JAZ

Thanks. I did try it with more coffee and the results were much better. However, I think the whole thing is more time consuming than I want to deal with. I agree completely with your method of keeping everything as convenient and cheap as possible, as long as the quality is there. Your comments about the Melita cone reminded me that I have a Melita one-cup "travel" drip coffee maker, which I actually used as my only coffee maker a while back for several months while I was subletting a place. When I got the Krups I put it away and sort of forgot about it. But I think I'll get it out and use it for my everyday coffee -- it makes great coffee; it's quick and it's a breeze to clean up. The only problem is that it takes #1 filters, which are hard to find. But I found that I can cut down the #2 size, because the base is the same size. So I guess I'll be French-press-less, but that's fine.

I recently bought a French press and have a couple of questions. First of all, I have been using a Krups Aroma Control maker and am very happy with the coffee quality from it. The reason that I bought the French press is that I find with the Krups, I can't make less than 6 cups (it's a 10-cup) and get good results. On the days when I'm home all morning, that's fine, but when I have to go to work early, I don't drink anything close to all that coffee and I hate wasting it. So I thought I'd get the French press thermal pot that Bodum makes. It's an 8-cup, which means that I can make about 2/3 of a pot and have two mugs of coffee, which is what I drink on those "early" mornings. First problem -- I didn't read this first, so I wasn't aware that you're not supposed to keep the coffee in the pot after brewing. I've been doing it anyway, and haven't noticed any deterioration in flavor (but I should say that I generally go through the first cup pretty quick, then linger with the second cup). I'm thinking that since the coffee from the press is so much hotter than the filter coffee, maybe I could just pour out the coffee into a second mug, cover it and it would still be hot enough to drink when I'm ready for it. Second, how am I supposed to dispose of the grounds? I don't have a disposal (Hah! I live in a basement apartment in SF -- like I'm going to have a disposal) and am not crazy about pouring the sludgy grounds down the drain. With the relatively dry grounds from the Krups, I can just empty them into the compost bin, but all that liquid in the press pot makes for a mess. I've been draining the grounds in a strainer and then dumping them, but that is way more fuss than I like in the morning (or evening, or any time). Can I just pour them down the drain and hope for the best? Next question: I've been using a rounded tablespoon of fairly coarse coffee per 4 oz. of water, as recommended by Bodum and Sweet Maria's instructions as well (I use a scant two tablespoons per 4 oz. in my Krups). Good news is that I'm using less coffee; bad news is that I don't seem to get the same flavor level. Am I not letting it steep long enough (3-4 minutes)? Is my coffee too coarse? Should I just be using more coffee? I'm using the coarsest grind on my little Melitta burr grinder. It's not that the coffee is bad, it just doesn't seem to have the depth I'm used to. My third and final question is this: given that I bought the press to solve a particular problem, are all the new problems making more trouble than I had to start with? I can return the press pot (ah! the joys of working for a cookware store!) and just go back to my Krups, but I really should do it soon. One final note: I like coffee a lot, but I'm not quite at the intensity level of many of the posters here. So convenience, while not as important as quality by a wide margin, still counts a lot for me. Since I work in a cookware store, I have access to vacuum pots as well as a million press pots of various sizes. The pot I bought retails for $50. Would a small stovetop vacuum pot (about the same price) be a better answer for me? Or should I just stick with the Krups and drink more coffee -- or deal with the waste? Thank you.

In theory, I think it's a great idea, but like CompassRose, I think you should limit the "experiment" part. If you do the wine and cheese course, it's going to be pretty exhausting for your guests' palates, and you'd be better off with a non-complex, non-experimental second course and dessert. Another idea would be to concentrate on the "main course" and do three different ethnic variations of the same basic dish, like chicken stew. You could do a classic American version (like chicken and dumplings or small chicken pot pies), an Indian or Thai curry, and Hungarian paprikash or a Mexican or South American chicken dish. Very small servings of each, so your guests don't get overloaded.

At the risk of sounding boring, I have to say that almost all the "fusion pizza" ideas leave me cold. I've tried a couple styles of California Pizza Kitchen pizzas (Thai chicken and something else I've chosen to forget), and both tasted wrong to me. I guess my feeling is that if you want Buffalo wings (or tandoori chicken, or sushi) eat Buffalo wings (or tandoori, or sushi). The marshmallow thing makes my teeth ache just thinking about it.

I do wish you'd added the Jambalaya recipe earlier. A couple days ago, I discovered a couple of bags of opened rice in my cupboard, plus I had a couple of cups of sliced Andouille sausage, a couple of cups of sliced onions and a few roasted peppers left over from a cooking class at the store. While at the store, I saw some shrimp on sale and I thought, "I'll make jambalaya. I'm sure I have a recipe." (I have made it before -- a long time ago. I was pretty sure I had the spices necessary, and figured I could make do with what I had). Went to look in all the appropriate seeming cookbooks, and found nothing. So, I thought, I'm sure there's something in eGullet. But no! Then my computer crashed, so I couldn't check any other websites. So I winged it. I sauteed onion and green pepper, added the roasted red pepper, some garlic, and the sausage. Added a healthy amount of cayenne, black and white pepper and some thyme, then stirred in some rice. Poured in some chicken stock and basically cooked it like paella, except covered. Meanwhile I sauteed the shrimp and added them when the rice was done. Is that anything like real jambalaya, or did I just make weird paella?

Two points: first, despite what Cook's Illustrated says, there really is no such thing as "the best recipe" -- that is, people's tastes vary, and for every dish, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to prepare it. So to assume that all the recipes have already been printed (not that you're saying that) is naive. Second, people may buy cookbooks for the recipes but that's not (by far) the only reason they buy them. The author's voice is at least as important, probably more so, than the actual recipes. And again, because people's tastes vary, different voices appeal to different people.

To be precise, water will dissolve some flavor agents, and alcohol will dissolve all of those (because of its water content) plus others that are not soluble in water. Juniper, for example, will not flavor a simple syrup, not matter what you do. It has to be infused into alcohol. You make some interesting points. I hadn't thought about double infusions, but of course it makes sense, especially with herbs.

Thanks for the link. I attended a seminar at the IACP conference on beer and cheese pairing given by Garret Oliver and a cheese guy (I'd have to look up his name). It was very impressive. I'm now reading his book and learning a lot about beer styles and food pairings.

Hmmm. I haven't made popovers in several years, and I wouldn't bet that I made them correctly when I did, but the method I learned was more like what you describe for yorkshire pudding -- heating the tins with a hunk of butter, so you end up with a very hot pan with a pool of butter in each tin. I agree, though, that the drippings/beef fat are a much more integral part of YP than the butter is of popovers.

Okay, JAZ, which place? Come on... fess up! Nizza La Bella in Albany, which is actually a small bistro, with a very small bar. But they make fabulous drinks. (They also have great french fries.)

Well, and just to confuse things further, there's the whole Dutch Baby/Finnish Pancake thing as well. My mom and sister always used to make these, which were like giant popovers cooked in a cast iron skillet. Start out with a ton of butter in the pan, heat it up really hot, pour in the batter and pop the whole thing in the oven. It tastes like a popover, but -- because of the size -- has that denser, moist center like a YP. It's really, really good too.

If I'm shaking a cocktail, I prefer the cubes out of the ice tray as is -- I find that cracked or crushed ice waters down the drink too much and results in ice bits in the drink, which I, personally, hate. When I'm stirring, I find that smaller chunks of ice chill the drink down faster and more evenly, so I usually either crack the cubes into two or three pieces, or, since two of my ice cube trays seem to crack the ice on their own, I use the ice from them. When I'm building a drink, it depends on whether I pre-chill the drink before I pour it over the ice. If so, I go for big cubes. If not, I go for crushed ice (I have a hand cranked crusher) so the drink cools faster. Unless, of course it's a straight spirit, like Scotch, on the rocks. Then I like big cubes. All of this is for home drink making -- a bar or restaurant won't generally have the choice (except for my favorite, which gets ice in big cubes, cracks some, and crushes some -- by hand. Man, I love that place.)

Maybe my recipes are different from yours, but I've always made popovers with a blob of butter in each tin, preheated them and added the batter to the hot buttered pan. So the difference is the type of fat used, not the presence of fat.

It is amazing how much a Jasmine tastes like grapefruit juice. I think maybe the reason I'm so taken with the stuff is that for the first time (in cocktails) I've been using fresh squeezed juice. I ordinarily use Odwalla's, which, I believe, is flash pasteurized. And it's fine, flavor-wise, but I think the fresh juice is adding something that just isn't there, even in the Odwalla. Tropicana's refrigerated, not-from-concentrate stuff is okay to drink, but I've never used it in cocktails. And I can't stand anything farther than that from fresh

My produce market has had beautiful grapefruit really cheap, so I've been taking advantage of the bounty. In addition to using the juice in the usual drinks, and making up some new ones (like the Reverse Pomeranian), I've been experimenting with it in drinks that don't usually call for it. I started out with a splash of it in an Aviation, something that a bartender friend of mine does, which brings the drink close to the Hemingway Daiquiri. I've added a dash of grapefruit to margaritas, and to the Mischief, for example, with good results. In small amounts (a teaspoon or so) it seems to make other citrus juice (especially orange juice) more complex tasting, without really being obvious. Now that I think about it, it occurs to me that I often use grapefruit juice in my non-alcoholic cocktails, because of that complexity it provides. I wonder if it's because grapefruit is one of the few typical cocktail ingredients that's high in glutatmates and thus provides a hint of umami. Or it might just be that it's got a background of bitterness, which is something that I tend to like in my cocktails. Anyone else do anything interesting with grapefruit juice?

Two more for me: The Whole Beast (had to know how to make the Roasted Bone Marrow with Parsley Salad) and this odd book called Food Mania, which turns out to be nothing but illustrations of food and cooking/dining scenes mostly from the 18the and 19th centuries. It seemd like something I should have, and it was only $10. Oh, and I'll pick up a copy of Peter Reinhart's pizza book tonight at his class.

Jeez, I got that too! I was pretty successful at putting it out of my mind until you brought it back up. And yes, visions of Tequiza danced in my head as I read the email.

My favorite way to prepare beets is in salads. When I get beets with fresh greens, I blanch the greens and use them along with the beets in the salad. Oh, and I completely agree about Vegetables From A to Z. Fabulous.

I've never tried cold-infusing the jalapenos. I got the idea for the syrup from a recipe for a granita, and it called for steeping both the mint and the jalapenos, so that's what I've always done. Again, I'm not sure I'd want a huge hit of green jalapeno heat in the syrup -- this way, it's actually pretty subtle. In fact, when I use the syrup in the Fire and Ice Margaritas, it's sort of difficult to identify either the mint or the jalapeno in the flavor profile, at least at first. I have found, though, that for the original non-alcoholic drink I created it for -- the Twisted Mojito -- I like to muddle some fresh mint in addition to using the syrup, since the mint is such a crucial element. So that's where I think a cold infusion of mint might be a good idea. Or I could just continue to muddle.

Oh, I think I'd only start worrying if the folks at CI ever agreed with my opinions. I'm just surprised at the "dull blade" comment, because mine was so sharp I sliced through my dish sponge the first time I washed it. But that's interesting about having to sharpen brand new knives -- I never knew that. Is it because the manufacturers don't put a final edge on them on purpose, or that they aren't stored properly, or some other reason?

I've mostly experimented with flavored syrups as components of non-alcoholic cocktails, so I probably use them a little differently than most. In my jalapeno-mint syrup, for example, I'm not sure that a real, fresh mint flavor is what I want. But it would be interesting to try it with a cold infusion of mint into the jalapeno syrup to see. The only time I made ginger syrup (aside from the ginger-mint experiment), it was actually a by-product of making crystalized ginger slices, in which the ginger was steeped in hot syrup several times (it was time consuming, complicated and not something I'll repeat). I liked the taste of the syrup -- it didn't have that fresh "zing," but it was good on its own terms.

Reverse Pomeranian After I created the Pomeranian Cocktail, I started playing around with the proportions to see if I could make it a little more complex tasting. I ended up essentially reversing the proportions of pomegranate and grapefruit juice and this is the result. 2 fl oz white rum 1 fl oz fresh grapefruit juice 1/2 fl oz triple sec 1/4 fl oz pomegranate juice Add ingredients to an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist, or you could float a couple of pomegranate seeds on top, if you had them. Keywords: Cocktail ( RG1073 )

Reverse Pomeranian After I created the Pomeranian Cocktail, I started playing around with the proportions to see if I could make it a little more complex tasting. I ended up essentially reversing the proportions of pomegranate and grapefruit juice and this is the result. 2 fl oz white rum 1 fl oz fresh grapefruit juice 1/2 fl oz triple sec 1/4 fl oz pomegranate juice Add ingredients to an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist, or you could float a couple of pomegranate seeds on top, if you had them. Keywords: Cocktail ( RG1073 )

So, I see that Cooks Illustrated reviewed Santoku knives and rated the Furi (without the granton edge) as "not recommended." Said the handle was too big and clunky and the blade was "dull." Okay, I know knife handles are a very personal thing, and I can see them saying that. But a dull blade? What -- they got a used model? Whatever.

I tried for a ginger-mint syrup, but the ginger was so overwhelming you couldn't taste the mint. However, it was still good. I used it with anejo rum, a splash of orange juice and club soda (a take off from DeGroff's Anejo Highball). And there's that ginger drink from Mas that beans posted on, too.