slkinsey

Again, no one is saying that these meals can't be or never are delicious... just that they usually are not. I've given some reasons why I think this is so, based on my experiences with vegans and other health/ethics-based dietary philosophies. I think it's somewhat telling that one is unlikely to hear a non-vegan talk up the delicious food all his vegan friends eat, and indeed most people seem to agree that the best vegetarian restaurant dishes are more likely to be found at non-vegetarian restaurants.

I think if you are going to go as far as eating vegan for the rest of your life, it really must go beyond health issues. And vegans are not the only ones who choose to eat certain things on the basis of their ethics. There are many ways to be healthy, and I don't know anyone who has kept up eating vegan for 10 or 15 years just because it's better for you. And I have honestly never heard anyone vegan talk about complete proteins as part of normal conversation. When we talk about food, we talk about new things we've tried that are delicious. When you're eating vegan, talking about making something even more healthy is kind of silly. Most of what you're eating is going to be pretty healthy, though not necessarily, given the abundance of vegan snack food items. I've known dozens and dozens of practicing vegans, not to mention practitioners of even more restrictive dietary philosophies such as raw foodists. Without exception, a primary concern was the perceived health impact of the food and they tended to view food as fuel rather than something that gives pleasure. This may not have been true 100% of the time -- there was occasional splurging. But, in general, if there were two ways to treat an ingredient and one of them is more ascetic (e.g, using raw tomatoes instead of slow-poaching them in extra virgin olive oil), most vegans will choose the more ascetic option unless it is some kind of special occasion. As for whether your vegan friends are talking about the health aspects of their food, I certainly hope they are. A practitioner of such a restrictive diet needs to pay close attention to make sure they are consuming sufficient protein, etc. -- and especially Vitamin B12. The larger point I was making, however, was simply that vegans are already facing a steep road to deliciousness due to the fact that the diet is so restrictive. Since health and ethical concerns are the primary reasons for adopting this dietary and lifestyle choice, the road is even more steep. Vegans don't have to sit around talking about making their food more healthy ethical. These priorities pervade the lifestyle. I mean, let's be honest here: we're talking about people who eat salad as often two meals a day on a regular basis. There's absolutely no reason it can't be outstanding. But it's also a fact that it rarely is. I also think it's worthy of note that most people seem to agree that the most delicious vegetarian and/or vegan food is often prepared by cooks who don't practice those dietary philosophies -- and who, I would argue, have a fundamentally different outlook on food because their primary goal is deliciousness.

Interesting results, Steven. A few questions and thoughts: How much Palmolive did you use, and in how much water? In the experiments I did (which did not involve raspberries, peaches or grapes but did involve citrus, lettuce and other greens) I filled the entire kitchen sink with water and added around a quarter teaspoon of Dawn. That was plenty to get the same effects ascribed to Veggie Wash, and I probably could have used less. I did not detect any residual flavor from the soap, although it seems clear from your experiences that certain foods are more affected than others. I gather that the main difference was that you detected more residual taste and a more objectionable aftertaste on the items treated with Palmolive? But that there was otherwise no observable difference in the extent to which the different pieces of fruit appeared to have been cleaned of various residues by the two different treatments? Assuming you used minimal Palmolive as I did, I wonder what results might be obtained by either a) further reducing the amount of detergent (e.g., a single drop of detergent in a kitchen sink full of water), or b) using a citrus-based "low impact" organic detergent like this one instead of Palmolive.

I think it goes beyond that. There's an element of asceticism in the way most vegans I've met have practiced their dietary code. A lot of them are just not comfortable with the hedonistic enjoyment of food. There are certainly vegans out there who are culinary hedonists, but not many. Even the best vegan food out there -- for example the Korean Buddhist vegetarian restaurant Hangawi in New York -- tends to reflect the ascetic aesthetic. A vegan restaurant styled after a Michelin three-star restaurant, while a theoretical possibility, would sort of be missing the point. Yes, this is exactly the point. I think someone (Steingarten?) wrote about a survey of American and British that asked them why they were vegetarian. "Health reasons" was the huge #1, with "ethical reasons" a strong #2. Every other reason was dwarfed by these two reasons. It's interesting to note, then, that America and the UK have by far the largest percentage of people who are vegetarians for reasons other than religion or scarsity of animal-derived foods. So, here's the thing: If achieving deliciousness is not the cook's primary goal in preparing vegan food and experiencing deliciousness is not the diner's primary desire in consuming vegan food, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that vegan food is not often delicious. Clearly vegetarian and vegan food can be delicious. Look at the wonderful vegetarian food of India, for example. But Indian vegetarian food grew out of an entirely different mindset. They said: "Our religion says that we cannot eat certain foods. Okay, we will cook with the goal of deliciousness within the dietary restrictions imposed by our religion." The result is a great tradition of delicious vegetarian cooking. Most vegans do not regard their dietary choice in the same way as religiously-restricted people do. For most of them, the dietary restriction is merely part of a larger philosophy of food that places primary importance on perceived health and ethical issues. One is more often to hear a vegan say something like, "I added such-and-such to this dish in order to make a complete protein" than "*I added such-and-such to this dish because these two ingredients are delicious together." I would argue that, while it is not impossible to create delicious food that is vegan, the task is made incredibly more difficult by being so restricted in its use of ingredients that humans are genetically programmed to consume and crave. So long as deliciousness takes a back seat to other issues, it's unlikely that vegan cooking will be particularly delicious. This is especially true with respect to the way vegan cooking is perceived by non-vegans. Non-vegans are used to consuming a wider range of ingredients, including those the body is programmed to crave and consume, and are used to partaking of cooking traditions that prioritize deliciousness (plk's Thanksgiving example, while interesting, doesn't reflect everyday mainstream vegan cooking, nor does it seem particularly hedonistic compared to a mainstream omnivore Thanksgiving). A number of vegans and raw foodists claim to derive gustatory pleasure from their diet, and while I cannot discount their subjective experiences I do think these subjective evaluations are greatly influenced by the loss of context created by a highly restricted diet and also the fact that many of these diets are extremely low calorie and hunger is the greatest seasoning.

Todd, did you use blended or bonded applejack? The blended product (comes in a bottle that looks like this) is only around 35% apple brandy blended with neutral spirits and a little apple wine. It has a much lighter flavor and color compared to the bonded product (comes in a bottle that looks like this, which is 100 proof and 100% apple brandy.

I'd just do a bonded applejack Old Fashioned Cocktail: 2 oz bonded applejack (there's your apple), 1 tsp 2:1 demerara syrup (there's your caramel) and 2 dashes of aromatic bitters (there's your spice). Stir/strain/garnish with a fat twist.

Short answer: Big ice cubes take longer to chill the drink and also melt at a slower rate compared to cracked or crushed ice. This is useful when you are shaking a drink, because it gives you the opportunity to shake the drink longer (thereby getting better aeration, creating better foam, etc.) without watering the drink down. Long answer: Check out the thread on ice. I also, despite being a traditionalist, prefer the modern differentiation between a smash and a julep (the former containing muddled citrus and being served on the rocks). I don't see much point in changing the name just because the size of the drink is different. Or should we start calling the gigantic restaurant cocktail a "Martone."

Steven, you have some points, but some of your examples demonstrate why google searching has its limitations in a discussion like this. Pizza al taglio, for example, simply means "pizza in slices." This is typically a long rectangular pizza that is sold in slices by the pound -- common in Rome, but by no means unknown elsewhere. Regardless, this is something that every Italian understands is very closely related to pizza Napoletana and the other typical forms of pizza one might find around Italy. (I should point out that I am not suggesting that pizza Napoletana defines "pizza.") Pizza fritta is something that evolved from pizzeria more or less by some pizzaiolo putting another piece of dough on top of regular pizza and tossing it into a fryer. Again, not very far removed at all. Pizza ripiena is not exactly the same thing as a calzone, although I should point out that a calzone is nothing more than a regular pizza that has been folded in half before baking (again, not very far removed at all). Pizza ripiena actually takes a number of forms. Most often, it's simple a regular pizza with more-than-usual toppings that is covered with another piece of dough and baked. Clearly related to the same concept of pizza and not very far removed at all. I'm going to disagree with you that plenty of Italians would call sfincione "pizza." Of course there are some, but this wouldn't be any more than might call focaccia "pizza", which it clearly is not. I'll also disagree that any of these things is less recognizably "pizza" to an Italian than Chicago Style. In any event, your point is well made that there are other things called "pizza" by Italians. I'm not sure I agree with the rest of your point, however. Look at it this way: There are plenty of things that are called "biscuit" in this country. We have sourdough biscuits, yeast biscuits, baking powder biscuits, drop biscuits, rolled biscuits, tall/fluffy biscuits and shorter crisper biscuits. These encompass a fairly wide, but also understandably related category of "biscuit." But there are other things called "biscuit" as well. We have dog biscuits, tea biscuits, hard biscuits, beaten biscuits, and so on. "Biscuit" is even slang for a woman's breast. And in Canada "biscuit" may mean "small, flattish sweet cakes." It would not be any less appropriate to call a scone or a cupcake a "biscuit" than it would be to call a calzone a kind of "pizza." And yet, if you were to take an American from the Deep South to a restaurant in Parma that was serving "ham biscuits" that consisted of prosciutto inside a panino (prosciutto is a kind of ham, of course, and a panino could certainly be considered a type of yeast-raised "biscuit") I would expect that person to say: this is a pretty good sandwich, but I don't know why they're calling it a "biscuit." Ultimately, however (and I guess I wasn't clear above), I don't really have a problem with calling it "Chicago Style" or "Deep Dish" pizza. Regardless of the fact that I think it's more related to other kinds of foods, I can certainly see how it is related to the American conception of pizza (e.g., the typical seasonings and ingredients, the fact that it is served in slices like a pizza, etc.). But I can equally see why an Italian would be just as mystified at calling that food "pizza" as my hypothetical American Southerner would be eating his "ham biscuit" in Parma.

Most of the Vollrath Tribute line is 8 gauge (except for the very smallest pieces, which are 10 gauge). They are aluminum core with an interior and exterior cladding of stainless steel, just like the All-Clad Stainless line. However, Vollrath's specifications are actually a little better. Tim, a micrometer-equipped eGulleter, recently measured All-Clad Stainless at 0.100 inches (2.54 mm) thickness, and MC-2 at 0.120 inches (3.05 mm). 8 gauge aluminum is 0.1285 inches (3.26 mm) thick. This strikes me as a small difference, but certainly a meaningful one considering that you can get a 10 inch Vollrath Tribute frypan with better specifications for around 45 bucks whereas the same size frypan in All-Clad Stainless retails for over 100 dollars and deep discounts at around 70 (MC-2 retails at around 90 and deep discounts to around 60).

Several things come to mind: 1. It strikes me that most cultures that consume a wide variety of mammals are situated in areas where the conditions are congenial to, and sometimes require raising and hunting a wide variety of animals in a relatively small geographical area. A great example of this would be the Italian peninsula. America, on the other hand, due to the fact that the vast majority of our country consists of a large flat place in the middle, is better suited to growing lots of the same plants or animals over a large geographical area. This, combined with the fact that we are a young country and have largely optimized our meat industry to take advantage of shipping and economies of scale, has resulted in fewer "regional meats" and less choice overall. In Italy (France, etc.) on the other hand, it's impossible to grow a zillion cows in one place in the middle of the country and to feed all those cows on ten zillion tons of corn all grown in on place in the middle of the country. This "geographically mandated diversity," as well as the much greater age of the culture, has resulted in a wider variety of "regional meat" traditions (the people in the central mountains eat guinea fowl and lentils, the people a few miles away on the coasts do not, etc.). Plenty of cultures, however, have even narrower meat consumption than the States. Some eat practically nothing but goat and lamb. 2. Another reason we don't eat a wider variety of mammals here is because many of them are prohibitively expensive. When I'm in Italy, rabbit costs no more than chicken. So I eat a lot of rabbit. Everyone does. But here, it's too expensive to be more than an occasional treat and, frankly, if I'm going to spend 20 bucks on a three pound bone-in small animal yielding around 1.5 pounds of meat, I'm likely to go for something a bit more exciting than rabbit. This is too bad, because rabbit is a mild, lean and healthful meat. You can say similar things about bison: why spend 20 bucks a pound on a bison strip steak when you can get better-tasting aged beef for the same price? 3. The end of my previous point takes me directly to this one: some of the products that "they" seem to want us to try simply aren't all that good (certainly not good enough to pay the much higher prices). This may have to do with the fact that the meats don't sell as well and therefore are more likely to have been frozen, resulting in a mushy texture. But sometimes... well, here's an example: Fat Guy and I once had the opportunity to sample a bunch of dishes at a good "second tier" Manhattan steakhouse. When it came time for the steaks, they gave us several. I think there was a ribeye for two, a porterhouse for two and a bone-in bison strip steak. Needless to say, there was no way we were going to eat it all, but we wanted to try everything. We both took one bite of the (perfectly cooked) bison steak and decided that we wouldn't waste any more precious stomach space on it. It simply wasn't very good. 4. I think that the early industrialization of the American food system combined with the early and wholesale proliferation of monoculture (largely abetted by mass media but also overtly and covertly encouraged by the government, especially during the Cold War years) resulted in the narowing-down of American food choices and we standardized on the three mammals that are the least "challenging" in beef, pork and chicken. This effect may have been especially magnified in the years immediately following the Second World War when industrialization, television/mass media and nationwide uniformity/conformity really took off in the States.

Indeed, most Siciliani would say that sfincione is not pizza. Chicago Style Pizza I suppose falls within the definition of what we call pizza in the United States. But, really, Americans will call anything that involves a bread-based base topped with some combination of something vaguely saucy, something vaguely cheesy and/or something vaguely Italian-tasting "pizza." Thus, a lamejun is an "Armenian pizza" and a tostada is a "Mexican pizza." Even focaccia, which is certainly not pizza, could fall under this definition (and is considered a kind of pizza by many Americans). Chicago Style Pizza certainly has more in common with a casserole and many other non-pizza dishes than it does with pizza. I would argue that it is only the vaguely Italian flavors, including the copious use of tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, that makes Chicago Style Pizza "pizza." For example, if you take a thin crust and top it with some braised lamb, thin potato slices and cheese and bake it in a hot oven, you've got a lamb and potato pizza. Make that same dish "Chicago Deep Dish Style" and you have a Shepherd's Pie. The foregoing notwithstanding... for better or worse, we call it "pizza" in the States and, if you're me anyway, it can be delicious. But I agree that most Italians would not consider it pizza.

Vacuum seal and keep it in the refrigerator. If you can, see if you can pick up the half-bottles instead of the full bottles.

I don't know if it is a typo, but there is no space between cio and ciaro -- although I can understand how one might think there is a space considering that that it is capitalized as CioCiaro on the bottle. (I swear there is more to this post than nitpicking spelling.) The reason this struck me as odd is that Amaro CioCiaro is named after a small sub-sub-region in the Southwest of Lazio called Ciociaria and I can't think of why they would capitalize it that way (except maybe because it looks cool?). A person from this region would be called a Ciociaro, which is also the name of the local dialect and would further (as in the the case of the amaro) describe something coming from that region. This name is probably derived from ciòcia (from Latin soccus, which gave us "sock"), which I can best describe as traditional footware of shepherds comprised of a leather slipper bound to the foot with leather straps which are further wound up the legs. Hard to describe, but you would recognize them if you saw them. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting bit of trivia about Amaro Ciociaro that was brought to my mind by the capitalization.

I think one of the best ways to keep a PTFE coated surface clean is to immediately spray it down with hot water as soon as you take the food out of it -- while it's still warm and none of the oil has had a chance to bond to the surface. If you let an oily residue sit on a PTFE surface, my experience is that it does like to stick around.

High heat cooking. Have you ever cooked something at high heat in a stainless pan and when you're done there is a light brown residue (usually around the inner sides of the pan) that is tough to scour away? That is polymerized fat. Polymerized fat is also the "seasoning" that builds up on cast iron cookware. If that's what it is, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that it's relatively easy to keep cookware free of built-up polymerized fat: just make sure you diligently clean it all away after every use. The bad news is that once it does build up, it is very difficult to clean away without resorting to chemical means. I've spent as long as 20 minutes working on the outside of a Calphalon frypan scrubbing as hard as I can with Bar Keeper's Friend and a brand new Scotch Brite pad, and still didn't get it all off. The further bad news is that, as you may imagine, the treatment I just described is not advised for a PTFE-coated surface. Indeed, the polymerized fat is harder than the PTFE coating, so there is little hope of scouring it off or dissolving it with chemicals without hurting the nonstick surface. The moral of this story is that PTFE coated pans shouldn't be used for high heat cooking unless they are "throwaway" nonstick pans you expect to burn through and replace in a year or less.

Is this oily surface on the inside or the outside? I assume it's on the inside? My best guess is that it may be polymerized fat. Does the oily surface cover the entire cooking surface of the pan? If it's polymerized fat, I don't see how you'd get it off without scrubbing away the PTFE coating. If you're talking about the exterior of the pan, you might try finding an aluminum-safe pan and oven cleaner.

For a variety of reasons I've found myself on airplanes a lot recently, and as light airplane fare have been reading some detective books by Sicilian author Andrea Camilleri. One thing that is very interesting about Italian popular fiction is that the authors often spend significant time describing what the characters are eating, and the characters are often great lovers of food. Camilleri's stories are set in the Sicilian town of Vigàta, and his protagonist, commissario Montalbano, eats fish and seafood almost exclusively (one gets the impression this is true of most everyone there). Many wonderful dishes have been described, and I find myself in serious need of guidance and inspiration in making these dishes and others like them for myself. Ideally what I'd like is a Southern Italian fish and seafood cookbook. Failing that, a comprehensive Italian fish/seafood cookbook or a fish-heavy Sicilian cookbook would be just the thing. Recommendations?

I recently improvised a Caipirinha variation I thought was pretty good. I julienned around three slices of fresh ginger and muddled that in around a half-ounce of cachaça. I let that sit off to the side while I cut a small lemon in half and removed the center pith (I would have used limes, but didn't have any). Muddled the lemon in a rocks glass with superfine sugar, strained in the ginger-infused cachaça plus an additional few ounces, dropped in several large ice cubes, topped with a small mixing tin, shook the whole thing and poured it back into the rocks glass. The milder-flavored lemon let the ginger come through more than lime might have, and the fresh muddling provided a nice backbone of bite.

As the owner of both a heavy anodized aluminum roasting pan and an All-Clad Stainless roasting pan dating fom the days when they actually had an aluminum core in their Stainless roasting pans (they no longer do), that is the opposite of my experience: The anodized aluminum roasting pan warps, the stainless-clad aluminum pan does not.

Unlined aluminum cookware for home cooks is rarely manufactured at a sufficiently heavy gauge to avoid warping. There are some professional lines at >5 mm that I imagine don't warp. Anyway, the stainless lining does seem to provide some kind of structural integrity that helps to prevent warping in clad aluminum cookware.

I'm not sure there is anything special about Kold Draft cubes and temperature, except for the temperature to which the freezer is set. If you have the freezer set to -2F (-19C) then any ice inside the freezer will be at -2F. In practical situations, bar ice is almost always considerably less cold than home ice. This is because home cocktailians take their ice directly from the freezer (typically below zero degrees F) whereas professional bartenders take their ice out of a open bin. The probable reason Toby's chunk and shard ice is colder than regular "shaking ice" is that it is stored in the freezer. If the temperature of the shaking ice is equal, there are many things that give Kold Draft ice an advantage. Due to the way the ice is formed, it is denser than many other kinds of ice. This means that it has a larger thermal capacity compared to other ice of the same size, which equals a colder drink. Also, when you are shaking, it is advantageous to have larger pieces of ice with a smaller surface area to volume ratio because you can shake longer (again, resulting in a colder drink) without overly diluting the drink. There is a theoretical optimal size and surface area to volume ratio for chilling a shaken drink with approximately 20% dilution, but I'm not sure what that is. It's something I plan to look into in the future. Interestingly, the physics change for stirred drinks, and we would rather have smaller pieces of ice with a greater surface area to volume ration. This is why we typically use big pieces of ice for shaken drinks and smaller pieces of cracked ice for stirred drinks. The difference between using cracked and whole Kold Draft ice for stirred cocktails was clearly demonstrated by johnder and myself one evening at PDT when we prepared two sample drinks, one with whole Kold Draft cubes and one with cracked ice. After stirring to the approximate same dilution, it was obvious that the cracked ice drink was colder. On the other hand, if we had shaken the same samples, the cracked ice drink would have been watered.

Yea. Kold Draft is awesome. Not quite sure where the figure "40% colder" comes from, as that doesn't make any sense from a thermal standpoint (is 100C "twice as hot" as 50C? or is 212F "twice as hot" as 122F?). But they're nice dense cubes with good clarity. Most of the best places are using Kold Draft.

Interestingly, lately I've been getting limes with almost two ounces of juice, and lemons that barely have a half-ounce.

Yea, as Toby points out, staff buy-in is important in any endeavor like this. One thing I think you have to be willing (and able, depending on the circumstances) to do if you are trying to "convert" an already-opened bar or restaurant bar into a serious cocktail spot is get rid of people who aren't with the program and replace them with people who are interested in buying-in to your way of doing things. This is fundamentally no different from what happens in restaurant kitchens when a new chef comes in. However, owners may have more resistance to moving out uncooperative bar staff as opposed to an uncooperative line cook. A big part of this is developing talent (something that is becoming increasingly important in NYC with the huge proliferation of cocktailian bars). It's not enough to have a consultant come in to train the staff and create a list of drinks. You need to have someone on-site who knows what he/she is doing training the staff and developing talent. If you can do this, you may be surprised at how far you can come in a short period of time. Some of the best NYC 'tenders today were the "new guy" in the cocktailian community not too many years ago. But the moral of the story is that, if you find yourself in a position where you have to ram jiggers down the gullets of your bar staff, it's time to start looking for some new bar staff. Friends of mine who have worked in situations with unionized bar staff, have had to struggle against quite a bit of institutional resistance -- and ultimately I think a lot of people in those situations simply resort to batching the specialty cocktails.

As chance would have it, I'll be in Houston this weekend and hope to have a few things to report on this subject.