slkinsey

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.

One of the things that happens in a long bulk fermentation is that the gas produced by the yeast exceeds the dough's capability to contain it. This is why the dough at this stage is very delicate and spongey, and why it has a tendency to collapse dramatically when agitated. When you reshape the dough, you give the bread another chance to contain the fermentation gasses and inflate. One thing that the folding does -- even miminal folding such as suggested for this technique -- is to help provide a better structure for containing the fermentation gasses. One tip for shaping extremely wet doughs: I have found that the best way to do this is to flour the board, gently turn out the wet dough into a rough oval, roll the dough up the long axis into a "cigar," then roll the cigar up its long axis. At this point, the dough should have enough structure for a quick, light turn to stretch the gluten across the top. As always with wet doughs, if you want the big holes and irregular crumb, it's best to handle/deflate the dough as little as possible when shaping.

To the best of my knowledge, this is not entirely correct. AFAIK, "rapid rise yeast" is actually a strain of yeast that was created to rise faster (i.e., have faster metabolic activity) than regular active dry yeast. It may also be more finely granulated, and thus an "instant yeast," but other "instant yeasts" like SAF Red are not necessarily "rapid rise" (in fact, some of instant yeasts, such as SAF Gold, are specially formulated to be slow-rising). With respect to the wetness of the dough, I think others have pointed out that the wetness will depend on the gluten content of the flour. The higher the gluten content, the more dry the dough will be for a given percent hydration (I note that most everyone who complained of an overly soupy dough and/or a wet crumb in the finished loaf used AP flour instead of bread flour). This is why, as Mark Bittman suggests, one should view the recipe formula as an approximation and adjust the dough with additional water or flour until a target texture is achieved. There is no way to assure that the wetness will be the same unless the same flour is used (there is also the effect of humidity and how wet or dry the flour is before it is used, but this should be fairly negligible in a three-cup recipe). Today I am experimenting with combining this technique and my usual "workday bread" technique. I fermented the dough for 18 hours, then this morning I formed the dough into a boule and put it into a cloth-lined banneton. I put a plastic bag around the banneton and put the whole works into the refrigerator to retard. I'll take it out while I'm preheating the oven once I get home this evening. This, I've found to be a good method for having a proofed loaf ready to go into the oven when you get home from work.

One issue with the Northern Tools grinder: As previously mentioned, it is extremely heavy and heavy-duty. Every part is thick metal. . . except one: the on/off switch. This is made of plastic. Because the grinder is so heavy it's not going to move if something bumps into the plastic switch. No, what's going to happen is that the plastic switch is going to crack and break -- which is exactly what happened to mine. Apparently this is not an uncommon problem, because when I called Northern Tools to order a replacement switch, the helpful customer service rep told me that it was back-ordered and that there were already several orders pending.

Yea.

The bakelite knobs on Le Creuset pots are notoriously crappy. Mine is continually slipping off the lid entirely. I've been meaning to replace it with a brass drawer pull from a hardware store.

I thought this was an interesting discussion in its own right, so I split it off. I wonder if the Daisy started off more or less with two different meanings, one being a sour with a short squirt of seltzer and the other having a float of chartreuse and no seltzer. It also seems that this drink went through a kind of re-definition at some point, much like the flip.

Well, to be precise, of the 23 recipes you have there, 16 of them have a squirt of fizz water added at such time so as to make the drink have light carbonation, 3 use a squirt of seltzer in the beginning to dissolve the sugar, and 4 have no selzter at all. The "float some Chartreuse on top" recipes all seem to flow from William Schmidt whereas the "squirt of seltzer" recipes seem to flow from JT.

It's always hard to know exactly what they meant by "dash" in those old books. Clearly two dashes from a dasher bottle such as those used for bitters would be a minimal amount. On the other hand, a quick dash from an open bottle of maraschino liqueur could easily amount to a half teaspoon or more.

Seems like just about all the recipes you cited include a squirt of soda water. Or am I missing something?

You can pre-order from among several kinds of turkey ("regular," free-roaming, organic, wild, heritage, etc.) at Citarella. That's where I usually get mine. Word to the wise: pick it up on Tuesday, not Wednesday.

Discussion on the Daisy split from this thread. The Cosmo (1934) seems to have just been another name for a Gin Daisy; looking through other Daisy Recipes I see that it is nothing out of the ordinary daisy-wise. Its just a Gin Daisy, so the chances are that it wasn't changed from another spirit. Although non-bartenders, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way, might have trouble coping with the idea, the Cosmo (1934) is not that different from the Cosmo (1988). Bartenders do this kind of swapping around of ingredients all the time; it sometimes seems like they prefer this than to actually make a cocktail properly. Gin swapped for Vodka, albeit Absolut Citron. Cointreau stays. Lemon juice changed for Lime Juice. Raspberry Syrup changed for Cranberry (its just for colour remember). As for correlating recipes, and by this I assume you mean a Gin Daisy that is also entitled "Cosmopolitan, the answer is no (not yet!-) Doesn't a Daisy clasically have a short squirt of fizz water?

Interesting. How does the tech work? Where is the light source?

Yea, it's an okay sub for Gran Marnier. Similar to GranGala.