slkinsey

I'll add my voice to those who have never had a problem with bags floating when using a FS-type machine.

I find that the Paderno lids fit Falk pans nicely. But, really, I've found most any appropriately-sized lid to work just fine. No data on the layers in Copper Core cookware. All-Clad used to be willing to tell people the thickness of their various layers, but they clammed up right around the same time they started making their stuff thinner. You may draw your own conclusions. If anyone feels like running a piece of Copper Core through a band saw to take a look at the layers, let me know. I always assumed that's what I'd have to do if I ever wanted to write a book on this subject.

Not so! Upthread pounce has a really nifty work-around where a check valve is attached to the FoodSaver bag and the whole thing is put inside a canister. Whether it will compress fruit or not I don't know... Oh yea... That's a pretty sweet hack. I wonder if it would work. Right. For actual sous vide cooking, there is nothing wrong with using a FoodSaver or "semipro" edge sealing vacuum machine. For a very small number of tricks, you'll need a chamber machine. I think that, once you sealed the bag, there would be noplace for the "extra air" to go. So the weighted plate might crush the watermelon, but wouldn't compress the watermelon. Short answer: No, it doesn't really matter for most sous vide applications. There are certain tricks that one can do with sous vide equipment (although I am not sure I would call most of these sous vide cooking) that require a strong chamber machine.

I've had Elixir Vegetal a number of times. Doesn't strike me as a bitters. First of all, it's not all that bitter. But it doesn't seem to have that intensity of flavor that makes something a bitters in the same sense that Angostura bitters are bitters. You're not going to be able to flavor a rich rum drink with a few dashes of Elixir Vegetal, for example.

This to me is the most relevant thing in the thread so far. Steven's comments make sense, I think, but only if some form of "journalism" is a goal you have for your blog. The beauty of a blog is that it can be anything you want it to be, and you get to make up the rules as they apply to you and your blog. This is not to say that you shouldn't be aware of potential consequences of your decisions, of course. But if to you and in the context of your blog the shopkeeper's feelings are important, then it's fair game for you to consider the shopkeeper's feelings. Maybe this means that you don't write a post about that place, maybe this means that you make a few criticisms but hold back a bit out of consideration for the shopkeeper, maybe this means that you only focus on the things you liked, etc. The main thing is that you do whatever is comfortable for your own sense of ethics. You're not writing "hard hitting" and "truthful" news for a newspaper or magazine, you're not writing a book that needs to be interesting in order to sell. You're writing an entry in your online journal. The worst-case scenario for you should be that the blog entry is perhaps a little boring. But I certainly don't think that throwing your personal consideration for the shopkeeper's feelings to the wind and posting all your various negative criticisms of the place should be an ethical imperative for you unless you want it to be. If I were writing a blog about musical performances that I pursued seriously as "online journalism" I would feel constrained to give a scathing review to a friend who had given a bad performance; but if the blog were simply "slkinsey's personal reflections on classical performances in NYC" I would feel no obligation to do so -- and if the friend were expecting to read my write-up... well, we've all got plenty of noncommittal phrases in our bag for the times we don't have much good to say about a friend's performance (e.g., "you were really doing some interesting stuff out there").

Flatiron Lounge has been doing flights of cocktails ever since they opened, as far as I know. The secret is to batch the cocktails and keep them under refrigeration. If you pre-dilute, you don't even need to shake them with ice (I don't know what FL does). Even if you do shake with ice, it can't take too much longer to shake out and pour two small drinks made from a batch and pour out one batched rocks drink than it takes to measure, shake out and pour one regular-sized drink. Needless to say, logistics have to be taken into consideration when designing the flights and you only offer one flight at a time (themes are good for flights). Flatiron Lounge also has really nice little wooden boards with three circular depressions that fit the bottoms of their glassware. Once the flight has been prepared, you just bring over the whole board and set it in front of the customer. Here's a picture taken by Snowy is dead:

Thanks for your nice thoughts. Have you ever tried to fry an egg in a sauté pan? The main advantage of a frypan is the low, sloping sides. This makes it easy to get in there with a spatula for things, which is especially important for things that are delicate (trout fillets, for example), and also facilitates crisping. You can fry crisp and have room to turn in a sauté pan, if you put one piece in the center and give it plenty of room, but it's difficult and not optimal. Meanwhile, what is your projected use for the sauté pan? One piece of cookware I've seen that most people want to have is a large, heavy duty nonstick frypan. If you have access to restaurant suppliers, you can probably get some thick Vollrath or Lincoln frypans (12" is a good size) with a durable nonstick coating for not too much money. If you don't think this access will last forever, buy four or five of them and store the extra ones, because eventually the coating will wear off. If you like making eggs, you might think about an 8-inch nonstick frypan as well. I'm not crazy about the design of the Demeyere frypans. The sides seem too tall and too vertical for my taste. Demeyere is the best fully-clad cookware, IMO, so long as money is not an object. If you can get 50% off, it seems like a very good choice. Wrong about what? Copper has advantages. Other materials have other advantages. It all depends on your priorities (and budget, of course). What I'm not quite clear on is your projected use for these pans. If you read through this thread you'll see that one of my recurring themes is that I discourage people from buying a lot of fancy expensive cookware based on some notion of putting together a "complete battery of cookware." What do you think you'll cook with this stuff? Why don't you have a stockpot with a fitted strainer for pasta? Why do you want expensive Demeyere sauciers? (It's not clear what pans you're talking about, by the way. Demeyere doesn't make anything called a "saucier.") These are all questions I'd ask myself.

That wouldn't work, I'm afraid (although there are other tricks you can do with those cannisters). In a chamber vacuum machine, the air is evacuated from the chamber and the bag is sealed around the food while it is still inside the chamber under low pressure. This is impossible with a FoodSaver.

Not that it's particularly important, but for the sake of clarity: this is only partly true. The owners of Zinc Bar are among the owners of Pegu Club. Audrey Saunders is also an owner.

Question: Isn't the pecan a New World tree?

Rob... Seriously, I think you'd do just fine to roll out fairly traditional middle eastern dishes.

Try an Asian Market. It's also sometimes called "Long Jing" in English. Another loose leaf Chinese Green Tea of some sort? Just not a Jasmine Tea. That would probably be pretty bad. There are so many, it's hard to know what you have, what might be available, or what it might be called. Looks like this, with the leaves in long needle-like bundles: Long Jing So, you used a green tea rather than a black tea? Don't you figure the original probably called for black tea?

Is there any way you could reproduce a bunch of dishes invented by Puccini and pass it off as your own work?

Well, they can't just snap their fingers and make the stuff to keep up with demand like a gin or vodka maker could do. It takes time to make Rittenhouse BIB. Time that is measured in years. Six of them, in fact. I think what happened is that Heaven Hill had no idea six years ago the demand for Rittenhouse BIB would be anywhere near as high as it turned out to be. Keep in mind that it was only two years ago that rye whiskey was poised to be a darling of the cocktailian set. When we were talking about rye back in December 2005, brown spirits were the "new thing" and when we were all joking about how "rye is the new vodka" it was a bit of a joke. Fast-forward 28 months or so, and now it seems like everyone is drinking the stuff. It's not so "retro cutting edge" any more. That's tough, because there is a six-year lag in Heaven Hill's ability to respond to demand. I have to believe that they've significantly increased production, but it's still likely to be quite a while before Rittenhouse BIB is easily available nationwide throughout the year. In the meantime, I gather that they have selectively distributed most of it to areas of the country where it will keep the interest of a critical mass of buzz-generating mixologists and cocktail enthusiasts, who will hopefully come to think of the product as indispensable, and then when there is sufficient supply to meet with rising demand, they will distribute more widely.

Shenley Reserve is another example. Most any crappy blended made in the States is likely to be called "blended American whiskey" or "American blended whiskey."

I like rhubard as well, but found that even the mildest-flavored liquor would completely obliterate the rhubarb flavor, meaning that the rest of the ingredients had to be extremely mildly flavored in order to get any rhubarb flavor.

How's the rhubarb syrup work? I love rhubvarb, but have never found that a rubuarb juice, syrup or infusion of any kind was able to stand up in a cocktail.

Both "squab" and "dove" are nicer-sounding words for "pigeon" -- squab being an immature one.

What is the diameter of the pan? As far as I can tell, All-Clad doesn't make a 5 quart saute pan. They make them in 2, 3, 4 and 6 quart sizes. It's unfortunate that All-Clad lists the size of its saute pans by quarts, because this is not the information we normally would like to have. What we would like to know is the size of the cooking surface, which is typically given with the diameter measurement. Strangely, All-Clad doesn't offer as much variability in diameters as one might expect. The 2 quart pan appears to have an 8 inch diameter, which size I have found to be fairly useless. The 3 quart pan is listed with a 10.5 inch diameter and 2.5 inch sides. The 4 quart pan also has a 10.5 inch diameterbut has 3.25 inch sides, which seems tall to me. The next size up, the 6 quart pan, has a 12.875 inch diameter and 2.75 inch sides. In my opinion, it is probably too large in diameter for the typical home stove.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. While straight rye whiskey and straight bourbon whiskey are American whiskies in the sense that they are whiskies from America, they are not "American Whiskey" in the same sense as we mean by "Canadian Whisky." The post to which you are responding seems to indicate that Darcy is speaking of American blended whiskey. This is defined under 27 CFR 5.22(b)(4) as "a mixture which contains straight whisky or a blend of straight whiskies at not less than 20 percent on a proof gallon basis, excluding alcohol derived from added harmless coloring, flavoring or blending materials, and, separately, or in combination, whisky or neutral spirits." I have to agree that American blended whiskey doesn't, as a rule, tend to be very good stuff. As far as I know, Michter's US1 is the only unblended bottling calling itself "American Whiskey" rather than bourbon, rye, etc. -- and I think it's noteworthy that they took the trouble to put the word "unblended" right on the label.

I don't think it is water. This is why the fruits for which the compression effect is interesting tend to be ones with a lot of air inside (watermelon, cucumber, etc.). No one is, e.g., compressing a plum.

Vacuum chamber machines are generally powerful enough to compress fruit and veggies in to a terrine-like stack. Its less the power of the vacuum and more the method of vacuum that makes the difference. FS machines can actually pull a very strong vacuum. I've been thinking about this, and I think I've figured out why it works with a chamber vacuum and not a bag sealer. When you have the fruit in the chamber and evacuate the air, you are creating a low pressure environment in the chamber. This should have the effect of "sucking out" the air in the little spaces throughout the watermelon. The the bag is sealed around the fruit, and when the chamber is opened there is an even 14.7 psi of pressure which closes all the empty spaces created when the air was sucked out of the fruit, thereby compressing the fruit.

No, I don't think that a FoodSaver can compress fruit. I actually wonder whether any bag sealer can compress fruit. Haven't tried it with the semipro bag sealer I have now.

I actually like a blend of lemon and lime in certain drinks (the Pisco Sour comes immediately to mind).

So what, exactly, is your question? I wouldn't necessarily think of cooking vegetables together with meat in the bag simply because most vegetables need to be cooked to a much higher temperature than what you would like to have for the meats. Carrots, for example, would never soften properly if you cooked them sous vide with beef at 55C. For this, you would want to cook the vegetables beforehand before bagging them with the beef if you wanted to have some flavor transfer between the two. Another feature of braising, for example, is that the long slow cooking concentrates flavors through evaporation. This also is not possible with sous vide cooking. So, if you want to end up with a rich, flavorful liquid at the end, it is likely that you will need to reduce some of the cooking liquid beforehand. Looking at your coq au vin example, you would definitely want to cook down the wine beforehand, not only to concentrate the flavor but also to cook off any alcohol. Even with the "pre-reduction" of liquids, you will usually need to do a further reduction afterwards to cook down the juices that had come out of the meat. This can get a little complicated sometimes because the meat juices resulting from low temperature sous vide cooking haven't been cooked at a high enough temperature to coagulate certain proteins. My experience is that when these juices reach the boiling point they will coagulate quite a bit of scum that needs to be removed. If you have vegetables that you want to keep in the bag, these may need to be rinsed to remove any scum-forming proteins. I have, on a few occasions, cooked the meat together with some other ingredients in the same bag. Earlier in this thread I did some chicken breasts with shiitake caps on one side and scallions on the other side. This was a short-duration cooking process, however, and neither the scallions nor the mushrooms really needed to be "cooked." I have also done things like brisket with a puree of (pre-cooked) caramelized onions, which I thought worked pretty well. That said, I'm not sure that I think this technique is particularly useful for cooking everything together in one bag. If I were going to make something like sous vide beef stew, I'd be likely to cook the beef sous vice together with a liquid consisting of reduced stock, wine and some other flavorings. This could even be done several days in advance and the cooked meat refrigerated. After that, you could de-scum the cooking liquid and use that liquid to cook the various vegetables conventionally (which could also be done ahead of time). For service, it's then a simple matter of reheating everything, which could be done using bagged portions in a water bath, or over the stove.