JAZ

Okay, being an amateur cocktail maker myself, let me start by saying that I know amateurs can know a lot about cocktails. This forum is proof of that. (Also, to set the record straight, I do know who Rachel Maddow is now, although I didn't two days ago.) But it puzzles me that someone with no apparent experience, much less expertise, in making cocktails is, all the sudden and seemingly everywhere, being presented as a "mixologist." First, on the cover of the latest issue of Imbibe was a teaser that read, "Cocktails with Rachel Maddow." A friend and I were looking at it and we both said, "Who's Rachel Maddow?" Turns out that it was just an interview with her about what cocktail bars she likes and what she likes to make at home -- reminiscent of the interviews at the back of what was it -- Gourmet? Bon Appetit? -- where someone thought it would be interesting for us to know what Richard Gere or Meryl Streep cooked at home. But then, within two days three friends sent me this link from Grub Street, entitled Rachel Maddow: Mixologist. So it's one thing for Imbibe to interview her, but a Grub Street video showing her making a Jack Rose, and not very well? Now, I know there are bad cocktail videos out there, and I'm not surprised that there's yet another one. I also know that every cook with a cocktail shaker thinks he or she knows cocktails (Bittman on cocktails), but still. What's the deal? Is it just that cocktails are in and everyone is now jumping on the bandwagon? If Rachel Maddow is a mixologist, who isn't?

I've only made these once (from the recipe quoted above), and I liked them because they weren't as sweet as the original. But if you want them sweeter and less peanut-y, why not just start cutting back on the amount of peanut butter until you get to the point where the sweetness level is what you want?

My pancakes aren't as good as anyone else's, as far as I can tell. My sister uses the same recipe I do, and hers are light and fluffy and perfect. Mine are not as good as you'd find at your local Denny's.

Maybe some of these charts would help? lamb basic cuts lamb primal cuts American lamb cuts

You can always run the cheese-topped bread under the broiler before you place it on the soup.

While I agree that coffee and tea can balance the sweetness of desserts, I'm not sure it's acid that does it. They're both bitter, and bitterness (think chocolate) balances sweetness as well as acid does, just on another axis.

The grocery store had smoked pork hocks on sale, and I had a big container of navy beans in the pantry, so I made, of course, navy bean soup. I'd never made it before, but it turned out pretty well. I'll definitely make it again. In the pressure cooker, it took about 90 minutes start to finish, and that's with beans that had been rinsed briefly but not soaked at all.

I have citric acid in my cupboard, but I use it rarely. Usually I want the flavor that various acids provide, but if I'm out of the appropriate natural acid (lemons, limes, the right vinegar) citric acid steps in as a great pinch hitter. Has anyone mentioned tomatoes? Or bell peppers?

I remember going grocery shopping with my Mom and watching her check the little window on the back of the bacon package to get a cut with some meat -- not all fat. Now, I check the window to find the fattiest package; pork is so damn lean these days that you might as well be eating tenderloin as bacon.

If you like Asian style stir-fry dishes, pork tenderloin is a great cut for that.

I have a cake recipe that calls for 1/4 cup of almonds (ground fine) to 1-1/4 cups of flour. It's not a pound cake, but it has much the same texture -- rich and fairly dense -- so that might be a starting point. One trick I learned from this recipe is to process the nuts with some of the sugar, which keeps them from turning into nut butter before they're fine enough.

So I guess the hole in the cartouche is for the string that ties the bouquet garni together? Why crumple the paper first?

I bought some "red meat" radishes from my CSA this week. I love radishes, and silly me, I just figured these were a variation of the small radishes you eat in salads. When I got them, I found that they're the size of turnips, with a thick, kind of tough exterior. I sliced into one, and once I peeled the outside off, it did taste like a radish. But I'm not sure what to do with them. A Google search turns up dozens of hits on how to grow them, but precious few on how to prepare them. Any ideas? Is this something better cooked, or can I shave them into salads and otherwise treat them like the radishes I'm used to?

Not sure, but I'd imagine some of the olive gray would be the pressure cooking -- I'm not sure I understand why you pressure cooked it, as if the broccoli is chopped I don't find that broccoli soup takes much more than 15 minutes of cooking *without* pressure... ← The olive color comes from cooking pretty much any green vegetable in a closed system (i.e, steamed or blanched or boiled in a covered pot, not just a pressure cooker) for longer than about 10 minutes. Actually, I think the acids in the vegetables start to break down the chlorophyll in something like seven minutes, but of course they don't change color completely right away. As to why I cooked it in the pressure cooker: as I mentioned, this was very old broccoli, so I thought that pureeing the soup completely would be the best way to go. Given the fibrous nature of the stems, I wanted to make sure it was pretty mushy to begin with. As it was, after the 15 minutes in the pressure cooker, the soup blended to a silky smooth puree without even straining it. The texture was fabulous, so I guess it was a good trade off.

I just made broccoli soup last night in the pressure cooker; I had some broccoli that I'd forgotten about, so soup was the only option. I started with an onion sauteed in some butter, then added the broccoli and some white wine and cooked that until most of the wine evaporated. Then I added four cups of stock and cooked it under pressure for 15 minutes. I pureed it and added a couple tablespoons of cream. It tasted great, looked not so good. Is there any cure for olive-gray vegetable soups?

Great tip, but this is easier if you cut the tomato in half the other way (i.e., not through the stem, but through the equator, as it were) -- it opens up all the seed pockets and they all just pop right out.

For quite a while, I used Sauza Hornitos as my standard mixing tequila. I could almost always find it on sale for less than $20 (sometimes much less), so it was by far the best buy for a 100% agave. Then I moved, and price structures are different here. My standard tequila for mixing became Milagro (blanco -- I'm not so fond of their reposado), which is fine and usually pretty reasonable. But a few weeks ago, I discovered 1800 100-proof blanco. I made a margarita with it according to my usual blanco proportions (4-2-1), and it I think it was the best margarita I've ever made (not the best I've ever had, but truly exceptional). It's got all those funky wet-cement notes (and I mean that in the best possible way) that blanco should have; it doesn't get lost in a margarita yet plays well with the other ingredients; and on top of all that it's amazingly smooth. I know that there are other tequilas out there that make better margaritas, but for less than $30, the 1800 is my new standard.

Sorry for the lapse in posting -- working retail at Christmas didn't leave much time or energy for kitchen reorganization. But I have been busy the past few days. As I mentioned, I bought a storage unit that's now out on my deck. Didn't take long to fill it up, but it has relieved the congestion in the kitchen cabinets. I thought seriously about installing a pot rack or bar above the counter that divides the kitchen from the living room, but the configuration of the counter is such that I'd have to get out a step stool to reach anything hanging from a rack there. So any convenience of having my pots and pans hanging would be lost by having to get out a step stool every time I need a pan. So, I decided to buy this pull-out rack for one of the cabinets. It would have been ideal if it were wider, but the convenience of the pull-out drawers won out. I'm still deciding how to organize pots in it, but I'll post some photos when I do.

A voice of dissent here. We had a popcorn popper when I was growing up that was a deep aluminum pot that sat on top of a separate heating element. It made great popcorn, and when I went to college, my Mom gave it to me (she'd gotten a new popper). I made fabulous popcorn all through college, but the popper was so old by then that it didn't survive my college years. I then tried an air popper (awful -- popped corn so dry that no amount of butter could save it), some other electric popcorn maker (okay, but not great), and every pot and pan that I owned that seemed like a good candidate for popping corn. The stovetop results were uniformly bad. Tough, chewy popcorn, loads of unpopped kernels. Sometimes greasy, sometimes not, but never good. Fast forward some years. I was at my sister's and she made popcorn. It was great. "How'd you make this?" I asked. She looked at me like any big sister looks at a little sister who's clueless. "Microwave. Duh." I was a convert and have been ever since. True, "butter flavor" microwave popcorn is awful. And it's harder than ever to find "natural" popcorn (read: without awful fake butter flavoring). But Orville and Paul Newman both make very good plain (salted) microwave popcorn -- in fact, that's what I used this year for caramel corn. Granted, it's very expensive, and I do wish they made the plain stuff in the smaller bags, but that doesn't seem to be in the stars. Also, just in case you think I haven't tried stove-popped popcorn lately: At work, we had a Whirley Pop stovetop popper, and it made decent popcorn -- not great, but okay. It died, however, and recently a colleague made popcorn in a heavy pan on the stove. Gotta say -- tough, chewy and greasy. Just my opinion. I'm sure I'm missing something that's obvious to everyone else.

My answer would be that dutch ovens aren't good for roasting -- the high sides keep moisture up around the meat, so you're steaming rather than roasting. With braising, the main difference in pan size (assuming that the food to be braised fits in the pan) is that the larger the pot, the more liquid you'll need to keep the level up where you want it. If the last step is a reduction, you'll have a lot more to reduce, but that's just a matter of the time it will take to finish your sauce.

I agree that the key to a silky soup is to put it through a sieve after pureeing -- a chinois is nice, but a medium to fine sieve works as well.

Baking soda both neutralizes the acid in the brown sugar and molasses, and also makes for a lighter texture.

I've made this chard gratin from Fine Cooking, and it's excellent. Not sure if it counts as festive, but it's pretty dressy for a vegetable, and if you can find rainbow chard, it's very pretty. Plus, it has bacon.

I don't add them at the end, I add them at the beginning. I've tried stirring, and not stirring -- either way, they don't stay mixed with the popcorn. It's fine though -- I've decided I like it better without nuts.

I like these Zyliss tongs, mostly because they're really easy to lock and unlock -- you just slide the button on the side of them. Although the tips are silicone coated, they're pretty sturdy because they're reinforced with metal.