slkinsey

The sad reality is that common grits (i.e., Quaker Grits) are not made from hominy. It's nothing more than coarse white cornmeal. You have to get the fancy stuff if you want hominy.

The NY Times reports today that Brown-Forman, the liquor company known for brands such as Jack Daniel's, Southern Comfort, Finlandia and Canadian Mist, will acquire Mexican tequila company Casa Herradura for $876 million. Following this sale, only top-seller Jose Cuervo among the three largest tequila makers will remain Mexican-owned (Sauza, the #2 company, is owned by Fortune Brands).

Here's another tidbit I got from a friend that you can pass along to your liquor store and bartender friends regarding Laird's Apple Bond in NYC: Paramount's item number for Laird's Bonded 100 proof is #825200. It is not listed as "Bonded" in the system or the book, only as "Lairds Apple Brandy 100 proof."

Although the two pans seem to be the same size and shape, I find it very interesting that the MC2 pan is called the "Ultimate Covered Sauce Pan" and the Stainless pan is called the "Ultimate Sauté Pot." The Macy's links you provide don't give any dimensions so it's hard to say exactly, but the pictures sure look a lot more like sauce pans than they do sauté pans. The sides appear to be too high, and the cooking surface too small, for them to be particularly useful at sautéing. I also find it extremely strange that the Stainless pan is over a hundred dollars less expensive than the MC2 pan. Stainless is usually a good bit more expensive. In general, MC2 and LTD will provide better performance than Stainless. This is because these two lines have a thicker layer of aluminum compared to the fully clad Stainless line. More aluminum means better performance. IMO, the MC2 line is All-Clad's best line, because it has the thickest layer of aluminum and you aren't paying extra for the hard-to-clean anodized exterior on the LTD line (MC2 is All-Clad's least expensive line). lorea, I'm not sure what you're looking for a pan to do. Why would you want this pan? If you're looking for a sauté pan, I think you can do a lot better than this particular shape, and I think you could do a lot better on price. You could get a Sitram sauté pan with a thick disk bottom on amazon.com for around half of what Macy's is charging for the All-Clad "Stainless Ultimate Sauté Pot." The Sitram pan would, in my opinion, be better for sautéing. Then again, very few home cooks actually use a sauté pan. As for saucepan functionality... it is very rarely worth the money for a home cook to have a fully clad six quart sauce pan. A lot of people end up spending big bucks on All-Clad saucepans that end up being massive overkill because they're mostly using them to boil water, steam vegetables, make soup, etc. Six quarts is a lot of sauce. What is is that you would like to do in the kitchen that you feel you currently cannot do well with the cookware you currently own?

Tomorrow marks one year since Pegu Club's official opening. Congratulations to Audrey and everyone else on the team.

I don't understand. What do you mean "their not serving wine?" They certainly sell wine, as this wine list demonstrates.

Thanks for the info, phlip. There are several meanings of the word "tea" and I wonder if there isn't a small confusion of terms here. Tea can mean not only refer to the tea bush Camellia sinensis and a beverage made from its leaves, buds, etc., but can also refer to beverages made in a similar manner using other herbs, buds, flowers, whatever. We might refer to these preparations loosely as "herbal teas." When I think of tea-infused-liquor for the purposes of this discussion, I'm specifically thinking of liquor that has been infused with tea leaves. As I noted above, tea leaf infusions have the somewhat unique challenge of tannin. Something like hibiscus-infused syrup I would consider a herb-infusion rather than a tea-infusion, despite the fact that we call hibiscus flowers steeped in water "hibiscus tea." Phlip: do you know whether the jasmine-infused gin used in the cocktail at Pegu is infused with jasmine flowers or whether it is infused with jasmine tea consisting of (usually) green tea that has been perfumed with jasmine flowers?

No, in fact this wouldn't be right. First of all this entire "impurities" idea is based on the premise (largely promoted by vodka makers) that hangovers come substantially from exposure to congeners (vodka is low in congeners). This is a mistaken premise. Yes, there is some evidence that high levels of congeners can contribute to the headache portion of a hangover, but there are many aspects to a hangover and many root causes of those aspects. Second, given the nature of the distilling, rectification and filtration process that goes into making vodka, I am quite sure that there is no chemical difference between "organic" vodka and "regular" vodka out of the still.* According to the sense in which "impurities" is used with respect to vodka, it would be easy to make a "not organic" vodka that had substantially fewer impurities than an "organic" vodka. * This is why I think the idea of an "organic" vodka is silly if you're concerned about the product itself. If you're more concerned with the environmental impact of standard agricultural practices, there may be some point to buying "organic" vodka. Although, personally, if that's the reason I'm buying a certain liquor, I hope someone comes up with a "sustainable agriculture" vodka soon. The point is, though, that there would still be no difference in the bottle.

The only real tea cocktail I've had is the Earl Gray MarTEAni, and tannin is fairly prominent in that one (albeit tempered by the egg whites). I'm interested to hear the extent to which tannin is present in other tea-infused-liquor cocktails. I'm not surprised, for example, to hear of more green tea-infused-liquor cocktails than black tea-infused-liquor cocktails, because green tea is substantially lower in tannin.

I've always wondered about that "half an egg white" and it never made much sense to me, unless you're making a drink with only 2 ounces or ingredients or something. Modern recipes (or old recipes reworked for modern usage) may call for a half an egg white because the standard size today seems to be extra large to jumbo, whereas the old recipes most likely were calling for the white of a medium egg. One way to avoid waste is to use medium eggs and keep the egg yolks in a container in the freezer. When you have enough yolks, let them thaw out and then make creme anglaise, egg yolk pasta, whatever.

Audrey's Earl Gray MarTEAni. I had once thought that Lapsang Souchong would make an interesting infusion into alcohol for a cocktail - but after trying it, it turns out that smoky-tea-infused-liquor is just as hard to mix with as scotch.

Audrey's Earl Gray MarTEAni has been a popular drink for several years. It's essentially a silver gin sour made with Earl Gray-infused Tanqueray.

Maybe if they do more shopping, Steven can explain the "Shaw Pineapple Index" metric for comparing supermarkets.

Yes, I believe that was in the original draft of the article: "I can remember my first customer," said Mr. Hoy, "an nice gentleman named Rich Schulhoff ordered a Martini back in 1948. I hear he's still around... living proof that gin is a preservative."

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Oldest-Bartender.html I thought this was a nice article. Hoy Wong has been bartending for almost 60 years.

As I posted earlier, Eber Brothers/Paramount Brands is now bringing Laird's Apple Bond into NYC. Let's see what we can do to get liquor stores to start carrying it. They first brought in four cases, which have all been sold to the business. We should start making our favorite stores aware of Laird's Apple Bond's availability and asking them to get some in stock. Make sure they understand that it's not the 7.5 or 12 year old brandy you're talking about. You want the 100 proof bonded product. So... let's get something started in NYC! I'm willing to bet that if 4-5 people ask the liquor manager at Astor Wines to get in some Laird's Apple Bond, they'll start stocking it. Let's ask our favorite shops in NYC to stock Laird's Apple Bond and post about it here when we ask. I'm going to ask Astor Wines the next time I'm down there.

Exactly! I've thought about taking some Fairway pictures for the various foodblogs I've done, but managed to restrain myself by imagining a headline in the Post that said, "Stupid Foodie Beaten to Death by 80 Year Old Jewish Ladies in 74th Street Fairway." It's hard enough to elbow those senior citizens out of the way when I'm reaching for a number at the appetizing counter, never mind standing around trying to frame a shot.

Jason brought this Smirnoff video to our attention. It's an interesting example of an attempt to promote a liquor through viral marketing. Viral marketing is a relatively new advertising technique whereby marketers seek to spread awareness and increase interest in a product via word-of-mouth by associating the product with an interesting piece of content that people will talk about and share with one another. The most noteworthy example of viral marketing today is probably the "Snakes on a Plane" movie. Liquor may prove to be a particularly good match for viral marketing because new premium liquors -- and this is especially true of vodkas -- are often valued because of perceived prestige, which is largely created by word-of-mouth. In a way, having a celebrity bartender create a special cocktail featuring a certain liquor could be seen as an example of viral marketing. If the cocktail takes off, or if the liquor is able to associate itself with a currently popular cocktail phenomenon (as Bacardi is trying to do with the Mojito), it increases the presence and perceived value of the brand. Ed Hamilton asked the important question: So... what do we think of this. The Tea Partay video is amusing, on that we largely agree. Many of us may share the links with a friend or two. But, do we think it's a successful marketing strategy? Does this video make us more likely to try the new Smirnoff product? Does it succeed with any of us in associating itself with the image of the whitebread old-moneyed Martha's Vinyard set?

Of course, guacamole is also a mole. FWIW, I've had a pretty good Oaxacan pipian in a few NYC restaurants.

Except that I didn't get the impression anyone thought that 66 and Spice Market were any great shakes when they were JGV's newest restaurants at the time.

Today's review in the NY Times by Frank Bruni would suggest that the answer to the question posed in this thread is coming periously close to "yes." Ouch! Thoughts?

As chance would have it, we have a thread going on making Maraschino Cherries (plus variations) at home. I've had some going with NY State sour cherries, Maraska and a touch of simple syrup for a while. This particular jar can now be found in one of the refrigerators at Pegu Club. Luxardo cherries strike me as yet another category of cherry. Not really maraschino cherries, as I understand them.

Luxardo cherries are incredibly awesome. Seek them out. Hoard them. Eat them by yourself when your friends aren't around. Let those ingrates have the regular cherries.

eG Forums threads on. . . Maraschino liqueur The Aviation I wouldn't say that's exactly correct... Maraschino involves a special process in which the fruit is separated from the stems and pits, which are then distilled like grappa and the resultant liquor reincorporated at a later stage with the liquor distilled from the fruit. (More in the Maraschino liqueur thread).

FWIW, I've always taken "powdered sugar" in the old books to mean "superfine sugar" rather than the sugar-plus-corn-starch powdered sugar we have now.