slkinsey

Certainly. Tortellini in brodo is very traditional. I'm not big on tortellini in soup that has many other ingredients floating around, but tortellini in a clear broth is one of the best ways to appreciate them.

Get a ricer and do Jack's retrogradation trick next time. I guarantee a substantial improvement.

I was there on Saturday myself (and, er. . . a good bit of Sunday morning too). It was filled to capacity at around ten or eleven o'clock, at which time was a wait at the door. This was precisely to make sure that it was never "packed to the gills" inside. Inside had the feel and bustle of a filled room, but never felt crowded. Without crowd management at the door, it would have been a madhouse inside. By the time 1:00 or 2:00 rolled around, I don't think there was a wait. As a general rule of thumb, Saturday night at 10 or 11 is the worst possible time to be out looking for a peak cocktail experience, because even the best places are going to be packed with weekend barhoppers. By limiting the door to control capacity, Pegu Club is actually doing something unusual for an "open admission" bar: they are making it possible to get a peak cocktail experience in a comfortable setting with the full attention of the barstaff even at 11 on Saturday night if you're willing to wait for a while. This, of course, is something restaurants have always done -- we're just used to the idea that bars will cram in as many people as are willing to come through the door. As another general rule of thumb, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights are the best possible times to be out looking for a peak cocktail experience. I'm sure there is no wait at the door to get into Pegu Club tonight, and last night you might have shared the bartender at Flatiron Lounge with only a few other people. Five or six o'clock is also a good time just about any day except Friday. On another subject: Check out the web site at peguclub.com. If you click on the "Ethos" tab, there is a nice video of a bartender making a Pineapple Pisco Sour and swizzling a Ti Punch (with a real swizzle stick, natch).

Those oxtail ravioli look delicious, Ellen! For something really rich like that, I've often found that I like it best minimally sauced (perhaps just moistened with a little reduced braising liquid and butter) and with a lump of cold chevre on top. You take a bit of chevre with each tortellino, and the cool tartness of the cheese really cuts the warm richness of the meat.

Gnocchi really should be made as soon as possible before they are cooked. I wouldn't rest them uncooked more than an hour or two. Here's what I do: While you are making up your gnocchi dough, have a pot of water simmering on the stove. Make one gnocco and toss it in the water to cook. Take it out and taste it. Is it too soft? Add more flour. Is it hard and gummy? Start over or default to something else. Once you have made gnocchi a number of times, though, your skill and judgment will increase and you will gain confidence that it will turn out right every time. If you're worried about a gummy texture from overworking the potato, you can always do Jack Lang's retrogradation trick, which eliminates this concern. Especially if you are not doing Jack's trick, a potato ricer is absolutely de rigeur. Thinking about potato gnocchi, I decided to make some for dinner last night. I riced Yukon Gold potatoes directly onto a pastry cloth. Sprinkled on flour and a small grating of nutmeg. I like using a pastry cloth, because it makes combining the ingredients easy with minimal manipulation of the dough (I didn't have time for Jack's trick tonight). I just pick up one side of the cloth, use the cloth to fold the dough in half, press firmly, repeat until dough holds together, adding a bit more flour as and if necessary. Divide the dough and roll into "snakes." I find that it's much more efficient and easy to "snake" all the dough at once, rather than making one snake of completed gnocchi at a time. Continuing the bulk production theme, all the snakes are cut into sections. This also makes it easy to make sure that all your gnocchi are the same size. Flick each one off the back of a fork. In my opinion, the dents in the back side of the gnocchi are just as important to sauce adhesion (if not moreso) than the grooves on the front side. Cooked and sauced with my favorite tomato sauce for gnocchi: San Marzano tomatoes, a halved onion and a good lump of butter started together in a cold pan and slowly brought up to temperature until the butter and tomato emulsify and the onion has given up its flavor.

Sam, for the infusion-impaired among us, can you give a simple how-to here about the ginger syrup? I get the 1:1 but not the "hot and cold". And how much of what kind of ginger? There are two fundamentally different ways you can infuse a flavor into simple syrup: 1. You can heat the simple syrup up and "cook" the flavoring ingredient in the hot syrup; or 2. You can put the flavoring ingredient into room temperature (or colder) syrup. Different characteristics will emerge depending on how the syrup is infused. With ginger, I find that infusing "hot" by simmering the ginger in the syrup creates a certain roundness and depth of flavor that it not possible to achieve with cold infusion. However, hot infused ginger syrup doesn't tend to have much of the "bite" and "zing" associated with ginger. In order to get the zingy bite of ginger, it is necessary to cold-infuse the syrup. If you want depth and roundness and zingy bite, one may hot-infuse the syrup; allow the syrup to cool; strain off the ginger; then add more fresh ginger to the cold syrup for an additional cold infusion.

Yes. . .those sauces went to the Western world in the form of Worcestershire sauce (anchovy based). Fascinating. I've been led to believe that Worcester Sauce is actually Indian in origin. Or rather I should say, created in England (by Mssrs. Lea & Perrins, natch) either from Indian ingredients or influenced by a recipe or sauce brought back from India.

mbanu, I think fortification does extend the shelf life of a vermouth compared to regular wine. But that doesn't mean that the shelf life is extended indefinitely. I also don't think it's accurate to call the vermouth process one of controlled oxidation, any more so than this is part of the normal winemaking process. Noilly Prat ages its wines for a year in oak casks outside in the open air with the snow, rain, summer sun, etc. That's kind of unusual. But I wouldn't characterize this as controlled oxidation like I would, say, making sherry. I'm not sure that I agree 100% with Alchemist that vermouth is inherently delicate, although it is delicate, I suppose, compared to bourbon. I've kept bottles of very high quality vermouth (Vya) sealed with "Wine Saver" corks in my refrigerator for months without any detectable drop in quality compared to a fresh bottle. But part of Alchemist's point (I think) is that this is not the way vermouth is stored in a professional setting -- it's just not practical. The best vermouth in the world isn't going to keep very well unrefrigerated and open to the air with a speed pourer stuck in it. Any bottle of booze maintained in this condition for a long period of time will eventually decline -- but vermouth will decline a lot faster than vodka.

The "velvet rope" involves selecting people based on how "cool" they are to create a certain "scene" in the bar/lounge/club/restaurant/whatever. Places that "limit the door" may turn people away, but the door is limited for the purpose of making sure the place doesn't go over capacity rather than to create a "scene," and people are admitted on a first come/first served basis rather than what kind of clothes they are wearing, etc.

As I understand it the doorman is for controlling volume of people and not doing the velvet rope thing. This is my understanding as well. As I think I mention upthread, I was there one Thursday night when the place filled almost to capacity -- at which time there was some mention of limiting the door for a while in order avoid overcrowding. Of course, as you say, I am quite sure the velvet rope thing will not be happening there, as this is antithetical to the philosophies of the people involved.

The EU investigatory group argued that because the ducks couldn't engage in "normal" activities (within the universe of livestock animals), it constituted poor welfare. But I thought their case was much weaker without battery cages (which is why they requested a ban on them). But even they, with their noticeable anti-foie-gras bias, had to acknowledge that the few experiments that have tried to measure stress in foie gras birds couldn't come up with any chemical indications that the birds are stressed during gavage. Right. And the EU group still doesn't address the issue of inherrently inhumane. It is, of course, absolutely possible to raise ducks and geese for foie gras in a way that is inhumane. The question is whether it is impossible to raise ducks and geese for foie gras in a way that is not inhumane. As to the question of what is and is not a "normal activity" in the contect of domesticated livestock animals, I'm not convinced that gavage prevents this any more than finishing cows on grain in feedlots, cooping chickens in henhouses, keeping milk cows in stalls, etc. As far as I know, by the way, Hudson Valley Foie Gras does not use battery cages.

Bruni, er. . . he doesn't really get it, does he? It's really too bad that Grimes didn't write this piece, because he's someone who really understands and appreciates a cocktail. It seems odd to me that he felt constrained to write mostly about the food -- even going so far as to state that it was the food that allows Pegu Club to "earn it a place in this column." Would one write about a serious wine bar by spending 75% of the column writing about the bar snacks? It's also interesting to see how much Bruni's perceptions differ from those of more experienced cocktail enthusiasts in these forums. We have been rejoicing in the Pegu Club's "Fitty - Fitty" Martini as a return to the true form of the drink, while he characterizes it as "awfully wet." And while members like Joerg Meyer have been calling the droppers of lemon, lime, simple and bitters "a really great invention" Bruni finds it a "cute additional gimmick." Oh well... They may feel the same way. I don't think they'll ever allow Pegu Club to become a "three deep at the bar" kind of place.

Since this is a "stuffed pasta & gnocchi" cook off, I decided to combine both and make stuffed gnocchi. These are stuffed with a mixture of mushrooms and chicken livers cooked with a little tomato paste, smoked garlic, a touch of aged balsamic and a tiny grating of fresh nutmeg. In the pan On the plate Looking inside

25 bucks?! For what size bottle? 750 ml bottles of Navan are going for something like $37-40. If the Montgomery County prices are for 750 ml, it's a remarkable bargain.

Before you commit to buying the Navan at Astor Wines, take a look at Warehouse around the corner on Broadway. They might not have Navan yet, but they often have substantially lower prices than Astor on certain items. For example, I've bought liter bottles of Cointreau at Warehouse for thirty bucks when other places are selling 750 ml for thirty-three.

One of my favorite stuffed cabbage stories is the time I was in the middle of cooking and realized that I had made enough for around 15 people instead of 3-4. What do to? I called Fat Guy for advice: "Dude, what am I going to do? I've made way too much stuffed cabbage. I don't think I'll be able to fit this in the refrigerator!" "Hold on a second." <Short pause with talking vaguely audible in the background> "We'll be over in ten minutes."

I think Robert's recipe is a little bit more than 3:1. French Quarter 2.5 oz : brandy .75 oz : Lillet blanc Stir with ice and strain; garnish with a thin quarter wheel of lemon I like the idea of rinsing the glass with Cointreau. Rinsing the glass -- something most people only think of doing with absinthe or an absinthe substitute -- is an underappreciated technique.

One of the great things about cognac drinks like the Sidecar is the luxuriousness of using good cognac. Courvoisier VS, Hennessy VS and Martell VS can usually be had for around $35 a liter, and are excellent in cocktails. For a brandy that has fine VSOP cognac characteristics but isn't too expensive, $35 will get you 750 ml of Germain-Robin Fine Alembic Brandy.

That's what I was thinking. Unless it came to fisticuffs (and perhaps not even then) I can't imagine a restaurant firing someone for slapping a runner's hand off the pass. Now, can I imagine that Psaltis was a bad fit for French Laundry, and that this caused some mutual dissatisfaction? Absolutely. Can I imagine that Psaltis' departure from French Laundry was mutually desired? Certainly. Can I imagine that the slapping incident was the beginning of the end, and a moment that led to this parting of the ways? Sure. Can I imagine that Psaltis had motivations for leaving this incident out of his book? Yes. But I can also imagine that people at French Laundry, people fiercely loyal to Keller and who have heavily bought into his unassailable sacred cow mystique, would spin the incident and Psaltis' departure in the opposite direction, and that the rumor mill would really get going. These are both natural and indeed expected reactions. I'm quite sure that if Keller feels that Psaltis' book -- and surely he is aware of it -- is unfair to him and French Laundry, and if he feels that it is connected to this incident, or that the story needs to be clarified with a description of this incident (or whatever the hell it is that Mssrs. Bourdan and Ruhlman are getting after), he is perfectly capable of saying, "Doug Psaltis slapped a runner at French Laundry and I shitcanned him" or "I thought Psaltis was a bad, cocaine-addicted chef, and when he punched a porter in the face it gave me the perfect excuse to fire him" or whatever. Having friends of the house and/or employees making insinuations and spreading rumors is sleazy, and beneath someone of Keller's stature. Frankly, I hope he wouldn't approve.

1:1 with a twist -- and a short dash of orange bitters, if you have any -- would be a good way to go. Sapphire is a good choice for this ratio, because it is 94 proof. Lower proof gins (say, Plymouth at 82.4 proof) may require a slightly greater amount of gin to make their presence felt. While I'm offering advice. . . make the drink small (maybe 1.5 ounces of each), stir briefly with cracked ice, strain into a pre-chilled glass and pinch a lemon twist over the surface.

ludja, I think that is just a sad result of the misconception that a Dry Martini is meant to only have a token amount of vermouth. Many bartenders say that their default Dry Martini contains no vermouth whartsoever, and yet they will still have a few drinks returned each night with an instruction for "less vermouth." Part of this is due to the popularization of "extra strong, low vermouth" Martinis from noted boozehounds who were really just trying to increase the alcoholic strength of their tipple. The rest is likely due to the popularity of tha vodka "Martini," because vodka doesn't play all that well with vermouth and most people prefer a mere whisper of vermouth at most in a "vodka Martini." These says I'm more likely to go 1:1 with Noilly Pratt and no more than 3:1 if I'm using a soft gin and a strong vermouth like Vya.

Good question. Step one would be making sure you're in a good cocktail bar. The UK has some spectacular cocktails, but cocktail culture does not pervade English culture the way it does American. This is to say that, whereas one can assume that most decent restaurants in the US will know what a Martini is and be able to make a reasonably similar facsimile, one cannot assume this in the UK. So, I'd make sure I was in a good cocktail bar and say that I wanted a Martini "American style" with gin and white vermouth, or I'd ask for "gin and white vermouth." Then I'd probably ask how they make it and settle on the ratio I wanted.

Actually, the first printed use of the word "cocktail" comes dates from May 13, 1806, in the magazine Balance and Columbian Repository of Hudson, New York. It was a response to a letter to the editor of asking about the meaning of the word: For sure New Orleans is important in the early history of bar culture. But I'm not positive we can call it "the birthplace of the cocktail." Especially as Antoine Peychaud wasn't doing his thing until the 1830s or so. Originally, the word "cocktail" was fairly narrowly defined and did not mean "all drinks made with mixed alcoholic beverages" as it does today. At its most narrow, it meant "base spirit, sugar and bitters." Other drinks were called Juleps and Fog Cutters and Slings and Flips and Cobblers and Corpse Revivers, etc. In Professor Jerry Thomas' epochal How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant's Companion of 1862, the section on cocktails is the smallest parf of the book, comprising a dozen or less concoctions. Others are more qualified than I to comment on when the term "cocktail" came to have a meaning closer than the one we have today, but the books in my collection suggest that it happened around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th.

This is, I believe, exactly what one will get in most UK bars. It's simply a regional difference, much the same way that an order for a "milkshake" in Boston will get you a glass of whipped milk with syrup (the drink with ice cream is called a "frappe"). I believe this UK understanding of "Martini" comes from the popularity of Martini & Rossi vermouth, and that many UK bartenders interpret an order for a "Martini" to simply be shorthand for "Martini & Rossi" (i.e., a glass of white vermouth).

I think people have been mixing alcoholic beverages with other ingredients for as long as there have been alcoholic beverages. Not sure that equals "cocktail" though.