slkinsey

Andiesenji's story is interesting, but doesn't really tell us anything except that some people are sensitive to certain things in certain circumstances. Someone could report the same story with respect to caffeine, black peppercorns or even carrot juice -- it still doesn't mean that carrots are causing autism, giving us brain seizures and wrecking our hearts. It just means that that one person, and by logical extension an infinitesimal percentage of the population, has a bad reaction to carrot juice.

Interesting, Maureen. You learn something new every day. I'd swear that's not the impression I got of the way that word is used by my friends when I'm in Italy, but then again food isn't my primary focus when I'm there. Steven: Interesting idea as well. Somehow, using 50% more fresh compared to dry seems like an awfully large increase. But maybe it isn't...

In Killer Cocktails Dave Wondrich says the original was the John Collins: The Tom Collins is a less complex version of the same, substituting London dry gin for the genever and substituting sugar for the maraschino. Dave says it probably took its name from the use of old tom gin.

"Fair-net" is a reasonable American pronunciation of the word. You could roll the R, but I feel this is a little affected when incorporating such a word into American English. In much the same way, it's fine to pronounce "Rigoletto" as rih-go-leh-toe, whereas rrrrrrrree-goh-leyt-[pause on the "t"]-oh, while technically correct, is going a bit far unless you're speaking Italian.

Hmm. That might be the original derivation of pastasciutta but I've never ever heard tit used that way by my friends in Italy. You're suggesting that one would call tagliatelle Bolognese "pastasciutta" because it's in a sauce and not in a broth? I've never heard that usage. Rather, I have heard this word used interchangably with pasta secca (secca and asciutta both having the meaning "dry"). Indeed, the Italian Wikipedia page for pasta begins saying: "In Italia la pasta secca, o pastasciutta, costituisce i tre quarti dei consumi totali" -- which indicates that they are typically viewed as having the same meaning. As for weight-to-weight conversion between fresh egg and dry semolina, that's harder to say. If I'm making fresh pasta, I generally go for one egg's worth of pasta per person, plus one extra egg. So I'd make 5 egg's worth of pasta for four people. If I were to buy fresh pasta, I'd go by eye.

Does Detroit have any strong culinary history? In places like Philadelphia, (and currently New Orleans) that went through hard economic times, at least I had the sense that there was a great culinary tradition there even if the economics weren't right at that moment for it to be a "great restaurant town."

That's what I do for mine. Just use a nice thick pizza stone (or several stacked on top of each other for more thermal mass) on the bottom of the oven so the gas jets fire more-or-less directly into the stone, and make sure you preheat at least an hour. Also, the best advice I can give you when it comes to making thin crust pizza in a home oven: use half as much topping (and this includes sauce) as you're inclined to use. There should be spots that are just sauce, there should be spots that are just cheese, and there should be spots that are just crust. This way, the sauce has a chance to cook in the heat of the oven before the crust burns. Something like this:

Unless you have a vitamin deficiency, your body absorbs maybe 10-15% of the vitamins from a tablet, and excretes the rest in the urine. My understanding is that those of us lucky enough to live in the Western World are not likely to suffer from nutritional defficiencies unless our food consumption is significantly reduced (say, less than 1,500 kilocalories per day). I only take multivitamin tablets if I have reason to suspect that I may have a temporary vitamin shortage (most often, this means taking one with a big glass of water after I've spent a long evening indulging my cocktail-related interests).

Notwithstanding the OP's use of the word "spaghetti" (which I recall from my first reading of this thread, if it makes any difference) and deliberate melodrama aside, the title of the thread made it quite clear and continues to make it quite clear, along with his follow-up post, that the OP is asking about fresh pasta and not dry pasta. That there is, technically, no such thing as "fresh spaghetti" is neither here nor there.

Well... not exactly. A pound of pasta asciutta has virtually no water content. It's all semolina flour. A pound of pasta fresca has quite a bit of water content from the egg, water or other liquid ingredient that was used to moisten the dough. This is why uncooked pasta asciutta is hard and stiff and takes a long time to cook whereas uncooked pasta fresca is soft and flexible and takes very little time to cook. Since a pound of uncooked pasta asciutta contains more dry ingredient than a pound of uncooked pasta fresca, the pound of pasta asciutta will weigh more than the pound of pasta fresca once they are both cooked (this is also due to the fact that pasta asciutta absorbs considerable liquid as it cooks whereas pasta fresca does not).

This all depends on what style/effect you're going for and what equipment you're using. For thin crust pizzas cooked at high heat, I prefer San Marzano (or other high quality canned) tomatoes, drained and lightly crushed along with coarse salt and a drizzle of good extra virgin olive oil. No cooking required, as the heat of the oven takes care of that. Other people like a cooked pizza sauce with lots of dried basil and oregano, garlic, etc. This is similar to what you'd get at a deck-oven "pizza parlor."

Have a look here for a page where you can convert BTUs to kilowatt hours and watt hours, etc. For example, a 30,000 BTU stove burner is also a 8,792 watt hour stove burner (not to mention a 31650000 joule, 7560 kilocalorie or 6.863 pounds of TNT stove burner).

Right. Something like immitating the distinctive viral logo and design of a big chain is one thing. That's easy to understand. You can't be like Cleo McDowell and say: "Look... me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's... I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds." This case seems a little less clear-cut to me. Like Nathan, I doubt it will go to trial. But it would be cool if it did. And I do think it's likely a matter of time before someone attempts to sue someone else for "copying" or "stealing" a recipe (which could include distinctive plating, etc.).

eas, I think there needs to be maraschino in there for that to be an Aviation. The ur-Aviation did contain some crème de violette, but I think the primary modifier was still maraschino.

A few answers to Nathan's points: - Pearl Oyster Bar is, to a certain extent, an "upscale NYC take" on New England beachside cookery. She's making lobster rolls and fried clams. - Anyone who would confuse Ed's Lobster Bar with Pearl Oyster Bar would also confuse, say, Wolfgang's with Smith & Wollensky. - As the article points out, there are already several other Pearl Oyster Bar knockoffs (e.g., Mary's Fish Camp).

We've had a number of threads here on restaurants, recipes, cuisine and intellectual property rights. Here is a representative example. Now, it appears that someone is going to test intellectual property law as it relates to restaurants and cuisine. Pete Wells in the New York Times tells us that Rebecca Charles or Pearl Oyster Bar is going to sue Ed McFarland for copying her restaurant in creating his "knock-off" restaurant, Ed's Lobster Bar. If this suit moves forward, it will be very interesting to see how the courts view this kind of intellectual property.

As far as I can tell, rules for this kind of thing change all the time according to the whim of the USDA and politicians. But a cursory google search for the string "imported pancetta" reveals plenty of people who claim to be selling it or using it. And, of course, there are plenty of things you can get (like <60 days aged raw milk cheese) if you know where to shop.

Interesting article on bitters in today's NY Times: A Bit of History, Reborn in a Glass, by Roh Willey The article more or less follows two threads about bitters today. One thread is about the re-emergence of bitters as a central cocktail ingredient that is happening as part of the nascent cocktail renaissance. More and more cocktail bars are stocking multiple brands of bitters (many of them house-made or privately-sources), and cocktailians view bitters as an integral part of mixology. The first bar in NYC to feature an extensive collection of bitters was likely Pegu Club, where Audrey Saunders also has an interesting and unique take in the other direction by featuring multiple single-flavor tinctures, which we might view as breaking down bitters into their component flavors. Another bar with a large bitters collection is Death & Company, where head bartender Phil Ward is an expert in matching bitters to different spirits and cocktails: There's also another thread throughout the article, concerning the efforts of our own John "johnder" Deragon at formulating a recreation of Abbott's bitters. John can (and hopefully will) fill us in more on his bitters experimentations. All I can say is that I've got several of John's bitters in my home bar, and they're all outstanding. The Abbott's in particular is delicious, and several NYC cocktail spots have his bitters behind the bar.

I want to mention that DiPalo's carries guanciale as well - it's from the Iowa farm called La Quercia... Yea, I've had their guanciale as well as some from various Arthur Avenue vendors. I've bought imported chunks from Italy. You can even get guanciale at Fairway. It's all good. I mean, it's guanciale, rightt? What's not to like? What, in my mind, makes the guanciale from Salumeria Biellese stand out is that it has a funkier, more "fermented" flavor than any of the other examples I've sampled in the NYC area -- and to my palate, it's not a particularly subtle difference. That "fermented funk" (which is also what distinguishes some of the best salumi at Lupa from other local examples) is what made me fall in love with guanciale, so that's what I look for. Perhaps we should have a guaniale tasting?

The future Mrs. slkinsey is quite the fan of crab legs and all things crab. Any good places for crab in the City?

In no particular order: - gnocchi di patate - real Gratin Dauphinois - potato puree Part of my criteria was for dishes that preserve the "potato-ness" and actually taste of potato. Things like Belgian-style frites and latkes -- both things I love dearly -- don't taste of potato so much as they taste of "fried."

Yea. That, to me, is one of the funny things about panchan. You get all these interesting non-American things, but then you're likely to get cubed potatoes with peas, corn and mayonnaise that would be right at home at an Asheville church picnic, or maybe salad greens dressed with the ubiquitous balsamic vinaigrette.

And let's not forget potato salad! Actually, one of my favorites is something that seems like it's made with raw or partially cooked potato shreds.

Warehouse Wines & Spirits is at 735 Broadway, between Waverly and 8th.

The amount of detergent I used is so small (1/2 teaspoon or perhaps less in a large kitchen sink full of water) that I would bet I could have not rinsed at all. It might have had a bit of a funny taste, which can also be true of things soaked in VeggieWash and not sufficiently rinsed, but I don't think it would have made me sick. I'll give it a try and see how it goes. What other things should I try? Blackberries? Broccoli? Lettuce? Anything else? The point of all this, for me anyway, is that I suspect two things: 1. that using small amounts of surfactant does result in cleaner fruit and vegetables, and 2. that when it really comes down to it, these vegetable washes amount to extremely dilute (and expensive) detergent.