slkinsey

Order some from these guys.

Haven't done much testing. I'll be bringing samples to my friends in Pegu, D&C and elsewhere to see what they think. No troubles using it or getting it to dissolve. It's not a small amount of effort, so it's hard to say whether it's worth it -- or, rather, to what extent it's worth it. I think I've detected increased silkyness in the cocktails I've made using gomme syrup, but am reluctant to say this is for sure true until I've done side-by-side testing.

I have made two batches of gomme syrup with gum arabic, according to Dave's instructions I posted above, one white sugar and one demerara sugar. I have yet to do any definitive s-de-by-side testing, but it's noticably thicker and more viscous compared to regular simple syrup with the same sweetening power -- so much so that it won't really flow through a speed pourer at room temperature.

I'm with Dave. I think it's possible for someone to be an extremely advanced home (or even professional) home cook and not be particularly skilled at pastry and baking.

I completely agree, but the variations created by dietary restrictions created a stye and taste all its own. Pastrami may have come from Turkish preservation and Romanian cured pork, but the brisket and navel stuff is a world apart. Why aren't there Jewish restaurants in NY, LA, Montreal, Chicago that serve the food from different regions you talk about? Why aren't there Jewish chefs who focus on reinterpreting kugels or kibbeh or rice pudding? There are. For example, there is a NYC family that owns two Italian restaurants specializing in the Jewish cooking of Rome: Tevere, a meat restaurant, and Va Bene, a dairy restaurant. Most likely there are several reasons there aren't lots of restaurants doing Jewish foods. First of all, it's not always the case that the Kosher food of a city or culture is so distinctly different that it would be worth having a restaurant dedicated to this cuisine. For example, despite the proud tradition of Roman Jewish cooking, it's not so distinct from regular Roman cooking that most Americans could tell the difference. So, more likely one is likely to find a few of the well known, unique dishes scattered around on Italian restaurant menus. A good example would be artichokes fanned out and deep fried in extra virgin olive oil, otherwise known as carciofi alla giudia. For this reason, as Nathan points out, the Jewish cooking is likely to be seen simply as part of that national cuisine. The second reason is that... well, once you can find something that would be identifiable as"distinctly Jewish" (and I would argue that kibbeh and rice pudding don't come close to passing this test) to most Americans... a lot of it is not terribly interesting. Why would anyone want to reinterpret a typical Ashkenazi kugel? How could it possibly be reinterpreted to much that anyone would pay money for it in a restaurant? Third, unless part of the "reinterpretation" includes sticking to the rules of kashrut, how much can many of these dishes evolve before they're not so "Jewish" anymore? How much could e.g., a noodle kugel be reinterpreted before most everyone would see it as being more of a variation on "mac & cheese"? How much can gefilte fish be reinterpreted before it becomes simply a fish quenelle? So, at some point one is left with the idea of doing, e.g., Eastern European peasant cooking that adheres to Jewish dietary laws. Meh. Not that interesting. And, more to the point, it's been done... for centuries. I would argue, by the way, that Jews do eat "Jewish food" -- or, rather, the ones who are observant do. And they eat the same kind of "Jewish food" that Jews have eaten over thousands of years, which is to say: more or less the local cooking tailored and changed a little to adhere to kashrut.

Yea, I touch on this in a related thread: As I say in the quote above, my experience is that there are plenty of things called "sauté" on both menus and inside kitchens that are neither tossed around the pan nor cooked over particularly high heat -- thus failing on any of the common definitions of "sauté." Again, I have no idea how "frying" came to be associated with a fairly deep layer of oil. This distinction is neither here nor there, of course, when it comes to actual cooking -- so long as all the cooks in the kitchen have a common understanding of what it means. But it becomes more important when discussing cookware design, and particularly the sauté pan, which is designed to facilitate the constantly moving ("jumped") cooking technique I describe above. Someone who purchases a sauté pan thinking it is optimized for some of the other techniques (mis)-labeled "sautéing" will find that the sauté pan is a poor fit.

It's a fact that very few (Western) home cooks do any real sautéing, which involves movinjg the food items around almost constantly. This is compounded by the fact that most home stoves are underpowered for this high heat cooking task, and brecause most home cooks put way more food in the pan than the burner can handle. It is also true that a lot of home cooks confuse the sautéing with frying. If the food is just sitting on the heat and not moving around, it is frying, not sautéing. So, for example, cnspriggs: What you want to do with onions isn't really sautéing. If you were to sauté onions, you'd move chunks of onion around and around in a hot pan until they were evenly browned on all sides. In order to get the deep, dark browning and Maillardization you want, the onions have to cook for a much longer time at a lower heat setting. Similarly, when paulraphael speaks of the difficulty in reaching in to a sauté to turn pieces of food, he is using a technique that is not sautéing. Sauté pans are designed with straight sides so that the cook can throw in the chunks of food and vigorously shake the pan back and forth on the burner grate, bouncing the food items off the straight walls of the pan back onto the cooking surface. Paul does have a point that some "frypans" are perfectly fine for sautéing tasks. This is because the sides are tall enough and the slope is steep enough that food items are unlikely to slide out when one shakes the pan (although this can still happen if you shake the pan too hard). Unfortunately, the "taller, steeper" design makes these pans less than optimal for frying. The whole point of a frypan design is to facilitate frying: cooking flat pieces of food in a small amount of hot fat, not moving them around much (usually) with the goal of getting a crispy surface. Low, sloped sides are useful for this because they offer easy access to a spatula for turning and, mostly, because they facilitate efficient evaporation of liquid (the sizzling sound is water coming out of the food and boiling on the surface of the pan) which produces a crisp surface. The "taller, steeper" frypans are not so great for the spatula access and evaporation, and are closer to what I might call a "slope-sided" or "curved sauté pan" than a "frypan." I have a classic frypan design from Mauviel -- the sides are quite short and widely flared. It's quite easy to shake food right out the back of the pan, and one must resort to the "flipping" technique. As Paul and Blether point out, however, there are plenty of things a sauté pan is useful for besides sautéing. They're great for doing little braises, for "shallow frying" (more accurately called "boiling in oil"), for making quick pasta sauces and finishing the pasta together in the pan with the sauce, etc. If you're someone who does some sautéing, but realistically not all that much, but who would like to benefit from the added functionality of a sauté pan, I very much recommend a curved sauteuse evasée -- called variously a curved sauteuse, saucière, sauteuse bombée, saucier, chef's pan, flared sauté pan, curved sauté pan (although these last two sometimes have shorter sides), etc. Both Falk and Bourgeat make excellent examples of this pan in stainless lined heavy copper.

I found this an interesting comment. Are you suggesting that Indian buttermilk is high in fat? If this is the case, I wonder if it is actually buttermilk. Real buttermilk is simply the liquid that is leftover after cream has been churned into butter. That's why it's called buttermilk. Since most of the milkfat goes to the butter, real buttermilk is quite low in fat (afaik, lower than lowfat milk). What one normally finds in American supermarkets isn't actually real buttermilk. Rather, it is lowfat milk that has been cultured with bacteria to mimic the tartness of real buttermilk. If anything, this "buttermilk" is just a very thin unflavored/unsweetened yogurt. Real buttermilk has a thin texture, whereas cultured "buttermilk" has a thick texture.

I have a few thoughts: What about doing a variation on the technique for tea smoked duck? Steam the duck for 1.5 hours, then smoke it with heavy smoke for 1/2 an hour, then deep fry (or pan fry) to crisp the skin. Or hot-smoke the duck at around 350 for 1 hour and then no smoke at around 300 for another hour and a half (could finish it in the oven). I wouldn't recommend a spice rub for the duck, but you could always paint the skin with a glaze -- usually mostly sweet (e.g., maple syrup, cane syrup, corn syrup, honey, etc.) with some salt (soy sauce is good for this) and some spices. Brush the glaze on the skin and air-dry. Repeat several times.

My how times and circumstances have changed now that the question "are you carrying?" can be interpreted to refer to bitters!

First I ask about what vermouth they have and how old the bottle might be, it it looks like that might be dicey. After that, I find that they tend to pay more attention to the vermouth situation. Then I'll say something like: Tanqueray Martini, [slowly] two to one, stirred with a twist. Tip in a dash or orange bitters if you've got 'em.

Tanqueray Malacca was produced according to a 1823 gin recipe, and the company stopped making it around 3 years ago. I would say that it had a much more emphatic herbal profile than other gins on the market, but wouldn't say that it had the sweetness I'd associate with a tom gin. If I were to approximate tom gin, I'd probably just add some simple to an already soft gin like Plymouth.

Pipe down, grandpa.

I wonder if this might have something to do with commercial rents? The other thing I've noticed is that most of these places are a serious hike away from the nearest convenient subway station, and a lot of the properties are (or were) somewhat dilapidated. Of course, rents could be sky-high there. I'm not exactly in that loop. As for the crowding: Isn't the idea that it's going to be a reservation-line place, like M&H?

I think I also saw Maker's, Woodford, Jack, Wild Turkey, Sazerac rye, Jamison, Powers, Bushmills, Laird's bonded. . . Hmmm. Everything else is lost in the haze of a booze and hot dog-induced coma.

Let's see if I can answer in order... I don't know what the drink prices are. Not sure if they even had them printed on the menu, as it was F&F. But I assume they're in line with what other places like Pegu, D&C and Flatiron are charging (which is to say, $12 rather than M&H's 15). I assume there is simple in the Pisco Sour, they just don't have it listed on the menu. I find this a fairly common practice unless it's something "special sounding" like demerara syrup. People just don't "get" simple syrup. Yea, they probably left "rum" off the ingredient list for the RBYC Cocktail. Because it's a much smaller place than, e.g., Pegu or Flatiron, the selection of spirits is necessarily a good bit narrower in scope. Don and John can likely say what brands are in use, but I can't imagine it's more than 4 or 5 of any one spirit. No scotch cocktails of which I am aware on the menu, but the F&F menu was deliberately made small. I assume they will ramp-up the cocktail selection over time, and this may include scotch cocktails (although I'm not sure scotch is necessarily a favorite base spirit for Jim like it is for Phil at D&C).

I'll chip in with my two cents... Salumeria Biellese is one of the best producers of sausage and cured pork in the City. Their guanciale is the best, and funkiest I've had anywhere in the US. They're the supplier to many of the best restaurants in the City, and I'm not sure how much retail business they do. It's great that they do retail business at all, as that makes it possible for us to have access to these same amazing products. All their sausages are first rate, but one of the things that makes it special is that they offer sausages like cotechino that most other shops do not. If there's anyone else in the City making hard-to-find sausages like zampone, I'm not aware of it.

So, I recently attended the preopening of PDT. All signs point to this being another fine addition to the NYC cocktail scene. As johnder points out, entrance is through an old-fashioned telephone booth with darkly smoked glass, located to the left of the entrance inside Crif Dogs. This worked just fine during my visit. Interestingly, the customers eating inside Crif Dogs seemed entirely unaware that there was a bar on the other side of the telephone booth. There were no curious dog-eaters poking their noses into the booth to see what was going on back there. I suppose that the amount of time one normally devotes to hoovering down a couple of hot dogs doesn't lend itself to noticing that every so often someone goes into the phone booth and doesn't come out. Anyway... donbert's pictures give a nice idea of what the space looks like. It's modern without being over the top. Small but comfortable. Noise levels, even at full capacity, are reasonably quiet. It imparts the exclusive and "secret" feeling of a place like Milk & Honey, but has a rather more polished and well maintained atmosphere in contrast to M&H's (equally charming in its own way) "frayed around the edges" aesthetic. The bathrooms are cool, entirely "tiled" with bits of broken mirror. The glassware is very nice, and a bit more delicate than higher volume places can afford to use. For most "up" drinks they are using a coupe/balloon-style glass from Spiegelau. These look tiny and delicate, yet surprizingly accomodate 5 ounces. For larger pours, such as their Martinis, Manhattans, Rob Roys, etc. they use a larger "rounded V" glass by Alessi. Ice is the becoming-standard large Kold Draft cubes, supplemented with what looks like pre-cracked Kold Draft cubes, but I understand actually comes from a different machine. They also have some of the most snow-like crushed ice in the City. johnder, who along with donbert will be shaking there from time to time (FYI for those who care: he made the post above before finding out about an opportunity to bartend there), made me just about the best Julep I've had in a NYC bar, using Four Roses 100 proof single barrel, demerara syrup and a large bouquet of mint leaves. John is a proponent of the Julep school that uses mint exclusively as an enticement for the olfactory proboscis, and does not include any with the spirit. The Julep was seved in a metal Julep cup, which again is the kind of touch that's made possible by the small size and lower volume of a place like PDT. In addition to the Julep, I sampled several items from on and off their menu, including an Aperol Sprizz, Trident, Martinez, Up To Date, Pimms Rangoon and Hemingway Daiquiri. All were excellent, although there is some minor tweaking to do (after a not-as-cold-as-it-could-be Trident, we experimented with different usages of ice to get a colder drink), which will surely be worked out before long -- hey, that's why they call it friends & family. John and Don acquitted themselves marvelously behind the bar. Of course, this preview was just a taste of what it to come. I would like see a lot more new cocktails on the list. But, given Jim Meehan's inventiveness and talents, as well as the efforts of whatever mixologists he may be mentoring at PDT, will provide that soon enough. Oh yea... there is also a small service door connecting the back bar at PDT to the kitchen at Crif Dogs. So you can order ridiculously sinful food to soak up all that booze, such as the "Chihuahua" (bacon wrapped hot dog with avocados and sour cream), the "Good Morning" (bacon wrapped hot dog with melted cheese and a fried egg), waffle-cut fries and hamburgers with a range of toppings -- all priced to sell.

"Searing" is not a very precise cooking term, unfortunately. It is almost exclusively, and best used to describe the process of aggressively browning the outer surface of a large piece of meat (usually by frying, but sometimes by sautéing) without meaningfully cooking the interior. A good dictionary definition not confined to culinary use would be: "to scorch the surface of something with a hot instrument." Sauté is more complicated, and one of my pet peeves in the culinary world. The French word sauté is the past participle of the verb sauter, meaning "to jump." Thus, something that is sauté is "jumped." Where is it jumped? Around in the pan. So, for example, if you have poulet sauté, you have "jumped chicken" ("sautéed chicken," in restaurant-speak). Other languages, such as Italian, take this one step further and will often say saltato in padella, meaning "jumped around in the pan." This means that when we sauté (the French past participle having turned into an English verb), the food items are regularly agitated ("jumped") around in a large, flat pan so that all sides are browned. Some people will suggest that one can sauté without moving the food around in the pan, and that the "jumped" part means that the pan is "so hot the food will jump up" when it touches the pan. This doesn't withstand too much scrutiny. First of all, the typical preparation that most of these people would call "sautéed fillet of snapper" or whatever isn't done over particularly high heat. Second, a sauté pan is not particularly useful for this kind of cooking. A sauté pan is, however, very useful when you would like to shake the pan back and forth over the burner and bounce the food around in the pan. No, this other thing where you let the food sit in the pan, is frying, not sautéing. Otherwise, it would be a "sautéed egg" instead of a "fried egg." Nevertheless, it is true that in English usage, "sautéed" is commonly used as a stand-in for "fried" -- even among the kitchen staff. This is for a lot of reasons. . . Primarily I believe it is because "sautéed" sounds lighter, more healthful and more desirable than "fried," which is often incorrectly believed to imply cooking food that is partially or entirely sumberged in hot fat (this would have been called "boiling in oil" back in the old days). And also perhaps because some professional kitchens operating under a brigade system call the position in charge of most stovetop cooking the "sauté station" -- despite the fact that this station does more frying than sautéing. This is likely because this station is often considered the highest station under the sous-chef, which "rank" was previously occupied by the saucier (who was in charge of making sauces and stews as well as... you guessed it, sautéing food to order). In any event, it is a fact that "sautéed fillet of snapper" would have meaning to most professional cooks, despite not actually being correct usage. Notwithstanding the foregoing, however, it is correctly called a "fried fillet of snapper." Yet another complication is that there are often dishes called "a sauté of mushrooms" or whatever. These dishes typically involve sautéing as one step of the preparation process, but most often include other techniques. For example, mushrooms might be briefly sautéed in hot fat, then some rich stock is added to the pan and the mushrooms are then braised for a while in the stock, after which time some butter and herbs might be added to create a sauce from the remaining liquid, and the whole thing called a "sauté of mushrooms" or "mushroom sauté." So... to get to your question (finally! I know): both searing and sautéing are typically done over high heat. However, it's possible that most of the things you want to do that you think of as sautéing, are actually variations on frying, where the food is left to sit in one place for most of the time. This is a much more temperature-sensitive operation. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone can give you a set temperature for frying. Different things like to be fried at different temperatures, and the temperature setting you use will vary depending on the size and thickness of the food item as well as the effect you would like to produce. If your stovetop is particularly recalcitrant as to temperature adjustments, I'd suggest you experiment with finishing foods in the oven: just sear the food by frying or sautéing as appropriate, and then transfer the pan to a medium oven to finish cooking.

Yea, it's long been the case that HFCS is less expensive than cane sugar in America. This is largely for three reasons: First, US government price supports for domestic sugar conbined with tarrifs on sugar imports have artificially driven up the price of sugar in the United States. Second, US government subsidies and other supports for corn growers have artificially lowered the price of corn syrup. Third, corn syrup is a liquid product and sugar is a solid product, which makes it easier to use corn syrup on an industrial basis. It also means that some re-tooling would be necessary to switch over to sugar (which costs money, and would also make it expensive to switch back if the economics changed), or the sugar would have to be purchased in liquid form which would further drive up the cost of using sugar. Here's something I posted in another thread on the same topic: Is corn syrup so bad? I think the reality is that high fructose corn syrup is, indeed, quite a bit cheaper than sucrose -- not only on a cost-versus-sweetening power basis, but also in terms of industrial handling costs, etc. Others have mentioned that high fructose corn syrup, being liquid, is much easier to handle on an industrial basis. As chance would have it, there are all kinds of quotas and price supports for sucrose in the United States, with the last batch introduced by Reagan in the early 80s (although the government has been inflating domestic sugar prices and making importation difficult for almost 200 years). These serve to make it way too expensive to import sucrose in any meaningful amount, and also artificially inflate the price of domestic sucrose. On the other side of the coin, we have all kinds of subsidies and supports for corn growers, which serve to drive down the cost of corn-derrived sweeteners (i.e., high fructose corn syrup). Manufacturers turned to high fructose corn syrup beginning in the 80s in response to this artificial economic imbalance because, when you combine the serious price savings on the raw ingredient with the easier industrial handling of a liquid product, it made sense to change. Other manufacturers in other countries didn't make this change, because they didn't have the special economic conditions that exist in the US. On the world market, I think sucrose is still a good bit less expensive than high fructose corn syrup. In the US, however, the price difference is reversed. There have been times when the US price of sugar was over 700% greater than the world market price.

Esposito's Pork Shop on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan.

There's some question in my mind as to whether the <$10 items offered at MSB could be described as "mediocre." Are they categories worse than what other places are offering at that price point? I don't believe so. No one has come out and said, "the lunch ssam is worse that a burrito at Chipotle" or "it's not as good as an eight buck workday lunch special at a Chinese restaurant." Indeed, I don't see suggestions that it's worse than what could be had for lunch at that price at places which are generally considered excellent (Grand Sichuan, various Indian places, etc.). The lunch ssam at MSB can only be considered "mediocre" compared to what they're doing at dinner. The fact that one can have a "mediocre by dinner standards" lunch experience, when the concept and operation of the restaurant is entirely different, is not in my mind a fault of the restaurant. It strikes me that both the lunch and dinner service are "above mediocre" for what they are.

Hmm. I get Cointreau for 30 bucks a liter at Warehouse Spirits here in Manhattan. Doesn't strike me as all that much money compared to, e.g., any of the Van Winkle or Anchor Distilling whiskeys; gins such as Hendrick's, Junìpero, etc; Favorite and Niesson Rhum Agricole, etc. And I would argue that Cointreau is at least as high quality a spirit as the others I listed, not to mention that Cointreau is used in much smaller amounts than these base spirits and therefore one bottle's worth equals a vastly larger number of cocktails. Creole Shrub is fine, for what it is. But I wouldn't consider it a substitute for Cointreau. A Sidecar with Creole Shrub instead of Cointreau? No, thanks.

Who isn't?

Yea, I'll make that argument. There's no way he can make enough money on the dinner menu at lunch in that neighborhood to turn a profit. So, as Nathan points out, you're more or less asking that Momofuku Ssäm Bar only open for dinner.