slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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For pecan pie, Steen's cane syrup can't be beat, in my opinion.
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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.
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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).
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... MB Orangero (which I also think is now Grand Orange) ...
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.
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... MB Orangero (which I also think is now Grand Orange) ...
Didn't you say Orangero was clear, though? It looks orange here.
After tasting them side-by-side I would never substitute the MB for Cointreau. While they are both high quality I got no comparison in taste. That is, I found the Cointreau to be much stronger in orange taste. If comparing two of the same cocktail using the same amounts of both then the MB has more of a chance of being undetectable. IMHO.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.
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.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.
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I can assure you, that if you made a Blue err... Orange Monday with the Brizard Orange Curacao, the aged brandy base would be completely apparent, especially if compared with one made from Cointreau.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It wouldn't seem rational for restaurants to refuse a table, since then they would lose that cover for the particular 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.
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Does this make sense? I'd like to know your thoughts. The next time I go (I'm determined there will be a next time), I'll have to try the goose liver ravioli and some of their non-filled pastas. Which would you recommend?
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.
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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.
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Those are more commonly known as sfinci di San Giuseppe, at least down South.
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1- I think the answer is yes, but does boiling definitely cook more thoroughly than steaming?
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.
2- Even with just steam, wouldn't the vertical orientation mean the bottoms get cooked more quickly than the tops [when asparagus is cooked in a tall, narrow pot such that the water only comes part of the way up the length of the asparagus]?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).
People will also use terms that sound more attractive as well (like "saute" for "fry"), and in part I think that this is what is going on with boil=steamYes, 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."
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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.
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...a distinction seems to have developed within the last 50 (?) years?
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.
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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.
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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).
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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?
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I thought about brown butter today as I was cooking an omelette. Typically, one lets the butter froth a bit and, as the frothing subsides, the eggs go in. I decided today to use extra butter and to let it go way past frothing to browning. I added the eggs to the brown butter and proceeded as usual. When the omelette was done, I plated it and drizzled the remaining brown butter over it.
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.
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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.
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I assume that the "hembarig" part is somehow related to the german "himbeere" and that raspberry syrup is going to be more authentic.
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.
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I have actually pondered using my electric heatgun that reaches 1000 degrees as a searing tool.
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.
All About Orange Liqueurs
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
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?