JAZ

Shhh! It's my neighborhood favorite, and although I really want it to prosper, I also want to be able to drop in a find a seat whenever I want. One of the things I really like about Incanto is the way the wines are chosen to match the food. I almost always sit at the bar, and if the wine director is there, I always ask for a recommendation on which wine to get, because I'm not very familiar with Italian wines. Sometimes he has a definitive answer ("This is the wine to get") and sometimes he has a couple of ideas, but he's never steered me wrong. The other nice thing about the wines is that the glasses come with a sleeve around the base that has the wine info printed on it. So if you drink something you like, you can take the sleeve home instead of having to try to remember it or jot it down on the back of a napkin.

I've heard the argument that various religious food taboos have their roots in health measures (i.e., not eating dangerous or diseased food), but I've never read anything that provides much convincing evidence for the theory. The most plausible sociological reasoning I've read for such taboos comes from a book called How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. He discusses food taboos as a mechanism for keeping a group together, by keeping younger members from forming alliances with "the enemy." He goes on to note that not only are children taught not to eat certain foods, they actually grow up to think of them as disgusting. I think that's why, even when kids from religious families with food taboos want to rebel by breaking those taboos, it can be harder than they expect to get over the first impulse of disgust. In my experience, having been raised Catholic, it seems to me that the Catholic dietary restrictions are somewhat different from other religions. That is, instead of forbidding some foods all the time, it simply required us to abstain from them some of the time. In other words, it wasn't that meat was bad, but that abstaining from it on certain days was a sacrifice that brought us closer to God. It was the same with the standard kid's Lenten practice of giving up candy. It wasn't that candy was a disgusting food (far from it!) but rather that it was so good that giving it up really meant something.

I'll help out however I can. I have a great recipe for pickled beets that can be made as little as a day in advance, if that fits in with the menu. I also have a lot of appetizer recipes, if we decide we need more than deviled eggs. And I have some great ice cream recipes, if anyone is interested in coffee, chocolate malt or cardamom-caramel flavors.

If you can find a bottle of citric acid ("sour salt"), you can add a grain or two per drink to increase the acid level. I don't know what kind of luck you'll have finding it, though. Absent citric acid, all I can suggest is cutting back on the sweet ingredients to compensate (which I'm sure is what you did for the second batch). For the tequila: you can make a pretty good marinade for chicken or fish with tequila, orange and lime juice, garlic, cumin and ancho.

I saw this at Beverages and More, along with a number of other ginger beers and ginger ales. Seemed like a perfect opportunity to try some new ones (my usual is Reed's). I tried the Barritt's first, in a drink inspired by Dale DeGroff's Anejo Highball: 2 oz. anejo rum, 1/2 oz. Velvet Falernum, 1/2 oz. lime juice, dash of peach (or orange) bitters. Top with ginger beer. (DeGroff's version is about the same, but uses triple sec instead of Falernum and contains no bitters.) I also tried it with plain rum. It was great. I'm looking forward to trying the others.

I love composed salads. The last issue of Fine Cooking magazine had some great salad recipes that, although not composed, could be adapted. I made one with red pepper, carrots, and snow peas with a ginger garlic vinaigrette and topped it with grilled skirt steak (the first time) and sauteed shrimp (the second time). It was great both ways. My favorite salad cookbook is Lettuce In Your Kitchen by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby -- yes, the grill guys. You have to love a salad book with a recipe for a "salad" topped with grilled pork ribs. Seriously, there are some really great ideas in the book. I hardly ever follow any of them exactly, but always find inspiration within the pages.

I'll be happy to help out as well, Katie, so you won't have to toil alone. On the drink front, I recently tried a great afternoon drink from (of all places) Martha Stewart Living -- Lillet, gin and orange juice, scented with basil, and topped with soda. I'm not sure about Lillet and barbecue, but with some tinkering, it holds promise.

When you say "small," what size group are you thinking about? Making drinks for six guests is a lot different from making drinks for 15. I find that six is about the limit for mixing individual cocktails -- more than that (unless you have a bartender or a friend who can step in). More than that, and you'll probably want to go with a punch or pitchers of drinks. As mentioned upthread, you probably want to stick with one or two drink choices. I also think it's important to have an interesting non-alcoholic drink to serve to those guests who don't or can't drink alcohol. Plus, as the evening wears on, you can gently urge your drinking guests to switch to it, so they stay more sober. As for food, my advice is to strive for food that can be eaten in one or two bites without plates or utensils of any kind. For a cocktail party, you don't want your guests to have to put their drinks down in order to eat. Balancing a drink, a plate and a fork is impossible, and if your menu requires that, you might find that your guests simply choose not to eat, which means a) you'll have gone to all the trouble with your food for nothing and b) you'll end up with a bunch of very drunk guests. One of my most successful class menus, especially with "neophytes," is a Southwestern/Mexican one. It's easy; most of the work can be done ahead of time; and it's pretty universally liked, but not ordinary. It's also good for summertime. For drinks, you can mix pitchers of Margaritas. I find the Margarita to be the "universal donor" of cocktails: it's the one drink that most people will accept as their only cocktail choice. The nice thing about it is that although it's pretty accessible for guests unaccustomed to "serious" cocktails, if it's well made, it will still please more advanced cocktail fans. Plus, many people have never had a properly made Margarita, so you'll be educating them as well. And it works well made in batches. For a non-alcoholic drink, I serve Faux Margaritas. (If you want to make your party prep even easier, you can actually add tequila to the Faux Margarita mixture for a pretty good cocktail.) My standard food menu is miniature smoked turkey quesadillas, phyllo "chile rellenos," bite-sized tostadas, and chips and salsa (either homemade or purchased). I don't have the other recipes entered into RecipeGullet, but I can post or send them.

Sounds like Var-Mint Juleps to me. ← Folks - I think we have a winner for the name of the Official Pig Pickin' cocktail! Now we just have to decide what is in it besides bourbon and mint. ← I don't think we need to limit ourselves this early, do we? Let's pursue some other ideas as well, and then we can decide before (or even at) the event which one is the "winner."

So, now that we have the official t-shirt, I think it's time to get to work on a Pig Picking signature cocktail. Join us here in the cocktail forum for the discussion.

Depending on whether you're wandered over to the Southeast forum lately, you may or may not know that Varmint's Second Occasional Pig Pickin is coming up over Labor Day weekend (click here for details). Since we already have an official t-shirt, I think it's time to start working on a "Pig Pickin" signature drink. Varmint's request is that it be bourbon based, and since he's hosting it, I guess we might want to humor him. Ideally, it would go well with barbecue. And it would be great to have something that can go from afternoon to evening -- maybe something versatile enough to work as either a tall drink (with ginger ale or soda added), or as a cocktail. Maybe a punch. Of course, if we ended up with a couple of new drinks, that would work, too. I started experimenting with Wild Turkey, ginger syrup and peach puree, but haven't been particularly successful yet. Any other ideas?

It's been a while since I tasted them side by side, but overall, they have a similar flavor profile. I preferred the white La Favorite slightly -- I think it was a little smoother -- but both are very good. They certainly both work well in a Ti punch.

You'll be happy to hear that I did, at long last, make the choron. To start with, as I said, I decided not to make it because it seemed like overkill. But I have to admit that I also didn't think it sounded very good. Paradoxically, that's actually the reason I decided to try it. The point of this whole thing is to get myself to move outside my usual cooking boundaries, so it seemed like the perfect test of my resolve. I used the recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking because I'm familiar with the hollandaise/bearnaise technique from that book. Essentially, I made bearnaise without the tarragon (because I don't like tarragon) and added a spiced tomato sauce that I already had on hand. I served it on sauteed scallops and shrimp, and -- lo and behold -- it was really good. But I still think it would be overkill on top of lemon beurre blanc.

I'll echo what Sam says here. I think the sweetness of lower quality (and proof) triple secs means you'd want to use less, not more. You can partially make up for the lack of orange flavor by twisting a wide strip of orange rind into the drink, though.

I've had a Krups ice cream maker for 10 years or so (it's the model with the motor in the base, not the one on the lid) but until pretty recently, I made sorbets almost exclusively. Lately, though, I've been experimenting with some ice cream recipes. First, I tried a very rich lemon ice cream. Despite my overcooking the custard just a bit, it turned out great, I thought. Then, the past couple of weeks at work, we've been doing demonstrations of the Cuisinart canister-style machine, so we've been making ice cream there too. I tried a different lemon recipe, which essentially called for making lemon curd and then adding cream. The flavor wasn't quite as intense as the first recipe, but the texture was exquisite. I added extra zest to the first batch, so that might account for the difference in flavor. Another flavor we made at work was coffee -- we used a French coffee extract for the flavoring (it's called Trablit) and simply added it to the vanilla recipe we were using. The flavor was great, but I wasn't thrilled with the texture of the vanilla we were making, so I got some of the extract to use at home. I made a pretty standard rich vanilla ice cream base (cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla) and added a tablespoon of the coffee extract. As it was freezing, I added very finely ground dark roast coffee. It was by far the best ice cream I've made, and one of the best I've ever tasted. My original plan was to add toasted nuts and chocolate chips to the ice cream, but the texture was so ethereal I couldn't bear to interfere with it. As it was, the crunchiness of the coffee specks was just the right foil for the rich mouthfeel. I don't have a camera, so I'm sorry that I don't have pictures.

One of my favorites is the original daiquiri, which, in these days of fruit versions, is surprisingly rare. And, as ubiquitous as it may be, the mojito is still a great summertime drink. I was recently introduced to the rum crusta as well, which is defintely worth trying if you happen to have a bottle of maraschino on hand.

I want those. But does that mean I have to use smaller corks?

My parents were not big cocktail drinkers; Dad would have bourbon on the rocks and Mom drank gin and bitter lemon or tonic, but they were just as likely to drink a beer or glass of wine before dinner as a mixed drink. My real interest in cocktails started when I stumbled on the old AOL spirits and cocktails discussion board (moderated by Dr. Cocktail). It really blossomed about 10 years ago when I bought a copy of Paul Harrington's cocktail book. I started mixing whatever drinks I could with the liquor I had on hand, and then started searching out the harder to find ingredients. Pretty soon I was making up my own drinks as well.

What's the cork to ice cube ratio necessary to keep the ice from sticking?

If you think your family would be adventurous enough, you could add a bottle of Campari. Because it's low in alcohol, you can mix it with soda or grapefruit juice (or both) for a light, refreshing afternoon drink, then make Negronis or Jasmines during cocktail hour.

I think this sounds really interesting. I have a question, though. Since I don't have the vinegar you mention on your site, what would be a close substitute? Balsamic?

This reminds me of a drink from Killer Cocktails, the Paloma, which uses grapefruit soda instead of the grapefruit juice, and includes a pinch of salt in the drink. It's great, as well. I have to admit that I really only use tequila for mixing, which is why I've remained silent on this thread. I like Sauza Hornitos, and as I can usually find it on sale for less than $15, that's what I stick with.

Is using a pinch (or more) of salt, or sugar, or acid cheating? They also enhance other flavors; would you say that their use is trying to make up for something missing?

Here's a class on the subject of taste and flavor I did for the eGCI: Taste and Texture: Part I It might give you some ideas.

Incanto is a reasonably priced Italian place with good food and an interesting wine list. The chef uses fresh seasonal ingredients, sustainably and organically raised whenever possible. Click here for a thread, which includes a link to the restaurant's website.