slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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For lack of a better way of putting it, pot stilling is a more old-fashioned and artisanal way of distilling, and therefore produces a spirit with more character (although what can be considered "character" in one kind of spirit can be considered "impurities" in another).
One thing I recently learned about is that a lot of the microdistillers who are supposedly producing "pot stilled" spirits are really using a pot still for the bottom, but then a column on top of the still instead of an alembic. This produces a spirit that i suppose can technically be called "pot stilled" but really doesn't have the character one would associate with this distilling technique.
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Sugar pots and polenta pots are still made in unlined copper.
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I would definitely say not All-Clad Stainless. It's okay if you want fully clad cookware that you can throw in the dishwasher, but it's egregiously overpriced, some of All-Clad's other lines (e.g., MC2) have better thermal properties, and more or less equivalent cookware can be had at a much lower price point.
As for Eric's question... I'm not sure I understand it. There is no one brand or design that's good or "best" for everything. It depends on your price point, what kind of cooking you want to do, whether dishwasher-safe is important to you, and many other variables. Even if you have decided, say, "I want a twelve quart stockpot with a heavy stainless body and an thick aluminum base that can be fitted with a pasta insert" there are many options: You can go with something super-expensive such as Demeyere, you can go with a professional-grade pot by someone like Paderno, you can even get something from Target that will fill those specifications. All of them will be a good choice. Which one you buy will depend on how much money you're willing to spend and how much value you put on other considerations (e.g., Demeyere will have an encapsulated "all the way to the sides" base, Paderno will have an extra-thick aluminum base that does not go all the way to the sides, the Target pot will be similar to the Paderno pot with a thinner body/base and a correspondingly even lower price point).
Better, more important/relevant questions to ask would be:
1. What kind of cooking does your wife like to do? If, for example, she likes to do a lot of stir-frying, then a really nice wok (or a wok burner) would seem to be in order. If she likes to make omelets, then a nice nonstick dedicated omelet pan would be good.
2. How much money are you willing to spend? Secondarily, is it more important to you to have a few really good pieces (hopefully the pieces she uses the most) or a whole lot of new stuff?
3. How much maintenance fussiness is acceptable to you? Fully clad stainless cookware does have a great advantage in that it has okay thermal properties, is nonreactive and can be chucked into the dishwasher. If you don't mind cleaning your pots by hand, this opens up the possibilities to things such as stainless-lined heavy copper -- and if you don't mind cleaning by hand and you don't mind having a mildly reactive pan, this opens up the possibilities to things such as heavy gauge carbon steel.
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A set almost always turns out to be a bad idea in the long run.
First of all, it's often the case that one or more of the pieces is on that you never end up using. For example, a lot of sets come with a 9-inch sauté pan. I have owned this pan, and find it almost entirely useless. I won't say that I never use it... but hardly ever. In general, I find that frypans and sauté pans are usually too small in sets.
Second, since a set consists of pans all using the same design philosophy (disk bottom, fully clad, whatever) it's inevitably the case that some of the pans are massive overkill for their intended use and some of the pans have a non-optimal design. For example, you'll end up with a 4 quart saucepan you use for boiling water and steaming vegetables that has a thick disk bottom, and you'll end up with a (usually too small) frypan with a disk bottom -- the former being overkill and the latter being non-optimal design.
Third, it's my experience that most home cooks do 75% of their cooking on only two pieces of cookware that require any real quality. Boiling water and things like that work just as well in a $10 saucepan from the hardware store as they do in a $150 saucepan from Williams Sonoma. And, there's really no point in getting someone a fancy sauté pan if they don't sauté. On the other hand, someone who cooks a lot of pasta may really benefit from having a nice large stockpot with a removable pasta insert. This is something you won't find in any set.
Finally, depending on what kind of cooking the person does, there are some things you can get that will actually cost less than any pan in the set. For example, if someone likes to do a lot of high heat/short time cooking such as stir-frying, searing meat and fish, sautéing, etc. -- an extra-heavy gauge carbon steel saute pan may be just the thing. And it'll only cost around 25 or 30 bucks for a 12" pan.
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Picked up a bottle of St. George at Park Avenue Liquor today. Outstanding. Really, it's very good with no water, but it louches beautifully and is quite complex.
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Curious: It's been two months since the excursion. Who (other than Steven) has been back to New Jersey for a food trip?
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1. The fact is -- and this is simply too widely acknowledged to be worth debating -- that any regular restaurant reviewer operating in a given city will be recognized most of the time. All of the time? Probably not. But most of the time. And I would suggest that a reviewer who goes into restaurants under the (usually mistaken) assumption that he is not recognized and is not receiving any special treatment is much more susceptible to having his opinion swayed by the special treatment he will be getting most of the time than a reviewer who goes in with his eyes open. On top of that, even when it's clear that a reviewer is recognized and the restaurant is making maximum effort to turn out their absolutely best product, there are limits to the changes a restaurant can effect (they can't keep one extra-prime steak in the walk-in just in case a reviewer walks in) and dishes still come out as disappointments. There have been any number of occasions where Bruni was clearly recognized and still got so-so food and service.
2. Given the food cost, any restaurant operating at a price point at which it would be unduly burdensome for a reviewer to pay out of his own pocket will easily be able to afford dozens of comps.
3. I'd say Bruni is recognized around 75% of the time, and that most likely goes up to 95% on his second visit. He may not have been recognized at Babbo (I have no position on this) but if he wasn't, it was also practically the first review he wrote and I don't think anyone at Babbo supposed he would be re-reviewing them as part of his earliest work.
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What a crappy web site.
Unfortunately, the specific heat of water makes it better for the job.
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Sometimes you can pay homage to an earlier drink without repeating the base name. Variations on Manhattan neighborhoods are a good, if overused, example; I also liked the Squadra Azzurra, which may be a bit too clever for its own good.
I can't quite tell from your description in the other thread whether you meant to name this drink after the Italian national team (most commonly associated with either football or cycling).
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Keep in mind that sea salt is not just boiled-down seawater. All food-grade sea salt must be at least 97.5 percent pure sodium chloride by law. This means that in edible sea salt, at most, you are getting 2.5% "other minerals" and usually a lot less. Salt harvested by solar evaporation, for example, is around 99 percent pure, with the other 1 percent being almost entirely magnesium and calcium compounds. When you evaporate seawater in traditional evaporating pools, some of the stuff you don't want precipitates out before the sodium choride does, so it's possible to get a fairly refined salt. You would not want sea salt that contains everything in seawater minus the water.
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Poison Dart also somehow makes me think of Tiki. Is there a way to make a Tiki-style drink with Green Chartreuse.
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i don't hold much of anything sacred but i'd say some cocktail names are more or less sacred and should stay true to tradition and others shouldn't... the jack rose i'd never mess with but that same set of ingredients and ratios would easily become a "corpse reviver" to amuse my favorite, very eccentric, regular at the bar... corpse reviver and names like it to me aren't names for explicit recipes but just synonyms for generic awsome drinks...
I wouldn't disagree with this. The Corpse Revivers Nos. 1 and 2 are completely different drinks, with the only commonality being that they were either originally or notionally thought of as morning pick-me-up drinks. So why not serve a different drink as a "Corpse Reviver"? My only preference would be that the drink be in the spirit of a short pick-me-up. I wouldn't want a cooler-type drink, or a crushed ice drink to be called a "Corpse Reviver."
There were all kinds of drink categories back in the 18C -- although I think that most of them "defined" a feeling and perhaps a style, time,situation or manner of imbibing rather than more well-defined categories such as a Julep. This we have from Notes and Sketches of the Paris Exhibition, by George Augustus Sala (Tinsley Brothers, 1868) on page 374:
While thirst is my theme, let me mention, with gratification, a great establishment for the slaking of human lime which was in the exterior zone. Messrs. Dows and Guild, and nother and kindred firm, who added to their raison commercial the familiar name of "Van Winkel," started a grand American bar, and a grander American restaurant. At the bar, and from syphon tubes decorated with silvery figures of the American eagle, were dispensed the delicious "cream soda" so highly recommended by the faculty. "Cobblers, "noggs," smashes," "cocktails," "eye openers," "moustache twisters," and "corpse revivers" were also on hand; and I dare say you might have obtained the mystic "tip and tic," the exhilarating "morning glory," the mild but health-giving sarsaparilla punch, to say nothing of " one of them things," which is a recondite and almost inscrutable drink. I remember being treated to " one of them things" at Boston, by a young gentleman who was a "Sophomore" of Harvard College; indeed, I think we took two of "them things." The effect produced on me was an impression that I had set fire to the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, combined with an ardent desire to slay Professor Agassiz, and take refuge from justice at the top of the Bunker-hill monument. In fact, "I felt bad." The kindly Sophomore at once suggested a curative whose action was instantaneous and efficacious. I may not mention its components; but it is called, "one of them other things."I wouldn't mind an ice-cold Moustache Twister or One of Them Things myself.
(ETA: The quoted work is in the public domain.)
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This is not to say, I think, that soliciting comps can't be or isn't now occassionally abused. But just because something can be abused doesn't make it automatically unethical in all cases.
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I will excerpt the portion of your post from the other thread that relates to restaurant comps, since continuing the discussion about the restaurant side seems more appropriate in this thread.
Considering the serious objections I have stated towards accepting complementary meals, the major question I expect to arise is: "Why is it acceptable to sometimes accept wines or attend wine-tasting events sponsored by commercial sources when it is forbidden (in my opinion) to accept such meals?"Simple enough – of the thousands of wines that one receives as samples or tastes at events, 99% is tasted and spit and only 1% actually goes into the body. True, one might save the best wine tasted in a given day for dinner but that hardly comprises a bribe or tempts one to change one's impression or tasting notes (after all, the wine was selected because we thought so highly of it). Second, as much as tasting wine can be a very rewarding challenge, it is very, very hard work, the time and concentration involved in tasting dozens or more of wines in a day being enormous and then adding the time required to write up and post or otherwise publish the tasting notes. The rewards are great because most critics love wine (as much and perhaps even more of a philosophical base than food) and love the challenge of testing and re-testing their own palates.
So, if I understand this properly, your main argument is that accepting free wines in performance of wine criticism is okay whereas accepting free restaurant mealsin performance of restaurant criticism is not because:
1. You don't digest the wine whereas you do digest the restaurant food
and
2. Wine tasting and evaluation is "hard work" whereas restaurant evaluation is not.
I'm sorry... but that seems like a pretty thin justification for approving one and condemning the other. If we're going to split wine hairs as fine as you have been splitting restaurant hairs, I simply do not see how there can be any ethical justification for accepting the wine. Any ethical conflict as to favorable treatment that comes along with accepting a free restaurant meal automatically comes along with receiving free wine -- especially if one is permitted to "save the best wine tasted in a given day for dinner." It's pretty easy to extend the logical argumets made in this thread to wine: If you receive a wine from a you are going to feel beholden to that consortium, importer, distributor or winery and this may influence you to write a better review -- even if only subconsciously. Furthermore, if you do write a bad review of the wine, there is the chance that the consortium, importer, distributor or winery (and perhaps others as well) may no longer provide you with free samples for evaluation, which may further influence you to write a better review. In consideration of the fact that you cannot afford these wines yourself and do not have a job that reimburses you for wine expenditures, you would like to continue receiving free wines, without which your wine-reviewing career would be impossible. This is further influence to write a better review. As you say, some wineries send bottles for tasting and others to not. This is a further influence. You do point out that the wine critic "should not 'hold it against' any winery that does not send wines for tasting"-- but that's like saying that a restaurant critic shouldn't be influenced by comps. How do we know that either is doing as he should? How do we know that the wine critic won't be biased in favor of wines he tastes at home compared to wines he has to evaluate at organized tastings?
Daniel, it seems clear that you give these things a lot of ethical thought, and so my going-in assumption is that you don't have any ulterior motives in making these different points. But I can't help pointing out that, in the case where you have a salaried/reimbursed job doing something you couldn't afford to do on your own dime, you have constructed some ethical logic to come out against comping; in the case where you are a freelancer who is not reimbursed for somethign you couldn't afford to do on your own dime, you have constucted some ethical logic to come out in favor of comping. I can't help noticing that both of these things justify your own special case, and I can't help saying that hinging the ethical logic that differentiates these two cases on something as esoteric as digestion versus non-digestion and "hard work" versus "less hard work" (which I submit will depend greatly on the individual -- ask the NYT critics how much "fun" they're having eating at restaurants 14+ times a week) seems a little weak.
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I'm curious: Who paid for all the wines you reviewed in "Rogov's Guide to Israeli Wines"? Was it you, or your publisher?
Sure as all get out it was not me. I never was and never will be wealthy enough for that.
If you factor out the notional anonymity of the restaurant critic, I don't see how there can be any ethical difference between accepting comped wine from a consortium, importer, distributor or winery, and accepting a comped meal from a restaurant.
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I have to say that my biggest peeve in all of cocktailery is the inappropriate naming of a new cocktail after an old cocktail, or an old category of cocktail
This is most pervasive in the practice of naming a cocktail the "[something or Other] Martini" -- but it can be seen across the board. A drink that does not include Cognac, Cointreau (or at least an orange liqueur) and lemon juice just shouldn't be called any species of Sidecar. Period.
For example: Phil Ward mixed me up a great Sidecar-inspired drink at Flatiron Lounge several years ago. It consisted of blended scotch (instead of Cognac), Drambuie (instead of Cointreau) and lemon juice, all in the recognizable Sidecar ratios, along with a short dash of Anostura. It was a tasty cocktail, but I would suggest that "Scottish Sidecar" or "Scotch Sidecar" would not be a useful, good or imaginative name. If one were determined to reference the Sidecar (and there is no reason to do so, considering that the Margarita is equally closely related) there are any number of names from which one could choose. For example, you could call it a Knockhill Cocktail (Knockhill being a major racetrack in Scotland where sidecar races are held).
I do think there are a few circumstances where naming a new drink after an old one makes sense:
First, when the new drink represents a minor tweak, a house formula or a specific iteration of the classic. For example, as we know, a simple gin and dry vermouth Martini can be made in almost infinite variations. A "Hoffman House Martini" tells you that you're getting a 2:1 Martini with orange bitters. The "[insert Name of Bar Here] Martini" may specify certain brands of gin and vermouth at a certain ratio, etc. Or, for example, The Violet Hour might have a house Martini fomulated to be refreshing on a hot day and dashed with some of Toby's Summer Bitters. It would not be inappropriate to call this drink their "Summer Martini."
Second, when the new drink is clearly evolved from and fundamentally related to the old drink. As it so happens, two drinks that always come to mind when making this point are from Audrey Saunders: her Tantris Sidecar and Gin Gin Mule. A regular Sidecar is made with Cognac, Cointreau and lemon juice. The Tantris is made with Cognac, Calvados, Cointreau, Green Chartreuse, lemon juice and pineapple juice. At first glance, these don't seem to be very much related. But really what the drink has is Cognac and supplemented with a little Calvados to result in what could be considered "apple Cognac"; Cointreau supplemented with a little Chartreuse to result in what could be considered "spicy Cointreau"; and lemon juice supplemented with a little pineapple juice to result in what could be considered "tweaked lemon juice." Now we're back to Cognac, Cointreau and lemon juice: a Sidecar. If the Cognac were replaced with Calvados instead of supplemented by it, or if the Chartreuse overwhelmed the Cointreau to the point that the Cointreau might as well not be in there, or if the drink just didn't taste like it had any relationship to a Sidecar -- then I wouldn't want to call it any species of Sidecar. The Gin Gin Mule, which substitutes gin for the Moscow Mule's vodka, could be seen as less strongly related to the old drink which inspired it -- but it's also true that there have historically been any number of cocktails named "Mule" (which presumably refers to the "kick" of the drink). Similarly, I wouldn't begrudge a properly styled drink from calling itself a species of "Corpse Reviver."
I think there are a lot of good names out there for drinks, if the mixologist just uses a little imagination. The Introduction to Aperol, the Silver Monk, the Van Brunt, the Red Hook, the French Pearl. . . the list could go on.
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So, it was more of a limited-edition thing? Mostly for the California market?
That sucks... I thought they were really going to start making the stuff.
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I have one. You can come 'n' git it.
HA! I'm with you on this one. I bought the square Lodge grill pan and I've used it twice in the last year. Why fill the house with all that smoke just to cook some meat. I guess it would be a good pan if you had a big range hood with enough power to suck your hair up like a Flowbee.
Count me among you. Mostly, I don't think a grill pan is very good at cooking meat. It's not like using a real grill, where the meat is getting lots of radiant heat from the fire and even more conduction heat from the grill (causing the grill marks). With a grill pan, just about all the heat is coming via conduction from the fins. This tends to equal, in my experience, dry unappetizing meat or meat that is not uniformly cooked. The only thing I could see using a grill pan for is as a "marking" pan -- cook the steak to the appropriate level of done-ness in a cast iron pan (either stovetop or in a low oven basted with butter), and meanwhile get the grill pan screaming hot. Then a quick sear, rotate, sear, flip, sear, rotate, sear to get the criss-crossing "grill marks" (which are purely aesthetic when using a grill pan anyway) and have done with it.
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I'm curious: Who paid for all the wines you reviewed in "Rogov's Guide to Israeli Wines"? Was it you, or your publisher?
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I'd suggest that if a critic gets a reputation for accepting comps and then not giving a place the benefit of the doubt the lesson learned will be to not comp that critic.
I'm not sure I agree. Certainly this would be true with respect to a critic that is overwhelmingly and universally negative (and they do exist). I can't believe than any restaurant ever likes to see this guy. But a critic who has been known to be positive and supportive of the places/things he likes and critical of the places/things he doesn't like, but overall balanced and fair, would likely still continue to be comped. I suppose the one concession a comped writer might need to make would be if the meal was truly horrible, he might go back to the restaurateur and say, "I have to hope that the kitchen was having an off night, because that was terrible. If you want to invite me back later, I'd be willing to give it another try before doing my writeup." This, frankly, is something I would hope that a responsible reimbursed food writer would also do. Otherwise, there are always some good things and some bad things to write about most any restaurant. "Benefit of the doubt" doesn't equal "overall positive review" -- and, Brit reviewers notwithstanding, a place really has to stink to get a shellacking.
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I don't think it takes too many negative reviews following comped meals for the restaurant community to pick up on the idea that a comp doesn't guarantee special treatment from a certain writer. But, if the writer is good enough, fair enough and/or influential enough, and/or if they want reviews badly enough, and/or they have enough confidence in the quality of their restaurant, they'll take the risk anyway. This is exactly the relationship opera and theater companies have with the critics they comp.
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Holly: What about if a restaurant comps the writer a meal, with the expectation that there is likely to be a review, and the writer replies: "I am happy to come and experience your restaurant, but I hope you understand that I can't pull any punches if I write about your place, and I can't make any guarantees that I'll find space in my column."
ETA: I do agree that it's not right for a writer to approach a restaurant and demand comps.
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Danny: I think we all agree that, at least for the sake of appearances if nothing else, it's ideal if the writer is reimbursed (or pays out of his own pocket). But really, if a writer is going to allow his ethics to be swayed to the extent that he goes easy on a place or turns in an undeserved glowing review of a place simply as the result of accepting a press comp. . . how ethical is that writer going to be anyway? How good is his work going to be anyway? Would that writer's work be meaningfully better, or meaningfully more ethical if the comp were removed? I'm inclined to believe that there would simply be other forms of potential influence and ethical conflict that would sway this writer's work in one direction or the other, and the quality would remain low.
Pot-Stilled
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
I certainly agree that pot distillation isn't ideally suited to every spirit. In particular, I wouldn't think that a pot-stilled modern dry gin would be ideal. You want a neutral base so that the aromatics shine through.
As an overgeneralized rule of thumb, I guess my feeling is that pot distillation is better if the spirit will be aged, and column distillation is better if the spirit will not be aged.
One may make a true pot-stilled (i.e., with an alembic) unaged spirit that is refined enough, but I think it's a lot more difficult than using a column still. On the other hand, I suppose it would also be possible to configure a column still to "let through" more character. It is, of course, possible to make a good spirit either way.