slkinsey
-
Posts
11,151 -
Joined
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by slkinsey
-
-
Ice is a funny thing. Well actually water is a very very funny thing. It expands when frozen, instead of expanding when heated like every other element in the known universe. That might be an overstatement I ditched all my chem classes in high school. As well as my spellin classes starting way earlier.
Water freezes at 32 degrees F. But water can get much much colder. In Chicago I was getting The chunk, and shard ice down to 2 degrees below 0 F. At this stage ice sticks to your fingers. It smokes and shatters. KD ice has many good qualities. It is a good size for shakers, it is colder than regular ice (how much is a guess on anybodies guess, but numbers are allways thrown around. But once it gets into a well behind the bar that number is moot.) But the fact remains that KD ice Rocks!
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.
-
Toby has impressive knowledge and technique, he's also got some of the best body control I've seen behind the bar and just the right touch of understated flair.
-
as for Milwaukee, I lived there in the late 90's and still visit friends there pretty much yearly:
the bar near the opera was almost certainly Eagan's. like Elsa's on the Park (sister restaurant to Bar 89 in NY and AZ-88 in Arizona), it does have a reasonably solid liquor inventory and bartenders who seem to take some care.
Exactly. It was Eagan's. Excellent back bar, but no one there who had the faintest idea how to make use of it and they don't have rudimentary tools such as jiggers on hand. I'll also add that, while the bar is well-stocked, the back bar is more designed as decoration than as a cocktail bar that takes advantage of that inventory (you shouldn't have to climb up a ladder to get at the Luxardo). That said, they do seem enthusiastic and interested, they have the right clientele, and I think there is potential there.
All it would take in Milwaukee is for the head bartender at any of the listed places to make it policy to make drinks correctly. A couple jiggers and some training probably. The places have quality ingredients for the most part. Seems like it has to come to the staff from the management.For me, until about year ago, I though jiggers were for bartenders who weren't good enough to estimate. A trip to The Violet Hour in Chicago changed my mind about that. I wonder if some people have the same mistaken belief.
Yea. Really what it takes is for someone dedicated to start a trend. Anyplace that already has a respectable number of people in the right demographic (and Eagan's certainly fits that bill) can only benefit by becoming known as a temple of the cocktail.
WRT jiggers, the most common justification for free-pouring I hear is that it's much faster than using a jigger. Well, I'll put up the NYC jiggering crowd (which pretty much consists of anyone coming out of the Flatiron-Pegu-Milk & Honey school) against any free-pouring bartender on specialty cocktails and be confident that the jiggering guys will at least match the free-pouring bartenders on speed and kill them on consistency.
-
It's worth noting, however, that there is some fluctuation in the price of this, and all oils at Fairway. I don't recall buying it for more than around 20, but have definitely bought it for less in the past.
-
Oh yea, the finish holds up fine. However, for 100% anodized aluminum, I find that those spots tend to be "sticky spots" on the pan. This is one reason I no longer cook on anodized aluminum surfaces (I do have some nonstick with anodized aluminum exteriors).
-
WRT salad dressing: I agree, if we're talking about the kinds of salad dressings we're likely to make these days (which tend to be lower in oil and to emphasize vinegar and other strong flavorings). The Italian way of dressing salad tends to be a lot more like what Steven suiggests: the greens are mostly dressed with oil, and then a little vinegar is added as a counterbalance. The point is to taste the oil.
WRT similarities to cooking with wine: There is definitely something there. Certainly it wouldn't make sense to cook with a $40/liter olive oil, because everything that makes the oil special would be lost in the cooking process. However, there are some instances where it does make sense to cook with one wine over another wine (perhaps one wine has really heavy tannins and you either do/don't want that in your dish).
At the high end, the things that distinguish olive oils from one another are fairly subtle "top note" qualities that are likely to be lost in cooking. However, between the middle range (let's say $13-$20/liter) and the bargain basement there are often larger, more obvious differences. I've never found an olive oil selling at 10 bucks a liter that can compete with middle range oils such as the Barbera oils or the various Fairway oils (which are excellent) on intensity and depth of flavor, and that has to carry through cooking to some degree, just like it would if you chose a strongly flavored wine over a weak and watery wine. This is especially true if, as I suggest upthread, you add a little raw oil at the end (if I'm watching the fat content, I prefer to be miserly with the oil I use for cooking so I can add the balance raw at the end).
Of course, there are certain instances where it doesn't make sense to use any kind of olive oil at all. If I'm browning meat at high temperature, I'll just use something neutral and high-temperature stable like grapeseed oil.
This is perhaps getting a little off topic, but I wonder if others have this experience. As I've grown older I've started paying more attention to my fat consumption, and actively worked to reduce it. This has led me to various techniques where I try to get the maximum flavor impact out of my fat calories (such as the "adding some back in raw" technique I describe above) and has led me to the practice of using different fats, both animal- and plant-derived, in order to take advantage of their various properties and flavors. As a result, I find that I am much more sensitive to the flavor contributions of various fats than I have been in the past. There are certain dishes where I might previously have reached automatically for olive oil where I will now use a different fat because I don't want the olive flavor that now seems to come through so strongly. For example, unless I am specifically going for an Italian or Spanish effect, I don't cook eggs in olive oil (or even any of the filling ingredients if I am making an omelet).
-
Yerba maté isn't particularly bitter unless it is infused into boiling water. I would say it's somewhat similar to green or oolong tea, only without the bitterness and astringency.
-
For sure cooking makes a difference in the way olive oils are perceived. And I think it's true that the more the oil is cooked, the more the oil's unique qualities are obscured. It would have been interesting if you had done a control sample with the potatoes using a neutral oil such as grapeseed oil.
Now, that said... To a certain extent, I do wonder whether using a better quality olive oil or an olive oil with certain properties contributes to the overall quality and characteristics of a dish in some undefinable way (this is what markk is talking about). For example, if you have two people making a pasta sauce and one person uses low priced but reasonably good supermarket-level olive oil, canned tomatoes, onions, garlic and fresh thyme from those little plastic containers, and the other person uses Frantoia Barbera, DOP San Marzano canned tomatoes, onions on the stem and hardneck garlic and fresh thyme from the greenmarket... The second guy's tomato sauce is going to taste a lot better. The thing is that any one of these ingredients on its own would be unlikely to make a big difference in the quality of the dish. Rather, it was the layering of one higher-quality ingredient on top of the other that made the difference.
Like markk, I think I can taste the difference in simple preparations between using one oil or another. But, more than anything else, I choose what I think of as a middle-priced olive oil as my everyday oil because I like to add a little raw oil off the heat and I'd rather not be bothered with having to use stock 5 different grades of olive oil. As Steven pointed out, a quick light drizzle of oil off the heat is the best way to showcase the qualities of an olive oil. I find that this practice greatly enhances the deliciousness of a dish (as does a quick swirl of raw butter off the heat in other dishes) and so I use this technique extensively. Something like Frantoia Barbera is excellent quality for use as a raw "finishing oil" for family meals at home, and really adds a lot. I'm only breaking out the $50/liter or hand-schlepped-from-Italy stuff for company and special occasions, and I don't care to use lesser grades of oil this way.
-
I saw a comment, forget which thread, that MC2 was thinner than it used to be but I thought it still offered thicker aluminum than the Stainless line?
MC is still thicker than Stainless. But it's not as thick as it used to be.
Also, fwiw, I think anodized aluminum is a much bigger maintenance hassle than stainless.I have a bunch of 17 year old calphalon, and the cooking surfaces have gotten beaten to hell ... knicks, dents, dings, and faded anodizing. But the outside surfaces, including the parts that get banged and scraped across stove grates, have held up beautifully. It's curious.
I find that oil and high temperature cooking inevitably equals spots on the exterior of an anodized aluminum pan that are far more tenacious than the worst tarnish I've ever got on the outside of a copper pan. Some spots can be tenacious on the outside of stainless as well, but with stainless you can always just spray the pan down with oven cleaner and leave it in a plastic bag overnight. You can't do this with anodized aluminum without ruining the pan.
-
If only we could pull a team of crack lab researchers off of whatever trivial disiease they're trying to cure and point them at something really important....
The thing to do would be to determine exactly how much 1:1 (or 2:1) simple syrup has the same weight of sugar as a half teaspoon of superfine. Then have someone else make two Daiquiris (several Daiquiris would provide a more convincing result, but would be wasteful) and serve them to you. See if you can taste a difference between the two.
-
Not vastly different. But when you're measuring sugar this precisely and in these small amounts, it's difficult to do with simple syrup. How do you get a half teaspoon's worth of sugar out of a 1:1 simple syrup?
-
If I went AC I wouldn't go stainless anyway....I'd go MC2, or LTD if I were feeling flush. According to SLK's article these offer thicker aluminum layers, and my experience suggests the anodized exterior of the LTD should hold up better cosmetically than a stainless exterior.
For the record: My article is due for some updating in a few areas, and this is one of them. All-Clad has changed its specifications since I got my data, and the aluminum in the MC line in particular seems to be quite a bit thinner.
Also, fwiw, I think anodized aluminum is a much bigger maintenance hassle than stainless.
-
How close does someplace need to be to Lincoln Center to have a reasonably-paced after-work dinner and still make an 8PM (or occasional 7:30PM) curtain?
-
Yea, I suppose that's true. Lucky us.
Still, 16 bucks for a liter of extra virgin olive oil definitely seems less expensive to someone living in NYC than it does someone living in, e.g., Akron.
-
adey73, to answer your question as to temperature: There are certainly temperature differences based on bean variety and/or blend (remember that espresso is always a blend), roast and roasting technique, and brewing method. Going back to your earlier question, it is not the case that good espresso machines have a higher temperature that others can't provide. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Cheap "steam toy" machines that depend on the pressure of steam to force the water through the beans (as opposed to a pump) have to brew at higher temperatures and produce a characteristically "burnt" flavor profile.
What distinguishes the better machines can largely be summed up into two things: First, pressure (how hard can the pump pump). Second, temperature and temperature stability (at what temperature does the machine brew the coffee, and how much variability is there in brewing temperature from shot-to-shot).
By modifying the Silvia with a PID controller, we are attempting to greatly enhance the second characteristic of a better espresso machines: temperature (you can choose your own temperatures with a remarkable degree of accuracy) and temperature stability (the digital readout is handy, but I believe PIDed machines also recover back to the target temperature more rapidly).
-
I have to say that I would never judge a restaurant by the average age of its clientele, and I don't think this is a valid barometer.
This is not merely a question of age. You're talking about a clientele composed largely of opera-going individuals of a certain age, at a certain level of affluence and with priorities that incline them to have an expensive meal on the Grand Tier as opposed to any of the other locally-available choices at a similar price point. And, on top of that, you're dealing with food-delivery logistics that make it, for all intents and purposes, a catering operation.
Or, I might take it to mean that if people old and wealthy enough to dine there choose to do so, it must be great. Or that they opted for the convenience, which is considerable.Or, you might take the reports of people who have been there a number of times and reported it to be mediocre-to-terrible in quality to mean that the quality has historically been mediocre-to-horrible. Whatever reasons people may be giving for supposing the food is the way that it is, everyone on this thread who has been there thus far says that it's not been very good.
I was asking if anyone has eaten there since the Patina group took over and installed a new chef.Who exactly are do you think Patina Group took over from? The name of the business is "Restaurant Associates-Patina Group." It's since been renamed as "Patina Restaurant Group" but there's not much indication that anything is different at the Grand Tier Restaurant. Indeed, this press release from Lincoln Center suggests that the makeover of the Grand Tier Restaurant isn't scheduled to happen until Fall 2009, and as far as I can tell the executive chef, Martin Burge, has been there since at least last season.
And though it's completely off-topic, if the baritone Sherrill Milnes was in the cast of an opera that I had tickets to, I can assure you that my seats would go empty the entire evening. So if those ladies left and headed to a restaurant, it would signal to me that they had exquisite taste and that the restaurant was probably wonderful.Milnes had a rather precipitous fall-off in the concluding years of his performing career, but could (and, in this case, did) still pull off the occasional excellent performance in a signature role as late as the early 1990s. I won't bother quibbling about individual tastes (some people never liked Luciano, after all), but one cannot dispute that Milnes was at the very top of his field in the 70s and 80s. 1993 was past his best years, but not so far into his decline that there wasn't something worth listening to. My point, however, was simply that these ladies had spend multiple hundreds of dollars on tickets to an opera featuring at the very least a legendary Cavaradossi still in his prime and a legendary Scarpia somewhat past his prime, and yet they came only to hear the aria from the not-legendary Tosca. This is not indicative of the kind of mind set that would prioritize having an outstanding meal before an opera performance over convenient, unchallenging food -- but it is indicative of a financial situation that doesn't mind paying high prices for the latter.
-
...inexpensive enough at around $19/liter to use for everyday cooking...
which makes it almost $ 72.00 a Gallon - 'inexpensive' ?
I don't think so
For decent quality olive oil, absolutely. As I said before, if I were going to be deep-frying in extra virgin olive oil I'd choose a less expensive brand. But for an everyday olive oil, I think this is reasonably priced for what you get. And, to be clear, what you get is an oil that's priced low enough that you don't feel like you're lighting your cigars with hundred dollar bills if you use it to soften garlic and onions for a tomato sauce, and yet has a good enough flavor that you can radically improve that same tomato sauce by drizzling on some raw oil off the heat and can use it to dress a tender green salad. This is something you can't do with, say, Bertoli or Colavita and obtain anywhere near the same quality result
I like the convenience of not having to stock 50 different grades of olive oil and I like having something reasonably high in quality for raw use at family meals when I don't want to break out the expensive Tuscan oil I hand-schlepped back from Italy. Personally, I don't like cooking with an oil I wouldn't be happy to use raw. As for whether using a good quality olive oil makes a difference when you use it as a cooking oil, all I can suggest is that you try it out and see for yourself. I've done side-by-side experiments and concluded that it does make a difference (and an even bigger difference if you use some raw oil at the end). Styles of cooking may make a big difference, of course. A tomato sauce with sausage, dried herbs and loads of garlic is much more likely to obscure differences in oil quality than a simple sauce with softened onion, San Marzano tomatoes and fresh parsley. Then again, if price is the major concern, I have to wonder how much difference one could taste in that first sauce between cheap olive oil and even cheaper vegetable oil. One of the things I especially like about Frantoia Barbera is that it has a big, "olivey" flavor that comes through even when it's used as a cooking oil.
Whether or not seventy bucks a gallon for olive oil is expensive is a matter of perspective. Looking at Steven's example, if I were using so much extra virgin olive oil in family cooking that the difference between Frantoia Barbera and Edda was costing me four hundred bucks a year, I think the difference in flavor would be even more worth the money than if I were only using enough to make a forty dollar difference. I also happen to think it's worth paying five bucks for a kilo of artisinal dry pasta compared to 89 cents a pound for Ronzoni, and the expensive stuff is still remarkably cheap on a per-serving basis.
For what it's worth, we also have to acknowledge that prices that seem reasonable to those of us who live and earn in the greater NYC area are often way higher than people in other areas of the country would find acceptable. This is a city where a half-million dollars for a 600 square foot studio in the right neighborhood is thought of as a bargain. Most likely, the same oil would be priced significantly lower in other cities.
-
I wonder a bit about Austin, which I perceive (perhaps wrongly?) as largely dominated by the college scene. College kids, by and large, aren't going to spend ten bucks on a cocktail and probably aren't ready to appreciate a perfectly made Sidecar.
Houston may have some possibilities. One of the things I see as a potential problem for Houston, which is true of many automobile-age American cities, is that it is very spread out and required automobile travel. There is (hopefully) no driving for 45 minutes after a three cocktail evening. On the other hand, there are some places where restaurants and homes are within comfortable walking distance or a short taxi ride from potential good cocktail bar locations. The Rice Village comes to mind, for example. One place in Houston that would seem ready for a cocktail bar would be Houston Heights, which is a reasonably affluent (and rapidly gentrifying), young (but not too young), fairly close-together, "hip" community.
Boston maybe? There is certainly the necessary affluence, culture and public transportation there. But, on the other hand, that city (where I grew up) has always been somewhat frustrating in its inability to sustain things one would think would be naturals. For example, Boston has never had the restaurant or social community one would think it should have, and one would think that a city with the Boston Symphony could sustain at minimum a high-level regional opera company.
How about Milwaukee or Madison? There is certainly a spirits culture up in Wisconsin, and the last time I was in Milwaukee I went to a bar & grill place across the street from the opera house that had a liquor inventory any cocktail bar would be proud to have. The place was packed, and people were drinking cocktails. And yet, there literally wasn't a jigger to be found in the place and, despite having a bottle of Luxardo, no one had ever heard of the Aviation. I remember thinking that that place was one committed, cocktail-tradition-savvy manager away from being a serious cocktail spot.
-
I'd modify your #1 by saying that it's best if it's a thriving culinary community for locals, and it's even better if there is a significant presence of middlebrow and higher level restaurants that are patronized by locals. Tourist trade is not going to sustain a cocktailian community in a town like it can restaurants, and cocktail culture is consumed more by people who have an interest in a "white tablecloth" trattoria or bistro as opposed to those whose interests are more centered on barbecue or a really good Italian beef sandwic. They need to be willing to spend $9-$12 on a cocktail, and not be primarily interested in getting loaded for a low price.
I'd add:
5. It helps if the town has a tradition connected to spirits and cocktails.
6. Good public transportation/taxi availability helps.
7. Overall, cocktail culture may fall on more fertile ground in a town that it is not a "blue collar town" and if there is some interest in so-called "highbrow culture."
With cocktail culture and high-end cocktails, we're still talking about the leading edge of the curve -- so we're talking about early adopters.
-
This will to a certain extend be affected by the BTU output of the stove. If it's a restaurant-style burner, one can easily maintain an appropriately high temperature with a copper saute pan (or a carbon steel saute pan for that matter). With a home stove, however, in order to maintain those high sauteing temperatures that will keep pieces of meat jumping around in the pan and browning on all sides without giving up too much liquid and starting to boil in their juices, I think it's beneficial to have the higher thermal capacity an extra-thick aluminum base provides. Otherwise, the food must be cooked in small batches in order to keep the temperature up. In my book that's not easier or more enjoyable.
Questions About Pot Construction
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
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.