slkinsey

They make them that way because they are good at staying "touchably cool" while the pan is on the stovetop. Very few home cooks actually move their fully loaded pans in the air while cooking, so tha ability to grab a handle without using a towel or hot pad rated higher than ergonomics for tossing/flipping. They also look cool, which is important to All-Clad considering that they probably do 90% of their business on looks and marketing. The handles as designed are also quite light in weight. This is important for a two reasons: First, as is demonstrated in many eG Forums discussions on cookware, many home cooks don't have sufficient arm strength to lift heavier cookware. Second, since the body of the pan is made of lightweight aluminum, the handle has to be fairly lightweight in order to balance properly. Finally, solid handles such as those employed by Falk, Mauviel, et al. are considerably more costly from a materials standpoint.

Is the Falk pan hard to shake when it's empty? If you can move the Falk frypan well when it's empty but are having difficulty shaking it fully loaded, it's not clear that you won't have just as much trouble with a fully loaded All-Clad frypan. Also, if you're finding that the Falk frypan is too heavy for your use and are more-or-less seeking to "trade it in" for a lighter All-Clad frypan (which is to say that All-Clad will become your primary frypan) one way to defray the cost of the All-Clad pan would be to sell the Falk pan. You could probably get 75 bucks for it, and then the All-Clad pan would be free. Disk bottoms work great in certain contexts. I would not recommend a disk-bottom frypan, or a disk bottom pan that is too close in diameter to the size of the burner flame. For things like large saute pans, tall sauce pans and stockpots, however, I think it's a great design. I'm not quite sure which line you're talking about here. All-Clad has the "Copper Core" line, which has an internal thermal layer of copper fully clad in stainless steel. It also has the "Cop-R-Chef" line, which has an internal thermal layer of aluminum, an internal cladding of stainless steel and an external cladding of copper. The Cop-R-Chef line does not benefit from any of the thermal properties of copper, as the external "display layer" of copper is too thin to meaningfully impact the overall performance of the pan. There is some talk that All-Clad has reduced the thickness on their cookware, but the last time I got data from them they said the aluminum layer on the MasterChef line was 3.9 mm. I bring this up because it's a mistake to think that Demeyere's aluminum layer is 4.8 mm. That's the total thickness of their "seven layer" design. If we assume that the non-aluminum layers are comparable in thickness to the 0.44 mm cladding All-Clad uses (and there's no reason to suppose they are not), then the thermal layer in the Demeyere "seven layer" pans is approximately the same. On the other hand, this is certainly thicker than the aluminum layer employed in All-Clad Stainless. A few things: First, if the Falk pan is too heavy for you, you should make sure you won't have the same problem with All-Clad Copper Core before spending the money. Also, try out the handles on the All-Clad pans. Many people (myself included) find them awkward for tossing the pan. You might consider bringing something to the store (marbles or whatever) to simulate the approximate weight and volume of whatever you might want to toss around in the skillet and try out the various ones you are considering. Also, given what it sounds like you want to use the pan for, and your discount, I don't see why you'd want to spend any more than the 75 bucks.

Nice article in today's NY Times about tonic water. Talks about Q Tonic, Fever-Tree Premium Indian Tonic Water and Stirrings tonic water. Also has a nice quote from one of my favorite bartenders:

You bribed the maintenance guys?

FWIW, and taking nothing away from Marcus Samuelsson's knowledge and talent, it strikes me that he's only a little more Ethiopian than Mario Batali is Italian. Yes he was born in Ethiopia, but he was brought to Sweden at age 3 and raised there by adoptive parents. It's not like he was brought up in Ethiopia eating injera at his father's knee, and according to him he rarely ate Ethiopian food until he moved to New York. This doesn't make his opinions non-relevant, of course, but does point out that he's hardly NYC's reigning expert on what does/doesn't make for a good Ethiopian restaurant. According to this article, Yeworkwoha Ephrem, the owner of Ghenet, is his "adviser on Ethiopian cuisine." Here's an interesting quote from the article that I thought was relevant to Ethiopian food in general, and Awash in particular:

Reproduced here for ease of reading: Read the rest of the article: Where Playing with Fire is not Taboo Before many of you jump on Bruni for this review, saying he's crazy or misguided or foolish or something, let me be the first to say that he's right: Spicy & Tasty is a great restaurant that deserves two stars. The prices are cheap, but the food is consistently wonderful. I've eaten there over 40 times, I figure, and never once have I had a dish that wasn't delicious. Not one. I can't think of any other restaurant I've eaten at so many times that I can make that statement about. Furthermore, the ground floor of the restaurant actually has quite classy and presumably expensive decor. This is a wonderful restaurant serving Sichuan-style cuisine that I could send my homesick student from Chengdu to and have her come back to me thanking me and telling me that the food was just like the food from her home town, it's got a long, varied menu, and it has classy decor and good service (though, as Bruni accurately indicates, they speak a limited amount of English, and a Chinese-speaker among your group is definitely helpful, though not essential). What's not two-star about that? Purely the price? Too cheap for you? The lack of a wine list? Please! I thought this was interesting and valuable enough from a lontgime S&T devotee to reproduce here. As always, let's keep star system criticism and metadiscussion on Bruni's reviewing quirks not bearing directly on S&T in the "Bruni and Beyond" thread.

Maybe you have a point. The "faux Polynesian" thing's got to figure in there somehow. I don't know... there's something inherrently "tiki" feeling about drinks like the Scorpion, the Demerara Dry Float and the Mai Tai -- not least of which is that they were created by the likes of Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber specifically in the tiki tradition. If, for example, Trader Vic's had been serving a lot of Manhattans, I don't think that makes the Manhattan necessarily a "tiki drink." This is why I don't think drinks like a Margarita, Daiquiri or Mojito belong. They belong to other traditions. Now, on the other hand, if one would like to suggest that a frozen and blended, fruit flavored "Margarita" or "Daiquiri" is a tiki drink, I might listen.

Denise, a two questions. . . 1. Without wanting to invade your privacy, I'm wondering just how deep this discount is. I ask for an important reason: All-Clad is egregiously overpriced at retail, and Williams-Sonoma typically charges full retail price. For example, a 12" All-Clad Stainless fry pan at Williams-Sonoma will run you 125 bucks. The same pan as a "second" at Cookware and More will run you 85 bucks. That's a 32% reduction in price. Can your discount beat 32%? 2. Why do you want this frypan? What do you want to use it for?

I have a follow-up question: What makes a drink a tiki drink? I ask this after looking through George's webtender wiki list of tiki drinks, where I see several that I would not consider born of the tiki tradition. In particular, I'm not sure I'd call the Dark and Stormy, Hurricane, Piña Colada, Queen's Park Swizzle, any variety of Margarita or Daiquiri, or the non-Trader Vic Suffering Bastard a "tiki drink."

I think there is a growing interest in tiki drinks due to a combination of 1) there is a cocktail revival well underway; 2) many tiki drinks are nonthreatening, easy-drinking and approachable to those who cut their teeth on "vodka with 6 different kinds of fruit juice" drinks; 3) there are some genuinely good tiki drinks out there; 4) 50's-era kitsch appeals to the "ironic hipster" set these days. These things combine to make it more likely that certain individuals will say "yes" to a Mai Tai in a tiki mug.

You could add other things to it to improve the color. I am thinking particularly of curry powder, which would bring it more towards the yellow side of the spectrum. Curry and cauliflower happen to go together brilliantly. Then a little chopped flatleaf parsley for color, maybe a dice of tomato sprinkled on the top... you've got more or less the same soup, but with a different flavor and color plus some added texture, with very little effort.

Interesting. I haven't found any of these to be notably better than Awash, but I understand that the Ethiopian dishes I like are Awash's specialties. Honestly, I can't say that I notice a huge difference from Ethiopian place to Ethiopian place in the City. There was nothing about Queen of Sheba that would make me want to go to 46th and 10th rather than a few blocks away to Awash. But, then again, I'm sure I'd feel exactly the opposite if I lived around the corner from Queen of Sheba.

From a purely geometrical standpoint, they could not possibly have been 4 inches deep if they were 1 quart pans. A 1 quart (57.75 cubic inches) cylinder that is 4 inches tall has a diameter of scarsely more than 4 inches. Anyway, All-Clad's product information page gives the dimsneions of their 1 quart saucier as 6.5 inches in diameter at the top (which calculates to approximately 4.9 inches in diameter at the bottom) and 2.25 inches in depth. I agree that you wouldn't want to fill the pan more than 1/3 deep (.75 inches) with hot oil. That would give you around 1.25 cups of cooking oil to work with. If that's enough for you to work with, you should go for it. That said, the blackening is going to happen no matter what if you're doing a lot of deep frying. It's also unclear to me why you'd contemplate spending 45 bucks for something like this. If I were you, I'd look around for a 1 quart carbon steel wok. Do such things exist?

Unless you are planning on frying miniscule amounts of food in a cup of oil, a one quart saucier is going to be way too small. The pan is only something like 2.5 inches deep. That's a recipe for boilover and a grease fire.

Since dulce de leche is a milk-based sweet, and a very thick one, I am not sure how easy it would be to incorporate into a cocktail. I would think a small amount of it might work in a rum or whiskey based fizz-type drink that was exhaustively shaken.

First of all, you don't need to worry about the drink bursting into flame. No cocktail worth drinking is alcoholic enough to catch on fire. To answer your questions: - An approximately silver dollar-sized piece of orange peel seems to work the best. It's possible, albeit more difficult, to flame an approximately quarter-sized lemon twist as well. - You could use either a match or a lighter. Most of the bartenders I know use wooden matches. - Flaming the twist definitely makes a difference in the impact of the drink. There is a distinctive "burnt orange" aroma that comes from flaming an orange twist. - You flame the outside part of the twist. - You don't actually light the twist on fire, so there is no need to blow it out (more on this later). - You don't soak the peel in alcohol. Whenever a cocktail calls for a "twist" or "peel" garnish, you're not supposed to simply drop a piece of citrus peel in the drink. You're supposed to "twist" the peel by flexing it over the glass, causing the citrus oils to spray out of the peel and onto the surface of the drink (sometimes you may also choose to run the peel around the rim of the glass to rub off the residual citrus oils). When a recipe calls for a "flamed orange peel," what they are asking you to do is flame the orange oils as they are sprayed out of the peel when you twist it over the cocktail, not the actual peel itself. The best way goes something like this: 1. Have the finished cocktail poured in front of you, and have the orange peel from a fresh orange pre-cut and ready. 2. Hold the orange peel in your right hand between your thumb and forefinger in a more-or-less vertical position with the orange part of the peel facing away from the palm of your hand. 3. Light a match or lighter in your left hand and briefly warm the surface of the orange peel by bringing the peel close to the flame at a slight angle. This helps to bring the oils to the surface of the peel. 4. Hold the flame near the rim of the glass, maybe a few inches above. Coming from the side, flex the orange peel causing the orange oils to spray out of the orange peel onto the surface of the drink. The idea is that the orange oils should pass through the flame on their way from the peel to the surface of the drink. The flame will ignite the oils, and there will be a brief flash as they burn in the air. 5. Enjoy the burnt orange goodness. If you want to see this technique in action, visit either Flatiron Lounge or Pegu Club and ask for a drink with a flamed twist garnish (you will notice that both establishments have a glass of wooden matches on the bar for just this purpose).

Me. I don't. How am I going to take the roasting pan from the oven to the stovetop to deglaze and scrape up all the concentrated bits of roastey goodness if there's foil all over the inside of the pan?

Rittenhouse bonded Old Fashioned.

As I mention upthread, it is not possible to obtain lacón in NYC so something else must be used.

Hi Nina. Now that the weather's turning cool, I've got to give fabada another try. I am not expert in making it (clearly!) but have had the privilege of dining at La Maquina, which is considered by many to be the pinnacle of fabada-making. So at least I think I have a good idea of what a world-class fabada should be like. Some thoughts on making fabada in NYC: It's great to have a source like Despaña, but their fabes aren't as fresh as they could be -- certainly not as fresh as one can get in Spain. This proved to be a problem in my first attempt, because while some of the beans cooked through to that etherial, creamy interior, around 10% of them remained somewhat mealy and undercooked even after several extra hours of cooking. The best way I can think of to make this work with Despaña's fabes would be to cook the fabada extra long (and extra low to avoid breakage) the day before, to make sure all the beans are properly cooked, and then gently reheat for service the following day. Needless to say, the fabada should not be stirred or the fabes will break. Looking at your picture, your fabada seems to be around 75% meat and 25% fabes. This is very different from the classic formula, which to my eye seems to be more like 85% fabes and 15% meat. As I think I pointed out above, at La Maquina each person got maybe 3 small pieces of each of the three meats (morcilla, chorizo and lacón). I don't know that it'll help much with the heaviness, but it should make for a less rich dish if you cut way back on the meats. That's missing the point anyway, as fabada is all about the beans.

I used King Arthur bread flour and SAF Gold for my first experiment. I have to say that I don't quite get the "no flavor" criticism in this thread. I found the loaf to be quite flavorful for a commercial yeast leavened white wheat loaf (I did use 2 tsp of kosher salt). The crust was especially nice. That said, I'd really like to try this with a natural leaven.

phlawless, what kind of flour did you use? I note, by the way, that the recipe from the Times calls for bread flour and 1 5/8 cups water, while the recipe in the video calls for AP flour and 1 1/2 cups of water. When you're talking about only 3 cups of AP flour (and especially given the difficulty in measuring 8ths of a cup of liquid along with the accompanying tendency to err towards 3/4 rather than 1/2), that additional 1/8th of a cup can make a difference.

The light comes from above? Or from below?

For a long rise like this, it also may help to use a small amount (maybe 1/2 tsp) of diastatic malt powder. This contains enzymes that will gradually break down some of the starch in the flour into sugars that the yeast can use for food.

I haven't tried it with this particular recipe, but experience suggests to me that using a poolish or biga won't make a dramatic difference in this recipe given the length of the rise. It is also worth pointing out that those of us who are used to working with natural leavening (aka "sourdough") will likely find most any straight white flour/water/commercial yeast dough to be underflavored. The same would be true for those who prefer herbed breads or breads made with specialty grains. I think there is something to be said for the flavors of a well-fermented straight white flour/water/commercial yeast dough, though. It's just not going to have the same impact as the others.