slkinsey

The thing that's infuriating about it, is that they wouldn't even have to change anything. Just put less water in the bottle. That, right there, would make a huge difference. Never mind missing out on the premium sipping rye wave. They're missing the boat as the mixing rye of choice. Let's say they're charging 15 bucks a liter for Overholt at retail. Okay, assuming that this stuff comes out of the barrel at 125 proof, a liter of 100 proof Overholt would have to contain 800 ml of barrel-proof whiskey cut with 200 ml of water. A liter of 80 proof Overholt should have 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%. Fine. Raise the price by 25%. I'd pay $18.75 for a bottle of 100 proof Old Overholt in a second.

Interesting. Growing up in Boston with parents from the South, I can remember having cod fish cakes but not salmon croquettes. Maybe that was a New Englandification of salmon croquettes. Thinking of cod got me to thinking about canned salmon, however. Brooks, you were wondering how dishes with a fish like salmon became so widespread in areas of the United States where it is not native. I wonder if canned salmon (and canned tuna as well) became a bit like the 20th century equivalent of salt cod. Salt cod, of course, is considered integral to many culinary traditions around the world that are removed from the cod's native waters by thousands of miles.

I was chatting with Dave about this the other day... It's really a shame that Old Overholt, the one brand that kept the rye whiskey flame alight through the years, is allowing the current rye renaissance (ryenaissance?) to pass it by. There are a few cocktails (for me, the Blinker) where I reach for Old Overholt as my first choice, but Rittenhouse BIB has easily taken its place as my house mixing rye, and Old Overholt isn't even a possible contender as a sipping rye. It's too bad, because it doesn't have to be this way. All they'd have to do is release a 100 proof bottling of Old Overholt (in other words, just don't water it down so much for bottle proof) and change nothing else. If there were a 100 proof Old Overholt, I think everyone who is currently enamored of Rittenhouse BIB would use the 100 proof Old Overholt as well. And, if they wanted to, all they'd have to do is age some of the stuff they're already making a little longer and/or bottle it a little differently, and they'd be instant competitors in the sipping rye category. Isn't Old Overholt made by the same guys who make Jim Beam? Aren't these the guys who jumpstarted the small batch bourbon craze when they figured out that they could take regular old Jim Beam out of the still and just age it/bottle it/label it differently as Baker's, Basil Hayden's, Booker's or Knob Creek? I don't understand why they aren't doing this with Old Overholt.

Yes, that's what he said. I'd think this might be approximated at home by keeping a constantly-replenished pan of simmering water in the oven.

There is some kind of bullshitty faux history about Licor 43 going back to Roman times, but I've seen no evidence that the actual liqueur has been produced for all that long.

That says more or less what I said before: marbling and maturity. And that's all good and well as to the rib and short loin sections of the carcass. However, as far as I can tell, the whole carcass is assigned a USDA grade based upon inspection of the rib section only of the carcass. So, a carcass with a prime rib and short loin may have chuck section that would grade out at select or good versus other chuck sections, and yet this chuck will still be considered "prime."

Well, folks... it's been fun. It's not clear to me that there's anything meaningful to add to this topic at the moment and we're going in circles. I'm going to close it up for a while & will probably re-open the thread later on, in case anything additional comes to light. In the meantime, if you have anything on this topic that you think would make sense for us to reopen the thread, please shoot me a message and I'll open it up.

I'm not saying that fat isn't important. Just that it's not part of the collagen-to-gelatin reaction, aka the "breaking down connective tissue" to which we most commonly refer in the context of meat cookery. Fat is, itself, a connective tissue, so to the extent that it melts it is doing some "breaking down of connective tissue." But this is relatively trivial compared to the collagen-to-gelatin reaction in a braising cut. As LT/LT sous vide cooking demonstrates, converting collagen to gelatin without melting out most of the fat still results in very tender meat, whereas the opposite is definitely not the case. On page 131 of the new edition, McGee says: My larger point was simply that it's unclear to me that desirable fat characteristics in one part of a carcass necessarily mean desirable fat characteristics in all parts of the carcass. Looking at my own body, I can pretty much guarantee that the marbling of fat in meat taken from my midsection will be far greater than it would be in meat taken from my calf.

It also strikes me that, while I'm not entirely sure what parts of the carcass are judged for the USDA grading, I have the feeling that it doesn't necessarily follow that prime chuck has more fat and better marbling than choice chuck. This idea is reinforced by the Wikipedia information on beef grading, which says: "The grades are based on two main criteria, the degree of marbling (intramuscular fat) in the beef rib eye and the age of the animal prior to slaughter." I'm not sure what the quality of the rib eye says about the quality of the chuck, but it's clear to me that there are cases in animals where the distribution of body fat is not even. Just look at humans: some have lots of fat in the stomach and practically none in the legs, and some have a more or less even distribution of fat. If you're "grading" humans according to an examination of the lower torso, it seems clear that there can still be wide differences in the amount of fat in, e.g., the lower leg.

According to my understanding, this is not correct. When we speak of "connective tissue" in this context, we are talking about collagen, which with the addition of heat, time and a few water molecules, is hydrolyzed into gelatin. As far as I know, fat doesn't have anything to do with this reaction. Fat is important, however, as I'll get to down below... Any time you braise, you're playing a kind of balancing game. You want to cook the meat long enough to convert the collagen into gelatin. This makes the meat tender, and also provides that unctuous, silken texture that can be so wonderful about braised meats. Gelatin also does a good job of holding moisture, which is important. It's important because cooking meat at braising times/temperatures also has the effect of squeezing water out of muscle fibers. This is also known as "making the meat dry." If there's a good amount of fat in the meat, that's good too. You want to melt that fat to provide additional lubrication to make up for the water that the muscle fibers have given up. If the meat is cooked too long, the lubricating properties of the collagen and fat simply cannot keep up with the drying effect as more and more water is lost from the muscle fibers and the result is dry, mealy meat. There are several things you can do: First, you can cook the meat at a low temperature. Collagen will convert into gelatin at lower-than-simmering temperatures, it just takes a lot longer. The nice thing is that you don't go over the temperature at which muscle fibers lose most of their water. Long time/low temperature sous vide techniques take advantage of this. The drawback is that it can take up to 48 hours. Second, you can start out the braise at a low temperature for a few hours. If you carefully manage the pot and keep the meat at around 115F/45C for a few hours, you can reduce the amount of time the meat needs to spend at 180F/80C. Finally, once you get the pot up to finishing temperature, stop the cooking as soon as the meat is tender. It won't improve at all once it reaches this point. As for whether prime beef makes a difference... that's hard to say. Just thinking about it objectively, it's hard to see how the things that make beef "prime" would make a big difference in a braise. I'd think that flavorful braising beef would be from well-worked muscles with lots of connective tissue, which doesn't seem like a "prime" thing. On the other hand, it's clear that not all braising meat is created equal. I've made the exact same beef tagine with supermarket-grade chuck from Fairway and with high-quality chuck from Oppenheimer Meats. The Oppenheimer beef produced a much better tagine. Whether this was prime beef, I couldn't say. So, my own experience is that the quality of the meat does make a difference (albeit probably not as much difference as technique). I also think that the "prime" designation is not important and that there are other indicators one can look for in selecting a braising cut.

Seems like a pointless and needlessly overcomplicated practice to me, the kind of fetishization of a piece of culture that seems somewhat peculiar to the Japanese zeitgeist (as does the so-called "hard shake"). What's next: Hand-carved natural reed cocktail straws? Olives pitted by hand and stuffed to order? If one really wants spherical pieces of ice, I think it should be possible to develop some kind of flexible mold that could be filled and frozen.

You probably won't find many. But, its not because of lack of enforcement. Um... I'd say its exactly for a lack of enforcement. Every single person who has offered an opinion on this thread as to the NYC scene has acknowledged that they have seen it happening to others and/or that it happened to them. So if there aren't any cases, then the law isn't being enforced in that context. So, what you're saying, as someone who "worked for Danny Meyer and several other 2, 3 and 4 star restaurants" where was "emphasized over and over that we were NOT to serve minors even if they were with their parents" is that if a customer looked like he reasonably might be 21 years old, but perhaps might not be 21 years old, you "wouldn't concern yourself" and would serve that customer. I have always understood that the law, at least as it applies in bars and shops, says you're supposed to card any customer who looks like he might possibly not be 21. You're applying the opposite standard, and saying that you wouldn't card a customer who looks like he might possibly be 21. Plenty of 18-20 year olds -- especially girls, who can avail themselves of makeup -- look like they might be 21 years old. Most of them, in fact. This is exactly what we've been talking about. I couldn't think of a better example than the one you've just given. We're not talking about 13 year olds. That said, I do agree (and I think we all agree) that once the server chose to card Bryan, he had no choice but to refuse to serve him alcohol.

I've been to the main Red Lobster in Times Square many times, and for my last birthday some friends took me to Otto Enoteca. So, the answer is "no," then? I don't see why some people are having difficulty with the idea that the NYC police choose to spend their attention and resources elsewhere than busting fine dining restaurant for serving minors wine. These judgments are made by police all over the City every minute of every day. There's also a law against drinking in public in New York City. This law is not enforced against picnickers sharing a bottle of wine while hearing the Metropolitan Opera in Central Park, but is strictly enforced outside the Chelsea nightclubs. Why? Because it's a problem in Chelsea and not at Met in the Parks. It's simply naive to assume that the NYPD doesn't set enforcement priorities, and I can assure you that underage drinking at fine dining restaurants is not a high priority. Here's a story: The first time I went to New Orleans, it was to attend the national convention of my college fraternity. On the first day, we were given an orientation session by the Chief of Police for New Orleans. He told us what parts of the City to stay out of, the fact that we would be required to decant any drinks into a "go cup" if we left a bar with our drinks, and that sort of thing. He also said, "it's no secret why we raised our drinking age to 21 years of age: to get our highway funding. But people around here, they're not going to change. As long as you're 18, you'll probably be okay." This was an explicit admission by a member of the police force that it was not a priority to enforce the drinking age in the French Quarter. They had other priorities. Similarly, the NYPD has more important priorities as well. I'd be interested to know if anyone can search the records and find even one single case of an under age bust for drinking wine in a NYC fine dining restaurant over the last 20 years.

markk, I don't understand what better evidence you're going to get. If nothing will convince you that this is so beyond a peer-reviewed controlled study with a large sample size and a p value of 0.001, then you're not going to be convinced. I note that note that not one single person who has any meaningful experience in NYC fine dining has come forward to say that it is not the status quo in NYC fine dining restaurants for late-teens with their parents to be served wine. I, at least, am not even arguing for a continuation of the status quo. I'm simply pointing out that it is the status quo and giving some reasons why I think it is so.

I can't imagine there is a restaurateur alive in this City that would cop to tacitly serving almost-legal-looking kids in the presence of their parents, with or without a promise of anonymity. Rather, I can only assume they would say that they do everything they can to make sure it never, ever happens.

Check out Uncorked: The Science of Champagne by Gérard Liger-Belair. It answers this, and many other questions about champagne. Here is one of his articles.

I have to assume that the (needed) crackdowns on drunk driving are due to the fact that sprawl and car culture are becoming a much larger part of European culture. With increased car driving comes increasing problems with drunk driving. As for "avoiding problems" like alcoholism and binge drinking, it's not clear to me that there is all that much one can do to avoid these problems among those who are inclined in that direction. It may be unclear to you that "countries where young children are exposed to drinking in the home and alcohol is a normal part of family meals, have thus, avoided problems" -- but it's also not clear to me that such an arrangement creates or contributes to these problems either. Given a choice between early education and exposure to responsible consumption of alcohol, or treating it like some magic elixir that you only get to have when you're 21, I think the former makes much more sense.

This is getting off the topic, so if we would like to continue I'll split out some posts and make a new thread. Anyway... I think that when people speak of "Prohibition Cocktails" or "cocktails that came out of Prohibition," I think they are thinking of cocktails invented in America during the period from 1920 to 1933. For some reason, this era is imprinted upon the popular imagination as a great era in the cocktailian craft, when in fact all signs point to it being a terrible era and the beginning of a long decline that we are only beginning to turn around in recent times. I wouldn't call a cocktail invented in, say, London in 1928 a "Prohibition Cocktail."

This practice, in my opinion, is just a lame excuse for not setting up a kitchen that is disciplined and organized enough to have the various dishes done and out to the table at the right time. It's called an expediter, folks. Get one. Do what he says. As for the Chinese food model, I have in practice rarely if ever found bad sequencing to be a problem. At New Green Bo, for example, the kitchen always brings out the dumplings and pancakes first, then the soup, then the more substantial dishes. Of course, the dumplings may not all be finished before the stir-fried rice cakes some out, but the nature of a Chinese meal of this kind is such that this doesn't really pose a problem. It's not a big deal to have another dumpling while eating the rice cakes.

Two things about the Sidecar. 1. As far as I know, the first printed recipes for a Sidecar appeared in 1922. If we assume that the drink was invented perhaps a few years earlier (a reasonable assumption, I think) then that would put it outside of the Prohibition years (1920 - 1933). 2. Also as far as I know, the Sidecar was created in Europe, not the United States. This would not make it a "Prohibition cocktail." There are any number of good cocktails created in Europe during the Prohibition era (the Golden Dawn comes to mind).

Doc's a busy, busy man. I was able to glean that a follow-up book may be in the making.

MADD was founded in 1980. You're <26?

According to my reading of the chart on the Alcohol Policy Information System web site, NY State does not prohibit the consumption of alcohol by those under 21 years of age. Of course, it does prohibit the purchase of alcohol by and the sale to those under 21 years of age, as well as the "possession with the intent to drink" bu those under 21. But it actually seems as though it might be the case that a parent could purchase wine at a restaurant and serve it to a child with no liability to the restaurant. I think "perceived" is a big part of this statement. It's not clear to me at all that underage drinking is meaningfully worse now than it was 25 years ago. In fact, if a comparison of the atmosphere at my alma mater today compared to when I was in school is any indication, it's significantly better. The difference is that it's covered a lot more by the mass media (which is more "mass" today than ever).

JohnL, if you look at all the legal steps being taken, I think you will find that thay are all done with the goal of preventing drunk driving -- something I support (er, preventing it, that is, not doing it). As for European drinking ages: Austria: 14 with your parents, 16 for beer, 18 for spirits Belgium: 16 (no age restrictions on beer and wine in shops) France: 16 Germany: 16 for beer, 18 for spirits (no age restrictions in private) Greece: 16 (no age restrictions in private) Hungary: 0 in bars/restaurants, 18 in shops (rarely enforced) Ireland: 18 Italy: 16 in bars/restaurants, 0 in shops Netherlands: 16 <22% ABV), 18 >22% ABV Spain: 18 Switzerland 0 in bars/restaurants, 14–16 for beer and wine and 18 for spirits in shops United Kingdom: 5 in bars/restaurants (with parent), 18 in shops As for the US, here's an interesting graphic. Wikipedia says: "Contrary to popular belief, few states specifically prohibit minors' consumption of alcohol in private settings (an exception includes Connecticut). ... As of 2006, 20 states do not specifically ban underage consumption and an additional 15 states have family member and/or location exceptions to their underage consumption laws."

Dude. You remember anything from chemistry class? Whoa. Okay... I have been able to determine that the legal definition of ABV in the US specifies a temperature of 60F.