cdh

Excellent photo documentation of an excellent dinner, Phil. I'm going to buck the trend and say that my favorite dish was the shrimp. The texture of the slow cooked egg was perfect, the lobster broth had excellent flavor, and the shrimp themselves were good enough to eat shell and all. It had been far too long since I'd eaten Shola's food... I hope more events like this one provide me the opportunity to do so again.

Alright, Alc. Moving this into terms you're a little more passionate and less snide about, how would you feel if the PLCB offered for sale a bottle marked "Petrus 1994" that actually contained a wine that was a dead ringer for a grand cru burgundy. The fact they they both taste really good wouldn't matter much to you then, would it? It would be a terrible fraud perpetrated upon you, no? Labels do matter. Truth in labelling is important.

I'm a fan of bacon, alfalfa sprout and baba ganouj on toast. Yummy!

You don't need a handle. Microplane graters cut so effortlessly that you really don't need to grip it tightly or exert much force. I've had that model for 6 years and gotten plenty of use out of it.

I'm there! It's been too long since I've eaten Shola's food.

While we're talking about such things, it should be noted that most home broiling apparatus is a very pale shadow of restaurant equipment. Broiling with an electric oven seems almost a waste of time, though toaster ovens seem a bit more capable sometimes. You just don't get the concentrated heat that a proper broil requires.

Don't worry about it. I still have some Luxardo so old it has a federal tax stamp on it, and it tastes as good as new... or better.

Who in the great PLCB bureaucracy gets to declare a product off limits in PA? I thought that their policy was to bring in whatever customers asked for. This sounds like a change.

I find that drinks like the Pegu Club and the Jasmine take a top-up with tonic really well... it converts them into more than just a fizz... it's nice for a longer more leisurely drink in the afternoon.

Since when does a wine have retail for $90+ to be "real"? I don't think I've had "real wine" more than once or twice in my life if we're going by that criterion... I'm quite happy with unreal wines, I guess.

Kent- You note a bitterness in the candi syrup that I have never experienced. Out of curiousity, how do you like Campari? I don't find it overwhelmingly bitter but some do. Are you particularly bitter sensitive? I agree that there are toasty notes, but I have never noticed burnt flavors. As a use that might temper its bitterness for you, try drizzling it over vanilla ice cream.

Better and cheaper if I make it myself? Easy answer is beer... so long as you don't want the mass market Bud Miller Coors Lite beers. Those you can't make at home cheaply or easily.... the economies of scale do win out there. Just about every other style of beer-- you can make it cheaper and better than you can buy it. You need some bottles, and a pot big enough to boil it in, but that's about it. Check out the eGCI brewing course.

Just reread your post, cdh. So, I guess the oil you had was natural and not artificial cinnamon oil? ← All I know is that the stuff I encountered was purchased from a pharmacy and called cinnamon oil. Whether pharmacists are into deceptive marketing and mislabeling, I don't know. The 1 dram bottle was labelled cinnamon oil.

I don't agree that cinnamon gets its heat from other oils. I have distinct memories of very hot cinnamon flavor coming from a bottle of pharmacist's cinnamon oil. It's also the stuff that tipped me off to my allergy to cinnamon, so I'm not much of an expert... but I do know that pure cinnamon is hot.

Was the beer anything like Duvel? That classic Belgian is alleged to be brewed with a yeast that came from Scotland... Might history be repeating itself here?

This sounds like a cut that need a really old school treatment. How about larding it? Poke it full of holes, fill half of 'em with pork fat and half of them with garlic cloves, and then braise it in onion soup.

There is no sugar in stevia, so it is processed into sugar in exactly the same way as aspartame or saccharin are processed into sugar: it isn't. Since stevia is not allowed to be sold as a food additive, I'd be really surprised to find a box of fine white crystals derived from stevia on the shelf. Not to say it wouldn't be possible. I'd imagine you'd shred and steep the stevia in a solvent that most effectively dissolves the sweetening compounds and leaves undesired compounds behind. Then take the saturated solvent and evaporate it off leaving the sweetening compounds behind. Then pick a neutral flavored white crystalline looking substance and mix it in with the sweetening compounds in proportions that sweeten by volume like an equivalent volume of sugar would. That's how you'd derive a sugar-looking stuff from a stevia plant.

Well, stevia is an "herbal supplement"... I think they have their own niche between regulations... not a food, not a drug... As to what it is? Stevia is a plant. Its leaves taste sweet. Look it up on wikipedia... I find that it has a sharp catnip-like aroma that is not particularly appealing to me.

Big hunks of salt in a grinder would be much more manageable in a humid environment than fine salt in a shaker. The grinder already contemplates the salt being in a big lump and needing to be ground down to a useful format. Shakers in humid environments often end up with big lumps of salt in them, and have nothing built in to handle that problem.

A thought here I'd like to bounce off the assembled-- What about the issue of franchising and the ability to afford the buy-in fees, and risk minimization? A franchise with a nationally advertised name over the door may be considered a much less risky investment than a start-up with no brand equity. Might folks who are interested in opening a restaurant be legitimately concerned about hedging their bets by buying into a franchise. Might local bankers be more likely to extend the loan to a prospective franchisee than to a ground-up new enterprise? Do people who started out as franchisees ever sell off the franchise and convert their return on investment and knowledge into ground-up restaurants, or do non-competes in the franchise agreements stifle that?

Your intuition appears to be right, Gabriel. This page: http://www.sucrose.com/lbeet.html makes it pretty clear that the dark syrup is beet molasses, as the boiling, chilling and centrifuging are all described in the process. I do wonder if it is processed in any special way, or if beet molasses is just really delicious.

Again, I question if this stuff we're talking about is the beet analog to molasses in its provenance as well as in its flavor profile. The descriptions say that they start with white beet sugar, heat it, chill it and centrifuge it. That makes it sound like caramel, not molasses... and its flavor profile jives with that. Beet molasses would be all the non-sucrose stuff that is dissolved in what's pressed out of sugar beets. God knows if that is good stuff or not.

I wonder if the unfit for human consumption idea is another cultural thing, rather than a health thing. Aren't turnips considered unfit for human consumption in some countries? So Ikea carries beet syrup? What's it called there? I must try that out in brewing soon.

I don't know that the dark syrup is actually beet molasses. As it is explained, it sounds a lot like it might be, but nobody has said that it is. What exactly it is remains somewhat mysterious, as this is how the production is described: I don't know the chemistry of sucrose well enough to figure out what is happening in that process... I don't know if anybody does. Also, check out this page: http://www.babblebelt.com/newboard/thread....g=9&tpg=1&add=1 for more interesting sugar chat.

Check Austin Homebrew. Link!They're a nationally known shop with a very wide selection and they definitely have the dark candi syrup. You may have to mail order the other belgian beet derivatives, or convince Austin Homebrew to add them, as they're not in the web store. I know that www.morebeer.com does carry the solid moist candi sugar. Also go shopping at Fiesta... they have piloncillo certainly, and may well have interesting palm sugars too. Austin has so many great eclectic markets that I'd bet you'll be able assemble quite a variety.