slkinsey
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As I understand it, the review demoting ADNY to three stars came out in February 2005, then Esnault was hired in April 2005 and the restaurant closed at the end of 2006.
If we consider that a major re-review would be largely, if not absolutely unprecedented before February 2006 (i.e., 1 year after the previous review)... is it not possible that there was already a sense that the writing was on the wall and that ADNY would be closing? Eater was reporting the closure in September 2006, which means that people in the right circles must have suspected this might happen several months before that. Indeed, Fat Guy posted at the time: "There has been talk of ADNY moving ever since the union exemption expired."
So, let's suppose that Bruni is thinking of fitting in a re-review of ADNY sometime after February 2006. It doesn't seem unconcievable to me that the Times started to get wind of a possible closure and a decision was made to not "waste" a review on a place that is probably closing within six to nine months. I don't think the argument can be made that Bruni had any obligation to re-review ADNY before February 2006 at the earliest. And, if ADNY hadn't closed, perhaps he would have re-reviewed it sometime around, say, May 2006.
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Coquille is French for "shell." Coquille Saint Jacques is the name for "scallop shell." It is also the name of a classic preparation where scallops are served in the shell, etc. To add to the confusion, both coquille and coquille Saint Jacques may refer to scallops.
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sounds like a cool place. Finally a restaurant to recommend when out of towners really want an Italian meal in what's left of Little Italy.
A few thoughts and comments...
He replaced the ricotta in the original dish with mascarpone to make it lighter, and he added poppy seeds for interest.I'm sure they were delicious with mascarpone. But I find it funny when people give reasons like this. I can remember once when David Rosengarten did a television piece on Philly cheese steak and he was asking one of the guys at one of the famous places about the bread and what makes it special. "We like this bread because, you know, it's crisp. It has to have that crispness," the guy said. Rosengarten raised his eyebrows while squishing the bread with no apparent difficulty and said something like, "well, I don't know that I think it's crisp, but..." and went on to say what he thought was special about the bread.
Anyway, the point of this is that people seem to think that "crisp" is a word one uses to describe desirable properties in bread, and also that "we used this because it's lighter" is a desirable way to describe substituting a different ingredient. Anyone who is familiar with ricotta and mascarpone will know that substituting the latter for the former will in no way result in a lighter ravioli filling. Quite the opposite: it will result in a richer, silkier filling. Which, from the sound of things, is a good idea -- but not lighter.
On the menu it's called capesante: seared diver scallops, truffled mashed potatoes and a beet-grappa vinaigrette.Cappesante (usually with a doubled P, but there are numerous spellings) is Italian for "scallop(s)." It comes from cappa (cape) and santa (saint) -- presumably because scallop shells look like a cape and... er... Italians like to throw the church in whenever they have a chance?
Anyway, beet-grappa vinaigrette sounds very interesting. Did it taste alcoholic at all, or was the alcohol cooked off somehow?
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Another Laird's bonded update: They recently added Opici as distributor, and Opici may be the best option for those wishing to order/stock Laird's bonded.
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Here is something I posted eons ago in the rec.food.sourdough newsgroup. I think it speaks fairly directly to what's happening here. The original topic had to do with the wisdom of using a alread-established starter culture versus starting one yourself. For some reason, people who are new to sourdough baking (I should hasten to add that I have no idea as to the level of sourdoush expertise among participants in this thread) often want to begin my making their own starter culture. This makes the task of sourdough baking, which is not without challenges in the best of circumstances, exponentially more difficult.
Well, it all depends on whether you are interested in sourdough baking because you want to make good bread or whether you are also interested in the challenge of creating your own sourdough starter. Even with a predictable starter culture, sourdough baking can be occasionally tricky. For someone who has never baked sourdough bread before and may be experiencing trouble, beginning with a predictable starter eliminates one possible source of trouble.How do "established" starters get that way? They are propagated for years and years, generations and generations. Also, "established" starters are the end result of selective disposal. For every 100-year-old starter there were countless starters that thrown away because their properties were simply not special enough to merit saving. People did, in fact, give up on all those other starters. Further, it is a relatively well-accepted fact that certain special properties in sourdough cultures don't come into being until a certain amount of time has passed. For example, one can reasonably expect that the symbiotic relationship between microorganisms that have coexisted in a starter for several decades will be much stronger than what is found in a months-old starter culture. This is one reason why these old, established sourdough cultures are such consistent performers and are often quite resistant to change/invasion by other sourdough microorganisms.
So the question becomes whether you want to learn how to surf or whether you want to learn how to make your own surfboard. Most people would agree that it makes a lot more sense to learn how to surf first, rather than doing both at the same time.
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For Rack & Soul I'd say the specialties are "pan fried chicken, beef short rib, pulled pork, baby back ribs." (They offer waffles among their many sides, but I don't get the impression that "chicken and waffles" is a particular specialty.)
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I think you have to toss the short ribs. It's not so much a matter of killing whatever bacteria might have grown during the time that the temperature was too low -- you know you can cook to sterilization over 31 hours. However, no amount of cooking will have an effect on any toxins that may have been produced during the period when the power was off. If, for example, you had some Clostridium botulinum growing in there and excreting botulin toxin during that period, you can cook those ribs until the cows come home and they'll still kill you dead as a doornail if you eat them. Probably this didn't happen... but it's a risk you can't take.
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TBoner, you say "Apry came through nicely in good balance with the maraschino." Maybe you mistyped? The Slope, which we're talking about, doesn't have any maraschino. In the Slope, Apry more or less subs for the maraschino in a Red Hook... so it's rye, Apry and Punt e Mes (instead of rye, maraschino and Punt e Mes, as in a Red Hook).
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I assume you mean the red one? Could be interesting.
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In this drink, I'm usually more concerned about overpowering the Apry than anything else. As opposed to the way maraschino cuts right through in the Red Hook, Apry can get lost behind an assertive rye and especially behind the Punt e Mes. I'd be more likely to bump the Apry up to 3/4 and leave the Punt e Mes at 1/2.
Chris, I'm a little surprised that you're concerned about covering up the rye, considering the bottling you use (fwiw, I think Flatiron uses Rittenhouse). It's hard to find a more assertive straight rye whiskey than Wild Turkey. If any rye can stand up to 2:1:1, it's Wild Turkey 101.
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A google search for "choctease" suggests that your recipe is missing an ingredient.
1/2 oz. Lena
1/2 oz. Frangelico
1/2 oz. Goldken[n]
1/2 oz. Butterscotch Schnapps
2 oz. cream
Honestly, I can't help saying that it sounds like a positively revolting drink.
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3. Arroz Con Pollo? I have traveled extensively in Mexico, eaten in local homes and have yet to be served "Arroz con Pollo." This is a generic bastardization of regional variations that would blow your mind. Just because you can say it in Spanish doesn't mean it's authentic.
Wait. You're saying that Arroz con Pollo is not a "traditional Mexican" dish, or is not a "latin cuisine" dish? This is something that can be found in many variations in many different Spanish-speaking cultures. I've had Cuban versions, Dominican versions, Puerto Rican versions, etc. Okay... I haven't had a Mexican version. But this was a "latin" episode, not a Mexican episode, right?
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Mmmm, I don't think so. A Manhattan served in a bowl is still a cocktail, and vichyssoise served in a "V glass" is still a soup. The question, in my mind, is how much booze do you have to put in the vichyssoise in order to make a "leek and potato cocktail."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
Pecorino is a large, oily cylinder of sharp-as-the-devil, aged sheep's milk cheese -- an irreplaceable cheese in the cuisine of southern Italy. Most weigh around 40 pounds (20 k) and are about 16 inches high, 12 inches in diameter. The thin, dry rind is the same bone-white color as the paste, although for no apparent reason some cheesemakers paint the rind black. The intense flavor is peppery, very sheepy, and, to me, overly salty. -
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.
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The Upstairs Neighbor, which he described as "Caprese salad in a glass" was particularly pungent, as it is currently using Hangar One's Chipotle Vodka.
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.
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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.
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We use the peach bitters in the Trident --
1 oz Aquavit
1 oz Manzanilla
1/2 oz Cynar
2 dash peach.
It's pretty tasty -- although the drink isn't for everyone.
This is a modification/tweak? I thought the Trident was an "equal parts" drink?
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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).
NYC Barbecue Restaurants -- Master List
in New York: Dining
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Hill Country... somehow I can't get that excited about smoked sausages. That's just my taste, but I don't think it's as difficult to master as whole cuts of meat (you can adjust the fat content and grind to keep the texture and moisture where you want it, etc.)