Plantes Vertes

From driest to sweetest, the wine will be either brut, extra dry, dry or demi-sec; most modern Prosecco is on the dry end of the range.

Thank you! I don't really have a house dressing and often eat salad naked, tee hee, but I do like a 70:30 mix of vegetable and extra virgin olive oils combined with white wine vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper and sugar. I don't measure it but I guess it's about 63:15:15:7 for the liquids and mustard, with a pinch of the seasonings and several pinches of sugar. I put a lightly squashed garlic clove in the jar and give it a hearty shake. Remember to get the garlic back out if you want to save any left over, as it will make some very pungent dressing and also pose a botulism risk if I understand right...

Easier not to overspend when the potential purchase is called dog. Just puts things in perspective.

On this topic, it would also be useful (for me) to know of any less humungous retailers worth visiting in London. In my hometown there's a tiny rundown newsagent and general store on St Clements that seems to stock about 50 kinds of absinthe as a sideline to selling tobacco and tins of baked beans. What are the London equivalents?

Could not resist copying SobaAddict's leeks vinaigrette (vegetarian version).

More salad; lettuces, beetroot, tomatoes, cucumber, sweetcorn and olives.

Blume Marillen, Zwack and G Miclo are producing; try Amazon, Master of Malt and Astor Wines.

If I understand it right, brandy distilled from apricots is rare stuff; apricot liqueur is what is generally meant by 'apricot brandy'. So you're safe.

It's evolution at work. The most persistent obtain the rum. Then they drink it, feel frisky and reproduce.

Put them in a warm place, in a paper bag, with an apple. Both the bananas themselves and the apple give off ethylene, which promotes ripening apparently, and that is trapped and concentrated in the paper bag.

Leslie, they do have S+C at Gerry's.

Hello pto, and welcome to eGullet! Most recipes rely on (slightly more) grenadine for sweetness so your opinion is well supported as well as judicious from a dental point of view. You could try ditching the simple and increasing the grenadine if the result is not sweet enough. I would not make a drink for myself with that much sugar in any case and certainly not with only 1.5oz booze. You should increase the booze proportion whatever you do I agree with you that several of the recipes in this book seem very sweet, like the Clover Club and the Julep and the Toddy and the Sazerac and the Ward Eight and the Bacardi Cocktail and the Bee's Knees and... and then I quit looking. Perhaps it would be wise to halve the syrup as a rule of thumb and increase from there if necessary. By the way, the part of the book you refer to relates to the relative sweetness and size of cocktails of the past vs those of today; Degroff says that a richer syrup was used in the past because the drinks were smaller, but that now a 1:1 syrup is common. The logic of this text seems quite dubious to me but at any rate I don't think Degroff dilutes his 1:1 any further.

For off licences, you could try Amathus or Gerry's, both general spirits retailers with gigantic stocks in Soho, or the Whisky Exchange on the Southbank, which sells things other than whisk(e)y, but also a hell of a lot of whisk(e)y. None of them are very cheap, but you can get everything you want in one place.

Is there a reason for cooking the leeks root-on, that you know of? Is this what everybody does but me?

If you google dal uttapam there seem to be several recipes without rice. Hope you find one you like!

I surely must have posted this elsewhere on this site, but in high school holidays I worked as a breakfast cook for construction workers. Lots of eggs! I would boil 5 dozen at a time. To get the shells off, I put all the eggs in the water and stabbed them Psycho-style with a chef's knife. The water pressure keeps the egg in the shell while boiling, but the slit in the shell allows water in to separate the shell from the membrane inside, which makes the shell easier to get off. Once boiled the eggs would get rolled on the counter and the shells would fall open easily.

Perception of flavours depends on the other flavours you experience at the time; maybe you ate or drank something that influenced the way the drink tasted.

Puff pastry would happen rarely at my house without the Jus-Roll brand.

Wrapping the cod in bacon before cooking is a popular way of increasing flavour.

You could invent a Schrödinger's Martinez with that. Then you wouldn't have to open the bottle. There's a site about vermouths here (http://vermouth101.com/) that might provide inspiration.

I hope that his near ones can find some consolation with time, and in the love so many have felt for him.

I also like my women this way. And I like my daiquiris this way.

We made some Corpse Revivers #2. They induced a form of prospective drunkenness whereby I accidentally made four instead of two. Then we drank them both/all. Then I really lost count.

2:1.5:.25 from PDT. So, I will try your method next time.

Messed around with a couple of Hanky Pankies tonight. Actually, I think I will prefer this drink with more Fernet in it, so I'll try that next time. My housemate was satisfied as is.