slkinsey

My experience has been that early dinnertimes are more common in the American Midwest, and I think this tradition may be a holdover from more agrarian times. Growing up in Boston, we typically ate dinner sometime around 7:30 or so -- and I didn't have the sense that this was particularly late. It seemed like almost everyone I knew started dinner sometime between 7:00 and 8:00. It was only when I went to college in Wisconsin that I encountered the phenomenon of dinner at 5:00 or 6:00. In a two-income family, I don't see how it would be possible to have dinner on the table by 5:00 or 5:30 anyway. When is there time to cook? Personally, I rarely have more than a cup of coffee with perhaps a piece of toast for breakfast on weekday mornings, and I like to have lunch at around 1:30. After that, I really don't find that I'm all that hungry for a meal again until 7:30 or later.

Right. I think there is a certain concentration of alcohol or in some situations a certain presence of an alcoholic ingredient (e.g., wine, champagne, sherry, whatever), that represents the dividing line between "alcoholic libation" and "cold soup." And, most often, cocktails on one side and cold soups on the other don't get all that close to the dividing line. To make a few examples: If you start with 8 ounces of finely pureed, relatively thin gaspacho and add a half ounce of pepper vodka, you have soup. If, on the other hand, you take 3 ounces of the same gaspacho, add 3 ounces of pepper vodka and serve it over ice, you have a kind of Bloody Mary -- a cocktail. Or, if you take 2 ounces of white peach puree and add 4 ounces of prosecco, you have a Bellini -- a cocktail. If you take 5 ounces of white peach puree and add 1 ounce of prosecco, you have a fruit soup (or perhaps a non-cocktail libation). With both of those examples, I think you will find that as one gradually reduces or increases the proportion or presence of the alcoholic ingredient, tasters will begin saying "this is no longer a soup . . . now it's a drink" (or vice-versa). And there will be some (not particularly appealing, IMO) point there in the middle where it is neither fish nor fowl -- it's either a weak drink or an overly boozey cold soup, or both or neither.

I'll likely have more to say about this later, but to begin will offer this: if it is a cocktail, it should be primarily about the spirit. A cocktail is, after all, an alcoholic libation.

I could be wrong, of course, but I am not familiar with Pecorino Romano being called a grana cheese. "Grana" refers to the finely granular texture, and secondarily to the fact that these cheeses, when grated, result in fine crystalline flakes. This is not the way I would describe Pecorino Romano. Think about breaking apart a wedge of pecorino... it doesn't have that sandy appearance in the broken area the way Parmigiano Reggiano does. The point, regardless of whether I have used the right term to describe it, is that romano cheeses like Pecorino Romano and Pecorino Sardo are not made in the same style or using the same techniques as cheeses like Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano. In the Cheese Primer, Steven Jenkins says:

Well, like I said, I think it would be interesting to see if an American cheesemaker could produce a distinctive and unique American grana cheese. As for the UW romano, their literature leads me to believe that it is made using romano techniques and not using grana techniques. Their own desciption says: "Pecorino Romano cheese, made from whole sheep's milk curdled with lamb's rennet, was first imported to the United States from Italy in 1894. Our Romano is made from part-skim cow's milk and is a naturally lower fat cheese. It is brined for 14 days and cured for a minimum of one year. Romano has an extra-hard body, which is crumbly and flaky, and a sharp flavor." This all seems consistent with romano and not grana.

That seems like an odd way to describe a drink. Do you know what the ingredients are? An insalata caprese consists of only four ingredients, in decreasing order of importance and prominence: fresh mozzarella (traditionally this would be mozzarella di bufala), "salad" tomatoes, fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil. To me, the idea of this dish in more-or-less cocktail form sounds revolting. But considering that he's using chipotle vodka, I have to assume that the "caprese salad in a glass" just a misunderstanding.

Rob, what happened is that bacteria and yeast from the juniper berries and in the flour were able to survive for a certain period of time and eat the sugars in the flour (thus, causing the starter to appear "active"). Then, after a while and a bunch of generations of feedings, those microorganisms died out, resulting in the low-activity starter you have now. Juniper berry microorganisms are evolved to live on... well, juniper berries. Not in a continually refreshed sourdough starter. That is a completely different environment. If you want a healthy starter, feed it twice a day with an extra-thick batter of flour and water (this approximates equal weights of flour and water), and before each feeding discard the entire contents of the starter jar except for a tiny bit clinging to the side of the jar. This creates the optimal growth conditions for sourdough microorganisms, and you should have a working starter after a while. It won't have any juniper berry mircoorganisms in it, though.

This is a modification/tweak? I thought the Trident was an "equal parts" drink?

The frost on the outside of the mixing tin is indicative of two things: First, that the contents of the shaker are cold; second, and more to the point, that the metal mixing tin has good thermal conductivity. Anyway... this is something I covered in some detail here in a thread on cocktail science. The short version: A common glass mixing vessel has a much higher thermal capacity than a common thin metal mixing vessel of the same size. Therefore, if we are using a room temperature mixing vessel, we would like to use metal because it has far less thermal energy to contribute to the drink -- resulting in a colder drink. If we have a frozen mixing vessel, we would like to use glass because it is able to absorb more thermal energy from the drink -- resulting in a colder drink. In terms of real-world application, frozen glass is probably the best. Something like heavy frozen silver would be better, because that mixing vessel would not only have a large thermal capacity but also good thermal conductivity (i.e., it would be able to absorb even more thermal energy from the drink than frozen glass, which does not have good thermal conductivity). My eGCI class on cookware has good sections on thermal capacity and thermal conductivity (the former is far more important in the context of barware).

marvelous_marvin, if I had to guess, I'd say that your knife probably needs sharpening. There's no reason the middle should be slipping out on you like that unless you're having to use too much pressure due to a dull knife.

Torrilin, you say that this UW cheese is a "romano" cheese? Is it made from cow milk? Traditionally, romano cheese is made from either goat or, more typically, sheep milk -- thus, Pecorino Romano, a cheese that has the same DOC/PDO protection as Parmigiano Reggiano. Almost all US romano cheeses are made with cow milk, and I think are quite inferior to the sheep and goat milk versions. Anyway, romano cheeses are made with a special technique called "rummaging" whereby the curds are drained very rapidly and then then the wheel is lightly pierced all over before the cheese is brined. This produces a different texture (romano cheeses are not grana cheeses) and results in a saltier cheese that can be ready after only around 6 months of aging, compared to 24 months typically for Parmigiano Reggiano. Pecorino Romano and the other romano-type cheeses are used mostly as grating cheeses, and they can't compete with Parmigiano Reggiano as a world-class eating cheese. UW probably makes romano-style cheese instead of grana cheese because the production time is so much shorter. It's not clear to me that college experience in making a romano-style cheese would have great applicability to producing a grana cheese.

Joesan, have you tried hitting the fish with a blowtorch after it comes out of SV? Another possibility for a fillet with skin would be to take the skin off, crisp that separately in a pan, and then use the crispy skin as a garnish with the fillet.

The advantage of gins like Tanqueray and Beefeater is that they have a traditional juniper-forward profile and are also high proof. All at around 94 proof are Beefeater, Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray. Junipero is a little higher at 98.6 proof. Boodles is a bit lower at 90.4 proof. Bombay is lower still, at 86 proof. And then there's Plymouth at 82.4 proof and Gordon's at 80 proof. In addition to this, the various gins have different flavor profiles. Among the higher proof gins, Tanqueray has fairly emphatic flavoring and a strong juniper note, whereas Bombay Sapphire is softer. Interestingly, Gordon's is also one of the more emphatically flavored, juniper-forward gins, and it is the lowest in proof. Plymouth, a lower proof gin, has quite a soft flavor profile. I prefer Tanqueray for the Pegu Club cocktail. I like the fact that Tanqueray's gin flavor carrys through the drink, and since I make it with two ounces of gin to three-quarters each of lime and orange curaçao, I think it benefits from using a higher proof gin. If I were going to use one of the lower proof gins in a Pegu Club, I'd probably go with Gordon's over Plymouth in order to take advantage of Gordon's more emphatic juniper note. I love Plymouth, but I think it's softness makes it most appropriate either for drinks where it can shine relatively unadorned (e.g., a Martini) or for drinks where I would like for the gin to blend in seamlesly with the other ingredients, contributing its flavors but not necessarily signaling "there's gin in here."

It isn't. After following up on some experiments Dave Wondrich did, I confirmed that stirring with cracked ice in a frozen stirring glass will give you the coldest drink. It's all about surface area contact for thermal transfer. With larger cubes, shaking will give you a colder drink because you increase the area of contact (and thus thermal transfer) by moving the liquid around vigorously.

Again, for those who may be considering purchasing new tin-lined copper: consider the cost. Retinning is not cheap. These guys, for example, have you add up the diameter of the pan plus the height of both sides of the pan, then multiply by $4. So, the cost of retinning an 11-inch saute pan would be around 68 bucks before shipping, etc.

For me, it depends on the bag. If it's a bag I am likely to finish in no more than 3-4 openings of the bag, and if it's something like chips or crackers that's likely to go stale fairly quickly even with a folded and clipped bag, I just re-seal the bag using my FoodSaver.

A few interesting things from this article I found on the CI site: This suggests to me that it's unlikely that an American facsimile cheese could ever have the same flavor profile. Radke goes on to point out that Parmigiano Reggiano has a much lower salt content, because the wheels are a much larger size and do not absorb as much salt during the 20 day brining period. This means, among other things, that Parmigiano Reggiano can be aged over twice as long as domestic examples. The longer aging leads fo the disginctive crystalline nature of Parmigiano Reggiano, which SI says is the result of "proteins breaking down into free amino acid crystals during the latter half of the aging process," and it also allows more complex flavors and aromas to develop. The lower salt content also means that Parmigiano Reggiano is more perishable and more suceptable to degradation by drying out once the wheel is cut. This is likely a big part of the reason so many middle-market pre-cut/pre-packaged examples, such as the Connecticut Stop & Shop example Steven makes, are inferior. It also goes a long way towards explaining why the stuff Steven's mother brings home from Italy is so much better (#1, it's probably top quality that never makes it out of Parma, never mind Italy; #2 it comes from a wheel that was broken open the day she bought it, not 6 months earlier like the Stop & Shop sfuff). I always store my Parmigiano Reggiano wrapped in a lightly damp paper towel and sealed inside a heavy duty ziplock bag in the refrigerator to mitigate this problem. But the lesson to learn there is that, if the store isn't splitting their own wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano and turning over the cheese pretty fast, there is only so good the cheese can be. Domestic producers could, of course, cut their curd smaller, eschew mechanical pressing and make bigger wheels to reduce salinity and allow them to double the agind period. That's not standing in the way of someone stepping up to produce a quality American grana. What is standing in the way is that these things all cost a lot of money to implement, with an uncertain payoff considering the titan they'd be going up against. I'd actually love to see an American cheesmaker develop a top quality but distinct and unique grana-style cheese. I don't think it would compete with Parmigiano Reggiano for people who want the things Parmigiano Reggiano brings to the table, but it could be delicious and interesting in its own right.

Parmigiano Reggiano is the leading example of an entire category of "grana" cheeses, which are hard aged cheeses characterized by their crystalline structure and granular texture. The Italians of Parma are not the only ones who make this kind of cheese, but nevertheless Parmigiano Reggiano is universally acknowledged as the best of the grana category -- and indeed, many cheeseophiles assert that Parmigiano Reggiano is the best of all the cheeses. Is it theoretically possible to make similar quality, if not identical grana cheese in America? Of course. But why? What would a cheesemaker gain by doing this? Where is the profit to be made? Where is the commercial will to set up production on a scale that would turn a profit (there is no making Parmigiano Reggiano on Bobolink-sized scale). Making a facsimile Parmigiano Reggiano is not directly comparable to, for example, making American wines because the American wines are unique and distinctive in and of themselves -- they are not facsimile European wines. Here's the thing: Let's say you learn the method from the experts in Parma, you import Italian equipment and you have your aging facility built to Italian specifications in a location with a fairly similar climate to Parma. This is a place where you can have access to more-or-less the same kind of grass and hay as the Italian cows. Maybe you're able to import over around 200 or so Italian cows and get them to thrive so you can make around 10 wheels a day, but more likely you just use American Holsteins. You only make cheese between May and November. You curdle the milk the same day. You reproduce everything as much as possible on the Italian model. You even hire a guy from the Consorzio to be the in-house quality examiner for your wheels, selling off the stuff that does not pass your standard as a lesser brand. You cut no corners and you do everything right. And, in the end, you might end up with something that is on a similar level of quality with A or high-B level Parmigiano Reggiano. However, just as someone in California duplicating the ingredients and methods of Bordeaux wine makers doesn't end up with a premier cru Bordeaux, it's likely that you a) won't end up with something that truly competes with A level Parmigiano Reggiano, and b) even the stuff you have that competes with B level Parmigiano Reggiano in terms of quality still won't be a taste-a-like. Meanwhile, once you achieve this not-a-taste-alike American grana cheese (after many years of tweaking and refining, needless to say), what are you going to charge for it to make back your investment and turn a profit? How much to you have to under-cut Parmigiano Reggiano, even the C level stuff, to get people to try it?

Yes, but we're not talking about chefs buying a locally produced substitute (for what it's worth, I highly doubt that chefs who are shelling out for real Parmigiano Reggiano would line up to buy a substitute anything -- they might, however, go over to a different but equally good unique local cheese that could serve a similar function). Furthermore, what you're talking about now is an entirely different proposition. We're no longer talking about a reasonably good, reasonably priced Parmigiano Reggiano facsimile that beats Il Villaggio in the Connecticut Stop & Shop. We're talking about something good enough to entice chefs and sophisticated shoppers away from the good stuff they have already been buying. Something that beats, say, Grana Padano in price, but is better than Grana Padano to the point of being competitive with the quality of Parmigiano Reggiano professional chefs are able to procure. And, on top of that, it has to compete with the name recognition and appeal of the real thing. I have to believe that, if it were an easy or apparently feasible thing to make money producing a domestic facsimile of Parmigiano Reggiano that competes with good examples of the original available to restaurants and sophisticated buyers, someone would already be doing it. As I said before, I also think that a major barrier to entry in this game is the fact that the infrastructure would seem to make the minimum investment for entry fairly high. This doesn't seem like something one can duplicate at a small boutique farm. It takes approximately 145 gallons of milk to make a single wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano. That's the daily output of around 18 cows per wheel. So, the minimum you'd have to have is 36 cows just to make one traditional two-wheel batch. And, of course, the makers in Parma have all kinds of financially beneficial synergies where they do things like feeding the whey to (also local) pigs, etc.

Yes. Tin is much less reactive (and, as a bonus: not poisonous) compared to copper. I personally don't recommend tin-lined copper because the tin lining is too fragile and in the long run, once it's retinned it ends up being more expensive than stainless-lined.

I like Audrey's recipe for a still ginger beer. You could always put it in a seltzer beer if you want carbonation. "Mulch" 1 pound of ginger in the food processor, then put this together with 1/4 cup of light brown sugar and the juice of two limes in one gallon of hot water for one hour. Strain, cool and enjoy. This, along with any natural ginger beer, begins to lose its "zip" after 5-7 days. There is no way I know of to make ginger infusions at home that keep their spicy quality through extended storage.

Right. Although the problem with oversize cocktails (consider that the standard cocktail glass found in most restaurants and bars holds up to 10 ounces!) warming up is a problem even when the drink is a good one. This is why I've always liked the way Audrey and others have done their large-size Martinis and Manhattans: The drink is stirred with ice, and then half is poured into the glass and half into a small glass caraffe nestled in a bowl of crushed ice where it stays cold without further dilution.

My earlier reply as to the gastrique was merged out of this thread into the Roses' thread, so I thought I'd reproduce the thread-appropriate part here: A gastrique is a sweet reduction of vinegar, sugar and (usually) fruit? In older days, something like this would have been called a "shrub." This is actually a very old tradition. Wayne Curtis talks about it in his excellent book, And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails (brief eG Forums thread here). Sounds like a very interesting direction for experimentation.

I take your point about the quality of Parmigiano Reggiano at your "average American grocery store." It isn't very good. I would argue, however, that the quality of the stuff I get at Fairway is "high B" quality. If you adjust for the price of importation, I wouldn't say it's markedly inferior to the cheese you get for the same price in Italy. Importing is expensive. That's why we spend 35 dollars on Tuscan table wines that can be had for six bucks outside Firenze. Perhaps a better question might be: why does 90% of the cheese at your average American grocery store suck: Because, by and large, it does. Grocery stores probably charge more for mediocre Parmigiano Reggiano, and make a huge profit, because they know their customers are willing to pay that upgrade over the stuff in the green can. The reason they don't sell this stuff in Italy is because Italians wouldn't buy it -- but we've had myriad discussions in these forums around the fact that culinary life and quality of food is integral to average Italian life and much more important to average Italians compared to most Americans, so it's probably not worthwhile to belabor that point. The extreme expense of setting up for production of Parmigiano Reggiano-like cheese and the fact that it is difficult to make a meaningful profit without fairly large scale production, combined with the fact that Parmigiano Reggiano has fairly wide availability and the fact that most people don't really mind using cheese of the "Il Villaggio" quality means that it would, actually, be fairly difficult to make a profit producing and selling an American "Parmigiano Reggiano-a-like" for 9 bucks a pound. Otherwise, frankly, someone would be doing it.

It could also come down to the age of the Rose's. It has shelf stability, but not that much shelf stability. I've definitely noticed from my own pantry that year-old Rose's is different from brand-new Rose's (for one, the color isn't the same). So that might have something to do with it.