slkinsey

I have always preferred side towels as an all-purpose home kitchen tool. I use them to grab hot panhandles; to clean up dribbles of sauce on plated presentations; to dry dishes, glassware, silverware, pots and pans; wet as a sponge alternative and dry as a paper towel alternative in cleaning up counters, etc.; to squeeze the water out of blanched greens I'm later going to sauté or cream; as a cover for rising dough; new and good-looking ones are nice for wrapping around a bunch of fresh warm biscuits or rolls in a bowl; and many other things. I have my towels washed with the whites in hot water with bleach, so I'm not particularly concerned about bacteria or anything like that (certainly not compared to using a sponge!). I keep my side towels folded and stacked in a deep drawer under the counter that is my main working space. As others have pointed out, they're very inexpensive. Once mine start looking ratty, they're turned into general-purpose house cleaning and furniture polishing rags. The thing that's nice about having a lot of them around is that you never feel like you have to conserve. If one of your side towels gets damp and you don't feel good about using it to protect your hands as you lift that cocotte out of the hot oven, just toss it into the laundry bin and get a fresh side towel. Personally, I hate things like oven mits because they're awkward (my grip never feels as secure with oven mits as it does using a side towel) and single-purpose. Places like Costco, Sam's Club and Bed Bath & Beyond always seem to have side towels in packs of 20 or so for a reasonably cheap price.

Meyer Corporation owns the license to cookware produced under the Farberware name. And I can't find any mention of cast iron on the Farberware web site. That makes me wonder whether this is a branding thing and makes me wonder who is really making it. Nevertheless, the design is not the same as Lodge's design. So it's nice to see some variety.

Oh, I've already got several carbon steel pans. I've had them for years. They're great, because they're cheap and you can get single-function pans (crepe pans, omelette pans, oval fish pans, etc.) for not very much money. I just wouldn't compare their performance to cast iron, and I tend to use them in very different ways. Carbon steel pans heat up more rapidly and, in the larger size, tend to have hot spots. In my opinion, carbon steel makes for a much better and more versatile all-purpose pan (I'm not particularly sold on the "all purpose-ness" of cast iron, and tend to use mine only for cooking tasks that take advantage of its unique properties). There are plenty of things where I reach for the carbon steel pan instead of the cast iron pan. But... for things where I want to use cast iron (searing steaks and chops and finishing them in the oven, cornbread, hamburgers, sausages, etc.), carbon steel is a poor substitute in my experience. Carbon steel is also substantially less durable than cast iron. It's quite easy to scour the seasoning right off a carbon steel (or French steel or black steel or blue steel or whatever you want to call it) with a Scotch Brite pad. No need to order off the internet if you live in NYC. You can walk to Bridge Kitchenware or any of a zillion Bowery supply stores and choose from a vast profusion of carbon steel gauges, shapes and designs for ridiculously little money.

Yes, Steven, that's correct with respect to these two materials. Which is why your statement to the effect that carbon steel will give you "cast iron-like" performance at a lighter weight is incorrect. Thermal capacity is the defining property of cast iron, since it has relatively poor conductivity. If the pans do not weight the same amount, they will not have the same thermal capacity and therefore will not perform the same. What you say would be more or less true if one were comparing a carbon steel pan with an unusually thin and light cast iron pan. But there's no way that a 2 pound carbon steel pan is going to perform similar to a 4 pound cast iron pan.

Getting back to the topic, I've always found these handles useless as well, for a number of reasons. . . 1. Any time the pan accumulates any serious heat, the metal "stay cool" handles get hot anyway. 2. The metal handles get hot in the oven, which is a danger once the pan has been transferred to the stovetop if the cook is used to thinking he can grab the handle with bare hands. 3. The typical (All-Clad knockoff) metal handle shape and size is awkward any time the pan is carrying significant weight. The balance can be very precarious when lifting, e.g., a loaded twelve-inch frypan with a "stay cool" handle. 4. I have yet to see a metal "stay cool" handle design that seems structurally sound to me. Half the time they're welded, and when they're riveted they're likely to have that narrowing right at the connection to the body that Steven describes. I have to believe that both of these are destined to eventually fail under heavy use (and I do know of incidents where either the weld has broken or the thin area of the handle has bent). 5. The plastic, resin, wood, Cherokee hair, etc. non-metal handles are useless, because they can't be put into the oven. Fundamentally, I think "stay cool" handles are a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. As others have pointed out, there's no reason to grip the pan with a big old floppy oven mit. 75% of the time, the handle won't get hot enough to be a problem anyway. And for the other 25% of the time, just use a kitchen/bar towel like they've been doing in restaurant kitchens since the restaurant was invented.

This is unfortunately not true. Carbon steel and iron have the same density (7.87 g/cm^3) and fairly similar specific heat numbers (carbon steel is a litle better than iron). This means that, in order for a carbon steel pan to have a "cast-iron like" thermal capacity, it's would have to have to weigh almost as much as the equivalent cast iron pan. The difference in weight would be too small to make a practical difference. In addition, iron has better thermal conductivity than carbon steel (0.80 W/cm K compared to 0.51). This isn't a huge difference either, but might be noticable. All this is to say that, if a carbon steel pan is light enough to be noticably different from an equivalent pan in cast iron, it won't have perfornance characteristics similar to the cast iron pan. There's a reason that pans with better heat capacity properties tend to be heavier. The The Dulong-Petit Law tells us that all substances tend to have right around the same thermal capacity per mole.

Here's one of Gary Regan's SF Chron articles on the Floridita.

Very nice. I have to say that I like the Constantino Ribalaigua touch Angus mentions in his video of double straining the drink (once through the Hawthorne strainer and the second time through a fine mesh strainer) to remove any little shards of ice created by the hard shaking. Paul: I've (mostly) seen them in print simply as "El Floridita #1" (maraschino) and "El Floridita #2" (creme de cacao) -- sometimes with, sometimes without the "El" part. In speaking, people seem to most often call them both "Floridita Daiquiri #1 or 2."

There's also a recipe for a "Floridita Daiquiri" that has rum, lime, sweet vermouth, white creme de cacao and a touch of grenadine (for color?).

If the word is a foreign language word, I'd say it's never inappropriate to defer to the real pronunciation (within reason, of course: "rih-goe-leh-toe" is a reasonable enough English pronunciarion of Rigoletto and there's no need go as far as "ree-goh-leyt-toh" but "jiggly" is not a reasonable enough English approximation of Gigli). All of which is to say that, even if lawyers may pronounce "voire dire" as "voyer dyer" I am still going to die a little inside each time they do, and will continue to say "vware deer." Of course, plenty of people find it ridiculous and pretentious to point out that the Martini is made with gin and vermouth in due proportion instead of vodka and a sideways glance at the vermouth bottle, or that prime beef has properties that distinguish it from supermarket grade beef -- but plenty of us feel these are "fights worth fighting." So I guess that sort of thing is where you find it. Please feel free to skip over those parts in your reading of this thread. In general, of course, I don't go around every day telling people the proper pronunciation of "daiquiri" any more than I do the pronunciation of "absinth" (hint: it's not "ab-synth") or "bolognese." Indeed, I'm known to say both "dack-uh-ree" and "ab-synth" around 50% of the time myself. But I don't think it's inappropriate to point out the correct pronunciation of the cockail's name in the context of a discussion around the minutae of the drink, including historical origins and "definitive recipe." If one is going to invoke the likes of Constantino Ribalaigua and Jennings Cox, why not mention the real pronunciation? Anyway, that's neither here nor there. If people in America started pronouncing "Mojito" as "moe-jeye-toe" instead of "mo-hee-to" -- I'd probably mention it in passing as part of a thread on the Mojito.

What is polished cast iron? This stuff (from Wagner's unfortunately vestigial web site). It's cast iron where the interior of the pan has been machined so that it is smooth instead of rough. I don't quite see that working while the pan is in the oven. Personally, I have attempted to train myself to never touch the handle of a pot that's in use except by using a towel.

Actually, I don't believe Wagner is manufacturing "standard" cast iron these days. Wagner was bougnt by World Kitchen, which doesn't seem to even mention it on their site. And the Wagnerware web site appears to be vestigial (I ordered something off that site around 6 months ago, and while they did accept my charge information and appeared to process the order, my card was never charged and I never received any product). I'm not aware of any manufacturer besides Lodge selling traditional cast iron cookware with wide distribution. Unfortunately, those stainless steel handles will still be blazing hot after 30 minutes in a hot oven.

Interesting, Angus. A few questions: 1. At what temperature is the ice typically melted before refreezing? 2. How long is the ice held at the >0C temperature before refreezing? 3. How thorougly is the ice melted? Completely? Only to the point where the bubbles are filled with water? I'll have to do some experiments at home. In particular, I'd be interested to see how twice-frozen ice stacks up against boiled and once-frozen ice using the same water.

That's how you pronounce it in Spanish. There's no vowel equivalent in Spanish for the [ae] sound (as in "cat") we use in saying "dack-uh-ree." The vowels "ai" are pronounced as a dipthong ("aye"). Also, Spanish pronunciation does not migrate unstressed middle vowels towards the neutral schwa ("uh") as we do in English, so the "i" in the middle sylable is pronounced as "ee" (in fact, all the letters "i" are pronounced as "ee") rather than "uh." That gives you "die-kee-ree" (in the International Phonetic Alphabet: ['dai-ki-ri]).

Now you see... there's my comeuppance for not watching more closely, or at least not double checking. Very nicely done video, by the way. Heh. I know what you mean. My understanding is that the Spanish pronunciation would be as I wrote it. That said, the de facto English pronunciation does seem to be "dack-uh-ree," so I imagine that fight's already lost (not that this would keep me from fighting it anyway!). The Hemmingway I know has rum, lime, grapefruit and maraschino. The Papa Dobles is an extra-large Hemmingway blended with ice (most likely originally shaken with finely crushed ice and the whole works turned out into the glass). Some people add sugar to both if they find them too dry, and I don't think that's entirely inappropriate so long as it's not too much

I was a little surprised to see that there isn't already a thread on this cocktail, so I thought I'd start one. It's a brilliant marriage of rum, lime and a little touch of sugar. Before I get to the meat of my post, I thought I'd mention a few things: First, the proper pronunciation is "die-kee-ree," not "dack-uh-ree." Second, here's a nice page on the Daiquiri over at the WebtenderWiki, mostly compiled by ThinkingBartender. From this post in the "Stomping Through the Savoy" thread. Interesting. , Angus says that Constantino of La Floridita (who he says invented the drink, which I believe is not exactly an accepted fact) tossed the lime shell into the shaker, presumably to include some of the oils. I've never heard of this. Anyone else?I actually am most fond of the Hemmingway Daiquiri, sometimes called the Hemmingway Special, which includes the addition of grapefruit juice and a touch of maraschino (but without the crushed ice as in a Papa Doble).

Many of us, yours truly included, love cast iron cookwares for a variety of cooking tasks. When it comes to searing a thick steak or making cornbread, good old seasoned cast iron wins out every time. One of the best features of cast iron has always been its cost: cheap. A twelve-inch cast iron skillet is unlikely to run you more than twenty bucks. As various manufacturers of cast iron cookware have faded away along with cast iron's popularity as a cooking surface, not to mention as part of a few corporate mergers, one maker has carried the torch: Lodge Manufacturing. Their "Original Finish" cookware has remained true to the original product that should be a part of any well-equipped kitchen. But those of you who clicked through to the home page may be thinking: "Ruh? What is this? Calphalon?" Not quite. It's Lodge's new "Signature Series" which, as far as I can tell, consists of a cast iron body with "new style" stainless steel handles riveted to it. The difference? Well, presumably the new handles will "stay cool" more than the old integrated cast iron handles. Well, I hope those handles are worth a 500% increase in price, because a twelve-inch Signature Series cast iron pan will run you a cool hundred bucks. Clearly the folks at Lodge aren't stupid, and clearly they have reason to believe that people somewhere will line up to pay a hundred bucks for a cast iron pan with a stainless steel handle. But, seriously, I can't think of any reason why anyone would want them. And, at the same time, no one seems to be selling polished cast iron, which most everyone agrees would be a great idea that's worth an extra, say, 15%.

I thought that too, and it may still be possible; but, I'm not sure the dates add up for that version of history. Grand Marnier, according to their website originally named "Curacao Marnier," has been produced since 1827. Cointreau has been produced since 1849. It doesn't seem like the Senior family started distilling on Curacao until 1888 or so. Most of the modern rum houses, (Bacardi, Clement, Havana Club,) were founded around the same time, between the 1830s and 1900. If there was rum based orange liqueur coming from the West Indies in prior to 1827, it was likely not very nice. From what I can tell, the European Orange liqueurs probably pre-dated the ones actually produced in the islands. Yea, that's hard to say. I'm not sure Senior is saying that they are the original producers of curaçao liqueur, but rather that their product is the only "original" because it's the only one made on the island of Curaçao exclusively with local bitter orange peel. It's a bit like Crystal saying, "we're the only ones making the 'original Louisiana-style hot sauce' because we're the only ones making the sauce in Louisiana exclusively with local ingredients" (for clarification: Texas Pete, a Louisiana-style hot sauce, is made in North Carolina). That's not quite the same thing as saying, "we invented Louisiana-style hot sauce" -- although it is cleverly worded to make it seem as though that's what they're saying. As for precedence, given the fact that sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean were making rum as far back as, say, the 1600s, it's not a far reach to think that someone might have thought of dumping in some dried orange peels and extra sugar. This would put it well before Grand Marnier. I'm not sure we have to believe that the alcohol for the original curaçao liqueur was distilled locally, and I doubt it would have been re-distilled following infusion. The liqueur itself is not excessively expensive, at least once you get over the shipping, or the balance of the other tempting items you might accidentally purchase from LdF. I find some of their claims a little dubious, but maybe they're right. What they say in their history is that the Combiers were confectioners who opened a shop in Saumur in 1832, and they "began to make liqueurs in their back shop." By 1848, they became full-time makers of liqueur. Cointreau didn't start making their famous triple sec until 1875. So the questions are: Is the liqueur sold by the Combiers today meaningfully similar to the one they were making back in the 1840s -- which is to say, would we recognize it as "triple sec"? Or might it be the case that they were making something a bit different, and simply called it "triple sec"? Or were they making something we might recognize as "triple sec-like" but calling it something else? If they were making something called "triple sec" and that we would recognize as triple sec as early as 1834, why is it that the product seems to be unknown until Cointreau's 1875 debut? Regardless, it seems clear that the Cointreau model is the one that defined the category (so much so that Cointreau removed "triple sec" from their bottle and re-branded as simply "Cointreau" after the market was flooded with cheap immitators in knockoff bottles).

Seems likely from the material Erik linked to thatmany of both kinds are redistilled after the orange infusion -- although the cheap ones are certainly made with alcohol and flavorings. I also have to believe that most curaçao liqueur is colored with added coloring agents. For example, Senior in describing their Curaçao of Curaçao brand says "The original liqueur is clear in color, but it is also available in four (4) other colors: blue, red, mandarine (orange) and green. These colors are available for cocktail purposes. ... The taste is exactly the same." Some of the brandy-based ones (Grand Marnier for sure, and perhaps also GranGala?) likely derive their coloration primarily from the alcohol base. Grand Marnier, interestingly, seems to infuse orange peels into neutral spirits, then blends the flavored alcohol with "up to 5 years old" cognac, then ages the whole works in oak.

Interesting. Some of what he says seems contrary to other reliable information I've received. For example, I've been given to understand that the only difference betwen blue curaçao and orange curaçao is color. Now, of course it doesn't have to be that way. Makers can certainly change the formula by color if they wish, and apparently Bols does, but I've never heard that blue curaçao is supposed to have a flavor that is distinct from orange curaçao. If I can paraphrase what he says about the history, it goes something like this: <blockquote>First there was curaçao, an orange liqueur produced on the Dutch Carribbean island of Curaçao using the peels of the local bitter oranges. This liqueur grew in popularity, and before too long the market was full of over-sweet/under-potent orange liqueurs. The balance was so far in the direction of sweet and away from orange, that curaçao came to be used in cocktails primarily for its sweetening properties. [At this point, I think we can assume that many, perhaps most curaçao brands were not made exclusively with bitter orange.] Cointreau began selling their curaçao as "triple sec," to indicate that this was a dry version of the liqueur. Eventually the classification "triple sec" became diluted and the company began calling the product "Cointreau." Grand Marnier did the same thing with their curaçao.</blockquote> Not sure that does much to clear up the curaçao/triple sec question. According to those links, production of curaçao has gone back to a more orange-flavored, less sweet aesthetic. Other than color, however, it's still unclear to me what definitively distinguishes triple sec from curaçao. There are certainly cheap triple sec liqueurs that are sweeter than better quality curaçao liqueurs. If we color those triple sec liqueurs orange, do we now have curaçao?

For pecan pie, Steen's cane syrup can't be beat, in my opinion.

Exactly. It's confusing. What we can say for sure is that they're both orange-flavored. And it seems to be the case that curaçao liqueur is made only with bitter orange peels while triple sec uses both bitter and sweet. Beyond that, it seems fairly ambiguous. I've even heard some people say that "triple sec" indicates triple distillation, and Andy claims above that it also indicates distillation after the orange peel infusion. ("Sec" means "dry" in French, and is also how one might indicate "neat" or "straight" when ordering a spirit -- I'm not sure where the idea comes from that "sec" refers to distillation.) This would presumably mean that curaçao liqueur is not redistilled post-infusion? Regardless, like The Hersch, I have yet to see any definitive information one way or the other.

This is where it all gets confusing. I agree that we are usually thinking of something Cointreau-like when we say "triple sec." And yet, I am also led to believe that Grand Marnier is technically a kind of triple sec (indeed, I think orange curaçao is technically triple sec).

Didn't you say Orangero was clear, though? It looks orange here. Wow, yes that's orange, and Orangero is definitely clear. Perhaps they added some coloring agents to Grand Orange? Or changed the ingredients enough to get that color? The descriptions are similar though, but the Orangero does mention something about bitterness. Considering that, IMHO, the Orangero was not very worthwhile, maybe others thought the same and they dropped Orangero and devloped Grand Orange? Yea, hard to say. I suppose it's possible that Grand Orange is colored. On the other hand, the product description for Grand Orange says it's made with "cognac" which I think we are supposed to believe is aged and therefore colored already (I'm not convinced it's meaningfully aged). Grand Orange also does mention that it's made with a mixture of sweet and bitter oranges. I wonder if it isn't simply a brandy-based version of their Triple Sec? On the other hand (and this speaks to some of my suppositions as to aging and color in these liqueurs) my google searches have turned up references to Orangero as "liqueur au cognac." It's a mystery.

Didn't you say Orangero was clear, though? It looks orange here. Yea, I don't disagree with that. Just saying that when people want "triple sec" rather than Cointreau (ignoring for the moment that Cointreau is triple sec), MB seems to be the best one to reach for. Personally, for my own use I have only Cointreau. Funny how it works. I had no problem finding Senior but the MB Curacao was nowhere to be found, even after hunting through over 20 liquor stores from Boston to Maine. It's not that easy to find the MB at retail in NYC either, but the pros seem able to get it fairly easily and most of the best places use it. Thinking about the "aged brandy" question, I note that MB specifies cognac for their orange but not for their blue curaçao. I wonder if they're made with different base spirits. Or, if not, I wonder if we'd be so ready to taste "aged" in the blue curaçao.