JAZ

While I was growing up, my mother kept virtually all condiments in the cupboard, including mayonnaise (Best Foods aka Hellmans). Our family went throught things pretty quick, which may have some bearing on the case, but we never got sick from anything, at least as far as I know. I've always had limited cupboard space and have stored many things in the fridge because of that, but I had almost all of my condiments in a box in my sister's garage for six months while I was sub-letting last year, and almost everything (soy, fish sauce, chili sauce, mustards, worchestershire, etc) survived just fine. I don't do the mayonnaise in the cupboard thing, though.

Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century by Paul Harrington and Laura Moorhead. My favorite cocktail book by far. It's not that old, either -- I'm not sure why it's not in print anymore.

Welcome, Bob! Thanks for posting -- hope to see you around often.

Definitely no eggs.

But I don't like partially melted butter on my toast. My goal with toast is to make sure that all the butter is melted before I start eating it. And hard butter is just wrong for toast -- it tears the bread.

Interesting that they choose to call this a "spice" when it's tasteless. I guess "additive" doesn't have quite the same ring to it. It's also worth noting that many real spices and herbs also kill bacteria and other pathogens in food.

A bartender acquaintance of mine infused gin with apples and cucumber and used the result in a variation of the Pimms Cup. I didn't taste the infused gin straight but it was very good in the drink.

I think it's fun to try to make a lot of ingredients once, if only for the experience. Usually, once does it. If what I make is much better, much cheaper, or a whole lot of fun, I continue. If it's none of the above, then I go back to buying the product. Examples of the "once-only" category: puff pastry, mustard. Examples of things I've made often: pickles (refrigerator), spice mixtures, limoncello, Irish cream liqueur.

Thanks for the link, beans. You're right -- those drinks sound pretty nasty. And does anyone get the reasoning behind calling the same drink by two names (Republican and Democrat "tinis"?)

Yes, Lillet is wonderful stuff. This recent thread (Lillet) has some additional ideas for using it, and the Lillet Rouge as well. Absolut Mandarin (or other mandarin vodka) and Lillet is one of my favorite drinks.

Jaz - any chance you can post or pm the recipe? I would love to try those. Here it is. For the cookie base: 1 cup butter, softened 4 oz. cream cheese, softened 2/3 cup sugar 1/2 tsp vanilla 1/4 tsp. almond extract pinch salt 2 cups flour (all purpose) Beat the butter and cream cheese together until thoroughly combined; add sugar and extracts and beat until smooth. Stir salt into flour and add, mixing until well blended. Scoop out 1-tablespoon sized balls of dough out onto a parchment lined cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. With the back of a small round spoon (or your finger), make a small indentation in each. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes or more, until very lightly browned. If necessary, deepen the indentations with the spoon (they tend to disappear as the cookies bake), then remove from the sheet and cool. The cookies can be made to this point and frozen. To finish: Drain a large bottle of Amarena Fabbri cherries (reserve the syrup for another use, if you want). Melt a half pound or so of dark chocolate (you can temper it if you like, but it's really not necessary). Spoon it into a pastry bag or ziplock bag with a small hole snipped out of one corner. Pipe a small amount of choclate onto each cookie and top with a cherry before the chocolate sets.

I had a wine broker friend take a look at the photo, and he says it's a vase.

Here's the recipe for the cheesecake. It seems to me that I was copying down notes from a cooking show, because what I have is not terribly complete. But I think there's enough to go on. Bread crumbs Butter, melted 1 1/2 lbs cream cheese, softened 5 eggs 1/2 cup flour 1/4 smoked shrimp stock * cocktail sauce** 1/2 lb. smoked shrimp * 4 oz. roasted red pepper For the crust combine the bread crumbs and butter and press into the bottom of a spring form pan -- 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. For the cheesecake, combine the cream cheese, eggs, flour, cocktail sauce and smoked shrimp stock and mix until smooth. Notes: * I didn't write anything down about how to smoke the shrimp, but I vaguely recall them sort of poaching them in a pan on the grill -- hence the stock. Sorry I can't provide more info. ** I wrote down 1/4 cup of 1000 Island dressing on the ingredient list, but crossed it out and wrote "cocktail sauce" because I don't like 1000 Island. I'm thinking that 1/4 cup of cocktail sauce would probably work, but it might be overwhelming, so you might start with less, or use the 1000 Island if you like it. Back to the recipe: Coarsely chop the shrimp and dice the roasted pepper and mix together. Pour half the cream cheese mixture into the pan. Top with shrimp and peppers and then the rest of the mixture. Bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes. Let cool at room temp. and then refrigerate overnight. Note: I didn't write down anything about a water bath and can't remember if they used one. So you're on your own there. Again, my apologies for incomplete information. Anyway, I hope it's enough information to work out a complete recipe if you decide to make it. And I'd love to hear how it comes out.

I realize it's not a terrine, but I have a recipe somewhere for a smoked shrimp savory cheesecake. I've never tried it, but it sounded good when I copied it from wherever I found it.

No, it's still in print. I love it too. Everything from very traditional to very different. Also, it includes plans, templates and recipes for a Notre Dame de Paris cathedral made from gingerbread.

Instead of the maraschino, try making these with one of the wild Italian cherries (amarena) packed in syrup -- Amarena Fabbri is probably the most commonly brand, but there are others. Last year I made a cream cheese/butter thumbprint cookie filled with dark chocolate and topped with one of those, and they were the biggest hit of my assortment.

One point hat has not yet been brought up here is the fact that to the early "fathers" of the Catholic Church, the body was deeply distrusted, as was pretty much any sort of bodily pleasure. Obviously, the body is necessary, but they looked at it as a necessary evil. So the point with them was to give the body what it needed to survive, but no more. Sex was okay as long as it resulted in children; eating was okay as long as it was only enough to sustain one. As soon as you start to enjoy the bodily pleasures for their own sake, you end up in deadly sin territory. So, in this sense, the sin has nothing to do with whether you're denying others the food you're eating. If you're eating more than necessary, and enjoying it, then according to the men who wrote up the rules, you're a glutton. As for the difference between a gourmet and a gourmand, I've always thought that a gourmet prefers quality to quantity, while for the gourmand, quantity is all.

Yes, sodium chloride is sodium chloride, but smoked salt is smoked sodium chloride -- it tastes smoky. I'm with you on the other salts -- but this really does taste different.

When, at a Mexican restaurant, all the entrees come with a side of spaghetti.

I'm not an expert by any means, but I have read (in, for example, Corby Kummer's Joy of Coffee) that the water process of decaffeination, although preferred by some because it's believed by them to be safer (in some ill-defined sense), does not result in coffee that tastes as good as the chemically processed decaf. The reason is that chemical solvents can remove just the caffeine, without removing the other soluble solids in the beans. So, no need to put them back in. The moral of the story seems to be to find a purveyor that uses the chemical rather than the water process. I think Peet's does this, because their dark roast decaf is surprisingly good. I mean, I can tell the difference between it and other Peet's blends, but only because it's a little one-dimensional with less body than the blends I usually buy. But I'd actually take Peet's dark roast decaf over their regular house blend, and I'd certainly prefer it to many caffeinated coffees from other purveyors.

Several bartender friends of mine and I were talking recently about patron's liquor preferences, and we all agreed that, generally speaking, if a patron preferred gin to vodka when ordering "clear" drinks, then he or she usually preferred scotch to bourbon when ordering whisk(e)y. And vice versa. Actually, they were talking about patrons, and I was talking about my experience with friends, relatives, students, etc. But you get the point. Not that there aren't exceptions -- my father's standards are bourbon on the rocks, but gin in martinis; my ex-boss drank vodka martinis, but scotch on the rocks. Those exceptions noted, I still think there is definitley a correlation. Personally, I'm a gin drinker -- for those drinks that are commonly made with either gin or vodka, and a scotch drinker -- straight or on the rocks. It's not that I don't drink vodka drinks, or bourbon drinks, but the fewer the extra ingredients, the more I stick to gin/scotch. One of my best friends is just the opposite. Martinis, for her, are made with vodka; whiskey straight or on the rocks is bourbon. So: two questions. Was this this a statistical fluke with our informal and limited group of observers and patrons, or does anyone else notice this as a trend? And, if anyone else notices it, does anyone have any ideas as to why?

As opposed to the little, fake truths? (And I guess the author went to the Paul McCartney and Wings school of prepositional redundancy...)

Everyone knows the best way to cook a turkey. Brining and smoking. But wait. Trussing and rotisserie for some folks seems to work just fine. Cajun injectors, basting and marinating. Decisions are hard.

There's no reason to use a salt mill, except for symmetry on the table. Salt is salt, no matter how fine or coarse it is -- it doesn't ever get stale. Hence, no need to grind "fresh" salt.

I'm sorry I didn't post something earlier (a combination of the new eGullet and my less than state-of-the-art computer and old internet browser has been causing me to lose posts), but I wanted to say hello to all the veteran posters, who have already made this a great (and, dare I say, "spirited") forum, and welcome all the new members who might wander in here. A general announcement is forthcoming which will include a little background on all the forum hosts, but for those who don't know me, I'm a San Francisco-based food writer and cooking instructor, specializing in cocktails and party foods. I love this forum and am looking forward to hosting it. So (imagine a cocktail glass raised in salute), here's to us!