slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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well, Grimes is the preeminent historian of the cocktail. he's also written about food on and off for 20 years.
Hmm. I'm not sure I agree that Grimes has paramount importance as a cocktail historian -- unless there's something beyond that one book of which I am unaware. And whether or not he wrote about food off and on for 20 years, according to Chodorow's summary of his conversations with Mrs. Grimes, they almost never went out to dinner before he became the food critic for the Times.
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I wouldn't call a peach- or melon-infused vodka a "-cello" since that's something I think is probably most appropriate for citrus zest-infused, sweetened alcohol.
Anyway, for what you want to do, I'd simply chop up some fruit, cover it with 100 proof vodka and infuse until you get the intensity of flavor you're after. Then strain out the fruit and sweeten with rich simple syrup to taste, if desired.
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One could argue that Chodorow's many years of experience in the restaurant business gives him as much or more cred than Bruni, Platt, Grimes, etc.
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It will be interesting to see how Chang will deal with the influx of diners, particularly those large groups that want to do bo ssam.
I don't think the Bo Ssam was mentioned in a way that will make review-readers order it any more than people had been in the past. It's not even clear that Bruni tried the Bo Ssam, or even the baby one, since he doesn't say anyhing about it other than that it exists (I have to believe that anyone who tried it would rave).
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What I think is interesting is that he's planning on starting a blog called "Following Frank and After Adam" where he plans to visit the restauraunts reviewed by the aforementioned critics and then post a review of the review.
It will be at: http://chinagrillmgt.com/blog
Edited: to fix URL
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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?
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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."
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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.
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As chance would have it, there is a New York Times article about this, dating to 1997.
concerns have been raised ... about widespread use of the units in multifamily dwellings, particularly older buildings. The most common concern ... is that use of the garbage-disposal units might increase both water usage and the amount of semisolid waste passing through aging, sluggish plumbing systems -- a combination that might be too much for some systems to handle.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.
In a study conducted by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection in which waste-disposal units were installed in multifamily buildings in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, the department concluded that even with the ''worst case'' assumption of 38 percent of households using disposal units by the year 2035, the increase in water usage attributable to the units would amount to about one gallon per household each day. The study also concluded that the impact of additional solid waste being diverted into the city's sanitary system -- and eventually into surrounding waters - would have a minimal impact on water quality. At the same time, the report indicated, the reduction in food waste diverted from household refuse collection would ''make a positive impact'' on the city's residential waste management efforts.It was that study, published last June, that provided City Council members with the evidence they needed to abolish the existing ban on waste-disposal units.
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?"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So you believe that caloric control alone will reduce weight?
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.
Sugar and hfcs does hurt our blood sugar and this does get really dicey as it progresses with the liver thing that can create weight issues in addition to cardio blockage and stroke and diabetes, cancer.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.
When folks get sick, it is recommended that they cut back or eliminate sugar and eat a proper diet. If it's not harmful, it's use would not be discouraged or forbidden.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.
Sugar is simply an allowed poison. A little won't kill you. America in general is way beyond this point. The 'a little' point.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."
I'll grant it's the same chemically as fruit sugar. It is however so refined it is dangerous to us. If we refined habernaro or jalapeno to that extent and used it our food (as in the craving for spicey food being equal to the craving for sweets scenario) we would burn our tongues off with the first use.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.
I boldened that line ^^^ above. This agrees with me. Umm, 4 weeks and 6 weeks while great for this study are not long enough time frames to bring the detriment I am referencing. (Not to mention personally experiencing.) How long did the study continue overall?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."
Also of extreme interest is, who funded this experiment in Belfast Ireland the undisputed mission control of all things nutritional.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.
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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.
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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:
The premise of the book is that many foods high in carbohydrates send blood sugar soaring too high too fast, which then gets the hormone insulin in gear to take sugar out of the bloodstream. But the insulin overshoots its mark, causing blood sugar to plunge and leading to reactive hypoglycemia, which in turn produces feelings of incredible hunger and cravings for more carbs that keep the vicious cycle going. ... There's just one problem. Unless you have diabetes, blood sugar remains in a remarkably stable range. Yes, it may drop lower after eating a hot fudge sundae than after eating a salmon steak on a bed of lettuce. But, points out Christine L. Pelkman, PhD, who studies blood sugar responses to carbohydrate at the State University of New York at Buffalo, research that has looked at this issue simply has not linked relatively low blood sugar to hunger. "At most," she says, "it's a minor player in the hunger/satiety mechanism, with many other hormones and bodily reactions coming into play."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:
Consider that carbohydrates are stored in the body attached to water molecules. When carbs are not taken in with the diet, every carb that comes out of storage to fuel the various organs and other tissues releases water, which ends up in urine and creates weight loss on the scale that can be confused with fat loss.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?
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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.
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Just saw this thread...
Andrew, I believe there's a difference between corn syrup (like Karo) that you buy in the supermarket for use as an ingredient or topping, and the high fructose corn syrup industrial product that enjoys widespread use as a sweetener.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.
That being said, there are plenty of non-corn syrup products that should make for lovely pecan pies, for example molasses and cane syrup.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 don't think high fructose corn syrup is so much cheaper than sugar. Whatever the cost differential, it can't be more than the equivalent of a few cents on a can of soda. Let's say every can of soda went up by 5 cents. I can't imagine that would affect soda consumption at all.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.
Yes hfcs is at least as bad as sugar. It blows your blood chemistry. It's bad for the body. And while our bodies can adapt themselves to cruel extremes, it will take its toll with time. Especially since it is included in a billion products that it doesn't need to be in.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.).
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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.
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... secondi can be inconsistent ...
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."
I'll tell you what intrigues me the most about Babbo - they have one of the widest selections of offal of any fine dining restaurant I've noticed. But, other than the goose liver ravioli, I've not really heard much else about the other offal offerings at Babbo.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.
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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.
Chodorow's Response to Bruni's Review
in New York: Dining
Posted
I don't necessarily disagree. But, then again, I'm not comparing him to reviewers like David Rosengarten and Ruth Reichl either.