slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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I plan to get an inexpensive PID controller ($35) and probe ($10) that will allow me a greater range of control on the temp in the roaster. I will wire it in in place of the standard temp controller. I can hide the controller in the stand and snake the probe up the back of the oven so it will look just like an ordinary roaster. Then I will have a stand alone sous vide operation with precise temp control. I think the roaster will be an ideal vessel for this operation and less expensive and cleaner than a used lab water bath that has been stuck in who knows what.
I am new at this and if I am missing something important please point it out to me. It seems like it should work.
What you'll be missing is the recirculating part of the deal, which serves to make sure that all the water in the vessel is at the same temperature. Depending on where the heat is coming from, it's possible that there could be fluctuations of several degrees depending on where you place the probe. Also, it's not clear to me that you're saving too terribly much money. How much are you going to spend on the roaster? You say your spent 20 bucks on the roaster, then there's another 45 bucks for the PID controller and probe, assuming those are reasonably accurate prices. For ten more dollars you could buy that Lauda B-1 recirculating heater and use it with a large stock pot you already own (or even a large plastic bus bin or pickle barrel). It's not clear from your earlier post whether you spent as much as $170 refurbishing the roaster. If you did, you're spending more money to have something that at best I think would be not quite as good as using a real recirculating water bath heater. To compare: If you spent, say, 100 bucks on a recirculating water bath heater and 30 bucks on a 16 quart stainless stockpot at Target, you'd have spend less money, you'd have something that works better, and you'd have a kickass stockpot that could be used for many other things.
I believe the Lauda heater in your eBay link is thermostat-controlled, which means it will also suffer from large temperature fluctuations. To get a PID-controlled circulator on ebay, you'll probably have to spend closer to $150-$200.To the best of my knowledge, ths Lauda B-1 recirculating water bath heater controls to within less than 0.5 degrees C. If one is patient, deals on even more recent model recirculating water bath heaters come up on eBay and elsewhere.
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Using a metal spoon shouln't make any difference. After, the screen and plunger are made out of metal.
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There's some discussion of this here in the Q&A thread to my eGCI class on cookware. My opinion can be summed up in two points: First, it's definitely not worth paying the markup over regular cast iron. Second, nickel isn't something I'd particularly care to ingest in extra amounts.
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Andie, I'm not saying that these roasters have no usefulness at all. I am simply saying that they have very limited usefulness for someone who would like to do real sous vide cooking, especially if they want to take advantage of the full range of things that make sous vide and interesting and unique. That's simply a fact. This is, after all, a thread about laboratory water baths for use in sous vide cooking.
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The lowest setting on all of my vintage roasters, Westinghouse, Nesco, Hamilton Beach and GE, is 150 degrees F.
Unfortunately, 150F/65C is not particularly useful for extended sous vide cooking, and for shorter cooking times (e.g., for fish) it's unclear that these roasters offer any advantages over simply heating a large stock pot of water to temperature on the stove.
It's unclear to me that there is a reasonably unflawed solution for sous vide temperature control that exists between simply heating up a big stockpot of water to temperature and doing short-duration and waiting around for a decent recirculating water bath heater to come up on eBay for around 75 bucks (like this one). The problem with the other solutions is that the temperature regulation is too imprecise, or doesn't offer the desired range of temperatures, or is likely to have some spots hotter than others, or is likely to cycle up and down, etc. For most long duration sous vide cooking, these are all important considerations. For short duration sous vide cooking, a big stockpot and a thermometer will do just as well as anything short of a laboratory recirculating water bath heater.
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They're called <<fiaschi>> (singular is fiasco, but I don't know if it's related to our word for an unmitigated disaster or not).
Fiasco in Italian has the primary meaning of "flask." It also has a secondary meaning carrying the same meaning as the English word, that being a spectacular failure. Rossini was known to send letters to friends with a drawing of a bottle to indicate that one of his operas had failed upon opening. I've read that the secondary connotation derives from the practice of disgruntled Italian opera patrons expressing their displeasure by blowing across the tops of wine bottles to make a hooting noise (similar to booing), but I have no idea whether this has any real support (I've heard several other seemingly plausible explanations as well).
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Jeff, I'd suggest it's possible that, since you made the drink with a paste of mint and used regular ice, it's not surprizing you were underwhelmed.
IMO, aggressive muddling of the mint extracts bitter flavors and, as you observed, leads to little bits of mint floating around in the drink. Better to lightly bruise the mint and use a lot of mint sprigs as a garnish.
As for using straight ice cubes instead of crushed, it seems to me that it isn't a julep without crushed ice and you're missing a crucial part of the game if the ice isn't crushed. This isn't difficult to do, by the way. No special tools are required. Just wrap a whole bunch of ice in a tea towel and whack it with a hammer, meat mallet, muddler, or even a cast iron skillet, until the ice is pulverised. Voila! Crushed ice.
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Just to clear a few things up... Rye and bourbon are two different kinds of whiskey, the former being (mostly) rye-based and the latter being (mostly) corn-based. Rittenhouse is a rye whiskey brand which is sold at several ages and alcoholic strengths (and prices!). The most popular Rittenhouse bottling among cocktailians is "bottled in bond" (see note) -- also called "bonded" -- which is 100 proof.
One of the things we're talking about in this thread is that any base spirit may be used in a julep. At some point in time an orthodoxy and mythology grew up around bourbon and Kentucky with respect to the julep, although per some of the posts above, neither of these things appear to be true from a historical standpoint.
I've been drinking rye juleps lately, made with Rittenhouse bonded or Wild Turkey rye, and have liked them very much. Both are 100 proof spirits, and I have found that higher proof spirits work well in a julep. Wild Turkey 101 bourbon would also make a nice "traditional" julep. On the other hand, Dave recommends a julep made with cognac and a float of 151 proof rum. I've had that one as well, and it is very nice indeed. Laird's bonded applejack is good too. If you're in a mind to explore the julep further and step away from brown spirits, I am very fond of gin juleps (again, using something higher proof like Tanqueray or Junipero), and a genever julep is a great change of pace. Er... I wouldn't recommend a vodka julep, but most everything else is fair game.
Note: "Bottled in Bond" refers to American spirits produced according to the Bottled Bond Act of 1894. This is a way to avoid paying excise tax until the spirits are aged and ready for sale, and was also originally indended to ensure that the spirit was actually what it claimed to be (adulteration and faking being a common problem at that time). Bonded spirits are aged no less than four years in a government bonded warehouse and must be bottled at proof (50% abv).
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It seems like the effect of this change is: more Bruni, less anyone else.
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DemeraraDrinker: why do you want to cut narrow strips of peel, such that you would need a channel knife? I've frankly never found a channel knife or peeler that does as good a job as using a nice sharp paring knife and tripping the pith off the backside. I'd only use a channel knife to make a horse's neck garnish.
I want it to do twists, sometimes long twists for Vesper Cocktails. If I slip with a pairing knife, I need another lemon (or a bandaid).
If you have a sharp knife and fresh lemons, it's a cinch. Just saying.
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DemeraraDrinker: why do you want to cut narrow strips of peel, such that you would need a channel knife? I've frankly never found a channel knife or peeler that does as good a job as using a nice sharp paring knife and tripping the pith off the backside. I'd only use a channel knife to make a horse's neck garnish.
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A restaurant is not a play.
Brilliant. Can you explain in what sense it's "fair" for one to be reviewed on its opening night, and not the other?
It's appropriate to review different things in different ways.
Plays, for example, are usually extensively workshopped and previewed. So, by the time they open, they should be largely worked out. It is, of course, possible to rehearse and refine a piece of staged theater without the need of having customers (aka, an audience). Therefore, it's more appropriate to review the opening night performance of a play.
In practice, whether a play's opening night is the reviewed performance will depend on the length of the run. If it's a scheduled run of 40 performances of Macbeth with Liev Schreiber at Shakespeare in the Park, the reviewers may choose to wait a while and may not review the opening performance. If, on the other hand, it's a scheduled run of 6 performances of Verdi's Macbeth at the Met, the opening performance will be reviewed. If the opening performance weren't reviewed, the run might be almost over by the time the review found its way into print.
Restaurants, on the other hand, aren't set up to have a limited run. They also don't have the luxury of 3 months of workshopping, previews and a "pre-run" in Toronto. They also are not working within a known, extensively interpreted repertoire and tradition like opera performers. They also work in a milieu in which having an audience changes everything, and they have a limited opportunity to work with a "practice audience" (3 days of F&F doesn't cut it). This makes it more appropriate, IMO, to wait a while before reviewing a restaurant. Give them a chance to rehearse. Reviewing a restaurant on opening night (or very early on) is like going to see a performance of a newly-composed opera that's only had one rehearsal. The perormers are going to settle in and get better, the composer might make some changes (Madama Butterfly was extensively revised three times after its premiere), and so on. So, to review the opera, the performers, etc. on the second rehearsal isn't meaninfgul. One could say the same thing about reviewing a restaurant in the first month.
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...Marc's blog is a good example of a highly conscientious, true amateur (in the best Olympic sense of the word) blog. He's out there eating all the time, he has no agendas, he pays his own way and his opinions are highly informed. Approximately 100% of the time I would trust his one-visit/six-dishes analysis of a restaurant over Bruni's four-visit/forty-dishes inanity.
I agree with respect to Marc's blog 100%. And yet, it sounds like Marc would agree that Bruni's word holds more weight and has more influence, and that Bruni is able to accumulate vastly more experience. More to the point, there's no restaurant in the City that would trade a single positive review from Bruni for a dozen great reviews from people like Marc. Or perhaps even more to the point, it may not be good to use Bruni as an example, since most of us agree that we don't particularly value his opinions.
I'd add Steve Plotnicki's blog to that list -- he may very well dine out more than Bruni.Maybe he does. IMO he's the textbook example of high knowledge and expertise that's unfortunately greatly devalued by axes to grind and other factors. One thing that having a professional gig in the print media brings along with it is editorial oversight and supervision. No publication would employ a restaurant reviewer with Steve Plotnicki's intractable biases (unless, for example, they never intended to review Italian restaurants).
As we've discussed before, the professional/amateur distinction has been so deeply eroded as to be meaningless. How do we categorize Andrea Strong's blog, Restaurant Girl's blog, Jennifer Leuzzi's blog, etc.?None of these are amateurs. The Strong Buzz, Restaurant Girl and Snack are all written as part of a strategy for developing the respective bloggers' professional writing careers. And again, I'm not saying it's "right," but I think the general perception from the public is that, for example, an article Jennifer Leuzzi has written for the Sun has more cred than one that is only published on Snack And, of course, everything on her site benefits from the cred she brings to the table by being a writer in the print media.
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Seriously, though, isn't the "investment banker/food blogger" guy, who eats out at a different restaurant five nights a week and then has the time to sit down at his computer writing them up for his high quality, frequently updated blog a bit of a strawman? There's what, maybe two of these guys in NYC? How about well-adjusted? With a balanced opinion and something interesting to say? Maybe I'm wrong and there are dozens of these guys. And I've certainly seen some interesting writing in blogs, but they are generally along the lines of "here's what my friends and I had the one time we went there."
Edited to add: Do we have any actual examples? Broadly experienced; psychologically well-balanced with no obvious axes to grind; deep knowledge of the NYC restaurant scene, well versed in restaurant culture and cuisine; hits all the major NYC restaurants and important openings, etc. to the tune of 5 nights a week; and writes a frequently-updated amateur food blog? I'm curious.
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But we know that 1,100 of those 1,300 meals are likely to be at no more than 10 different restaurants (and likely fewer).
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The anonymity thing is pretty much bullshit, as has been endlessly rehashed in these forums. There's no way that any single-city, weekly reviewer isn't recognized at 90% of the places he or she reviews.
Here's my thinking on the professional/print versus online/amateur difference: I don't think there's a restaurateur in this City who wouldn't vastly prefer a positive review by Bruni in the NY Times to ten raves in the eG Forums, or ten glowing writeups at someguy.blogspot.com, someotherguy.wordpress.com, yetanotherguy.typepad.com, etc. Now, this isn't to say that certain blogs or forum posts might aren't meaningful or more meaningful to certain consumers. There are certainly posters in these forums, and blogs of which I am aware, whose opinions I value far above Frank Bruni's. But I also don't consider myself a typical consumer. I also know that, as online-centric as I may be, a print review of me is much more valuable than an online one.
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an online amateur restaurant reviewer could get hired by the Times and immediately go from "very little influence" to "great deal of influence"
I think you've highlighted the absurdity of the distinction with that example. I agree that people make the distinction on a widespread basis, but it's certainly also the case that the average blogger comes to the table with more restaurant and dining knowledge than Frank Bruni had when he got that job (though of course he is a better writer than most bloggers).
It's also true that, most likely as of 6 months after he took the NYT job, Bruni had acquired infinitely more restaurant and dining experience than most any amateur blogger out there. This is the real advantage of being a reviewer for a publication like the NY Times. You will be going to 10+ theater performance a week, or eating 10+ restaurant meals a week. The amateur gourmet or opera lover rarely has the time and/or resources to pursue that kind of schedule in addition to maintaining a day job, and those who do are often... well... to put it kindly, a little unbalanced, which has an additional effect on credibility and reputation. It's actually easier for someone like, e.g., an amateur opera reviewer -- he can amass expertise over a few decades of less-frequent attendance, and this knowledge retains currency because La bohème is the same now as it was in 1896 and operatic performance traditions have experienced far less change over the last 30 years compared to culinary trends.
It is a little bit absurd, of course. But for the time being it's the way it is. I wonder if it might come to be the case that more and more people will make restaurant reservations online via web sites like OpenTable until that becomes the dominant paradigm. If those sites were to include amateur reviews similar to the reviews Amazon has for its products, the totality of amateur reviewing could take primary importance.
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Doesn't a lot of this come down to disparities in prestige between professional restaurant critics and amateur restaurant critics (and among professional critics, disparities in prestige between the publications)? Because when we say "online review" what we are also saying is "amateur avocational reviewer" (there is, I think, a difference between a true "online review" and a printed review that is mirrored online).
Fair or not, by and large blogs are not considered as prestigious and authoritative as newspapers and magazines -- largely because blogs are amateur (or extremly small potatoes professional) and newspapers and magazines are professional. I suppose it might be possible for an amateur online restaurant critic to create a strong enough reputation for his reviews to "matter" more and have more influence than those written by professionals and appearing in newspapers -- but I am not aware of any right now. This seems unlikely to change. I suppose the best an amateur online critic can hope for right now is to compete with the critic for something like the "Upper East Side Post Crescent."
It does seems likely that, at some point in the future, an exclusively web-based "newspaper," "magazine," etc. with a hired restaurant critic may come to compete with the newspaper reviewers for prestige. I know this is a little ridiculous, since an online amateur restaurant reviewer could get hired by the Times and immediately go from "very little influence" to "great deal of influence" -- but it does seem to be the way things are today.
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I'm always particularly amused by posts that try to stereotype a restaurant's clientele. I was there last night, and both two-tops near me were taken by elderly couples (a category not matched by any of the above). One of the tables cleared, and another 50+ couple came along. There were indeed a number of stroller families too, along with other parties of various sizes that I wouldn't presume to categorize.The TriBeCa Landmarc, at its heart, is an unpretentious neighborhood restaurant trying to offer quality NYC-worthy food and wine at a great price along with friendly service. The TWC location is following the same aesthetic. So, yea, of course it's for UWS mommies and kids... it's also for 30somethings on date nights, pre- and post-theater dining, after-work hanging out for industry types and performing artists. Providing breakfast to mothers and kids before a trip to the park, museum, shopping, whatever is entirely in line with their raison d'être.If you thought the comments you quoted were an attempt on my part to stereotype or narrowly define Landmarc's clientele, I must not have expressed myself very well -- since that is exactly the opposite of my intent. My examples were intended to be just that: examples from among the many kinds of people who might go there and be well-served. The point being that they've always been a neighborhood restaurant that seemed devoted to serving the neighborhood -- and that includes every demgraphic that stops in.
The main dining room, by the way, seats 200, not 300. Two private dining rooms (not yet open) add another 90.That's partly correct. The private rooms are "created" by bringing down a couple of gigantic garage doors. This area can funtion as two smaller private rooms or one larger private room, and of course with both garage doors up the space simply becomes part of the main dining room. I was at Landmarc late on Saturday with the cast of NYCO's Flavio, along with assorted friends, family and colleagues, after their final performance. They were kind enough to lower the first garage door in order to hold several large tables for us in that area of the restaurant so the 25 or so in the post-performance group would be able to sit together (they raised the door upon our arrival). This is a nice feature: Both rooms have separate entrances and can serve as entirely separate and private areas. Or, as it was for us, the garage doors can be lowered to separate out a space for a large reservation or party, then raised once the diners arrive for a more open feeling. Since the lowered garage doors obscure the view of the wine storage area, I have to believe that they will normally be raised -- effectively making the restaurant a 300 seat space.
When we arrived at around 11:15 PM on Saturday, I'd estimate the rest of the space at around 80% capacity. Walk-ins would be able to get a table, but they were doing a bustling business. When we staggered out at quarter to two in the morning, there must have been at least 40 people still there.
Edited to add: The TWC location is now up on the web: http://www.landmarc-restaurant.com/twc/. Fact sheet says: "300-seat dining room / 17 seats at the bar / 80 seats for private entertaining"
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I get the impression that Bonny Doon is "aging" it's peach eau de vie in stainless steel rather than wood.
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I wonder if the folks at Clear Creek or Bonny Doon could be convinced to put some of their peach eau de vie into barrels for a year or two. Dave: how long is peach brandy usually aged?
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What are the specific reasons for, or advantages of, bruising/crushing ingredients in the serving vessel?What I'm asking is: why the seperate tool. Wouldn't it be easier to just bruise the ingredients in a mortar and pestle?
These are variations of the same question. The reason to have a separate tool from what would normally be used in a bar is that there really isn't another bar tool that is good at this function. For muddling herbs, as I said before, you can get by with a bar spoon that has a flat disk on the opposite end. But this won't help you if you want to muddle something like citrus. Try it some time: If you have 4 lime quarters (actually 8ths -- a quarter being a halved lime cut into quarters) in the bottom of a mixing glass, it takes a considerable amount of pressure to squeeze out all the lime juice.
The advantages of muddling the herbs or citrus in the mixing vessel are several: First, as others have pointed out, none of the oils that are extracted through the muddling process are lost, because they're stuck to the inside of the mixing glass. Since a muddled drink is often shaken together with the muddled ingredients and then (sometimes) strained, all of the expressed oils are washed off the side of the mixing glass into the drink. If the muddled items were muddled in a separate container, it would have to be rinsed with the liquor used in the drink in order to capture all the oils. This would be a big pain in the butt. Second, sometimes the muddled items are muddled together with simple syrup, granulated sugar or some of the liquor, which aids in the extraction of oils. Third, for some drinks (the Caipirinha comes to mind) the fruit and/or herbs are muddled directly in the glass in which the drink will be served. Glass mixing glasses are plenty strong enough to handle vigorous muddling without breaking, but if this is a concern, one can always muddle in the metal part of a Boston shaker. I use all metal, so it's not an issue either way.
Muddling definitely makes a big difference. Try making a Daiquiri three ways: First, the standard way, with 2 oz of Cuban-style white rum, 1/2 ounce of fresh lime juice and 1/2 teaspoon of superfine sugar, shaken hard with ice and double strained. Second, squeeze the lime as usual, but throw the squeezed-out lime shell into the shaker and shake it together with the ice, rum, lime juice and sugar. Third, cut lime quarters and muddle half a lime in the bottom of the mixing tin together with the sugar, measure the expressed juice to make sure you have 1/2 an ounce and make adjustments as necessary, then add the rum and ice, and shake as usual. You'll find, I think, that the three drinks are distinctly different due to the amount of lime oil incorporated by the three different techniques. For herbs in shaken drinks, I think muddling makes less sense since the herbs will end up sufficiently bruised by the ice during the shaking process (so much so that double straining is usually necessary). But muddling makes plenty of sense for non-shaken drinks like Swizzles, Juleps, etc.
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The deal with the red lacquered muddlers is that, food-grade or not, the lacquer will eventually wear off and the red dye will eventually wear off. This won't be in chips, as Eric suggests (or at least I've never seen that happen), but it is true that the dye and lacquer will end up in your drinks. I've seen plenty of those red muddlers with the finish worn off of the base and the red color looking like it's partially soaked off.
As with anything, of course, whether it makes sense to spend 30 bucks on a muddler will depend on how much muddling you're doing, and also whether it's enjoyable for you to have a nice muddler. The PUG! Muddlers, as well as some of the other "artisanal" muddlers not only do a great job, but are also a joy to hold and a joy to behold. No, you don't need one of these to make a great drink, but you don't need copper cookware and a professional-quality stove to make a great pork chop either. For those who make few muddled drinks and aren't particularly interested in bar equipment, one can easily find bar spoons with a flat disk on the end opposite the spoon that can be used for muddling. We've even known those who put the wooden end of a potato masher to good use when muddling is required.
Choice of muddler will be a personal one, just like choice of chef's knife. There is no one obvious answer. I know a few people who use the stainless/rubber muddlers, but most seem to feel that the top of the stainless muddler is too small and hurts the hand when any pressure is applied. The plastic muddlers, I think, are slippery and too light, and often have a seam right across the top of the handle. I can't imagine that too many bartenders are actually choosing to use them, and have to believe that they're chosen by management because they can be thrown into the dishwasher.
In my opinion, what you'd like to have in a muddler are these characteristics:
1. Long enough to easily fit into a tall glass or mixing tin with plenty of muddler left available to grip.
2. Flat, round base that is large enough to cover most of the bottom of the glass or mixing tin without getting stuck.
3. Heavy enough that, if one is muddling mint, the muddler can simply be "dropped" onto the leaves a few times for a few light tape.
4. The top part of the muddler should be broad enough so that when any pressure needs to be applied (e.g., in muddling limes) it doesn't hurt your hand.
5. It shouldn't be slippery.
6. It shouldn't have any material that is likely to dissolve, flake away or otherwise find its way into any drinks.
7. It should be made of a material that is durable, long-lasting and relatively nonporous.
For a home user, however... if you don't really like having cool bar equipment and you don't muddle very often, why not just use the handle end of a nice thick wooden spoon?
Bruni and Beyond: NYC Reviewing (2007)
in New York: Dining
Posted
I hadn't intended to respond to your earlier counterarguments, because I thought it might draw the conversation off-topic, but I might as well revisit to point out that I disagree and why...
I suppose it depends on the level of the professional theatrical production ,and of course the vast majority of professional theatrical productions are not reviewed in the pages of the New York Times. I'd say that a Broadway-level play likely to get a significant Times review (something like, say, "Copenhagen" or "Wicked" or "Frost/Nixon" or "Denial") was very likely workshopped and revised as it was written, possibly pre-run in some other city depending on budget, and had a rehearsal period far more extensive than 3 days of previews with the paint still drying on the set. Fairly commonplace for a staged play would be something like a "short" four to six weeks of rehearsal and perhaps as many as ten previews before exposing the play to the press. Musicals, because they cost so much more, are likely to have a more involved process.
Yes, I know. I've done many, many, many performances of comedic works. I've also seen plenty of restaurants go into operating with paying customers. And I can tell you that the adjustments that must be made to account for audience response in a staged comedy are so trifling in comparison as to be hardly worth mention. In a restaurant, the customers are almost like a part of the cast.
Ultimately these are all just examples. The larger point is that there are lots of huge differences between what goes into putting together a theatrical performance or art show or whatever, and opening a restaurant. Those things make it more appropriate, and often necessary, to review the theatrical production on opening night, whereas with restaurants there are many factors which argue in favor of waiting. With restaurants it might be ideal to run a brief "early look" shortly after opening and then reserve a full review until 4-6 months down the road.