slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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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.
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Now, if they have orange bitters (pretty rare), nothing wrong with asking for a dash of them too! Or, if you're carrying, just add 'em yourself.
My how times and circumstances have changed now that the question "are you carrying?" can be interpreted to refer to bitters!
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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.
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I've heard the now defunct Tanqueray Malacca was a fairly decent substitution for Tom Gin. Unfortunately, I've never run across that gin anywhere.
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.
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Allright, off-topic, but what's with the older people thing??...I skew to that demographic, and I've been to Ssam or Noodle Bar as much as anyone in their twenties.
Pipe down, grandpa.
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considering the youthfulness of the neighborhood, it's rather interesting that the EV is becoming such a cocktail center
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?
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In terms of brown liquors now, we have the usual suspects, rittenhouse, weller, four roses, and a slew of scotches. I would try to recall some more, but at this point I have been worn pretty thin in terms of lack of sleep.
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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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 don't think high fructose corn syrup is so much cheaper than sugar. Whatever the cost differential, it can't be more than the equivalent of a few cents on a can of soda. Let's say every can of soda went up by 5 cents. I can't imagine that would affect soda consumption at all.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.
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Esposito's Pork Shop on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan.
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I entirely agree with FG that knowledge is always better than ignorance. But I also think that if it makes a huge difference what you order, or when you go, that's an indication of mediocrity—or worse. Of course, mediocrity is common in the restaurant industry (and everywhere else), so this is a recurring problem.
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.
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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.
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Well sure, if you're into stress, acid reflux and perpetual inner turmoil!
Who isn't?
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I visited Ssam Bar at dinner, and liked it. I have no axe to grind against the restaurant, or against David Chang. But what he's doing at lunch is dumb. Or at least, it appears to be. Now, if someone wants to argue that this is really smart, let's have that discussion.
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.
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raison d'etre.... (reason for being... for those not hip to the latin. i know etre from crossword puzzles but apparently raison and reason are the same)
Raison d'être is actually French. And yea, it means: "reason for being" or, by extension, the purpose of someone or something.
Interesting use of "usquebaugh" you have there. I've always understood that it proceeded from the Scots Gaelic uisge beatha and Irish Gaelic uisce beatha, and later transformed into the word "whiskey/whisky" (depending on how one prefers to spell it). Yet, when I did some web searching, I found one reference in the 1913 Websters which gave a secondary meaning of "a liquor compounded of brandy, or other strong spirit, raisins, cinnamon and other spices." I'm not sure I'd call this "pastis" however, regardless of the infused anise flavors.
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To respond to Matt's original situation. I've noticed an almost complete turnover in personnel at NYC Chinese restaurants a time or two. Apparently it's not uncommon for a family to sell their restaurant wholesale to another family, stick around for a little while to train the new guys how various dishes have been made there, and then split. A changeover like this might explain the poor service as well as the seeming dearth of people who had worked there more than two days.
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Truffles are one of the few foods we eat that are truly gathered, though eventually we'll figure out how to cultivate good ones just as we figured out how to cultivate good oranges, beans and wheat -- all of which have not only been cultivated but also improved by human intervention.
To the best of my knowledge -- and maybe this is implied in your statement, but I thought I'd say it outright -- we can and do cultivate truffles. Just not all truffles, and with somewhat mixed success.
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I should clarify: She wasn't wrong in suggesting that Chang and MSB wouldn't be worthy of the hype based on the lunch ssam.
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This discussion reminds me of some others. Notably, discussions about Grimaldi's Pizzeria in Brooklyn and Grand Sichuan in Manhattan.
If you go to Grimaldi's at just the right time when the oven is at peak temperature and order the right thing, you can get some of the very best pizza in the greater NYC area. On the other hand, if you go at the end of lunchtime after the oven has lost heat and order a pizza with 6 toppings, it won't be special at all. Does this mean that Grimaldi's is overhyped? Well, no. It means that you have to know what you're doing to "get" why it's hype-worthy.
Similarly, we have read plenty of reports in these forums of people who visited Grand Sichuan and wrote "I had the fried rice, chicken lo mein and General Tso's chicken. My neighborhood carry-out is better. I don't see what all the fuss is about." Of course, we would always reply that, if you want to eat what is so good about Grand Sichuan you have to order the right things. Does this mean that Grand Sichuan is overhped? Well, no. It means that you have to order the right things to "get" what is hype-worthy about Grand Sichuan.
It strikes me that Mimi Sheraton's comments are relatively on-target with respect to lunch at MSB, although people might quibble about what she should realistically expect for ten bucks. On the other hand, it does seem to me that her "Chang is overhyped" take on MSB is based on expectations formed from dinner hype. So, this is a bit like ordering a Grimaldi's pizza with extra cheese, pepperoni, sausage and ham at 4:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, or ordering egg rolls and sesame chicken at Grand Sichuan and then declaring that the emperor has no clothes. The fact is that, if you want to get what is hype-worthy about MSB, you have to go at the right time so that you are able to eat the right things. Mimi wasn't "wrong," per se, but she doesn't "get it" either.
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Yea. They're names for the bread. For some reason, America has come to know bruschetta (most often mispronounced as broo-shet-uh) as chopped tomato and basil. I've even seen jars of "bruschetta."
You could certainly say what the crostini, bruschette, etc. are topped with. It's not unusual to see descriptions such as crostini di fegato or bruschetta con funghi.
Indian Themed Cocktail Recipes
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
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.