slkinsey

Marinaro means "seafaring" according to my dictionary. And thus, un marinaro would be "a seafarer" -- or perhaps "seaman" would be more apt. ("Of the sea," I think, is generally marino, as in sale marino.) FWIW, I didn't pull the "wives" thing out of my ass. It's what I was told by a person with some expertise in Italian etymology.

The "a" at the end (and this is Italian Grammar) is because of the sauce (salsa) or Pizza or Pasta ends with "a" and doesn't mean that was cooked by a woman, although I agree that the meaning is not easily found in the ingredients but more often in other associations. I don't think you are correct here. For example, were you correct, a dish made of chicken topped with tomato and mozzarella would be called pollo alla pizzaiolo so that the "o" of pollo and the "o" of pizzaiolo would correspond. It's a reasonable idea, but it doesn't work out that way. The correct name of the dish would be pollo alla pizzaiola, with an "o" on pollo and an "a" on pizzaiola. For similar reasons, it is pollo alla cacciatora and not pollo alla cacciatore (although this dish is most often given by Italian-Americans as "chicken cacciatore" in an interesting gender switch). Ask yourself what you're saying when you say, "spaghetti alla marinara" (note that the vowel ends do not correspond). You're not saying, "sailor spaghetti." You're saying, "spaghetti in the style of..." or "as it would be made by..." the sailor's wife. When the name of the dish is shortened from spaghetti alla marinara to simply spaghetti marinara, the sense of "in the style of, or as it would be made by the sailor's wife" still remains. Else, according to your grammatical model, the dish would properly be named "spaghetti marinari" -- right?

Pomodoro is simply Italian for "tomato." There are plenty of tomato-based sauces in Italy.

Qwerty, as others in these forums have pointed out, people said the same thing about gas-fired stoves when they started to replace wood-fired stoves.

I don't think I've ever seen a tomato-based "alla marinara" sauce in Italy. Not saying that they don't exist, but I've never seen one. There are two things that seem clear... 1. The concept of calling something "alla marinara" is not an Italian-American invention. Italians have been calling things "alla _____" forever. Two things should be pointed out here: First is that they traditionally end with an "a" to signify that it's the wife who is doing the cooking. Second is that the reason something is associated with a certain mood, person, place or profession may not be as obvious as one might think. This is to say that a dish "alla marinara" doesn't have to include any fish. After all, dishes that are cooked "alla cacciatora" don't necessarily use ingredients that are hunted. Sometimes the association can be purely poetic (e.g., large flakes of black pepper possibly symbolizing ashes in spaghetti alla carbonara), and sometimes no one seems to be able to agree. 2. The concept of a spicy, garlicy, tomato and oregano sauce is not an Italian-American invention. Whether or not it is clear that a spicy, garlicy, tomato and oregano sauce called "alla marinara" is not an Italian-American invention... I'm not convinced it's clear. Francesconi offers a plausible conjecture. What also seems clear is that "marinara sauce" occupies a much larger share of Italian-American culinary mindspace than it does Italian. Interestingly, it has never seemed that there is such a thing as a definitive "marinara sauce" in the States. Everyone seems to agree that it's not a meat sauce, but other than that I don't see that there is a great uniformity. I've come to believe that many Italian-Americans grew up calling whatever their non-meat tomato-based sauce may have been "marinara." It's certainly not the case that you can walk into any Italian-American restaurant, order "spaghetti with marinara sauce" and get anywhere near the commonality you would get with, say, "veal parmesan."

It's interesting about certain rye cocktails and the rye you use. I find that Dave's Tombstone (just rye, 2:1 demerara simple and bitters) needs a 100 proof rye to work, and in fact really works better with Wild Turkey's slightly rough profile compared to Rittenhouse's suaveness. On the other hand, I've found that the Blinker only seems to work with Old Overholt.

mbanu, I'm curious... where did your quote come from. Is it an actual quote -- in which case I think it's likely misguided -- or is is a strawman to illustrate your point? FWIW, I do think that many, but not all classic cocktail enthusiasts tend towards drier and stronger. That's certainly my preference, although that is not to say that there aren't sweeter and weaker cocktails that I admire and appreciate. I'm actually quite fond of long drinks and silver fizzes. In terms of many of the leading cocktailians with whose work I am familiar (Audrey, Dave, Gary, Dale, Julie, Robert, etc.) I'd say that the preference for strong and sour over sweet and weak is not especially prevalent. Several of them have a definite sweet tooth. And, of course, it is a fact that bars do serve an awful lot of (usually vodka-based) sickly sweet soda-shop pancake syrup crap nowadays.

Read above. Definitely no flaming.

I find it interesting that so many people seem to hold the opinion that the pasta dishes are the real interest at Babbo and that the secondi are lower in quality. Many of the secondi there I think are among the best of their kind. Standouts I've had are their grilled branzino with roasted cardoons, duck cabbage and speck, grilled quail, rabbit with brussels sprouts and pancetta, the grilled pork chop, the fennel dusted sweetbreads with sweet and sour onions, duck bacon and membrillo vinegar (one of the best sweetbread dishes in the City), an the "deconstructed" ossobuco for two. All of these dishes, IMO, more than stand up to the pasta dishes in interest and quality. That said, the pasta dishes are excellent, of course, and I think it's also possible that they may hold more immediate appeal to those who are not as familiar with the "Italian way with protein." Still, though, I'd feel that I was missing out if I were to dine at Babbo only on pasta.

Hmmm... I've never managed to get very good Orval in the States. I think it's especially sensitive to handling. Mine favorites in no particular order, would go something like this: Rodenbach Grand Cru Chimay Cinq Cents Any of the really sour, horsey lambics Duvel I need to get back into beer more. I used to really seek out a lot of interesting beers, especially beers of Belgium. But my beer drinking has tapered off as my cocktail and spirits drinking has increased. I was reminded of my fondness for Belgian beers during a recent trip to Burp Castle in NYC for a friend's birthday. Sadly, their once comprehensive list has seriously declined over the last decade. I can remember when it wouldn't fit on a single page.

Suze is very interesting, albeit an acquired taste. To me there is a definite mold or old socks component to the aftertaste, but others don't agree. I have had several cocktails made with Suze at Pegu Club -- the one that sticks in my mind was called a "White Negroni." Hee hee hee!

Kevin, I think it's hard to get the temperature high enough with an electric oven. With gas, you have the advantage that you can put the stone on the oven floor so the gas jets fire directly up into the stone. After preheating a gas oven to 550F for an hour, the pizza stone should be significantly hotter than 550F. That said, even with the massive stones I use (I've been using a heavy piece of slate) there is some temperature and performance loss after the first few pizzas. All that opening of the oven door combined with the thermal energy conducted into each pizza means that the fourth pizza can never be as good as the first, unless you program 15 or 30 minutes between each pizza. There's a reason real retained heat pizza ovens are so massive.

This is a problem with baking pizza in regular home ovens. Unless you have a very thick pizza stone on the floor of a gas oven that you preheat for a long time on the highest heat setting, the pizza cooks too slowly and by the time the pizza is cooked all the moisture has cooked out of the thin dough, any initial oven spring has collapsed and you are left with a hard, cracker-like crust. This is especially problematic if the pizza is burdened with too much topping. In my experience, this is about as much topping as a home pizza can sustain and still have a good crust: Shitakii mushrooms, guanciale, tomato, fresh mozzarella

That's just part of the fun.

My family has had a house in the mountains outside Black Mountain since before I was born... I know Black Mountain a bit. This is an easy question: There is no Italian in Black Mountain, so it's Asheville or nothing. If you want something more Black Mountainesque, give the folks at the Red Rocker Inn a call. It's not exactly sophisticated and urbane (although presumably you're not in Black Mountain for those things anyway), but it is excellent. The best place in Black Mountain, I'd say. In Asheville, you might consider Gabrielle's in the Richmond Hill Inn.

Or, get a mini bottle of Angostura bitters, dump out the Angostura and refill with orange bitters. But an eyedropper bottle is smaller and easier to use, I think.

Get an eyedropper bottle.

Hey, an alcoholic drink that inhibits the herpes virus! You might have really stumbled onto a gold mine there.

You're right about both M&H and ESC. They open at 9:00.

I've been known to stick with either a Martini or a glass of Wild Turkey at Peter Luger.

I had the impression that that's what this place is. Is it not? Granted, I haven't been there myself, but the impression I get from pictures and comments is that it's "updated red sauce Italian-American." FWIW, while I suppose it is possible to get an oustanding experience in a fundamentally flawed restaurant by only sticking to one area of the menu, that still makes it a flawed restaurant. Staying entirely or mostly away from non-pasta dishes is not quite the same thing as not ordering the pad thai at Sripraphai or making sure you stick with Sichuan dishes at Grand Sichuan, where certain dishes that are not the restaurants' forte have been retained on the menu to satisfy certain expectations and exconomic realities. I should add, while I am at it, that I absolutely do not subscribe to the premise that the non-pasta dishes at Babbo are in any way inferior to the pasta dishes. They may be less familiar to those who are not experienced in the Italian way with protein and have more Italian-American influenced expectations about dinner at Babbo, but I think many of the secondi at Babbo are excellent and the fennel-dusted sweetbread in particular is one of the best preparations of its kind in the City. Regardless, even if someone prefers Batali's pasta dishes over his protein dishes, I don't think one would observe what, based on gaf's pictures and descriptions describe, seems to be a fairly dramatic drop-off between primi and secondi.

If you're going to save the olive oil (something I am not at all sure is a good idea), you should keep it well sealed in the freezer. Poaching in olive oil is expensive, which is one reason it's great to use sous vide techniques for olive oil poaching. A very small and economical amount of olive oil can completely surround the fish when it's in a sous vide bag.

I think most bartenders, at the higher end places anyway, share tips with the barbacks, etc. Also, practically no bartender that is in a position to be serving that many drinks per shift works 5 days a week. I know of one person who works that many days at that level, and everyone thinks he's some combination of insane and Superman to sustain that level. A typical Saturday night bar shift at one of these places is going to be around 8 hours on your feet with no break, shaking constantly. That takes a tremendous toll on the body. It's not clear to me that a bartender on a busy Saturday night necessarily expects a three dollar tip on a vodka tonic. But perhaps not unreasonable for a specialty cocktail prepared by an expert. That said, three dollars strikes me as a bit steep if one is going to tip on a per-drink basis, unless it's a $16 dollar cocktail. This is one reason I think it makes more sense to tip a percentage of the tab. This also goes back to my earlier remarks as to what you're getting and what kind of place you're in. If I pay eight bucks for a beer where all the bartender has had to do is pop the top off the bottle, a dollar strikes me as pretty reasonable. If I'm paying twelve dollars for an expertly mixed cocktail, two dollars (or 20%) also strikes me as pretty reasonable. As for volume, it doesn't make too much difference to me as long as I am getting good service and a quality libation. Do we tip a smaller percentage in restaurants that turn more tables?

That's a difficult one to estimate. On a busy Saturday night at someplace like Pegu or Flatiron it could be as many as 300, maybe more. On a slow Tuesday night it would likely be significantly fewer than 100. These are only guesses, though, based on my observations and doing some quick math. Others in these forums are in a position to ofter more definitive data. The point is, I think, that a good bartender at the right place can make several hundred dollars in tips on a busy weekend night, but he/she will also have to come in on slow nights when there isn't that much money to be made. Not too many bars are going to allow a bartender to only work shifts on the busy money-making nights. As with tipping on wine in a restaurant, I think there has to be some reasonable adjustment made if you're getting something that involved minimal service. Pouring a snifter of scotch or bringing out an iced bottle of champagne isn't quite the same thing as shaking up a perfectly balanced specialty cocktail. That said, as with a restaurant, one should figure into the tip the level of service that led to that scotch or champagne being served. There are plenty of places where you can order a $30 glass of scotch where the bartender is doing little more than pouring the malt you ask for. At other places, like the Brandy Library, the "spirits sommelier" is going through the list with you and helping you choose just the right cognac from their repertoire of several hundred. This means that I'm likely to leave a higher percentage tip at Brandy Library than I am at Macduff's Tavern. I actually rarely tip exactly 20%, although that's my general rule of thumb. I'm likely to tip 20% if it's a straight situation of "I ordered ABC and XYZ and was billed the standard amount for ABC and XYZ." Since I tend to frequent bars where I'm known and where I have friends or personal recommendations, I'll find myself in situations where my bill doesn't reflect what I've poured into my liver. Any time I've benefitted from someone's generosity I try to be as generous in return as my circumstances allow, and often wish my finances allowed me to leave more. If no one's taking my money, I like to leave at least $20. I often worry that I should leave more. Personally, I think a good bartender deserves at least as much as a waiter in a restaurant, considering that he/she is sommelier, waiter, cook and busboy all in one.

From a related NY Magazine Aubust, 2000 article entitled: Tipping Points : If it's true that money talks, what are your tips saying about you? we have this interesting tidbit: