slkinsey

But those are two different classes of liqueur (albeit somewhat interconnected, as I explained above). A better question would be whether a cocktail made with Marie Brizard orange curaçao has an "aged brandy" flavor relative to the same cocktail made with Senior orange curaçao (which as far as I know is made with neutral sprits), or whether that same cocktail made with Grand Marnier would taste "more aged" than the one made with Marie Brizard orange curaçao.

Who knows? Maybe it's filtered like some aged rums, to remove color? Or maybe it is relatively unaged. But I couldn't say that Marie Brizard or GranGala would taste all that "aged" to me in a blind tasting.

Thanks for the notes, Scott. I'm not sure I entirely agree with your assessments as to suitability for cocktails, but that's why we play the game. A few general thoughts: Marie Brizard Orangero: I'm not quite sure what this product is, and I don't see it listed on Marie Brizard's list of fruit liqueurs. Perhaps it's the old name for what they are now calling Grand Orange, or perhaps it's a defunkt liqueur. I don't think Grand Orange is all that interesting. Triple Sec versus Curaçao Liqueur: It's a bit difficult to classify orange liqueurs into families and say that one is definitively a curaçao liqueur and not a triple sec while another is definitively a triple sec and not a curaçao liqueur. Technically, I suppose triple sec is usually colorless and supposed to be made with a blend of sweet and bitter orange peels (originally from Haiti) while curaçao liqueur is usually colored and supposed to be made with bitter orange peels ony (technically from the island of Curaçao). There is a good deal of overlap, though. Senior makes an uncolored bottling of Curaçao of Curaçao, and triple sec was originally called "white curaçao." In practice, of course, the lesser brands are made with whatever they have on hand, and both sweet and bitter orange peels are usually sourced worldwide. As a generality, I'd say that curaçao liqueur has a sweeter, less fragrant and slightly bitter aspect compared to triple sec. Patrón Citrónge is not tequila-based. It's made with neutral spirits and a blend of sweet and bitter orange peels, making it a textbook triple sec. If I were cynical I'd suggest that what we have here is simply a tequila company using the historical association of Cointreau with tequila in the Margarita cocktail to roll out their own brand of triple sec which they promote as being a better match with tequila due to its provenance. Since it costs just as much as Cointreau, I don't see any reason to switch. Brandy-Based versus Not-Brandy-Based: This distinction doesn't really hold through very well. Marie Brizard's orange curaçao is made with brandy, as is Cointreau's triple sec. Grand Marnier could be classified a curaçao liqueur, as it is colored and is made with bitter orange peel. GranGala calls itself a "triple orange liqueur," which could make it a brandy-based triple sec. Suitability for Cocktails: For triple sec liqueurs, Cointreau is considered the gold standard by which all others are measured. Luxardo's Triplum and Marie Brizard's triple sec are considered more or less acceptable substitutions, although even with these quality products I think there are certain cocktails (e.g., the Sidecar) for which it's Cointreau or nothing in my book. What makes Cointreau so much better than all the other triple sec liquers is precisely the intensity of flavor and aroma, especially when considered alongside sweetness. We're not generally using a lot of Cointreau in a cocktail, which is why the intensity is so important. With something like DeKuyper or Hiram Walker, by the time you've used enough of the liqueur to make a positive contribution of flavor, the drink is way too sweet. Personally, I find "off brand" orange liqueurs like Hiram Walker, DeKuyper, Leroux, etc. have artificial flavors, and I have my doubts as to whether they're made with real orange peels. For curaçao liqueurs it's a little more complicated, as there does not seem to be a "Cointreau of curaçao liqueur." Senior's Curaçao of Curaçao is very good, although very difficult to source in the US. Most cocktailians in the US seem to use Marie Brizard's orange curaçao which, alas, was not among the ones you tasted. I've used goth Grand Marnier and GranGala as the curaçao component in a cocktail although, in line with your thinking, one has generally to increase the proportion due to the more muted orange flavor (which luckily also comes with lower sweetness). Other Orange Liqueurs: It's kind of a shame that Patrón Citrónge isn't tequila-based, because that would make it a lot more interesting to me. There are a few interesting orange liqueurs, like Compass Box's Orangerie. which is made with ten year old scotch infused with spices and fresh orange peels. It would be interesting to see what other orange liqueurs might be good.

Interesting to hear your reactions, Doc. I wondered when something like this might happen, and I'm glad your post brings some balance to this discussion and brings the expectations back to reality. Momofuku Ssäm Bar is awesome, in my experience, but it's not "unpretentious Asian-fusion 4-star quality in a casual room." I've seen any number of times when a very good restaurant gets hyped into unreasonable expectations. For example, I can remember when Ouest opened, and people were so happy to have a real upscale restaurant on the Upper West Side that they hyped the hell out of it. And Ouest was very, very good when I visited. But I had several friends who went to Ouest with hype-based expectations that it was going to be "Jean-Georges North." Of course they came away disappointed, because Ouest is not on that level. Momofuku Ssäm Bar is a great restaurant for what it is. And I can only imagine that, had you stumbled onto the place having heard nothing about it and had no expectations, you might be raving. If your expectation was "$24 and under" level food in a casual setting, I'm guessing you would have been blown away. Going in there with the hype-based expectation of low 4-star/high 3-star level food in a casual setting (which it isn't, in my opinion) is a setup for disappointment. I think I've been with you and these friends on several other occasions when very high expectations were met with disappointment, but the fact is that even a place as consistently high-quality as, say, Patsy's East Harlem is going to miss the mark a few times -- and is also bound to disappoint if one comes in with the expectation that it's going to be better than Sally's in New Haven. I will say that, based on my experience, you haven't had the best of Momofuku Ssäm Bar if you haven't had the Bo Ssäm.

Funny! I had a similar thing happen around a month ago. I usually buy whole racks of untrimmed short ribs from Western Beef or Big Apple Meats and have them cut to size on the band saw. This is a great deal on quality short ribs, but does mean that there will always be some pieces that aren't meaty enough or are otherwise unsuited to braising. These get cryovac-ed and stuck into the freezer. Last month, I decided enough was enough and made around 4 gallons of beef stock so concentrated it doesn't freeze solid in my freezer. I do this kind of thing often with chicken bones. . . I like to roast whole chickens spatchcocked, with the breast bone removed. This always leaves me with the backbone, breast bone and whatever those funny thing are that attach to the thigh joint (hip bones). These go into the freezer until I can't stand it any more. Then it's stock-making time.

Sure it seems rational, if their strategy is to take a short-term small loss in business in exchange for putting Prime Time Tables out of business or at the very least scaring PTT away from scalping tables at their restaurant.

I think I see where you're coming from. Personally, I found the extra chew of the lamb's brain ravioli a little off-putting, but that's a matter of preference of course. If I'm reading correctly, you're using the words "al dente" more or less to convey the meaning: "the ideal state of done-ness for each particular kind of pasta." My confusion arose because this is not the way that term is typically used in my experience. Rather, it's used to describe the firm bite of not-quite-cooked-through dry pasta. I don't think one would find too many Italians describing fresh pasta as "al dente" (or at least not in a positive way!), because fresh pasta in the Emilia-Romagna tradition is supposed to be tender. I remember an episode from Batali's original show where he spoke about how he learned not to use egg wash to seal the edges of ravioli: he said Italians thought this made the edges of the ravioli unacceptably tough, and they tended to cut the edges away and set them aside. A lot of Americans, however, like the idea of fresh pasta with some bite to it (usually achieved through the use of durum wheat), and I've had any number of ravioli at Italian-American places that I considered tough and therefore might have (negatively) described as "al dente." Anyway, back to the topic of Babbo... The goose liver ravioli are definitely a must-try, in my opinion, as are the "mint love letters" (rectangular ravioli filled with mint and sauced with a spicy lamb ragu). In the non-filled pasta category, I highly recommend the maccheroni alla chitarra with oven dried tomatoes, red chiles and bottarga di muggine, as well as the fettuccine with house-made pancetta, artichokes, lemon and hot chiles.

That must be it. Bomboloni are, more or less, fried doughnuts, usually filled with something. The "-oni" ending indicates larger-than-usual size (and also plural -- it would be "-one" in the singular). Change that to "-ini" (or "-ino" for just one) and you get something with smaller-than-usual size. Hence, these would be "small-sized bomboloni." Edited to add: "bomba" means "bomb" or "bombshell" -- i.e., something spherical -- and is used much like "bombe" in French with respect to foods.

Those are more commonly known as sfinci di San Giuseppe, at least down South.

That's not quite the right question. The right question is: Does water conduct thermal energy into food more efficiently than steam? The answer is: yes, it does. Something that is placed in 100C water will come up to 100C more rapidly than something that is placed in 101C steam. This is because the item that is in water is being contacted by many more molecules than the item that is in steam, because liquid H2O is much more dense than H2O gas dispersed in air. Thermal energy is only conducted when there is contact. So, it's not the case that boiling cooks more thoroughly than steaming in an absolute sense. If you steam something for one hour, it will be more "thoroughly cooked" than it would be if you boiled it for one minute. Given a reasonably short, equal period of time, however, boiling will cook more thoroughly than steaming because it is so much more efficient at conducting thermal energy. Yes. That's the theory behind this cooking method. The tougher, bottom parts of the asparagus need to be softened by being cooked more thoroughly. This is achieved by having the bottom parts of the asparagus in 100C water, where maximum thermal energy can be conducted in and the vegetable comes up to 100C rapidly and remains there for the longest period of time. The tips of the asparagus are already tender and only need to come up to 100C or perhaps even less. Since these parts of the asparagus are only heated by steam, which is significantly less efficient at conducting thermal enegry, it takes them a lot longer to come up to temperature. In this way, the whole stalk of asparagus is cooked at the same time, but the bottom part is cooked more than the top part. This is, I think, largely an abandoned theory on how to cook asparagus. In practice it doesn't really work all that well, and one either ends up with mushy overcooked asparagus or the bottom part never does become tender -- and most often, both. It's much better to simply snap off the woody bottoms of the asparagus stalks, peel away the tough parts of the skin from the bottom half of the stalks, and throw the whole stalk into boiling salted water until barely tender (the whole stalk will become tender at the same time when treated this way). Yes, I think that's a big part of it. For some reason "boiled something-or-other" doesn't have the same appeal to most people as "steamed something-or-other." This may be due to negative connotations accrued to "boiled" by overcooked meats and vegetables cooked by boiling. I agree that there is a similar phenomenon at work with respect to "sauteed" and "fried" (if it's sitting still in the pan, it's frying; if it's moving around in the pan, it's sauteing) because "fried" evokes greasy fattening foods whereas "sauteed" somehow evokes lighter more sophisticated food. This likely has to do with the mis-use of the word "fry" to describe cooking techniques that might better be described as "boiling in oil" (e.g., "shallow frying " and "deep frying"). There, again, we come up against a reluctance to use the word "boil."

ulterior epicure, you had what I think are among the best dishes at Babbo (tripe, beef cheek ravioli, fennel dusted sweetbreads), so I am not surprised you had a good time. I've also had excellent experiences with Babbo's wine staff, who always seem to take my vague ideas and recommend something special and extraordinary costing less than I was planning to spend on wine. Interestingly, the one thing you write about with which I'd take exception is your description of the ravioli as "perfectly al dente." The one time I've been disappointed with the pasta at Babbo was an order of the lamb's brain ravioli (which, similar to your reaction, I'd like to see a little more "brainy") that I felt was al dente. I say this because I don't think fresh pasta from the tradition in which Babbo is operating -- which is to say, in the larger Emilia-Romagna tradition as opposed to some toothier fresh pasta styles from the South, like orecchiette -- is meant to bite back. Rather, I think this style of fresh pasta should be tender, and when a raviolo has a texture that I'd call al dente, it makes me think it's been frozen too long, or made with flour that's too hard. This is not to say that I like it mushy, of course, but to my taste pasta can't be "tender" and "al dente" at the same time (in general, I'd only use "al dente" to describe dry pasta). I've never found the beef cheek ravioli at Babbo anything other than tender. Just curious if you could expand on your perceptions of the texture of the fresh pasta dishes.

Right. As I said above, I bet that has to do with the ubiquity of home ranges with a slide-out drawer under the oven where foods can be "broiled" from above by the gas jets that heat the oven, this part of the stove typically being called the "broiler." I don't know when this implementation of the home stove came to be standard in US households, but 50-60 years ago seems about right.

Which "scotch-style" blended whiskies are using rice? Suntory Yamazaki, in any event, is a single malt whiskey by any definition. And, as far as I can tell, Nikka makes single malts and all-malt blends. Both these distilleries appear to be attempting to make whiskies reminiscent of the scotch tradition.

Yes, that's correct. But I think it's clear that what we're talking about here is "scotch-style whiskey, which I take primarily to mean whiskey with a smokey aspect (although, interestingly, smokiness is by no means universal in true Scotch).

Technically, I believe that "broiling" simply means to cook by direct exposure to radiant heat. If I had to guess, I'd say that most likely the distinction between "broiling" meaning "heat from above" versus "grilling" meaning "heat from below" dates from the ubiquity of modern gas-fired stoves in the American home, which included the ability to broil by placing foods under the gas jets which heat the oven. Once this part of the stove became known as "the broiler," "broiling" came to be known as "cooking under the broiler." I suppose this is similar to the way "grilling" came to be known as "cooking on top of the grill." Isn't it the case that "broiling" and "grilling" have different meanings in the UK?

Brown butter is simple and delicious. Great with fish, and my go-to sauce (with sage) for gnocchi. The reason, I think, that people don't often do brown butter for omelettes is that we have this aesthetic idea that an omelette should be pale yellow and shouldn't be browned at all.

The problem with an aluminum disk bottom is thart aluminum is not affected by induction. So what part of the pan is heating up? Some pans have a thin magnetic steel layer on the bottom of the aluminum disk, but some simply have a magnetic steel body. Anyway, if you're talking about a 2 inch overlap on each side of the induction hob, it's unclear to me that aluminum being heated by a thin strip of magnetic steel on the bottom of the pan has a great advantage over directly heated carbon steel in terms of moving heat to the overlap area.

I would assume that this is simply a mispelling unique to Stanley Clisby Arthur, or perhaps one that was common around New Orleans for a time. One can understand how the German word himbeere could come to be mispronounced "hembarig" over a number of years and generations much the same way, for example, New Jersey Italian-Americans pronounce coppacola as "gabbagool." The "red" part would refer to red raspberries as opposed to black raspberries.

1,000 degrees onto an area the size of a silver dollar if you hold the heat gun an inch away. By way of comparison, an okay overhead commercial broiler puts out something like 42,000 BTUs per burner, and it wouldn't be unusual for there to be three burners. That's 126,000 BTUs screaming down out of that thing.

2 mm of carbon steel is quite a bit. Carbon steel is conductive enough that I wouldn't expect hot spots to be a problem the way they are on thin stainless steel or thin enameled carbon steel. And keep in mind that, at 0.51 w/cm K carbon steel may have so-so thermal conductivity compared to aluminum alloy at 1.63 or cast aluminum at 1.21, but at it's still way better than stainless steel at 0.16, and not that far from cast iron at 0.80. I'd expect these pans to perform over standard heat somewhat similar to cast iron.

Great job, dude. What I find is often the case is that tha parents simply aren't willing to give up that dinner you gave up in order to take the kid home in the car for acting up at a restaurant. Indeed, they'll tolerate a certain amount (sometimes a lot!) of misbehavior in order to have that restaurant meal. And once the kids learn that there aren't any meaningful consequences... Well, at that age kids are nothing if not little manipulation machines (which, I should hasten to point out to any potentially horrified parents, is exactly what they should be at that age of psychological development).

d. I suppose it's possible the he was just really sloppy about conveying his reality, however given that his intent was clearly to demean Varietal he should have taken at least some care to be clear and correct. I thought he wrote it to convey the impression that he thought this was a fussy and pretentious practice. This is right in line with his smirking description of Varietal's listing of various producers and growers on their menu (something that has been going on for so long that even likeminded middlebrow restaurants like Franny's do it, and including some mention of the purview of certain ingredients is almost standard in higher cuisine these days).

Right. So it's not 100% efficiency. They're just using the waste water for something else. The chance that restaurants are doing this is, I have to think, infinitesimal. One way restaurants might make their own "mineral water" would be to get ahold of an analysis for their filtered local tap water and then add measured amounts of various minerals to get the profile they want.

Barkeeper's Friend and elbow grease, I'm afraid. I'd ordinarily recommend oven cleaner, but that's not good for anodized aluminum.

I don't think that's correct, Nathan. I'd like to see any manufacturer claims of the efficiency you're asserting (which would be something like 1 gallon of waste water per 33 gallons of treated water). For example, these guys say that their home system is "incredibly water efficient" because it "rejects only 1 gallon of water for every 1 gallon of drinking water that is produced." I've never seen any claims of waste water production better than 1:1 for reverse osmosis. To be clear, reverse osmosis only works by producing waste water. There is no such thing as a reverse osmosis system that doesn't produce waste water. To bring it back on topic, the reason I don't like the use of reverse osmosis when a restaurant is going to represent itself as using filtered municipal water instead of bottled water out of altruism and concern for the environment, is that I think it's inappropriate to use such a wasteful technology.