slkinsey

It's not cheap, but keep in mind that each one of those bunches weighs around 2.5 pounds. So that's around $3.20 US per pound. Still not cheap, of course, but it's worth it to me when I can A) get very high quality and peak freshness, and B) support local farmers.

So. . . as mentioned above, I went to the Union Square Greenmarket this morning. I've either been out of town or otherwise engaged for the past few weekends, so I wasn't sure what they would have. Well, it was pretty disappointing. I was hoping there would be more Spring vegetables -- baby fennel, baby turnips, little carrots, shell peas, snap peas, asparagus and that kind of thing. All they really had was the asparagus and the turnips. One person was selling sugar snap peas. Oh well. The asparagus was lovely, and there were some good herbs. After stashing my greenmarket loot and slurping down a cappuccino, it was off to the butcher for tomorrow's steak. One thing we are lucky enough to have in NYC are a number of real, full-service butchers. You know, not a big display of pre-cut meat. The kind of place where they cut all the meat to order. One of the best places in the City that doesn't get enough attention is Oppenheimer Prime Meats on the UWS, my local. I told them I wanted prime porterhouse, and so they brought out a prime short loin so we could talk about how much I needed and how thick to cut the steaks. This is how it's supposed to be done. We settled on two big steaks for approximately 8 people. I think it says something good when one of the other butchers walks past the table where your steaks are being prepared and says, "Whoa! Whose are those? That's awesome!" And, I hope we'll all agree, they are an awesome sight indeed. Here is a picture with a ruler for reference, just to give some idea of the scale: I'm salting these babies and throwing them into the fridge until tomorrow PM.

Okay. I'm back now. Went to the Union Square Green Market and a few other places (more on this anon), and came back to have a little something before I venture back out to pick up a few more things. Around here, this is breakfast: That's a double cappuccino straight from the Rancilio, made with Sweet Maria's Liquid Amber Blend roasted a few days ago by yours truly. The milk is from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, bottled on the farm in Ancramdale, New York. Their milk is not homogenized; they don't use pesticides, hormones or antibiotics; and it comes in returnable/reusable glass bottles. I've talked them up before, and will continue to do so. This milk is so much better than even the most expensive "grocery store organic" milk, that it's almost an entirely different product. Now I'm off to the butcher.

Dude. . . what makes you think my smoke alarms ever were connected?

Update: I've been informed by the good folks at Maker's Mark that they are no longer producing the Black Label bottling. They used to produce it for sale in Japan and duty-free stores but currently just produce the regular Red Wax bottling.

I can get Inniskillin Ice Wine, in fact I probably have some downstairs, but I'm not sure Sam can. I can get it, but an ingredient that costs upwards of 70 bucks for 375 ml is probably outside the scope of this blog.

WRT the "mystery ingredients" -- we'll have to take into account the different locations in which Marlene and I live and the extent to which that will effect the ingredients we can use. Fish and other foods from the sea may be a tough one for us to match up, unless we go in a very general direction (e.g., "whole fish"). It's not clear, for example, that we'd both be able to get high quality fresh crab.

Not quite sure yet. My mind automatically goes to beef short ribs when I think of braising, but Kathleen reminded me that this would be following beef on Saturday with beef on Sunday (not that there's anything wrong with that in my book!). So I might do a pork shoulder braised in milk. Or maybe lamb shanks. Or maybe osso bucco. Or, if I can get a whole one, maybe oxtail.

With anything that comes in leaf form, I think you're better off just muddling rather than making an infused syrup. And, when it comes down to it, it's probably a little easier to do. Give it a try: Make the mint-infused syrup and do a drink with that. Then make the same drink using unflavored simple syrup and a few leaves of muddled fresh mint. I bet you'll like the muddled version much more, and will find that it's less trouble than doing the infusion.

Since this was raised here as an aside....My understanding has always been that pasta was introduced to China by Marco Polo. Some however insist that Marco Polo brought it back to Italy from China. Pasta was developed independently by a number of cultures (the earliest known record of pasta in what is now Italy dates to something like the 4th century BC, so it's a sure thing that they didn't get the idea from China). Think about it: mixing flour with liquid, possibly drying it, and then boiling it in water isn't exactly a revolutionary concept. The argument could be made that pasta cookery was most elevated in Italy and China.

Alberto beat me to it on the pasta thing. I agree that "fusion cooking" as the natural evolution of a cuisine as different cultures and culinary approaches influence one another and combine to create new culinary approaches will never end. This is how we got Italian-American cooking and Cajun cooking and much of the cuisine of the American South (etc.). Even things like Keller's "procession of small dishes using seasonal ingredients" is a fusion cuisine, having its roots in kaiseki. I do think, however, that the current fondness for not-organic, deliberate, precious and self-conscious fusions of culinary traditions (i.e., "chicken fried steak bibimbap alfredo") is already becoming tired.

Why, style and attitude of course. Seriously, that's hard to say. I mean, you get a whole country whereas I only have the NY Metro area. Let's see. I'll be going to the Union Square Greenmarket tomorrow morning to pick up local vegetables for the week. Those are NY ingredients. And I'll be visiting the butcher tomorrow afternoon to have him cut me a hella-thick porterhouse. High quality steak is certainly associated with NYC. Er. . . I'm sure we'll be having bagels. I'll be drinking heavily and cursing a lot. Does that count?

It will be my distinct and total pleasure. Humph. Everyone likes to root for the underdog. So, are you going to use any Canadian ingredients? Maple syrup? Saskatoon berries? Molson Golden? Peameal bacon?

Spatula? I don't need no stinkin' spatula! I use my bare hands! Seriously, though, this should be fun. It will be interesting to see how we bring our different approaches to similar concepts and ingredients.

Jeez. Apparently Marlene paid Brooks off already. . . I'd just like to say that I'm sure my opponent has been training hard, and she's a tough competitor. This will be a good fight. But I will show no mercy. I am the baddest cook in the kitchen. I doth bestride the stove like a colossus. I'm gonna torture her. I'm gonna crucify her. Real bad. I'll float like a soufflé and sting like a habañero. My prodigious culinaritization will manifest delectified flavoritism upon the tastified palates of the world! My cuisine will reign supreme! Brooks: I hope you like those words, because you're going to be eating them at the end of the week. And everyone knows that words are a dish best served cold. . . Or is that revenge? I can never keep that straight. Anyway, you're gonna be eating 'em, pal -- with a big side of crow! Or maybe nutria. Whatever, man. . . Stop distracting me! Marlene: I'm gonna eat you for dinner. And it'll be good, too. You know why? Because I'm making it! Let's get rrrrrrready to cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooook!

Mint syrup can be good right after it is infused, but it degrades very quickly and really is no substitute for fresh mint. Even one-day-old mint syrup tastes a little funny if you're expecting a real mint flavor. I'm guessing you tasted yours just before it started going downhill. Since it's really no more trouble to muddle fresh mint than it is to infuse a mint syrup, that's what I do. By and large, I don't find herbal infusions of simple syrup to be very effective (or worth the extra trouble versus muddling). WRT leaving the flavoring ingredient in the syrup long, term. . . I don't think it's a good idea. Most ingredients, such as mint leaves, citrus zest, and that sort of thing, will continue to degrade. They most likely won't spoil, but they'll turn brown, etc. Also, you will almost certainly end up over-infusing the syrup. Think of it like making a cup of coffee. If you brew the coffee for 5 minutes, you'll get all the flavors you want and have a delicious cup of coffee. If you brew the coffee for 20 minutes, you'll have an oily, bitter, disgusting cup of coffee. My general rule of thumb when infusing most anything is to infuse it up to the point where you have the flavor you like, and then remove the flavoring agent. That said, I can see certain special cases that might be different. If you had a bottle of simple syrup and kept a vanilla bean in there, or a piece of star anise or something like that, it would probably work out okay.

afaik, the main difference is that it is 95 proof -- which almost always equals "better" in my book. Whiskey is just better at proof, I think.

evoo will definitely give you a certain flavor -- and not one I am sure would work so well with Southern-style American fried chicken. On the other hand, if you were going for something different, it could work very well. Egg wash, bread crumbs and rosemary, for example, would be very good fried in evoo (it's awesome for fish!).

Certainly made the same day, but I would think well refrigerated fresh citrus juice in a closed container with minimal exposure to the air (i.e., small surface area) can stay in reasonable condition up to 12 hours. My personal experience is that orange juice is the most perishable, perhaps because it isn't as acidic as lemon or lime. There really is no substitute for fresh-squeezed orange juice.

I thought the Koi review was amusing in the way that music theater reviews can be funny when the reviewer is going out of his way to pan the show. Is it just me, or is Bruni turning in an unusually large number of "satisfactory" ratings? Unless the restaurant is so noteworthy that a review is more or less mandatory, I'd rather not bother reading a detailed review of a place that isn't even worth one star. Especially considering the fact that there are plenty of star-worthy restaurants out there that have never been reviewed by the Times.

People have been hanged over that 'e'... :) Yikes. What the hell was I thinking? I'll have to turn in my kilt.

My mother is always directing my attention to articles she thinks I will find interesting (and can understand) from Chemical & Engineering News, one of her favorite periodicals. I suppose the fact that I grew up in a family with subscriptions to C&E News, Science and National Geographic instead of Time and Sports Illustrated probably has something to say about how I turned out. But I digress. . . Anyway, a recent issue included a short article on the chemistry of whisky (mostly Scotch whisky) that makes some interesting points from the perspective of a chemist: The peaty taste comes from phenols that are acquired by the malt when it is dried with smoke from peat. The distillation process involves more than just concentration of alcohol through selective evaporation and recondensation. If the still is made of copper, the copper "acts as a catalyst, esterifying, oxidizing, and reducing compounds" in the wash. Distillers take the heart of the run and not the head or tail in order to capture fruity and flowery esters while avoiding long-chain alcohols, fusel oils, undesirable esters, nitrogen compounts and sulforous chemicals. An average Scotch whiskey contains more than 700 different flavoring molecules. This last bit I found especially interesting:

Kurt, are those low prices for the bonded (i.e., 100 proof) Rittenhouse or the 80 proof version? One of the nice things about Wild Turkey's rye is that it's 100 proof (and a little rough around the edges).

Well, I'm going to be there in 30 minutes and I expect everything to be in tip-top shape by the time I arrive!

SWEET! Are S&V the only ones who have it right now?