slkinsey

This is made by Noilly Prat, although it does not seem to be widely distributed. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much information on Noilly Prat's web site, which doesn't even have a listing of all the products made by the company. As for the wine aging in barrels outside for a year, this is correct. But it is the same process that is used for all the Noilly Prat vermouth.

Hmm... I'm not sure I agree that the recipes in Gary's book would compare to an adaptation such as the one cited above with respect to the Alaska. I may not recall correctly, but I don't think any of Gary's recipes include nontraditional extra ingredients in a classic cocktail. I think it's always a given that a modern recipe book will give the author's preferred tweak of a classic cocktail, within certain parameters. So, if Gary's book specifies a 3:2:1 Sidecar instead of the 2:1:1 Sidecar that appears in so-and-so's book, I still think that's appropriately called a Sidecar (I'm just making up this example, but FWIW I believe Gary's book contains some discussion about tailoring the proportions to your taste and the properties of the cognac). If, on the other hand, Gary's book gave a recipe for a drink made with cognac, Cointreau, lemon juice and a splash of Benedictine and still called it a Sidecar... that would be a problem. Because a "Sidecar" with a splash of Benedictine would have an entirely different flavor profile from the classic, and therefore should really have a different name as it is a completely different cocktail. All that said, I do agree with what George and Audrey are saying. If the recipe is tweaked to the extent that the flavor profile really changes -- either by radically changing the proportions or, more commonly, by adding, subtracting or changing an ingredient -- it should have a different name.

Um, sorry... but you are incorrect on this. "Sauté" does not mean "cooked at high heat" or "cooked in a limited amount of fat" -- although both of these things are likely to be true of sautéing. The most important factor you have missed, however, is that sauté necessarily implies motion. In fact, it necessarily implies tumbling motion. I will explain: The word sauté is the past tense form (passé composé) of the French verb sauter. Sauter means "to jump." Sauté, then, means "jumped." Thus, a literal translation of poisson sauté would be "jumped fish." Jumped where, you ask? Jumped around in the pan. Similarly, the French compound form for the Frenglish verb "to sauté" is faire sauter or, "to make jump." Make it jump where? Jump around in the pan. This is mirrored in other romance languages such as Italian, where the term for sauteed bitter greens would be something like rape saltate in padella. The "saltate in padella part means "jumped (around) in a pan." To sum up: sauté equals jump. If you don't shake the pan and jump the food around, it ain't sautéing. Frying, on the other hand, simply means to cook something in a pan using some fat and without moving it around very much. It's not a question of the amount of fat. You can fry an egg in a thin film of fat, or you can fry an egg in an centimeter of fat. They're both fried. According to your usage, an egg cooked in a hot pan using a thin film of fat would be called a "sautéed egg." Actually, use of the word "fry" to describe submerging piece of food in hot fat is not particularly useful. "Deep fried" food is really "boiled in oil" and not fried at all. I suppose we call it "fried" because the exterior comes out crisp. But, I digress... People like to say things like "sautéed fish" for several reasons, among which are the perception that "sauté" sounds "fancy" and "culinary," a desire to avoid the negative connotations that come with the perception that frying required a lot of fat, and of course a basic misunderstanding of the word "sauté."

I like Shalmanese's technique of drawing a knife across the skin to get out the last bit of moisture. A minute dusting of Wondra just prior to taking the fish to the pan is okay, but not always necessary. I'm more likely to do it with whole fish, which is harder to get completely dry using the knife trick compared to a fillet because it is not flat. I'll usually go with high heat and very little grapeseed oil in a nonstick skillet. I've done it over extra-high heat using stainless lined heavy copper as well, but you have to be much more careful about crowding the pan and you have to use more fat. Cast iron... if I'm going for crispy skin, I don't like to use a cast iron skillet because the tall straight sides don't allow the steam to escape with the same efficiency as the short sloped sides of a frypan. It also makes it much more difficult to get a spatula in there to turn the fish. My usual technique for something like a crispy skin salmon fillet is skin side down until it's cooked 80% of the way through. Then a gentle flip over, turn the heat off and plate it skin side up. I should probably point out, for the sake of clarity, that we are not talking about sautéed fish. One does not usually sauté fish. Sautéing is when you put chunks of food in a hot sauté pan and then shake the pan back and forth to tumble the chunks of food around and brown them on all sides. If you do this with fish, it will fall apart. We're talking about frying here.

Some people aren't fond of the Fee aromatic bitters, but I like them a lot. To me, they seem to have more of a clove top note as opposed to Angostura's cinnamon top note. I think the Fee's is a perfect match with Laird's bonded.

Gin sour is just gin plus sugar plus lemon juice. "Silver" means that it has egg white.

Oh, believe me... it's not because they don't want to, or for lack of trying. It's astounding how long it takes to bring a product into the US. Oh... and while you're making a wish list, don't forget Plymouth's damson gin. One of my favorite cocktologists made me some silver gin sours with a garnish of bitters and a float of this damson gin. Delightful.

For a reasonable price, you might look for something like this at a Crate & Barrel-type place (sorry for the out-of-focus picture): Or look on eBay for something like this:

You mean these? Awesome, aren't they? AFAIK, they get them from an outfit in Germany & they're not available at retail in the US. I think it may be possible to order them, but I don't think they're cheap. Especially if you are only getting one or two. Also, I'm not sure I'd call them "small." They each stand around 7 of 8 inches tall.

For me, it wouldn't be "Boy Scout food" unless it was cooked over a fire that had been started with white fuel when someone wasn't looking. Sam (a Life Scout -- the "ABD" of Scouting)

Hmm. I guess three hours each way is a little too much for you to drive up to NYC and buy some Peychaud's at Pegu Club.

All liquids have increased viscosity when the temperature is lowered. Viscosity may be simply described as a "fluid's internal resistance to flow" (more detailed info avaible here from Wikipedia). Think about how pourable simple syrup is when it is heated up, and how thick and slow it is when you take it out of the refrigerator. The difference is viscosity as a function of temperature. The same thing is happening to that Manhattan when you stir it with ice. Liquors like bourbon and rye already tend to have more viscosity than gin or vodka, and when you chill the liquid the temperature-dependent increase in viscosity is magnified. This is why, although a stirred Martini is also silky, it's not quite as silky as a stirred Manhattan. The dilution of the drink by water is also important, because water has higher viscosity than alcohol at low temperature (alcohol remains fairly low viscosity at low temperature). This is why a drink that is chilled by stirring with ice is more viscous than one made with pre-chilled undiluted spirits. The reason a stirred drink is silky and viscous compared to a shaken drink (assuming it is the same drink) is that the act of shaking incorporates air into the liquid, which decreases the sensation of viscosity and contributes a certain "lively" impression. But, as we all like to say about shaken drinks, you have to drink them quickly while they're still laughing at you (thanks to Harry Craddock for that bon mot). This is because the aeration provided by shaking will dissipate if you wait too long. If you make a stirred drink and a shaken drink and let them sit on the bar for a minute before sampling, you'll find that they're more or less the same by that time. Yet another argument for the three ounce drink, IMO. This is a little more complicated than the idea that the molecules are slower when the drink is chilled because, as explained above, a Manhattan made by stirring with ice will be more viscous than a Manhattan made with pre-chilled spirits by virtue of the added water content, even though the latter might in fact be colder and therefore have "slower moving molecules."

The only commercially produced real sloe gin -- which is to say, gin infused with sloe berries and sweetened -- of which I am aware is made by Plymouth. Sadly, it is currently not imported into the United States, although we hear that it may be coming to the US within the next year or so. Those of us who have had the opportunity to try some of the Plymouth product can attest to its excellence. The "sloe gin flavored liqueurs" made by the likes of Leroux and DeKuyper are syrupy abominations not worthy of the name sloe gin.

It's not at thermal equilibrium til the ice is mostly melted. Ice doesn't have a high thermal conductivity. Thermal equilibrium is also not an applicable concept when one is speaking of shaking or stirring a cocktail. You don't reach thermal equilibrium when you are shaking a cocktail, you shake fast and strain the drink. When you are making a cocktail where a lot of crushed ice is sitting in the glass with the liquid, like a swizzle or a julep, is when the concept of thermal equilibrium applies. Hmmm. I definitely prefer a chilled glass. It makes a notable difference in the temperature of the drink, especially over time. If you're finding a lot of ice shards in the bartender's drinks, that's likely due to bad ice or overzealous shaking or a combination of the two.

In tests that have been done by friends, stirring with cracked ice seemed to produce the coldest cocktail. IMO, as it relates to chilling cocktails, I believe that the most important variables are the temperature of the ice, the size and configuration of the ice, and the composition and temperature of the shaker. This last one may be a little confusing to some, but there is a reason that a lot of the better cocktail bars in NYC are using metal-on-metal Boston shakers instead of the more common metal-and-pint-glass ones. A glass mixing cup has a much higher thermal mass than a metal mixing cup of equivalent size. So, assuming that the shaker and mixing cup are at room temperature, the metal mixing cup will transfer less thermal energy into the drink than the glass mixing cup. If the mixing cup is frozen, however, the advantage is reversed and the drink should turn out colder from the metal-and-glass shaker. Pegu Club uses metal-on-metal for shaken drinks and frozen glass for stirred drinks to good effect. I remember when they went over to using frozen glass for the stirred drinks, shortly after the opening parties, and there was a very noticeable drop in the temperature of the stirred drinks.

Vadouvan, may we assume that your #4 above means after the water bath has rebounded back to the set temperature following the addition of the food? Because, unless you assume a very large amount of water and a very small amount of food, there is no way the water bath won't dip more than two degrees when a substantial food item is added. This is simple thermodynamics, and is borne out in my own experiences with an expensive laboratory circulating water bath heater.

I can answer many or most of these (one advantage of having chemists as parents) but I'll start with this one: When you mix a cold solid (in this case, ice) with a warm liquid (in this case, water and alcohol), heat flows from the warmer liquid into the colder solid until thermal equilibrium is reached. Thermal equilibrium in this example would be a relatively stable temperature for the solid and the liquid to coexist at which all the solid hasn't melted and all the liquid hasn't frozen. In the case of pure water ice mixed with pure liquid water, the temperature of thermal equilibrium would be the freezing/melting point of water -- zero degrees C. Mix together some distilled water ice and distilled water, wait a minute and measure the temperature. Zero degrees C. What happens when we introduce alcohol into the mix? Well, alcohol has a lower freezing point than water. As a result, when we mix water and alcohol with ice, the temperature of thermal equilibrium is lower than the freezing point of water. Mix together some distilled water ice and some 100 proof alcohol, wait a minute and measure the temperature. Lower than zero degrees C. When the liquid inside the glass is lower than the freezing point of water, condensation that forms on the outside of the glass is likely to freeze. This effect is magnified in drinks like a swizzle or a julep because the ice is crushed, resulting in increased surface area for transfer of thermal energy, and because the liquid addition is likely to be fairly high proof, lowering the temperature of thermal equilibrium. The effect is further magnified when a julep is served in a traditional silver cup, because silver has excellent thermal conductivity.

Vadouvan, here's the reason I think your requirements are too high: The part of this discussion that led to your proposal was talking about whether it might be possible to mass produce a sous vide bath so that this kind of cooking could be affordable in the typical home kitchen. A mass-produced, low-priced setup for the home cook simply would not require accuracy to one-tenth of a degree C. It's not reasonable to expect a restaurant-quality sous vide setup for a consumer bargain price (much the same way that a restaurant stove costs around 20 times more than a low end residential stove).

Yea, that's pretty much my feeling as well. I do think it could probably be done for around 200 bucks if you relax your requirements to accuracy within 1 degree C rather than tenths of a degree C.

How about that "stew" you make by sealing up beef and a bunch of vegetables in individual foil packages and tossing them into the fire?

I've had an all-stainless Matfer professional model for around 8 years that I'm very happy with (I've seen "Matfer Professional" sold online made of composite fiberglass -- not the same as mine). One advantage I think it has over the more popular Bron professional is that the blades are all completely removable. I can, for example, easily sharpen the blade on my mandoline.

Yes, it's definitely true that a reasonably precise circulating water bath could be mass produced and sold for right around the same price as, say, a fancy fuzzy-logic rice cooker. I'm not sure I agree that they could be made for 40 dollars. Ultimately you're still talking about something like 400 bucks for a home sous vide setup (figure a couple hundred bucks each for a mass-produced circulating water bath and vacuum sealer).

This, I suspect, is the biggest part of the bottomless portafilter's popularity in professional settings. That and the techie/trendy appeal.

In re to the crock pot question, there are really two basic techniques of cooking sous vide: One technique is the sous vide version of LTLT (Long Time, Low Temperature) cooking. The idea is that you want to take advantage of certain chemical reactions that happen over a long period of time (e.g., conversion of collagen to gelatin) and prevent other reactions from happening by controlling the temperature (e.g., "well done" meat). The meat is vacuum packed and then put in a water bath of other environment in which the temperature can be controlled very precisely. This is for things like beef short ribs at 55C for 36 hours. Only a few degrees can make a big difference. Beef short ribs at 60C for 36 hours will not be anything like the beef short ribs cooked at 55C. This would not be posible with a Crock Pot. It is simply not possible to maintain a sufficiently low temperature with no hot spots, etc. for that langth of time using a Crock Pot. And, of course, as Sandy points out, the temperature is not sufficiently adjustable. The other sous vide technique is to cook the food for a relatively short period of time to temperature and then serve it. This is typically used for things like fish and other kinds of tender meat that don't benefit from long cooking. This is something you could do in a Crock Pot, but I'm not sure why you'd want to. You can do the same thing using a large stock pot and a thermometer. Since the food is likely to cook for an hour or less if it is sized properly, paying attention to the temperature and adjusting the stove every 10 minutes or so is not a big deal. In both techniques you get the benefit of substantially lower moisture loss, enhanced effect of herbs and other aromatics, and "same doneness all the way through" that are really not possible through any other technique.

Okay, interesting. I can buy the argument that it's useful as a diagnostic tool for packing technique. That makes perfect sense, although I'm not sure why you'd want to use it as the regular everyday portafilter instead of as an occasional diagnostic tool. Not so sure I buy the "heat sink" argument, though. If the portafilter is properly preheated, it shouldn't be meaningfully different in temperature from the rest of the path traveled by the water. And, of course, unless the coffee grounds are also preheated, there is going to be a slight modification of the temperature simply due to the grounds absorbing heat from the water. Having a greater thermal mass in the portafilter should only provide more temperature stability, not less.