slkinsey

What's the word on non-Pomegranate flavorings in grenadine as it is was used as a cocktail ingredient? (Reduced pomegranate juice, I think, pre-dates its use in cocktails by quite a bit and is part of several culinary traditions.) Are any classics? Here's an interesting article on grenadine

InSinkErator's new models feature a multi-stage grinding system that they say handles "difficult food waste, such as beef bones, corn husks, potato skins and artichoke remnants."

Nice report. I've had any number of De Marco's slices to soak up the booze from Pegu Club on my way to the subway home. By now they've had plenty of time to work out any kinks, and I think it's safe to say that they're a big disappointment. Mushy crusts topped with rubbery cheese and an overly salty sauce that tastes of Chef Boyardee.

As chance would have it, there is a New York Times article about this, dating to 1997. However, according to the manufacturers it would seem that there is not much room for concern. They say that the waste is ground down to a "silt like consistency" by modern disposals, and that the use of extra water is minimal. They test those things using 35 pounds of frozen spare ribs! Pretty cool. This article strengthens my feeling that landlords and co-op boards aren't allowing them primarily because they figure "people have been getting along without them fine, so why take the risk, however minimal?"

leviathan, what do you mean by "cast iron frying pan"? Do you mean to say "cast iron grill pan" -- which is to say, a cast iron skilled with raised ridges on the bottom? If this is what you mean, I have to say that I don't find this pan particularly useful, except for marking meat with grill marks. And, really, who cares if your pork chop has grill marks on it unless it's because it was actually cooked on a grill? The transfer of thermal energy from the pan to the meat is nowhere near as good with a grill pan due to the reduced contact area, and they're always extremely smokey to use in the house. Although it seems like an interesting idea, in actual practice I don't think they really work very well, and I don't recommend them.

I suppose that depends a bit on the quality of your "ordinary-quality bar whiskey." In the bars I frequent, a Manhattan compounded with ordinary-quality bar whiskey is likely to be made with Rittenhouse Bonded. In other bars... I'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do with something like Banker's Club or Heaven Hill.

I always though that the citywide prohibition against garbage disposals was an environmental thing, and secondarily an infrastructure thing (handling the increased waste). Of course, plenty of NYers flush all kinds of things down the toilet that might previously have gone through a disposal. Anyway, with respect to landlords, when the building has old pipes (many of them 100+ years old) and when the tenants are largely used to getting by without a garbage disposal, it's easier and cheaper to simply say they aren't allowed. Because of the rent regulations in New York City, it's advantageous for the landlord to turn over the lease frequently anyway.

The earliest citation that I have found for the Margarita is from 1953, and that was a article in Esquire. Right. But "invented in" and "became 'top 50 popular' in" aren't the same thing.

I think of the Margarita as a drink that exploded in popularity (largely in its crappy over-sweetened frozen version) sometime in the late 70s/early 80s.

Yea, haddock is the poor man's cod. Personally, I wouldn't be too locked into cooking it whole. And, unless you've got 6 friends coming over, a fair bit of it will go to waste anyway if you cook it whole. What about taking off the fillets, cooking the fat part of the fillets (poached would be great), and saving the thin parts for chowder, which you could make tomorrow using the rack and trim to make a broth.

No lime juice or soda water in a Julep. And a Julep is usually made with crushed ice, not cube or cracked ice. The Maison Charles is an up drink, also without soda. I'm guessing that Movito is a mispelling of Mojito. Santiago Julep has pineapple juice, crushed ice and grenadine.

Yes! In fact... wait for it... waaaaaaait for it... burning more calories than you consume is the only scientifically-proven way to reduce excess adipose tissue. As I mentioned above, not all weight loss is the same. Loss of "water weight" through a low carb diet is not meaningful weight loss. Let us imagine the following: Take two identical twins at the same weight, and with the same exercise habits. Put them on calorie deficit diets that have equal caloric value. Both diets have the same amount of fiber, vitamins, etc. The difference is that one twin gets 50% of his calories from carbohydrates, including simple sugars, and the other twin gets only 5% of his calories from carbohydrates, with no simple sugars. At the end of the trial, the twins will have lost approximately the same amount of body fat. The low-carb, no-sugar twin may be several pounds lighter because of the water weight-shedding effect of a diet that contains insufficient carbohydrates. There is no scientific evidence of which I am aware that this is the case with respect to any kind of real-world diet (no one is suggesting a diet of 100% fructose) and a fair amount of evidence that it is not the case. Again, no one is suggesting that people don't overconsume sugar, or that overconsumption of sugar doesn't have negative consequences. So does overconsumption of fat, overconsumption of protein, overconsumption of salt, and indeed, overconsumption of water. That doesn't make fat, protein, salt and water poisons, and it doesn't make sugar a poison either. Similarly, just because reduction in consumption of certain foods may be recommended when one is sick (although I am not aware of any scientifically-supported recommendations to eliminate sugar from the diet when one is sick) does not make that food "harmful" in normal circumstances. For example, someone with the flu might be advised to lay off the red wine. And yet, we know that red wine in amounts of a glass or so per day is actually beneficial. Again, this is a common American misunderstanding, the idea that "if a lot of something is bad for you, then it's a 'poision' and you shouldn't have any of it." This is simply not true. Cigarettes are a "poison." A lot of cigarette smoke is bad for you, and even a little of it is bad for you as well. Alcohol is a poison, too. A lot of it is bad for you. But, interestingly enough, a little alcohol is actually good for you. Who knew? There is no evidence that sigar is a poison or that a reasonable amount of refined sugar in the diet is terrible for the human body. No one is suggesting that Americans don't have too much refined sugar in their diet. Indeed, I say above that "convincing and well-supported arguments may be made (and have been made) to the effect that overconsumption of mono- and disaccharides has had a negative epidemiological health consequence." It's not clear from this that you have a firm understanding of "refined." There is very little difference between the sugar content of, e.g., unrefined honey and high fructose corn syrup. As for the spicy heat example, there certainly are plenty of places in the world where the "craving" for spice is every bit as real as the "craving" for sweet, salt, etc. No, actually it does not agree with you. That sentence only says "this is what people are saying these days" (and, again, I would add that no one is recommending a high-sucrose diet). This is just cherry picking a sentence out of context to make it seem like the study supports one viewpoint when in fact it supports the opposite. The key sentence to read in that abstract is: "In this study, a high-sucrose intake as part of an eucaloric, weight-maintaining diet had no detrimental effect on insulin sensitivity, glycemic profiles, or measures of vascular compliance in healthy nondiabetic subjects." Another way of wording this would be: "The basic premise behind the South Beach Diet and other insulin-based diets is horsecrap unless you are diabetic." Peer-reviewed science is peer-reviewed science. Discounting the results of a study because of the source of its funding, or on any basis other than the soundness of its science, is a primary tactic of fringe quackery. Look... if you want to believe Agatston and Perricone, and the scare tactics and rhetoric of their big-money diet books instead of common sense and mainstream science, be my guest. But saying that sucrose and white bread flour are poisons that ruin our blood chemistry again and again and again still doesn't make it so.

I'm sorry, but there is simply no scientific evidence that added sugar (i.e., sugar that has been extracted from its natural source) is addictive in the clinical sense. None whatsoever. People can develop a taste for sweet flavors, and this may cause them to overconsume calories and perhaps to consume carbohydrates in a way that is not in balance with fat and protein consumption, and most likely to have a diet that is insufficient in fiber and certain nutrients. People can also develop a taste for fat, which carries its own well-known constellation of health outcomes. People can also develop a taste for sourness, which carries another constellation of health outcomes (I have a friend who has ruined his teeth by eating too many lemons). People can also develop a taste for spicy heat, which carries yet another constellation of health outcomes. And so on. None of these things are addictive in the sense that heroin and nicotine are addictive. These are ideas that are promoted in big-selling, big-money diet books -- not by real scientists. As for whether the Islets of Langerhans "crave" sugar, this is nonsense from a physiological and psychological standpoint. Pancreatic cells cannot, and do not "crave" anything at all. The Islet cells are endocrine cells that release hormones like somatostatin, insulin, glucagon and amylin into the bloodstream. Period. As pointed out in the Tufts article, blood sugar level, which is acted upon by these hormones, remains within a stable range and does not seem to affect hunger and produce "cravings." What I mean by "popular imagination" is that people have the idea that "I really like pizza and crave it sometimes, and I eat too much of it even when I know I shouldn't" equals "addicted to pizza." No. No, it doesn't. Pizza does not activate the addiction centers of the brain. There is no similarity between the psychology and physiology of heroin and pizza. Heroin is addictive. Pizza is not. Neither is added sugar. So, what I'm saying is that there is a) no generally-accepted scientific evidence that added sugar is a "poison to our bodies" and b) no generally-accepted scientific evidence that added sugar is addictive in the physiological/psychological sense that could be compared to real addictions such as heroin, nicotine or alcohol.

Actually, I would say that it's definitely a secret that sugar is addictive. Probably because it isn't true. There is a huge misunderstanding in the popular imagination about what addiction really is, but suffice it to say that one cannot become "addicted" in any meaningful sense to sugar, fat, carbohydrates, chocolate, etc. Regardless, even if one does develop a taste for and ramp-up consumption of sweet things -- and I agree that this is an issue in the American diet -- the same is true of salt, fat, bitterness, sourness, spice, etc. for other people. This doesn't mean that spicy heat, etc. are "addictive." As for all the glycemic index and blood sugar mumbojumbo, the scientific concensus seems to be that, unless you have diabetes or the genetic factors that predispose you to diabetes, it's not really meaningful. The Tufts University Health and Nutrition Newsletter had this to say about the South Beach Diet: There is also a simple explanation for why people can lose a lot of weight on low carb and low-sugar diets. First, although most of these diets claim to eschew calorie-counting, in fact they are almost always very low-calorie diets in disguise. The South Beach Diet comes out to something like 1,500 calories a day in Phase 1. One of the reasons these diets caution against the evils of sugar (for the same reason others demonize fat) is because it is a very calorie-dense food. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that replacing a diet featuring full sugar cola, cookies and large orders of french fries with mineral water and salad will result in weight loss. Anyone who has been around low carb/zero sugar dieters also notices that weight gain tends to be precipitous when they fall off the low carb wagon. Again, there is a fairly simple explanation (in addition to the fact that their calorie counts inevitably go up). I quote again from the Tufts article: So, yea... I don't have any trouble agreeing that reducing one's consumption of sweeteners can result in weight loss and improved health. There are lots of reasons why this is so: primarily reduced calorie count, but also increased consumption of nutrients and fiber, etc. But this simply does not equal "high fructose corn syrup is an addictive poison that ruins our blood chemistry and destroys our health." There is, by the way, no chemical difference between the sugars in, say, apples and oranges and the sugars in sucrose or high fructose corn syrup. Those sugars are simply more concentrated in table sugar and syrup, and don't come along with vitamins and fiber as they do in the fruits. None of the foregoing is intended to discount your own personal experiences. Just as with many things, just because the basic premise behind a diet regimen may be unsupported or inaccurate doesn't mean that the diet regimen itself doesn't work for some people. It's all about finding something that works for you personally. It may be that you really crave carbohydrates and so you need something that will strictly limit them. It may be (and it sounds likely) that any sudden weight gain you may experience after stepping outside of that strict limitation on carbohydrates is "water weight" due to the water-binding properties of stored carbohydrates in the body. Or it may be that you have some insulin resistance issues in your metabolism. As long as it's a diet you can live with, who cares?

Simple sugars = monosaccharides like glucose and fructose, and for the purposes of a discussion like this, I would also include disaccharides like sucrose and maltose, because they are so easily reduced to their constiuent monosaccharides by the body. Also known as sweeteners (although not all mono- and disaccharides are sweet). My point is that, while I do believe that convincing and well-supported arguments may be made (and have been made) to the effect that overconsumption of mono- and disaccharides has had a negative epidemiological health consequence, I have not seen any that single out high fructose corn syrup as being especially bad compared to, say, a diet in which the same amount of sugar was being consumed in the form of sucrose from sugar cane. These arguments would have to hinge on the belief that fructose is responsible for a wide range of maladies, and considering that high fructose corn syrup of the kind typically used in e.g., soft drinks, is only 55% fructose to 45% glucose (compared to 50% each after sucrose is broken down), one would have to consume a lot of high fructose corn syrup for the fructose to make a big difference compared to consuming the same amount of sucrose, and I believe that these differences would be largely obscured by the larger health impact of simply consuming so much sugar.

Just saw this thread... Pure corn syrup is, I believe, mostly glucose. It is produced via enzymatic reactions from corn starch. Karo syrup contains "light corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, salt, [and] vanilla." Their FAQ says that it "contains between 15% to 20% dextrose (glucose) and a mixture of various other types of sugar." This leads me to believe that the amount of high fructose corn syrup in there is fairly high. Absolutely. I swear by Steen's Cane Syrup for pecan pie, and have also had good results with Lyle's Golden Syrup. Golden Syrup is simply a golden-colored invert sucrose syrup from cane sugar. Cane syrup is, well, cane syrup -- boiled down sugar cane juice. It has some carmelization products, etc. Both could be considered "high fructose" in the same sense that this is used to describe the fructose content of high fructose corn syrup. I think the reality is that high fructose corn syrup is, indeed, quite a bit cheaper than sucrose -- not only on a cost-versus-sweetening power basis, but also in terms of industrial handling costs, etc. Others have mentioned that high fructose corn syrup, being liquid, is much easier to handle on an industrial basis. As chance would have it, there are all kinds of quotas and price supports for sucrose in the United States, with the last batch introduced by Reagan in the early 80s (although the government has been inflating domestic sugar prices and making importation difficult for almost 200 years). These serve to make it way too expensive to import sucrose in any meaningful amount, and also artificially inflate the price of domestic sucrose. On the other side of the coin, we have all kinds of subsidies and supports for corn growers, which serve to drive down the cost of corn-derrived sweeteners (i.e., high fructose corn syrup). Manufacturers turned to high fructose corn syrup beginning in the 80s in response to this artificial economic imbalance because, when you combine the serious price savings on the raw ingredient with the easier industrial handling of a liquid product, it made sense to change. Other manufacturers in other countries didn't make this change, because they didn't have the special economic conditions that exist in the US. On the world market, I think sucrose is still a good bit less expensive than high fructose corn syrup. In the US, however, the price difference is reversed. There have been times when the US price of sugar was over 700% greater than the world market price. I don't see any evidence whatsoever that high fructose corn syrup "blows your blood chemistry" or is "bad for the body" or, indeed, is any worse for you than sucrose. What is bad is that people are eating way too much processed food, which has health consequences that go far beyond overconsumption of simple sugars (too much salt, too much fat, too much saturated fat, etc.).

Maybe it's luck of the draw. I can't stand eggplant, so I've never had Babbo's lamb chops and can't comment. But, as mentioned above, I have had iterations of the lamb's brain ravioli that I thought were less than stellar.

I've never agreed with this. All the secondi I've had at Babbo have been excellent, and some of them -- I think especially of the fennel dusted sweetbreads with sweet and sour onions, duck bacon and membrillo vinegar -- could compete for best of class in NYC. Certainly I've never had overcooked fish, flavorless squab or insipid veal at Babbo. Rather, I think it is the case that Americans misunderstand the Italian aesthetic when it comes to the protein course. Babbo's pasta dishes are certainly excellent and inventive, but it's also the case that Americans have a paradigm for Italian pasta. This is not true with respect to secondi. For example, Babbo's rabbit with Brussels sprouts, pancetta and carrot vinaigrette is a simple preparation (although actually on the complicated side for Italian cooking) compared to what one might expect at a similarly appointed neo-French restaurant, and it has less "wow factor" than their beef cheek ravioli with crushed squab liver and black truffles... but that doesn't mean that the rabbit is inconsistent or less excellent in its own way. And it does mean that it's correct in the Italian restaurant tradition. I would suggest that anyone expecting an Italian rabbit dish to have the same "wow factor" as Babbo's beef cheek ravioli is going to be disappointed. Rabbit stuffed with foie gras and black truffles in a pool of carrot emulsion, napped with a saffron foam and topped with a Brussels sprout tuille might stack up better against the foie gras ravioli in terms of American "wow factor"... it just wouldn't be Italian. Among the things I've tried there over the years, the whole grilled branzino with roasted cardoons and lemon oregano jam; the barbecued squab with roasted beet "farrotto" and porcini mustard; the grilled quail with "scorzonera alla romana" and saba; the rabbit with Brussels sprouts, pancetta and carrot vinaigrette; the grilled pork chop with artichokes, cipolline and aceto manodori; the fennel dusted sweetbreads with sweet and sour onions, duck bacon and membrillo vinegar; the "brasato al Barolo" with porcini mushrooms; the deconstructed ossobuco for two with saffron orzo, cavolo nero and chestnut gremolata; and the grilled ribeye for two with roasted potatoes and aceto manodori are all very good. I'd recommend the sweetbreads, and ossobuco for those who want "wow." The pork (sometimes veal?) chop, branzino and ribeye are perhaps too simple for those seeking "wow." Babbo's warm tripe "alla Parmigiana" is one you won't want to miss. Probably my favorite tripe dish in the City. The pig foot "Milanese" and the testa are both good and interesting, although it's a somewhat odd pig foot preparation IMO. The brain ravioli are very good, although I found the pasta a bit less delicate than I would have liked the last time I tried them.

One way to make the supermarket ricotta more creamy is to drain it overnight in a fine strainer. I think the gritty consistency comes from too much water. Good quality ricotta has been drained more thoroughly than the supermarket stuff.

I crack ice at home this way all the time. Doesn't bother me at all. FWIW, places like Pegu have extra-heavy bar spoons that one us unlikely to find at the local supply store. For home use, I find that a decently heavy soup spoon is best. Just hold the ice in the palm of your hand, give it a sharp smack with the spoon, dump the cracked ice into the shaker, and shake out your hand once over the sink (this last bit keeps your left hand from freezing). I find that the cracking blow from the spoon should be fast, but can be relatively light. It doesn't take much pressure to crack an ice cube into three pieces or so. Experiment with your ice to figure out the best location for an effective cracking strike with the spoon (generally, in the center of a flat face of the cube).

I'd say that "crushed ice" is comprised of fairly uniform pieces that are no larger than the size of a pencil eraser. "Cracked ice" is comprised of pieces of differing sizes, with most not being larger than the last joint on one's thumb and the rest being smaller. Crushed ice must be produced with an ice crushing machine or by repeatedly whacking a bag of ice with a heavy implement until it is uniformly pulverized. Cracked ice is best produced one cube at a time by holding a cube in one's hand and striking it sharply with the back of a spoon. This will usually produce three large irregular pieces and several smaller pieces.

The Champion is a great machine. Easy to clean and built like a tank. BUT. It's very large, and not cheap. You'll spend all of that 200 bucks, and that's if you get a good price.

Well, it's not clear to me that a vacuum cannister has any particular advantages ("vacuum marinading" has been debunked a number of times). The advanage of using a vacuum bag is that, once all the air is removed from the bag, the marinade fills in all the spaces and completely surrounds the food item on all sides. This means that you can use a much smaller amount of marinade, and you don't have to worry so much about turning it around to get marinade on all sides. For home models (e.g., the Tilia FoodSaver) it is best to freeze the marinade, vacuum bag the frozen marinade together with the food item, and then allow the marinade to thaw. This way you can evacuate most of the air from the bag without getting liquid in the machine.

How would this machine work any better than sealing the marinade and food item in a vacuum bag, which also has the effect of covering the enture surface of the food item with marinade? A vacuum sealer, of course, has a multitide of uses, unlike this contraption.

Ths misunderstanding is between flavor and taste. I think mbanu was using the word "flavor" when perhaps "taste" would have been more apropos. I have posted this information elsewhere on the site, but perhaps it makes sense to repeat it here... Flavor and taste are not quite the same thing. Taste is the sensation produced by the activation of taste buds in the mouth and throat area by certain chemicals. Smell is the sensation produced by the activation of olfactory receptors by certain chemicals. There is another chemosensory mechanism called the "common chemical sense" through which various nerve endings (especially prevalent in the naturally moist areas of the body) react to certain chemicals to create sensations such as the burn of capsaicin, the sting of ammonia, etc. These senses combine with other sensed elements such as texture and temperature to produce the impression that we call "flavor." As many people understand, smell is perhaps the most important contributor to the perception of flavor. The new edition of McGee's On Food and Cooking has this to say: It is true, however, that there are certain additions made to drinks that are there primarily for their aromatic (smell) contributions rather than their taste contributions. One could make the argument that the minute quantities of vermouth added to the modern "super-extra-dry Martini" are there for their aromatic qualities. I would argue that they're there simply for the sake of tradition and make little if any meaningful contribution. Higher abv spirits tend to have a more intense flavor than their lower abv cousins, this is true. Rittenhouse 100 proof has more flavor than Rittenhouse 80 proof. But I wouldn't necessarily agree that this is because "alcohol carries flavour better than water." Rather, it is the case that the lower proof spirit was diluted with more water to bring it down to bottle proof. Take straight whiskey, for example. Assuming that the whiskey comes out of the barrel at 125 proof, a liter of 100 proof whiskey would be comprised of 800 ml of barrel-proof whiskey cut with 200 ml of water. A liter of 80 proof whiskey, on the other hand, would be comprised of 640 ml of barrel-proof whiskey cut with 360 ml of water. That means that there would be 160 ml more of barrel-proof whiskey in the 100 proof liter, for an increase of 25%. Considering this, it's no surprise that Rittenhouse 100 proof has a more intense flavor than Rittenhouse 80 proof. The effect is magnified when we are talking about products like gin, that start out at a much higher abv before being diluted to bottle proof.