I do from, say, Trimbach. Also Alsatian lables will denote SGN and VT, which are further indication of what you are about to drink. I'd prefer to keep this thread on german rieslings. VT and SGN are both in reference to the sugar in the grapes at harvest, the Alsatian and German systems are based on the sugar in the grapes at harvest. Zind-Humbrecht has recently added a 1 to 6 scale on their labels to indicate sweetness as a result of the somewhat opaque Alsatian labeling system. There are bone dry VT's out there and there are sticky sweet VT's with the new 6 point scale Olivier is using it will be clear how sweet the wine actually is; 1 would refer to a dry wine and 6 would be an intense dessert wine. The German system refers to a minimum alcohol as well as well as harvest date, the wines in order of richness are: Trocken - dry Halbtrocken - slightly off dry Kabinett – part of the main harvest, higher RS than halbtrocken and alcohol usually under 8% Spalese - harvested at least a week after the main harvest, again usually higher RS and alcohol than Kabinett wines. Auslese - harvested as individual bunches based on ripeness, some sweet enough to be dessert wines Beerenauslesse (BA) - sweet dessert wine, usually affected by botrytis Eiswein - hugely concentrated, usually very sweet, grapes are harvested and crushed while frozen Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) - made from dried, botrytised grapes, picked by hand, very sweet. It is not uncommon to find a lower pradikat bottling that is as sweet as the next level wine as many German producers declassify some of their Spatlese and Auslese wine and sell it blended as Kabinett. This is likely to change as more and more people discover how good German wine is. The general rule is that the wines increase in sweetness as you move from one pradikat to the next (spat is sweeter than kabinett, BA sweeter than auslese, etc).

Seems he has been consulting at Mondavi for a couple of years now.

Yet more proof that not having any idea what I'm talking about won't prevent me from taking sides.

Shepards pie, made with leftover smoked brisket, leftover garlic mashed potatoes, garlic, corn, peas, onions, chicken fat, stock, a bit of merlot, a bit of stock, a couple of smashed up garden tomatoes... Came out pretty well.

Clearly the article is referring to a subset of the service industry in the city, the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Including the people behind the counter at the McDonalds for example would be silly. I suspect they conducted a survey by mail and the restaurants that responded were the on the upper end of the spectrum. I agree with you that if you take into account all the places in the city where you can eat for $7 that $63k is a ridiculous figure, but if you limit the sample set to P.F. Changs and up then I suspect those numbers are reasonably accurate.

I would agree completely that Mondavi has done wonders for the California wine industry, not only has he helped bring recognition to the great wines being made here he has also done wonders for the community. Copia is truly wonderful place and without Mr. Mondavi it wouldn't be possible, the same is true of the facilities he has helped build in Davis. That being said, California was making great wine long before he arrived (Heitz, Martini, Inglenook, Krug, Ridge, etc), California is still making great wine and I find it hard to rank any of the Mondavi offerings into that category. Opus, Mondavi Reserve Cab, and the smaller ava cabs (SLD, Oakville,...) are all good wines but I don't find them compelling and the asking price seems unreasonable compared to Dominus, Caymus, Montelena, Quintessa, Ridge MB, and easily another dozen producers. Without Mr. Mondavi’s efforts the California wine industry would not be where it is today. The quality of the wine that bares his name in no way accurately reflects this mans accomplishments, the California wine industry as a whole owes a debt of gratitude to him. I would be surprised if anyone in the industry thinks differently.

grilled corn on the cob

Ok so assume your figure of $30 a plate is close to the city average for reasonably formal dinning, that may be right if you average all the $20 meals at the cheesecake factory with the $200 meals at gary danko. Clearly at danko it is effortless to serve $1200 worth of food in a shift, and at the cheesecake factory where one server gets a dozen tables or more and those tables are turned over four or more times a night it seems highly unlikely that they would have trouble hitting $1200. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any idea what the avg waiter in SF takes home but $63,000 doesn't seem like it would be out of the question.

I think the average cost per plate for meals I've eaten in SF is somewhere around $75, at that rate you only need 16 covers a night to hit $1200.

frosted flakes with blueberries and strawberries from the farmers market and a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice

I would suspect a fair number of us do a significant amount of our produce shopping locally at farmers markets, I’m curious what other people are buying. I go to the Napa farmers market every week, and from time to time the San Francisco and St Helena farmers markets. I grow about 3/4 of the produce we eat and buy the remainder at the farmers market. Today at the Napa farmers market I got several pounds of yukon gold potatoes, a dozen eggs, a half dozen ears of corn, a basket of blueberries, and some fresh garlic. How about the rest of you? What did the farmers market bring this week?

Reservations are much easier to come by if you go in person; they start taking reservations in the lobby at 9:45 or so and they deal with everyone who is waiting before they start answering the phones. Every time I've gotten a reservation by waiting in the lobby there have been at least two concierges from local hotels getting reservations for their guests. If you are getting reservations for five or six people you need to get there before the concierges, as there are only 4 six-tops per night and two are usually booked in other ways. I would suspect that between friends of the house and locals showing up in person that half of the tables are taken before the phones open for Friday and Saturday nights. If you want to eat at the French Laundry from out of town, stay in Yountville and talk to the concierge at your hotel when you make your lodging reservations.

I ended up making a plain vanilla shake, 1/2 leftover vanilla icecream that I had made a few days ago, and 1/2 milk. No malt in the house, it's on the list for the next trip to the store. The end result was pretty good tho it could have been thicker.

I'm bringing this back up since its 100 degrees out and noone posted any recipes the last time this was up... So what makes the best milkshake? Milk and icecream? Malt? No malt? whats the key?