slkinsey

An "Apple Pie Martini," eh? What goes into one of those?

I "cured" my dolsots by rubbing them with oil and baking them in the oven (repeated this a few times). I've never cooked rice in mine, but I do heat them over my gas stove, add cooked rice and the vegetables and let the whole thing sit on the flame for 5 minutes or so. As you can see, I get good crisping of the rice (better than I have usually had in restaurants, actually). I'm not sure how it would work with electric. Probably would make sense to use a flame tamer just to spread the heat around. I would think you could effectively seal the dolsots for rice cooking by putting a heavy oven-friendly ceramic plate on the top of each one while it was on the stove. I don't think the "seal" has to be any better than that. Remember, you're trying to crisp the bottom anyway.

From this book we love the Bronx and the Income Tax Cocktail (a Bronx with bitters), Twentieth Century, Aviation, Vieux Carré, Coffee Cocktail, Brooklyn, Satan's Whiskers, Corpse Reviver #2, Blinker, Pegu Club and the Jack Rose. I was familiar with at least half of these before the book published, and I disagree with some of the formulae (strongly disagree in the case of the Pegu Club), but that's a remarkable number of "regular rotation" cocktails in one slim book. I hope there's a volume two.

I like Zakarian too. I think his work is brilliant and Town is IMO deserving of far more recognition and attention than it gets. So it seems a bit odd to me that so many people have been speaking of Country as though it were a "Psaltis restaurant." As far as I know, Country will be a Zakarian restaurant. I have heard that, at least up to this point, the dishes are Zakarian's and that Zakarian is at the chef's station calling orders during service. People initially spoke of Esca as a "Batali restaurant" even though it was more Pasternack's place than it was Mario's in terms of the kitchen, and I'm not sure why we are doing differently here. All this is to say that we shouldn't take any credit for Country away from Zakarian.

Interesting question. My guess is that it probably wouldn't have been posted or written about. Another bad meal at Beard House isn't exactly news. But if it was as bad as Mimi says it was I'm sure the people who were there would be talking about it among themselves, even if only to say "that was one of the worst Beard House dinners I've ever attended." Here is the menu postef on the Beard House web site, by the way:

Yikes. It does sound pretty awful.

This is by no means a defense of Psaltis and his cooking at the Beard House dinner. Indeed, I have little trouble imagining that it was not very good. That said, I am given to understand that mediocre is par for the course at Beard House dinners, regardless of who is in the kitchen. This post by Fat Guy in the Beard House thread back in August may offer some perspective: I've cooked at a Beard House event. A few years ago, I was invited to participate in a latke competition there. I had to prepare latkes for 70 people. . . .The Beard House kitchen is a disgrace by the standards of the contemporary upscale restaurants the Foundation seeks to represent at its events. The equipment is second-rate, the design is poor and it's extremely difficult to work cleanly and efficiently. It would have been much easier to produce latkes for 70 in my mediocre kitchen at home than it was in the Beard House's disaster of a kitchen. . . I've had some good and some bad dinners at the Beard House. Mostly mediocre to bad. Some chefs can pull it off. This suggests to me that Psaltis has some pretty good company in making bad food for a Beard House dinner. FG's impression of the typical Beard House dinner attendees is also an interesting counterpoint to Mimi's characterization: Of course, I'm sure some dinners have more "important people" at the tables than others -- and that may have been the case on Tuesday.

Yes, Boston is very strange about the things the community will support and the things the community won't support. I always thought it was odd that a city that has the BSO -- historically one of the great orchestras in the world, although I think they declined under Ozawa -- has never been able to sustain an opera company of comparable quality. I grew up in Boston, and it was never much of a restaurant town, although I heard that it had made great strides in that respect over the last 10-15 years. Perhaps not as much as we might have liked.

I would think that Campari with limoncello would be way too sweet. As for Campari and rye, you could try a variation on the Red Hook. The Red Hook is 2 ounces of rye and a half-ounce each of Punt e Mes and maraschino liqueur, stirred with ice and strained. You could sub Campari for the Punt e Mes for more bitter herbal bite.

It's definitely interesting. I wonder whether a spoon (presumable a ladle) with a "cock's tail handle" was something commonly used, or if this was a common term.

Nope! Sorry! My guess is that it's caramel or chocolate or taffy or something like that, partially solidified in a pan of some kind and then turned over.

Usinger's! Takes me back to my college days in Wisconsin. Does anyone in NYC serve Usinger's?

No egg?

I posted this in another thread: Since the word "cocktail" to describe a spiritous libation wasn't mentioned in print until 1806, I have a hard time believing it originates from a punch spoon used 200 years earlier. That said, I suppose it's no less likely than any of the usual suspects.

Probably for the same reason Puglia is known as "Apulia." The UK's "rocket" most likely comes from the French roquette.

Real Spanish chorizo -- which is to say the dry cured paprika-loaded sausages (not Mexican chorizo, which is entirely different) -- should stand in for Portuguese chorice nicely.

Not to mention that quite a bit of the bottled water for sale is simply municipal water that has been filtered. I've never had bottled "spring water" that comes close to the NYC tap water I run through my massive plumbed-in under-the-sink water filter. Mineral water, on the other hand, is entirely different. There are wide differences in the tastes of mineral waters. Bah, you can lampoon the hell out of everything else but stay the hell away from my collection of gourmet salts. I *can* taste the difference and it *does* matter. Research would suggest that you can feel the difference due to the different shapes of various specialty salts, but that you cannot actually taste the difference between the salts (which makes sense, since aven fancy sea salts are something like 99.5% sodium chloride anyway). This is why it doesn't make sense to use fleur de sel to season the water you use to boil vegetables or to salt your soup.

I might be wrong here but isn't a martini traditionally gin? So saying you want a vodka martini is correct - but asking for a martini should result in a gin "martini"? Well, here's the thing: A "Martini" is a drink made with gin and dry vermouth, maybe (hopefully?) with a drop of orange bitters. If you change the basic ingredient, it is no longer something that should be called a "Martini." Think about it this way: A Margarita is made with tequila, Cointreau and lime juice. If I mixed up a drink made of bourbon, Cointreau and lime juice, it wouldn't be a "Bourbon Margarita." To us, a drink made with vodka and dry vermouth is so different from one made with gin and dry vermouth that it doesn't make sense to call them by the same name, even if we modify "Martini" by saying "Vodka Martini." But I think it's more than that. When you start calling everything a "Something-tini" or a "Whatever Martini" it starts to take away some of the meaning and value from the word "Martini." It's also not very interesting, and we're missing out on some really interesting and more informative cocktail names. Isn't it much better to have a "Vesper" than a "Vodka and Gin Martini?" I also think there are more interesting ways to indicate in a cocktail's name that it is inspired by another cocktail without just tacking something onto the name. As it so happens, this is something Alchemist and I have been discussing in this thread about swizzles. There is a famous swizzle called the Queens Park Swizzle that Alchemist has been riffing on. The QPS has a rum base. Alchemist came up with an interesting variation using gin instead of rum. Now, he could have called it a "Gin Queens Park Swizzle," but instead had the idea of naming it after a park in London to give a nod to the city of London Gin: the "Hyde Park Swizzle" or something like that.

Kohlrabi gives me the cold robbies. (Ten points for anyone who knows the reference.)

Dude. . . you drank straight Wray & Nephew overproof rum?! No ice? Wow.

I think we've solved the mystery of your "bag bloat." If this is your short ribs and mushrooms after sealing, it doesn't have nearly enough air removed before sealing. To my eye, there is still plenty of air in there. The bag should be tight on all the food.

More sous vide experimentation. This time it was chicken breasts with scallions and shitakii mushrooms. I bagged it all together with the FoodSaver and cooked it for 40 minutes in a 65C water bath. Nothing else in there but some salt, white pepper and around a teaspoon of rendered chicken fat from the freezer. Yea, yea. . . I know I could have gone for a lower final temperature, but as this was the first time I wanted to make sure it had a familiar "cooked chicken" texture. Here are some looks at the bag after it came out of the water bath: Mushroom Side Scallion Side (the vacuuming sucked the scallions into the "valleys" between breasts) Here are the results. Incredibly moist and tender, and exquisitely perfumed with shitakii and scallion. The juices in the bag made a very nice, light "sauce" that I poured over the chicken. On the Platter With Wilted Savoy Cabbage (I think this gives some idea of how moist the chicken is) This really couldn't have been easier, too. And hardly anything to clean up! With Nathan's charts, it's very easy to get started. Next time: fish.

That's a new one to me (not that I am anything but a novice!). What is it? Spatchcock.

Either/or, really. A lot of people like the curved sides for sauce making. I have a small regular sauteuse evasee and medium curved sauteuse evasee. I like them about equally. If the thermal mass is higher then, all other things being equal, it will hold temperature better. Of course, if the thermal mass is higher and the thermal conductivity is lower, it just magnifies the difference. FWIW, from what I have been able to glean, I suspect your ICM Cose Casa "Le Pentole" cookware is not copper core, but rather heavy stainless with a thick encapsulated aluminum base. One would expect better heat retention from such a design. Personally, I prefer heavy stainless body with an extra-thick aluminum base for a saute pan. I think it balances the need for a high heat capacity with some responsiveness and no reactivity. I can't say that I've experienced the situation you describe with my heavy copper frypans (losing heat and getting "sticky"), but my gas stove also puts out a considerable flame for a regular NYC apartment stove. The more heat you can pour into the copper pan (i.e., the more powerful your heat source) the less likely you are to experience any heat loss issues with heavy copper. It's when you pull the copper pan off the stove and put it in the oven, where the heat transfer to the pan is drastically reduced, that you would really rather have low thermal conductivity instead of high.

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