slkinsey

What about Stone Rose in the Time Warner Center? And isn't there a bar with a great view in the Mandarin Oriental? Both of those are reasonably close to Carmine's.

Buckethead, I'm not sure I entirely follow your logic on using copper. Given the way induction works, why wouldn't you want cookware where the thermal material can be directly acted upon by magnetics? In particular, my mind goes to Mauviel's Induc'Inox line, which I have mentioned previously on this thread. It is a fully stainless-clad, straight gauge design with a 2 mm thermal core of magnetic carbon steel. Given the way induction works, carbon steel should be plenty responsive, and I think it makes sense that the induction hob acts directly on the thermal core. This is what I'd be likely to buy if I were to switch to induction.

My first thought is that strawberry and basil isn't exactly a match made in heaven, so that might be a bit of a nonstarter. My second thought is that, if your friend wants a gin cocktail with which he is not familiar, there are plenty of tried-and-true gin drinks that, while perhaps familiar to the cocktailian community, aren't exactly well-known. There's the Pegu Club, for example: gin, orange curaçao, fresh lime, orange bitters, Angostura biters. Or, if that's too familiar, how about the San Martin: gin, red vermouth, yellow Chartreuse.

Okay. It appears that the B&T fork of this discussion has run its useful course insofar as it relates to the topic of this thread. So let's move on. Thanks.

Exactly. The bad news is that the dance nightclub scene in Manhattan is absolutely horriffic, unless you're into swing dancing or something (in which case, check out Swing 46). The good news is that, if you're not married to dancing, New York City is the international capital of cocktail culture and offers several of the best cocktail bars in the world. Unfortunately, the bad news for you may be that your companions may be more into clubbing and dancing than a decent drink.

Gordon, I think you'll have a difficult time finding any place in Manhattan that does "bottle service" (i.e., charging a 1000% markup to sell you a whole frozen bottle of Grey Goose at your table) that: a) you will be able to get into (and I say this with no offense intended, as I couldn't get in either), and b) isn't overrun with B&T guidos.

WRT the "new restaurant crowd" and whether they are often comprised of B&T types... I think a lot of it depends on the restaurant. I don't think a lot of B&Ters were going to Landmarc after it opened, nor were there likely many at ADNY. However, there certainly does seem to be an archetypical person found in some concentration at Manhattan restaurants of a certain kind (places like Spice Market and Buddakan) in the opening months, along with what I might call members of the "executive assistants by day, would-be scenesters by night" demographic. I've certainly observed an increased B&T quotient at, say, Pegu Club every time a mention runs in Time Out or New York Magazine.

As a generality, people who live in Manhattan do not go to Manhattan dance clubs. Rather, these clubs are populated largely by B&Ters from Jersey and the Outer Boroughs ("guidos"). Here's a blog from a Chelsea club bouncer that describes the scene in some detail.

What exactly do you have in mind for a "night club?" Are we talking about a luxe cocktails lounge like Pegu or Flatiron, or one of the Chelsea B&T dance clubs? Others may know better, but I'd say that any place in the Times Square area will be very tourist-oriented.

That's a nice idea and all, and I suppose we're meant to think they're such genii at Per Se and French Laundry that they'll come up with a brilliant strategy to make this happen. But these restaurants are so strongly identified with "the genius of Thomas" that I have a very hard time imagining how these restaurants will persist at anywhere near their current level after the eventual departure of Keller. This has nothing to do with how good they may continue to be, mind you, but everything to do with economics and perception. To continue your analogy, even if there were a plan for a Cuba without Castro (and there is no reason to suppose one doesn't exist), the smart money would still be on chaos down there once he dies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggnog

How can you filter with milk? And once the spirit is combined with the milk, how do you get the milk back out before redistilling?

Wayne Curtis, in And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, seems to doubt that it came from the Planter's Hotel in St. Louis. He notes that, while the claim isn't entirely implausible due to the connection to Jerry Thomas, the fact that the hotel also takes credit for the Tom Collins weakens their claim. And, while JT's book features plenty of punch recipes, none is named "Planter's Punch"). He notes that a Planter's Hotel in South Carolina also claims credit for the drink, and further notes that there hardly seems to be (nor has there ever seemed to be) a standard classic recipe for the drink. Curtis seems to lean in the direction of supposing that the name and concept, if not a definitive recipe, probably came from Jamaica, but that really no one establishment or person can claim sole credit.

I like the simple way: a couple teaspoons of your favorite sweetener in the bottom of a mug, pour in a few ounces of a nice strong rum, add a pat of butter, top with boiling water. Basta.

"Acidity" and "free fatty acid content" in cooking oils are, AFAIK, the same. Filtering removes solids, etc. Refining is a chemical treatment to neutralize tastes and free fatty acid content. Extra Virgin and Virgin oils may be filtered, but they may not be refined. So, a high quality extra virgin olive oil with low acidity comes by this low free fatty acid content naturally.

I'm not sure this comparison carries. Although it is getting somewhat off the topic, despite the popular identification in this country of prohibition with cocktail culture, this was most decidedly not a great time of cocktail development -- unless by "development" you mean "drastic loss of complexity, variety and tradition combined with a major exodus of mixological talent and expertise." In general, I'd say that Prohibition was the beginning of a great slide in the mixological arts, which depression has only begun to turn around in relatively recent times (I don't view things like the Highball as much of a development).

According to the chart, it's the higher quality (i.e., lower acidity) extra virgin olive oils that have a higher smoke point -- around 405F. I'd think that some of the higher quality ones are actually lower than that, though, because they are often unfiltered, etc. It's not really a huge surprise that highly filtered olive oil (aka "extra light") has a smoke point that's higher than the smoke point of oils commonly held to have a high smoke point, especially when in their unrefined state. In general, as oils are refined the flavor is diminished and the smoke point goes up. This is to say that extra light olive oil does have a very high smoke point, but also has zero olive flavor (which may not be all bad, depending on one's perspective). I'm not sure I agree with you about the importance of smoke point for the home cook. If one assumes that the lower smoke point is true for most lower quality extra virgin olive oils, which are presumably the only ones that are affordable enough to use for deep-frying, then this can be a serious limitation. I wouldn't want to deep fry fritto misto di pesce at 320F, and I have to believe that deep-frying at 380F would result in off-flavors.

Re the frying qualities of various oils, there's a handy smoke point chart on Wikipedia. Extra virgin olive oil has a relatively low smoke point, of 320F. This is lower than most people like to fry, although there are people who do deep fry in extra virgin olive oil (Batali used to do this on his television shows). Virgin olive oil, which still has plenty of olive flavor in the context of frying, will get you up to 420F -- plenty high enough for frying.

Interesting stuff, Dave. What would have been the primary benefit of only distilling off <45% of the wort? Was this simply a horribly inefficient way of obtaining a "cleaner" end product using fairly primitive distilling technology?

I can definitely think of some perfectly good restaurants that ultimately failed (@SQC comes to mind) because they were not good at retaining regulars. Interestingly, this strikes me as one area of a restaurant's success -- perhaps the most important area -- that is 90% in the hands of FOH. There are plenty of restaurants that seem able to retain a critical mass of regulars where the BOH is not turning out distinguished food.

I wonder if the current practice of adding back in things like sugars and glycerin are an attempt to get some of that fat texture back.

My family recipe comes from a clipping of an old Four Roses Whiskey advertisement. The opposite side of the page has an advertisement "introducing the 1939 new Ford." 6 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 pint heavy cream 1 pint milk 1 pint Four Roses (I use a good Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey) 1 ounce Meyers Rum Grated Nutmeg to taste Separate eggs. Add 1/2 cu. sugar to the yolks and beat until smooth. Add 1/2 cu. sugar to whites after beating very stiff. In a large bowl or punch bowl, mix egg whites with yolks. Stir in 1 pint heavy cream and 1 pint milk. Add the whiskey and rum. Stir thoroughly. Serve cold with grated nutmeg. Serves 10

Okay, last night I had what was -- to me -- a paradigm-defining Sazerac: a few ounces of Red Hook Rye (LeNell's unfiltered 136 proof 23 year old rye), a teaspoon of rich demarara syrup, 3 dashes of Peychaud's plus 1 short dash of Angustura, a rinse of Nouvelle-Orléans absinthe and a fat twist of lemon. Froze the glass, stirred the rye, syrup and bitters with plenty of cracked ice (and even then it came out plenty strong). Heaven in a glass.

Let's take any substantive Sazerac discussion over to the Sazerac thread.

Despite his fondness for White Russians (or, as he called them, "Caucasians") it's clear that we need to come up with a new cocktail to celebrate the modern-day "King of the Dudes," the Big Lebowski.