slkinsey

There's been some expansion in availability, but -- and I don't want to speak for everyone -- I think there's also simply a greater awareness of what's available. When I look at people's lists, I don't see so many new products as I see products that in 2004 might have been considered obscure but are now the focus of cocktail enthusiasts' interest. Awareness certainly makes a difference. But if today one can get Luxardo maraschino in the hinterlands, I'm betting it wasn't so in 2004. For example, everyone was using Bacardi back in the day because you just couldn't walk into a liquor store and see bottles of Flor de Caña and Brugal alongside the Bacardi. To name a few that are either new, have recently seen radically increased availability or radically increased variety since 1994: Laird's bonded, Rittenhouse bonded and any number of other ryes, several new high-end bourbons, rhum agricole, decent cachaça, decent pisco, crème de violette, pimento dram; Saint Germain elderflower liqueur, absinthe!, Bitter Truth orange, lemon and aromatic bitters, Hermes orange and aromatic bitters, Fee's lemon, grapefruit, peach and barrel-aged bitters, Regan's bitters, Angostura orange bitters, homemade bitters too countless to name, Bittermens bitters for those who can get 'em, radically expanded rum choices, etc, etc, etc. Isn't Luxardo Bitter a Campari knock-off? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I suppose it's a knock-off in the same way that Luxardo's amaretto is a knock off of Amaretto Disaronno. What I get out of Luxardo Bitter is that it's like the "Punt e Mes" version of Campari, with more of everything. Dutch gin, aka "Hollands" is a lightly sweetened, old-fashioned style of gin made in pot still on a base of what is essentially unaged whiskey. Or so I'm told. None is currently imported to the United States, aside from Boomsma, which those in the know say is not terribly indicative of the style. Damrak? Not really. Damrak has some genever-like qualities (softer, wetter), but fundamentally it's still within the universe of dry gin.

I demand that you come over immediately and make me a dozen biscuit dogs.

Has anyone tried the "Vermouth Classico" from Casa Martelletti? I picked up a few bottles recently and have been liking it a lot. It's made on a base of moscato.

For cocktailing, I like Krogstad. I think it has an appealing freshness and softness. Aalborg, in particular, really hits you over the head and I've had difficulty getting it to play nice with other ingredients -- much more difficulty than, say, equally assertive gins. (I've had some frustration with aquavit cocktails, which seem like they should work better on paper.)

You haven't heard that Cointreau is making cognac now? (D'oh! Fixed.)

There's a thread on this topic from 2004 that makes for some interesting comparisons. There's been such an explosion in the availability of certain spirits, certain brands and bitters, etc. Back in 2004, for example, practically everyone uses Bacardi. Here's mine from 2004: Not only have my brands changed, but other categories have radically expanded. Today this is what I have around for all-purpose mixing right now (doesn't include expensive single malts and 20 year old rye, etc): Gin: I always have Tanqueray as my all-purpose mixer and Junipero for special applications. Boodles, Beefeater, Plymouth and Gordon's from time to time. Genever: Boomsma Jonge (whish I could do better & will stock Genevieve when it comes to NYC). Vodka: Luksusowa or Smirnoff. One 1.75L bottle lasts me at least a year. Aquavit: Krogstad, Aalborg, OP Anderson, Linie is what I have around. Once these run out (which will take a very long time) I'll probably stick with Krogstad. Tequila: Heradura Silver -- a good 100% agave mixing tequila. I also have plentiferous Patron and Don Julio Añejo that I received as gifts or swag (and replenish the same way). Pisco: Barsol Cachaça: Mãe de Ouro Rum: Flor de Caña and Brugal white (Cuban-style white), La Favorite (rhum agricole), Lemon Hart (demerara), Appleton and Myers (Jamaican), Inner circle (overproof)... plus some other ones I can't quite recall. Rum is a category where I find you really need to have quite a few to make the cocktails right. A Queens Park Swizzle made with Flor de Caña just isn't going to taste right. Batavia Arrack van Oosten Applejack: Laird's Bonded Calvados: Busnel Cognac: Courvoisier VS and VSOP Rye: Rittenhouse Bonded and Old Overholt are my mainstays. I usually have some Wild Turkey rye around, and the occasional bottle of Baby Saz. Bourbon: Wild Turkey 101 is always on hand. After that, it can vary a lot. I usually have a few other bottles of bourbon around, although I easily drink 8 bottles of rye to each bottle of bourbon. Scotch: The Famous Grouse. Still sticking with the old reliable. Irish: Red Breast, Powers Aromatized Wine: Carpano Antica Formula, Martelletti Classico and Martini & Rossi (red vermouth), Noilly Prat and Vya (white vermouth), Martini & Rossi (bianco vermouth), Carpano Punt e Mes, Lillet Blanc and Rouge (would love to get some Cocchi Aperitivo Americano); Cocchi Barolo Chinato Liqueurs: Cointreau, Grand Marnier, Curaçao of Curaçao, Marie Brizard orange curaçao and Clément Créole Shrubb as orange liqueurs; Luxardo maraschino; Green and Yellow Chartreuse; Bénédictine D.O.M; Licor 43 (vanilla/herbal); Drambiue (scotch/herbal); Marie Brizard crème de cacao; Cherry Heering; Luxardo amaretto; Frangelico; Marie Brizard Apry and Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot liqueur; Rothman & Winter crème de violette; St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram; Velvet Falernum; Saint Germain elderflower liqueur; Strega; Belle de Brillet (pear cognac); etc. I want to buy some Gilka Kümmel and would love to get my hands on some Cherry Marnier. Amari: Cynar, Campari, Fernet Branca, Branca Menta, CioCiaro, Averna Amaro Siciliano, Ramazzotti Amaro, Amaro Nonino, Torani Amer. Plan to add Luxardo Bitter Absinthe: Nouvelle Orleans, Kubler Eaux de vie: Zwack Barack Pálinka, kirschwasser, Poire Williams I feel liks I'm forgetting something. Unless otherwise noted, these are things I would tend to replace after running out. I didn't bother listing bitters, because that would just get ridiculous. (ETA: I remembered a few more)

I have the impression that the demand for Rittenhouse BIB is so much higher than expected, that there are shortages and they are having to ramp up production to meet demand. But, of course that won't be ready for several years. So, it's possible that they are confining distribution to certain markets for the time being.

I'm guessing it's a mispelling of "Gangadin"/"Gangadeen" -- both of which turn up plenty of google hits. I'm also guessing this name was corrupted to "Gunga Din" by Kipling in his famous poem.

Reading many of the cocktail recipes in Dave's new book got me to thinking about cocktail formulae. As the reader will note, many of the recipes in the book are not recipes at all, but rather generic formulae. For example, the Improved [spirit] cocktail consists of 2 ounces of spirit, 1 teaspoon of simple, 1/2 teaspoon of maraschino liqueur, a few dashes of absinthe and a few dashes of bitters. Plug your spirit into the formula, and you've got your cocktail. Other mixologists have favorite ratios and formulae that they like to use. Here's another one I picked up from Dave: 2 ounces of spirit 1 ounce of aromatized wine (vermouth, lillet, etc.) 1 teaspoon of liqueur 1-2 dashes of bitters. Dave's Weeski follows this formula (2 ounces irish, 1 ounce Lillet blonde, 1 teaspoon Cointreau, orange bitters), and I have found it to be a good one. An extension of this idea is: 2 ounces of spirit 3/4 ounce of aromatized wine 1 teaspoon of liqueur 1 teaspoon of some other liqueur 1-2 dashes of bitters Another formula I have found useful is: 2 ounces of spirit 1/2 ounce of citrus 1/2 ounce of something sweet (either simple or liqueur) Bitters optional These modifiers can be increased to 3/4 of an ounce, or even a full ounce. Add an egg white if you like. People have enjoyed playing with the Vieux Carre formula: 1 ounce of spirit 1 ounce of some other spirit 1 ounce of vermouth 1 teaspoon herbal liqueur 1-2 dashes of 1-2 different bitters Any other favorites?

Robert, I wouldn't be so quick to impute nefarious practices to Campari just yet. First of all, Gruppo Campari doesn't "owe" responses to random emails from bloggers and internet forum participants (which, for all intents and purposes, describes almost all of us). Second, although the differences in taste seem quite clear, it is far from conclusive that Campari changed its formula.

I'm with the no-vodka crowd myself. Why even get into the game to make vodka? And, at least when I think about it, it seems that outfits such as Clear Creek Distillery and Tuthilltown Spirits are better positioned for the future than mostly-vodka makers such as Great Lakes Distillery.

Perfluoroisobutene (aka PFIB) is produced by the pyrolysis of polytetrafluoroethylene (aka PTFE, aka "Teflon"). Pyrolysis is the degradation of a substance by heat in the absence of a reagent such as oxygen, water, etc. So, if you put your dry teflon pan into an oxygen free sealed container and heat it above 600F/350C, you will likely produce some PFIB.

This is interesting to me, and suggests to me that age may indeed be a determining factor in this puzzle. If you've got a decent supply of something defunkt you'd like to trade, I might be pursuaded to exchange bottles.

Recently sampled some of Haus Alpenz's St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram at Death & Company, and picked up a bottle at Astor Wines & Spirits to use at home. Like everything in the Haus Alpenz portfolio, it is outstanding. One of my first thoughts was that it reminded me of the "bay rum" aftershave my father used to wear sometimes when I was growing up. Bay rum is made with rum (originally) and the leaves/fruit of the West Indian Bay Tree (Pimenta racemosa) whereas pimento dram is made with rum and the fruit of the closely related Allspice Tree in the same genus (Pimenta dioica). I always wanted to know what that stuff would taste like. As it turns out, Ted Haig's column in the most recent issue of [ur;=http://www.imbibemagazine.com/]Imbibe Magazine featured pimento dram, no doubt to coincide with the American rollout of St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram. It featured the Lion's Tail, which seems to be everyone's introductory pimento dram cocktail of choice, and a tiki drink by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry. Lion's Tail was nice, although I'm likely to dial back the pimento dram nex time around. At 2 ounces Wild Turkey 101 to 1/2 ounce pimento dram, the dram was still pretty overpowering.

This may be a topic for another thread, but I find that a lot of the new "artisinal" distilleries springing up around the country make vodka as the flagship product. This is likely due to a number of factors: 1. Vodka is popular and differences between brands are slight enough that there isn't much of a basis in flavor to differentiate brands other than image, which is advantageous for an "artisinal" distiller. 2. The product doesn't have to be aged and is ready for sale immediately. 3. If you want an unaged product based on neutral spirits, it's less difficult to make vodka than something like gin. But gin (usually soft-pedaling the juniper while playing up other aromatics) and/or flavored vodka usually comes next. 4. It's considerably less difficult, and far less expensive to make vodka than non-neutral unaged distillates such as eau de vie, grappa, or rum that is not wood-aged. To make neutral spirits, you just rectify the bejeesus out of it, and if there is any residual bejeesus left in the spirit post-rectification, that's what filtration is for. To make unaged distillates that are supposed to have some flavor requires a good deal more skill in every phase of the game. 5. Distilling spirits for aging probably isn't quite as finicky as to the distillation parameters compared to making flavorful unaged distillates such as poire williams, but nevertheless requires more skill than distilling neutral spirits and the learning curve may be longer considering that there are many more parameters to consider and the results aren't known until the aging process is completed.

Does anyone have a friend with access to a GC-MS (gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer)?

What we need to do is find someone who has some contacts with Gruppo Campari and put the question to them.

My guess is that breaking pasta is a practice that developed out of two things: 1. A wish to cook the pasta in far to little salted water; and 2. Not understanding how to properly twirl pasta around the fork. #2 isn't rocket science, but a surprising (to me, anyway) number of people have trouble with it. However, there may be a kind of vicious circle at work, because broken-short pasta is more difficult to twirl which might incline one towards more of a "scooping" fork technique, which would then favor shorter pasta.

Yea. . . That's the benefit of a superhot oven with a wet dough and wet toppings. We loved the amount of steam coming off those babies when they pulled them out of the oven. The sauce was practically boiling on the crust. I absolutely agree. It's clearly an elite pizzeria, and even based on only one visit I'd say it's my #1 Manhattan destination now. I haven't been this enthusiastic about a pizzeria since Franny's opened -- and this is a hell of a lot easier to get to for me. You liked the pasta less than "okay"? I thought the seafood was well-cooked (the octopus was tender, which is never easy) but the overall effect just North of "bad" into "okay." Nothing I'd order again. Exactly. It's great to finally have a place in Manhattan that accords with my pizza priorities and uses top-notch ingredients, has more than 3 offerings (or more than 3 worth eating), and costs $15 for an individual-sized pizza instead of $21.

Lamb chops should only need to come up to temperature. I'd recommend cutting them into individual (single or double, depending on your preference) chops and bagging them separately rather than cooking the rack whole. The smaller pieces will come up to temperature more rapidly, and you can trim them up more easily and thoroughly as you are portioning them.

I use my food mill every time I make tomato sauce for pasta. The coarse die gives me just the texture I want, and on the rare occasions I want to include some sauteed vegetables (onion, carrot and celery usually) I can just cook everything together in big chunks until it's tender and then pass it through the food mill to get the texture I want.

After a half-dozen cocktails at Death and Company on Friday, weinoo and myself, along with Mrs. slkinsey and Mrs. weinoo, were in dire need of some food. A short walk found us at Luzzo's, where by some miracle a table was available right by the oven. To make a long story short: Based on this one visit -- and I will have to make many, many more visits to, er, "confirm my first impression" -- I'm ready to call Luzzo's one of the top 2 or 3 pizzerie in the City. I guess I'd characterize Luzzo's pizza as "Patsy's East Harlem with much better ingredients." The char perhaps isn't quite at the same level as Patsy's, but the quality of the mozzarella in particular (which is as good as I've had at any American pizzeria) more than compensates for this difference. Luzzo's pizza is available in two sizes. The smaller is right around the standard Neapolitan size, and the larger is the standard NYC pizzeria "large." We tried a few large ones, and I am anxious to return and try the smaller size. The oven, which appears to be fired by a combination of wood and coal (coal in the firebox below and a pile of wood in the oven itself) is kicking out serious heat. The pizzaiolo said it should be running between 900 and 1000 degrees F, and the fierce heat was readily apparent in the copious steam we observed rising from each pie as it was conveyed from the oven to a table. To my eye, the Neapolitan-sized pizze seemed a little more "well done" compared to the large ones, which makes some sense considering that a 17 inch pizza has double the surface area of a 12 inch pizza. The fierce heat is especially important, because the toppings are quite wet when they go onto the pizza. The sauce is loose, wet, tangy and coarsely ground mixture of tomatoes and a few herbs compared to the reduced, cooked, garlic- and herb-laden sauces typical to stainless deck oven pizzerie from Di Fara on down to Ray Bari. The wetness of the sauce I feel is important because it keeps the top of the crust well moisturized and prevents it from "setting" too early, which allows for better oven spring. Meanwile, the wood fire provides a tiny hint of smokiness and copious reflected radiant heat to cook off most of the moisture in the short time it takes to cook the pizza. The mozzarella! Little pillowey dots were scattered over the surface of the crust in just the right amount so that they still retained a delicious wet, creamy goodness but didn't overwhelm the pizza with too much moisture or the rubbery cheesyness that can come from fresh mozzarella applied with too liberal a hand. Each bite of pizza that included a piece of mozarella was like a little prize. Luzzo's uses mozzarella di bufala, and the difference is striking. We tried two options, both in the large size. The bufala consisted of nothing more than a thin slick of sauce, a judicious application of fresh mozzarella di bufala, and a few pieces of basil. Once weinoo and I had finished shoveling back the first slice, we loudly agreed that it was revelatory -- er, albeit in much more colorful language commensurate with our post-cocktail degree of pickling. This is the reference pizza, and I can hardly imagine a visit to Luzzo's that did not include one of these. For me, only Franny's can compete at this level, and their version of this pizza is distinctively different enough that they're not directly comparable. Next we tried the quatro stagioni, and Italian classic consisting in Luzzo's incarnation of tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella di bufala, mushrooms, ham, olives and artichoke hearts. In its usual Italian form, the mushrooms, etc. would each occupy a quadrant of a 12 inch pizza. I don't know whether Luzzo's does this on the smaller size, but on the pizza we got the four ingredients were intermingled throughout. This pizza, while delicious, suffered in comparison to the bufala: The crust wasn't able to rise as well due to the abundance of toppings, and the artichoke hearts were not fresh. I might try this one again in a small pizza, but probably not as a large one -- it detracted too much from the crust and cheese. In general (and as usual, for me) I'd suggest sticking to the ones that seem to have a lower number of ingredients. In addition to the foregoing, we had two appetizers: Mozzarella imbottita ("stuffed mozzarella), which is a breaded and fried ball of mozzarella di bufala with some mushrooms in the center. This I would definitely recommend. We also had the fritto Napoletano, which they describe as "mixed fried specialties from Naples." It consisted of fried dough, fried rice balls and some fried potato croquettes. These were okay, but I probably won't order them again. Also okay was a special pasta dish with linquine, nicely cooked seafood (octopus, squid, mussels, clams, etc.) tomato and a ton of olive oil. Not sure I'd bother with the pasta again either. We also had a forgetable caesar salad. Definitely won't order that again. Luzzo's 211-213 First Avenue (near 13th Street) 212-473-7447 http://luzzomania.com/ (ETA: Website)

As it turns out, there was a thread a while back on this same subject, which you can see here. My thoughts are much the same now as they were then: One needs only to learn how to properly twirl and eat long strand pasta, and there is no reason to break it in half (as others have pointed out, if you're cooking only one serving's worth you can always boil it in a sauté pan or, if using a small saucepan, simply wait a few seconds for the bottom half of the pasta to sufficiently soften and push the rest of the pasta under the water).

Oh! I didn't realise that was yours. I guess that speaks well of your pizza-making!

Farro (aka emmer ) is Triticum dicoccon and spelt is Triticum spelta. Both are kinds of wheat. It's not clear to me that either one is necessarily helpful for people who have problems with gluten. Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to get a true Italian dry pasta experience with low gluten.