slkinsey

So... I took delivery of my Souss tagine from tagines.com yesterday. Soaked it in water for several hours, rubbed with oil and put it in a 250F over overnight. Some observations: 1. It was very interesting how much it smelled like clay. I could smell clay as soon as I opened tbe box, and when I put it in the oven the apartment really smelled like baking clay for a few hours. 2. As Paula has mentioned, you can really see the flakes of mica throughout the clay. Very interesting. 3. I was a little surprised at the geometry of the base. I had been expecting something that was more or less wok shaped -- which is to say, broadly curved all the way to the bottom. That's what this picture of Paula's looks like to me, and as far as I can tell, we ordered the same tagine from the same place. Perhaps it's an illusion in the photograph? The geometry of mine is more like this: It seems deeper than the other tagine styles, but fundamentally isn't something I'd call "rounded." Is this normal?

I think the best way to try Campari for the first time is probably in a weak Campari soda (Campari, sparkling water, ice, maybe a twist of lemon). Straight Campari is too overwhelming for most people on the first try. For similar reasons, I think a dry Martini is a poor choice for the ginophobe who is trying to develop an appreciation for gin. The bottom line, though, is that for most Americans, Campari is a taste that has to be acquired. American tastes tend mostly toward the sweet side of the spectrum, or to mostly-sweet-with-some-sour. Americans, by and large, do not enjoy or appreciate bitter flavors. Italians, on the other hand, love bitter flavors. Hence the popularity of radicchio and bitter greens, bitter soft drinks like Chinotto, and the whole family of amari both as aperitivo (Campari, Cynar, etc.) and digestivo (Fernet Branca, Averna, etc.). Here's a thought: try a swig of Fernet Branca before having a Campari soda. Relatively speaking, the Campari soda will seem hardly bitter at all. It might make an interesting thread to talk about beverages and foods that one makes a conscious effort to acquire despite not being attracted to it, or perhaps even disliking it, on the first try.

From THE BEST: Chinese Dumplings: Aside from the fried pork dumplings, soup dumplings and boiled pork and leek dumplings, an absolute must-have is the scallion pancake. Best in the city, I think. We also very much like the rice cake dishes and usually get the mushroom rice cake. Last time out I think we had spinach and mushroom Shanghai lo mein, which was very good. Moderator's note: Two threads were merged starting with the following post.

The soup dumplings at NGB are called "Steamed Crab Meat & Pork Tiny Buns" and "Steamed Tiny Buns with Pork." For more NGB recommendations and discussion, see here.

In a visit to New Green Bo a few days ago, Fat Guy turned me on to another dumpling there I had never tried before. I'm usually not one for boiled dumplings, but NGB's boiled pork and leek dumplings are outstanding. They have now firmly entered the standard list for the obscene amount of food Fat Guy and I order when we're there. This makes me think of trying their boiled seafood dumplings as well. NGB even makes an acceptably tasty version of steamed vegetable dumplings. Gotta love the service, though. Nice and surly, just the way I like it.

What kind of oven do they use, Ned? Is it a wood oven or a regular stainless pizza oven?

I pre-ordered some just now. Looking forward to it. And glad to see you back around here. Don't stay away so long next time.

Just discovered this thread. Am a big fan of Van Winkle's Bourbons and Rye. A friend recently informed me they are sold out of the Rye. They have some more in the pipeline; but, it won't be ready for 6 more years or so. :-( What?! I'll have to look into this.

This is very cool stuff, Tony. I wonder if you could comment briefly on the size of the plate. One thing I have noticed is that restaurants tend to use a much larger plate-to-food ratio than most home cooks. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that one of the biggest things a home cook can do to achieve a more "restaurant" look at home is to purchase oversize plates. It seems that having a lot of "white space" around the food gives one a lot more to work with in terms of presentation. Also, another thing I see a lot of is dishes that are plated in deep "bowl/plates" with broth around them instead of a sauce.

What is the expecting mother going to drink? A nonalcoholic libation would be a nice thing to have.

How about a Bacardi cocktail (Bacardi white rum, lime juice, grenadine)?

Pink but not gin, eh? I can't offer any non-Cosmo pink cocktails with vodka, not being much of a vodka drinker (but just about anything with a splash of cranberry will turn out pink). How about a pisco sour with Peychaud's bitters? Or a caipirinha with muddled cherries and/or blood orange?

A salted ice bath might be even better. Colder and also puts some seasoning into the chicken.

Thanks for the article, Elie. I think I must have missed it the first time around. As ever, Rob has some interesting things to say -- as do some of the people he quotes in the article. I'm not so sure I agree, however, when he says that "Houston is on the cutting edge of the new cocktail trend." He also says that Texans "drink more than twice as much distilled spirits as we do wine. And if you figure that those spirits are diluted in cocktails, you realize that by volume we probably drink six times more cocktails than wine." This didn't seem quite right to me. Although I am a New Yorker by choice and a Massachusetts yankee by birth, most of my extended family is in Texas, and my parents have lived in "Houston for around 15 years now. I did some digging. According to the Texas Safety Network, Texans drank 26 gallons of beer, 1 gallon of liquor, 1.5 gallons of wine and 1.5 gallons of malt liquor (i.e., Colf 45, Zima, etc.) per capita in 2003. This, and all the other statistical evidence I've seen (e.g., here and here) portray Texas as an overwhelmingly beer-drinking state, with liquor bringing up the rear. Experience tells me that much of this liquor is consumed in the form of shots and frozen margaritas. Anyway, that's really a minor quibble. The article is overall a very good one, with some provocative statements from a few notables. I found this an interesting one: Although one cannot discount Adria's culinary importance, I'm not sure he is destined to be a major figure in the evolution of the modern cocktail. On the other hand, I'd be interested to hear whether others think the idea of "deconstructed cocktails" and "melting essences" and that sort of thing are likely to become dominant paradigms. Walsh describes Adria's deconstructed piña colada as little pieces of pineapple sorbet, coconut foam and rum Jell-O lined up on a soup spoon that "become a cocktail" when you chew them in your mouth and mix them together. Danny Meyer also contributed some interesting stuff. Walsh characterizes Meyer as "one of the main forces behind the cocktail revolution in New York. I would imagine this is more due to the cocktails served at his restaurants, which were among the first to do cocktails themed with the restaurant's food, than his mixological skills. I had never considered this before, but it's a very interesting point. I wonder what others think about the importance of Danny Meyer's group in the cocktail revival. It was somewhat interesting, and unexpected, to read an article about the underpinnings of the cocktail movement in NYC without hearing the name Dale DeGroff.

Shouldn't make too much of a difference if the marinade is already cold, right? That would only accelerate the cooling of the chicken. Of course, one could always throw the chicken in an ice bath for 30 minutes or so before going to the buittermilk.

This is exciting. My Souss tagine (finally) is set to arrive on Monday and my copy of Paula's book shortly thereafter. I guess I'll buy a wok ring sometime this weekend. So... how soon can I start cooking in this thing? Sounds like I should give it at least a day for seasoning according to these instructions posted elsewhere: Since I live in NYC, unfortunately I do not have a fireplace for wood ash -- so I guess it will be just oil for me. After that, I'd love an inaugural recipe that's really going to show me what this thing can do -- not to mention start infusing flavor into the unglazed clay. Any suggestions?

I am quite interested in purchasing from a live market myself the next time I make fried chicken. This is undoubtedly the way my mother (and certainly her mother) had fried chicken. I am wondering, though, how to manage the whole buttermilk soaking part. Ordinarily I would marinate in Red Devil sauce for around 8 hours and then soak in buttermilk for around 16 hours before frying (usually in the afternoon). To a certain extent, however, this would seem to defeat the purpose of getting superfresh just-killed chicken. Now I'm thinking of getting the freshly killed chicken early in the morning, soaking in buttermilk/Red Devil for around 8 hours and then frying in the evening.

In re to the simmer mat or other heat diffuser: If one is using a rounded tagine (e.g., Souss) on a gas stove, is there any advantage to using one of these devices? Or might there actually be some disadvantage? I had rather envisioned using the Souss tagine with a wok ring over direct (albeit low) gas heat.

You should be able to order Medieval Arab Cookery by Maxine Rodinson directly from David Brown Book Co., the American distributor of Prospect Books (the publisher). They are selling it in hardcover for 60 dollars. And do check out the other food-related offerings at David Brown Book Co. Many books I have never seen before on interesting subjects.

Just a guess here, but cold egg wash probably has increased viscosity compared to warm. This likely means not so much that the cold egg wash adheres to the chicken better when it's cold, but that the layer of egg wash is thicker once adhered. Related, but not exactly the same thing. Again, just a guess.

The egg wash will probably adhere better if you pat the chicken pieces dry, then dust with a little bit of flour mixture (not very much will stick, so it's not the same thing as "double dipping") and then go into the egg wash. This is because wet things like to stick to dry things and vice versa. Dusting the towel-dried chicken pieces with flour makes the surface of the chicken dry before it goes into the egg wash.

By legs, I assume you mean drumsticks and not the whole drumstick-thigh combination? If so, I've always thought the drumstick was the worst part of the bird as it tends to have an unpleasantly dry and mealy texture. Fried drumsticks do seem to be somewhat better than other preparations, however. Usually when cooking drumsticks, I cut off the knuckle or run a shark knife around the knuckle end to sever all the tendons. This allows the meat to naturally contract as it cooks, and seems to provide a more "thigh like" texture to the drumstick meat. No, low fat is what you want. I'm actually not sure there is any such thing as full fat buttermilk. Remember, modern "buttermilk" is a facsimile of the real stuff from the old days. Back in the day, buttermilk was the liquid left over when cream was churned into butter -- cultured butter, that is, because all butter was cultured butter, since it was made from raw milk. Since the leftover butter liquid would be very low in fat (the whole point is that all the fat stays with the butter) modern buttermilk uses lowfat milk as a stand in, and then adds a bacterial culture to that lowfat milk as a stand in for the "cultured" part.

Well... I'm not sure I entirely agree that it's a matter of degree rather than kind. IMO, Di Fara is fundamentally "NYC slice shop pizza" elevated to the Nth degree. As such, it's fundamentally about the toppings rather than the crust. That said, I would agree that, within the context of pizza that is fundamentally about the toppings, he doesn't pile on the ingredients. Within the context of pizza that is fundamentally about the crust (e.g., compared to Franny's or Patsy's) it is a bit "piled on," though.

For a 2 ounce drink, I'd like something like this Libbey "3787 - Champagne - Embassy" glass. It holds 3.5 ounces which, with the flat shape, should leave a nice but not unreasonably large collar with a 2 ounce pour. Something like this would, I think, provide more elegance than a shooter glass without forcing patrons to hunch over the bar to avoid spilling. They're selling a case of 36 over the web for a little less than 4 bucks a stem, so three to five people could split a case and be very well set up for home use.

I have a theory about the way people think about pizza. For some people, pizza is CRUST (with some stuff on top). This is the way I think about pizza, and the way I think most Italians think about pizza. For this reason, the idea of "bagel pizza" or "French bread pizza" doesn't make any sense to me. Where's the crust? For other people, perhaps most in America, pizza is PIZZA TOPPINGS (on top of something). This is where the "piled to the sky = good" philosophy comes from. I'm not making a judgment here... just pointing out that there are differences. One thing that happened to a lot of Italian foods that came to America and became Italian-American foods is that they became more about the condiments than the base ingredients. Take pasta, for example. In Italy, pasta dishes are about the pasta and the sauce is there as an accent to enhance the pasta. In America, however, pasta dishes have become much more about the sauce than the pasta -- the pasta is simply a vehicle for the sauce. For this reason, the typical American pasta dish has around triple the amount of sauce compared to the typical Italian pasta dish. To make another example about pasta, an Italian would never call a dish "lasagne" that didn't actually contain lasagne, whereas in America we would have no problem layering up sauce and cheese with thin slices of potato and calling the result "potato lasagna." This is not to say that the "toppings are king" outlook is wrong, although it doesn't happen to be one I share. The famous and delicious Di Fara pizzeria produces a fundamentally topping-centric pizza. I think Patsy's or Franny's could easily do business in pizza topped with nothing more than rosemary, sea salt and evoo (often called a "ciclista" in Italy) because people would revel in the amazing crust. But I don't think this is something Di Fara would sell very well, because the crust isn't what makes that pizza great.