slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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Does anyone have a friend with access to a GC-MS (gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer)?
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What we need to do is find someone who has some contacts with Gruppo Campari and put the question to them.
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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.
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Here is the crust.. On any other pizza it would have been stiff as a board and crunchy.. The pizza dough was just amazing.
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.
Luzzo's is a must try pizza spot.. Seriously, anyone interested in trying what I think could be Manhattan's best pizza place should give it a try..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.
Maybe it was the cocktails, but I guess I liked the Caesar more than slkinsey did. And liked the pasta less.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.
But, bottom line is, it's all about the pizza...I've never been a fan of the over-laden slice, so stick with the "plain" pies or one or two toppings and I don't think you can go wrong here.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.
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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.
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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.
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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
(ETA: Website)
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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:
The main thing about breaking pasta is that it ruins the textural element that is created by the long strands. If long strand pasta was meant to be eaten in short little pieces, it would have been manufactured that way.Besides, regular mass-produced strand dry pasta is only what, a foot long? No reason to make it any shorter. I have some artisinal dry pasta that is around 4 feet long!
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).
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Oh! I didn't realise that was yours. I guess that speaks well of your pizza-making!
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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.
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How can that be a margarita with no basil?
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Instead of using whole wheat pasta in pasta salad, I think it's tastier to use wood shavings. Just make sure you shock them in cold water so they don't overcook.
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I suppose it would depend somewhat on the technique employed in making the bitters. Some of them start out being steeped into alcohol and then the solids are strained out and simmered with some water which is later added into the infused alcohol. When using this technique, it would seem to make some sense to use 190 proof grain alcohol. You are extracting the alcohol-soluble compounds into the alcohol, and the water-soluble compounds into the water, then combining the two. If you are doing a straight infusion, it would make sense to use something at around 100 proof so you get equal extraction of the alcohol- and water-soluble compounds. Of course, perhaps you don't want the water-soluble compounds. That's a matter of choice. For sure, a single-stage infusion into grain alcohol that is then diluted down to 100 proof will taste different from a single-stage infusion into 100 proof alcohol.
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does anyone know anything about surface tensions and dissolving CO2 in liquids? what is the optimal for keeping a gas from escaping a liquid and how do you create the optimal if it doesn't already exist?
i want freshly squeezed (no more than an hour old) sparkling grapefruit juice... the surface tension of the natural juice doesn't like being injected with bubbles that much... can it be done?
Where did you get this idea about surface tension? As far as I know, solubility of a gas in a liquid depends on the gas, liquid, temperature and pressure. But since we're talking about dissolving carbon dioxide into water, for our purposes we can consider this a constant. Solubility, then, depends upon temperature and pressure. Lower temperatures and higher pressures correspond to greater solubility. Time can also be a variable, depending on the carbonation technique used, simply to allow the gas sufficient opportunity to dissolve into the liquid.
We create fizzy liquids by dissolving carbon dioxide into water under increased pressure (chilling the liquid also helps, of course). The liquid fizzes because, when the liquid returns to regular atmospheric pressure, the gas comes out of solution, forms bubbles and we get effervescence. Actually, most of the carbon dioxide simply escapes from the surface of the liquid into the atmosphere without forming bubbles. In order to form bubbles within the liquid, nucleation sites are needed -- usually provided by microscopic pieces of cellulose or tiny points on the surface of the glass (little known fact: the best champagne classes are etched by the manufacturers to provide nucleation sites throughout the glass). Carbonated water in a perfectly clean, flawless glass would not form bubbles.
The size and extent of the bubbles is largely determined by the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved into the liquid, with larger bubbles corresponding to greater amounts of dissolved gas. One reason why we consider small bubbles desirable in champagne is that a certain amount of carbon dioxide is lost through the cork as the wine ages and therefore an aged champagne containes less carbon dioxide compared to a young champagne. The chemical composition of the liquid can also have a minor effect on the characteristics of the bubbles, and of course on the formation and character of a "head" on the liquid as the bubbles rise to the surface. This, and a whole lot more, is explained well in the book Uncorked: The Science of Champagne by Gérard Liger-Belair.
In the formation of persistent bubbles at the surface of the liquid, which is not the same thing as "keeping the gas from escaping the liquid," surface tension and other variables can be important. If you want a persistent foam like that, I would suggest including some egg white in the charger with your liquid.
As for your grapefruit juice. . . so long as it is as cold as possible when carbonated and spends sufficient time under pressure, you shouldn't have any problems. An hour is a fairly short time period, however, if you're using a seltzer bottle. You should also consider that citrus juice is full of suspended particles. These make great nucleation sites and are likely to make the carbonated juice lose its fizz rather quickly. You might consider running the juice through a fine filter (perhaps experiment with a Büchner funnel filter) to remove these particles to the greatest extent possible. Adding some gum arabic could be interesting as well, as it should result in good head retension.
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Yea. . . I don't quite understand the rationale behind eating whole wheat pasta. One serving of De Cecco whole wheat linguine is 180 calories, 35 grams of carbohydrates and 7 grams of dietary fiber. One serving of De Cecco regular linguine is 200 calories 41 grams of carbohydrates and 2 grams of dietary fiber. Personally, I'd rather have a small serving of steel-cut oats for breakfast to make up the difference in dietary fiber and eat the regular linguine.
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What about the fact that perceptions of "saltiness" differ person-to-person and, among other variables, there appears to be a strong habituation effect?
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I'm also often bewildered at how the white, unaged version of a line can be as expensive or nearly so as the reposados and anejos.
I think it's because most of the money is invested up-front in growing the agave and the other things I outlined. Also, the reposado and añejo bottlings aren't aged as much as you might think. Reposado mezcal is only aged between two and twelve months, and añejo mezcal only needs to be older than one year to qualify for the designation. When you consider the entire production cycle starting with the growing of the agave, a joven mezcal might take 8 years and a reposado mezcal might take 8.5 years (aged 6 months) and an añejo mezcal 9.5 years (aged 1.5 years). These are only production time increases of 6.25% and 18.75% for reposado and añejo, respectively, versus joven mezcal. Looking at the Los Amantes mezcals, Astor Wines sells the joven for $60 and the reposado for 8.3% more at $65.
So. . . it's not the same thing as, say, whiskey, where the vast majority of the production time and expense happens post-distillation. In contrast, an 18 year old single malt has a production time that is 50% longer than a 12 year -- not to mention that there are increased losses due to the "angel's share."
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Whole wheat pasta sucks. There's no two ways about it. It's a waste of good salted water.
I've had some pasta made out of emmer wheat -- pasta di grano farro in Italy -- that supposedly has many of the advantages of whole wheat pasta, but is reasonably similar to real pasta.
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However this is not good enough for Living Wage by Memphis standards and we do not have a high cost of living by any means either. It's $14 or $15 an hour without insurance and I think it's $12 an hour with insurance, not a subsidy either.
This depends on how one calculates the living wage. The living wage for Memphis for a single adult with no dependents is only $7.56 per hour. A single adult with a child dependent is $13.35 per hour. If it is a family of four with two working adults, they can do it for around $10.00 per hour each in Memphis. These living wages include medical expenses. Currently, the average Memphis-area compensation for "Food Preparation & Service-Related" is $7.87 per hour -- barely enough to get by if you don't have any dependents.
Hey you can get primary care at (some) county health departments and some emergency rooms.I hope you're joking when you say this. It is disgusting and morally bankrupt that, in the one of the richest countries in the world, we have people who are forced to avail themselves of hospital emergency rooms for primary care -- which, of course, means that they won't get any primary care but are instead compelled by economics to take their chances that they won't need critical care later on down the road.
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I have often remarked that tequila offers fairly low "quality per dollar" compared to other spirits. A decent bottle of 100% agave tequila will run you around 35 dollars, whereas excellent (I would even suggest objectively better) bottles of rum, whiskey and gin can be had at around $20 a bottle.
The price point for good quality mezcal is even higher. For example, the excellent quality Los Amantes joven mezcal retails at around 60 dollars a bottle. That's right around the same as Highland Park 18 year old single malt scotch! As good as the Los Amantes mezcal may be, 18 year old orkney single malt it ain't.
That said, there are some things that contribute to the high price of quality tequila and mezcal (it is, of course, entirely possible to buy cheap, crappy bottles of either product). Some of it is certainly a matter of supply and demand. This is undoubtedly especially true in the case of high-end mezcal. It's also extremely expensive to make a high-end mezcal. The agave plant has to grow for something like eight to ten years before the piñas can be harvested. That's a large initial investment of time, money and risk before the raw ingredient is even ready to be used, and there is really no comparison to other raw ingredients used for distillation such as grains, fruits and potatoes, all of which are ready to be used within one season. Finally, in order to make a mezcal worth drinking, the distiller has to lightly bake the piñas with wood in small ovens for several days, ferment a mash of 100% agave for a month or more and then do multiple small-batch runs through a pot still. Each one of these steps adds cost.
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So . . . I picked up a bottle of the new-label Campari and pulled out a few of the other bottles I had lying around, which consisted of old-label imported and some Italian bottles.
Tasted them all at full strength and room temperature. There is definitely a difference, I'd say. The older Campari had a more subdued middle-of-the-mouth bitterness whereas the new Campari has a more pronounced front-of-the-mouth bitterness with more intensity of flavor and a bit of a bite. Couldn't necessarily say that the newer stuff tasted fundamentally different from the older stuff so much as it tasted . . . well, "newer." The herbal components and bitterness were much more present, bright and up-front. Having tried bitter and herbal infusions at a variety of ages (some of them very old) this isn't a huge surprise. The up-front, bright bitterness of the new example I guess I'd say accords more with my sense memory of the Campari and Campari Soda I've consumed by the gallon during various trips to Italy. I'll need to go back and try them again both diluted and at colder temperature to see how my impressions line up. Whether it will be possible to tell the difference in a cocktail is hard to say.
Other than making some adjustments as to proof (I should point out that Sertl is both incorrect as to the proof and labeling of American-market Campari) I don't believe there are any differences in the formula as Campari is distributed to different regions. Indeed, considering that the formula is known to such a restricted group of people, I have strong doubts that the company is tweaking the herbal infusion for different markets. It would take an corporate effort of such size and scope to target, evaluate and implement regiona-specific changes that I can't believe it wouldn't come out. It does not appear from the reading I have done that the specific coloring agent is considered part of the "secret recipe" -- which makes sense considering that natural carmine was the only ingredient about which the company was not entirely silent. Rather, it seems more likely to me that the "old label" bottles we have floating around the States are quite old and have lost some of their zing. These more subdued flavors do have their own appeal, but I like the brash upfront herbal bitterness as well.
That said, I do prefer the older bottling -- albeit primarily because natural carmine has a stronger and deeper red than the coloring they are using now.
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Now, if that's not an indication that spherified cocktails have joined Arthur Fonzarelli in mid-air, I don't know what is.
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There is nothing wrong with eating a little PTFE (aka "Teflon"). So your only criterion should be how well the pan is working for you.
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From a purely moral standpoint, I don't see how it is possible to defend job compensation at a rate so low that it is not possible for workers to maintain a standard of living that would be within reasonable minimums for our society. It seems wrong somehow to connect a living wage to the performance of skilled labor when one considers that unskilled workers are those most disadvantaged and therefore most in need of the protections that our society should be able to offer. Not to mention that skilled workers are in a much better position to demand higher wages and other benefits.
There is a difference between a skilled worker who chooses to work without high compensation and medical benefits (as I have done for many years as a self-employed musician) but could obtain these things with relative ease, and an unskilled worker who has no choice other than to accept what is offered. I think the very least we can do is ensure that, within our borders, unskilled workers receive compensation and medical coverage within reasonable minimums for our society. Personally, I believe that some of these things (certainly medical coverage) could and should be provided by any modern, first world government. But, of course, they have to be paid for somehow. Some kind of reasonably progressive tax system that includes corporations seems like a logical solution. But if we don't have the political or moral will for that, then there is no recourse than to pass those costs along to employers and they to customers.
I'd rather see restaurants simply raising stated prices by 5% (or a few percent more, if that's what it takes to make it through the slower periods) rather than sneaking the cost in via a surcharge. Of course, there's no reason restaurants shouldn't include the cost of tax in their posted prices either. My guess is that restaurants don't include tax and across-the-board surcharges like this in their posted prices because (a) that is the custom in the United States; and (b) it fools customers into thinking their meal is less expensive (e.g., $11 seems less expensive than $12).
Imbibe!
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
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.