slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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I put hot pans on my wood cutting boards all the time with no ill effect. Then again, back when I was growing up, we were a lot less careful about that kind of thing. My mother would cut up a chicken or some pork chops on the cutting board, give it a swipe with a damp sponge and then proceed to cut up some raw vegetables for salad. And here's the thing: none of us ever got sick from it. Not once.
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What was the reasoning behind not setting a hot pan on the cutting board? The only things that occur to me is that it could possibly burn a wooden cutting board, and would surely melt a plastic one.
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PN, it seems to me that the grammar question is one that can't be definitively answered. Your explanation makes some sense, I agree. But I have most often heard my explanation from my cook and trattoria owner friends in Italy.
Certainly one can always come up with a "hidden" noun of whatever gender anc claim that it is being modified by an adjective. But these words also work grammatically, and more commonly, as nouns themselves. Looking at something like tacchino alla romana, the word "romana" can either be interpreted as an adjective modifying some unspoken feminine noun, or it can be interpreted as indicating a female Roman ("una romana"). I don't see that it's logically provable one way or the other. In any event, this fork of the discussion seems to have played itself out and no longer seems germane, so I'll leave it at that.
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The reason why Pollo alla pizzaiola stays with an "a" at the end is because it should be "Pollo alla salsa pizzaiola" where salsa is dropped, and this happen quite a lot in Italian.
How would this explain pollo alla cacciatora, in which there is no salsa? How would this explain something like pesto alla Genovese?
As we have opened the message more on the grammar side, I would like to point out that the word Marinara is a synonym of Marina, which denote an area by the sea. Other synonymes includes della marina, marinaresca (same roots) e marittima. All with nothing to do with a wife of the Marinaio.I'll only point out that Lo Zingarelli has marinaro as an old form of marinaio. If marinaio has the meaning "sailor," then marinaro is an old word for "sailor" despite the fact that it may not have that primary meaning today. Lo Zingarelli also has marinara as the feminine form of marinaro, along with some additional and more modern usages.
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Lo Zingarelli has marinaro as an old form of marinaio (sailor). It says further that alla marinara speaks of culinary preparations which bring into relief fish, crustaceans and mollusks. How this might relate to the tomato sauce most Italian-Americans know as "marinara" -- I have no idea. Perhaps Southern Italians tended to be stereotyped by the use of a spicy, garlicy tomato-based sauce with these ingredients? There are a lot of preparations that change meaning even from one region of Italy to another (e.g., something known in Milano as "alla Genovese" may be completely unknown in Genova), never mind from one country/culture/continent to another.
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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.
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First is that they traditionally end with an "a" to signify that it's the wife who is doing the cooking.
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?
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Pomodoro is simply Italian for "tomato." There are plenty of tomato-based sauces in Italy.
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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.
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i think we've pretty well established that this is not an italian-american invention, though some derivation of it may be more popular here than it is in italy. in my experience, marinara sauces in the us tend to be long-cooked tomato sauces while in italy they are very fresh and quickly cooked.
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."
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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.
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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.
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Read above. Definitely no flaming.
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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.
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Belgian Beer
in Beer
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.
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Off topic a bit, another citrus/gentian based bitter I read about on Gumbopages is called "Suze"*. Has anyone tried that bitter?
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."
*I do not recommend doing even a "safe" web image search for "suze", if you are at work. Apparently, there are several adult film stars, who use this particular nom de film.Hee hee hee!
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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.
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The temperature impact is one I can't really address - we have a wood-fired brick oven, so I'm usually baking off at 700F +, but have not noticed anything close to a "shattering" consistency as you've mentioned; quite the opposite - on the edges, the outer crust is crisp but quickly yields to a puffy and soft interior.
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
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That's just part of the fun.
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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.
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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.
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Get an eyedropper bottle.
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Hey, an alcoholic drink that inhibits the herpes virus! You might have really stumbled onto a gold mine there.
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You're right about both M&H and ESC. They open at 9:00.
Falernum: The Topic
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
Taylor's Velvet Falernum is, as far as I can tell, the original. So if you have that, you're fine.
...not that I think there's anything wrong with using the Fee Brothers syrup.