JAZ

For a Valentine's Day class a couple of years ago, we did brownie cups filled with a raspberry mousse, which went over well. It didn't have anything crunchy, but you could add a garnish of nuts or a tuile chip.

Cooking the sour cream will make it curdle -- you'd do best to add it at the very end, just so it warms through.

Jeff, while I don't have a Beehouse teapot, I do have several other pieces made by Beehouse, and they go in the dishwasher just fine.

While I think your idea of a family style meal is a great idea, I also don't think that family style is "fancy" by most people's idea of that term, regardless of what's served. Maybe it's unfair, but unless it's plated, it probably won't seem high end. I think if you're going with family style, concentrate on food that can be done in big quantities and still taste good. Don't worry about fancy.

Although grapefruit aren't in season right now and all I can usually find are pink grapefruits, they have been good lately, so I've been using the juice in cocktails. My latest version of a Nevada-inspired cocktail: 1 oz. white rum (Flor de Cana) 1 oz. amber rum (Appleton 12-year) 1 oz. grapefruit juice .5 oz. lime juice .25 oz simple syrup Heavy dash Angostura I like it more than the original.

Until I started this topic, I had never heard of rye Triscuits. I'd seen the flavored ones -- rosemary, garlic, sundried tomato -- but not rye. My store doesn't carry them. Then a friend who knows about my love of Triscuits brought me a box. I can't decide whether I'm happy or not. They're fabulous, but they're also the sort of thing I could just eat a whole bunch of without even noticing. (Regular Triscuits aren't like that for me; I like them but can easily stop after one or two.) Now I'm torn between asking my store to carry them and just forgetting about them.

Ten years ago I was drinking Negronis, Picon Punches, and Fernet and soda. I still like them, and other drinks with a bitter edge. But I prefer my bitter elements less obtrusive.

Early in the evening, a Gimlet; late in the evening, a Rusty Nail.

I'm not suggesting that commercial bitters contain tonka beans. However, there are herbs, barks, and other plant parts that are fine in small amounts but not in larger quantities. Nutmeg, for instance. Apricot or peach pits. That's more the sort of thing I had in mind.

Over in the topic on Rogue Cocktails and in the book itself, they're dicussing drinks that use Angostura and Peychaud's bitters as the base of drinks. There's some talk about how economically feasible it would be to serve these at a bar, but I'm wondering how safe it is to drink them. Aren't some of the ingredients in bitters dangerous in large amounts? If you figure that a dash or two of these comes to 1/4 teaspoon, then the two ounces of Peychaud's in the Gunshop Fizz would be 48 times that, which makes me really nervous. Should I be?

I couldn't make a Broken Shoe Shiner because I don't have pineapple juice, but I did try the Art of Choke. No offense meant to you, Chris, or to the originator of the drink, but for me, it ended up in the sink (literally). I like bitter elements in small doses, but not this much. Which goes to show either that I'm not avant garde enough to appreciate it or that we all have different tastes. But I guess I'm glad I tried it. Now I know.

I had some pizza dough that needed to be used and remembered some recipes in Joanne Weir's Weir Cooking in the Wine Country that call for baking the dough with cheese and then adding various "salads" on top when it comes out of the oven. I gave two of them a try: one was arugula and shaved parm (similar to this recipe for a parsley salad) and one with cherry tomatoes and basil tossed with olive oil, garlic and red wine vinegar. Both of them were really great, and really easy (that is, once you get the dough prepared). A nice summer pizza option.

I guess I don't understand what your point is, Kent. Is it that most pepperoni isn't very good? Or that there's no authentic Italian product called "pepperoni"? Or that we should do away with "pepperoni" as a term applied to a spicy sausage? I like good pepperoni but agree that most of what goes by that name is not very good; I don't care if it's authentic; and I think it's an impossible dream to do away with the term because it identifies a type of sausage that Americans are familiar with in a way that the more precise Italian terms wouldn't do.

A couple of summers ago my family all got together on the Oregon Coast. We had a ton of Dungeness crab, so we made deviled eggs using the crab and remoulade -- similar to this recipe by John Folse. They went over pretty well. I also used to make curried deviled eggs a lot. The mango chutney sounds like a great addition. I have a jar of mango-curry mustard somewhere; maybe I'll try that. (edited to actually add the link.)

Didn't anyone attend seminars?

So it seems to me from what's been said here (and thanks to all for the various opinions) is that you want a wet dough for texture (and taste, but to a lesser degree); and you want a slow rise/long fermentation for taste. Further, it seems obvious that since you don't need to knead the dough vigorously for gluten development if you're letting it ferment for a longer period time, you may as well skip it. Finally, it also seems that a wet dough would be harder and messier to knead, but that the wet dough and the lack of kneading don't necessarily have to go hand in hand. In other words, you could have a drier dough and let it ferment longer rather than knead it; just as you could have a wetter dough and knead it. Is that it, more or less?

In the pages I've seen, the recipes don't speak for themselves. Some of them, in fact, sound very unappealing. But if I see that they were developed by a bartender from a place I'm familiar with, I'm much more likely to believe that they're worth trying. For instance, the "Broken Shoe Shiner" calls for Pernod, Aperol, Benedictine, pineapple juice and rose water, among other ingredients. That hardly speaks for itself; it actually sounds completely unappetizing to me. I don't know who the creator, Stephen Cole, is, but if I knew that he'd worked at (for instance) Pegu Club, I'd be likely to try it, because I trust the place and know that a disgusting drink is unlikely to make it on the menu there. (It doesn't mean I'd love the drink, but it guarantees a certain base level to me.) If on the other hand it came from Red Lobster, I'd give it a pass, because to my knowledge, Red Lobster doesn't produce bartenders with the kind of skill necessary to make a good drink from those ingredients.

What's the rationale for using a very wet dough? I was hoping the article would give some clue, but it seems to be just the recipe.

My point wasn't to ask where he works, but to say that the book should include that information. If I see a recipe by "Kyle Davidson" (or whoever) and that's all, then if I don't know who he is, that doesn't give me much information. But if I see that the creator of a drink worked at Violet Hour (or Pegu Club, or PDT, or Zig Zag, or Holeman & Finch) it'll tell me more -- it may give me a clue as to the style of the drink, if the place has a certain "style"; it will at least tell me that the creator of the drink comes from a serious cocktail venue. Details like this make this book much less than it could be.

Kyle Davidson does indeed get credit, but the book doesn't include anything about his working at the Violet Hour. (On the other hand, maybe there's a bio section in the back; I'm just going by the online preview.) In general, though, what the authors have chosen to write about the drinks they present is rather capricious and not helpful at all if one is interested in the provenance of the drinks.

I have experimented. Spreading the butter definitely does work better, both for grilled cheese and for egg-in-a-nest. More even butter coverage, especially if the bread is hand sliced (which means that the bread doesn't lie on the pan evenly). Less wasted butter as well. And, by the way, a glass to cut the hole out is less than ideal, whether or not the bread is buttered. Biscuit/cookie cutter is the way to go.

A Cuba Libre is rule breaking? I'm sure these guys are great bartenders, but this book is hardly earthshaking. It's a compilation of some drinks. Spare me the "philosophy."

As I understand, what's necessary for gazpacho is bread and oil for thickening; stock is not. If you want to go reasonably traditional, you could try these recipes (both based on recipes by Penelope Casas): Andalusian gazpacho and green gazpacho (scroll down to second recipe). I discovered the first one a couple of years ago and have never made any other tomato-based gazpacho since. I haven't made the second one, but I imagine it's also good (my guess is that her original version calls for more olive oil, though, and I would leave out the lettuce).

I'm curious: my Mom always cooked both the bread and the egg on both sides, so it definitely wasn't sunny side up. And although we liked our eggs on the runny side, she would make it with the yolk broken or simply cooked harder if anyone wanted it that way. Was that unusual? Do most people cook the egg only on one side?

Okay, I swear I'm not making this up. When I was growing up, we called this "a piece of bread with an egg in the middle." Unimaginative, but accurate.