slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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So, I will get a copper fry pan.
What do you think would be most versatile size for a home kitchen?
Eleven inches.
Thank you for the link to the Paderno saucepan, it looks good and the price is nice. My one concern is...would there ever be a cooking/technique reason to have a Tall Saucepan of straight gauge construction rather than disk-bottom?Sure. If you were planning on, for example, making four and a half quarts of Hollandaise all at once. Or if you were cooking over an open fire. Other than things like that... not really.
The tall saucepan is for things like warming/reheating sauces, soups, stews and other liquids in situations where additional reduction is not desired and as as a general-purpose pan for blanching/steaming vegetables, reheating liquids, etc. None of these things need a straight gauge design.
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I think many of these drinks are called "flips," though, and a fizz is made with club soda?
The definition of a "flip" has changed somewhat with the times.
Back in the 17th and 19th centuries, it was a drink made by mixing sweetened ale with spices and maybe a dash of rum, and then plunging a red hot loggerhead into the cup warm the drink, thicken it and make it foamy. It's unclear to me, but I get the impression that eggs eventually began to find their way into this kind of flip at some point.
As the ubiquity of ice changed the American cocktail forever into something approximating its current form, the original flip either metamorphosed into or was replaced by a cold drink made by shaking a base spirit, sugar or some other sweetening ingredient and egg with ice.
As far as I can tell, the only thing these two drinks have in common is the foam and the sweetness.
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I'm always interested to see the number of people who try gin for the first time -- and as often as not, are turned off -- with a Martini. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it's introducing the taste buds to a somewhat acquired taste at full intensity with no familiar flavors to soften the impact. Second, the usual "modern ultradry" Martini is more or less straight chilled gin. No wonder the typical vodka drinker has a difficult time trying gin!
If a Vodkatini drinker is going to try the real thing, I'd recommend an early 20th century Martini recipe: a three ounce drink with equal parts gin and white vermouth plus a short dask of orange bitters.
But better yet, I'd recommend something like a Monkey Gland or a Corpse Reviver or Audrey's Gin Gin Mule.
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Do outfits like Dekuyper and Hiram Walker make anything good?
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Hmmm... interesting. I'm not sure I agree, Tengrain. I think of both Bombay Sapphire and Citadelle as being fairly lightly flavored/scented gins compared to, say, Junipero or Boodles or Tanqueray.
Try tasting Bombay Sapphire alongside regular Bonbay. Even though Sapphire is made with a larger number of botanicals, I think you'll find Sapphire has a substantially less assertive aroma and flavor. There is a persistent rumor that Sapphire was specifically developed as a "less ginny gin" to appeal to vodka drinkers. I don't have a hard time believing that, and it's clear that Sapphire used the "Absolut model" in marketing their product (with great success). This is not to say that it isn't good (it is good), but simply to say that I don't think it has a particularly strong flavor or aroma.
I wonder what brands we would describe as real "gin lovers' gins." The brands often to be found at my house are Boodles, Tanqueray, Hendrick's, Junipero, Plymouth and Gordon's. Of these, I'm likely to use Hendrick's and Plymouth only in martinis or other very gincentric drinks; I'm likely to use Junipero never in martinis but rather in drinks where I want the strong presence of gin to cut through other strong flavors; Tanqueray and Boodles I'll use for just about everything; and Gordon's I use for just about everything except martinis. I'm currently experimenting with a bottle of Beefeater Wet, which has a light pear flavor in the mix.
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We've already got a zillion threads on martini ingredients/techniques and the whole "gin versus vodka martini" thing. Let's not go down that path here.
I should hasten to point out that there are a multitude of wonderful gin cocktails besides the martini. Some of my favorites are the Aviation, the Twentieth Century, the Corpse Reviver #2 and the Pegu Club.
Gin makes a much more interesting mixing liquor than vodka, in my opinion, because you're adding flavor instead of just adding alcohol. Try a Cosmopolitan with gin instead of vodka some time. 100% better.
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asso = "ace"
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Very interesting article, entitled No longer forgotten, this drink is gaining on vodka and rekindling interest in the cocktails of yesteryear and mostly focusing on the growing popularity of gin rather than the choice of base liquor in a martini. Here's a little excerpt:
U.S. consumption of imported gins — mostly premium brands — grew 32 percent in 2003, says Jean-François Bonneté of Cognac Ferrand USA, which markets Citadelle gin."The premium-gin segment is being revitalized," says Jamie Rohlich of Bacardi USA, which owns Bombay Sapphire. "Because vodka — in particular, flavored vodka — has become so popular, consumers are looking to gin for a new taste experience."
Gin has long been the white liquor of choice for most cocktail afficianados. And I welcome any increase in popularity that might bring with it an increase in interesting new selections and imports.
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Obviously, a Reverse Martini or Reverse Manhattan depends highly on having a vermouth you really like and also on having a "reversed main ingredient" that is assertive enough to make its presence felt through the vermouth. If I were to make a Reverse Manhattan, I'd probably start with two parts Vya red vermouth (which I think it good enough to drink all on its own) to one part Bookers, and plenty of bitters.
That sounds like a good way of proceeding. Let us know when the lab results are in?
Tried a Reverse Manhattan last night. 2 ounces Vya sweet vermouth, 1 ounce Bookers, 3 dashes Fee bitters, stir with cracked ice. It was pretty good. Bookers is just assertive enough to make an impact in both flavor and alcoholic strength. Not likely to take the place of Audrey's Bookers/Punt e Mes Manhattan in my heart, though.
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Interesting, I was just talking with some of the gang about this not too long ago. Raw egg whites have, of course, been used in cocktails for a long, long time. Some classics (the Pisco Sour comes immediately to mind) have raw egg white as an essential ingredient. CocktailDB has about a zillion recipes with raw whole egg or raw egg white or raw egg yolk as an ingredient.
Anyway, I was given to understand that cocktails-with-flavored-foam (as opposed to a foamy cocktail such as the aforementioned Pisco Sour) is by no means a new thing. For example, we have the Apple Core served at First, which is made with apple vodka, Berentzen Apfelkorn apple schnapps, lemon juice, a splash of cider and a top of apple foam. In terms of a relatively stable foam of alcohol... that might be difficult. Here is the bit on cocktail foam from Harold McGee's Q&A. From what I hear, the big downside to using gelatin is that it tends to look like vomit when the foam breaks down.
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Based on Sam’s recommendations and reading all the Q&As, here I what is on my list of things to buy:
1) 11” straight gauge copper Sauteuse Evasée. I am leaning towards Bourgeat since I really like the idea of a pouring lip. I would like to from others with more cooking experience than I—How much do you think a pouring lip really matters? Seeing as at least the flared (but non-curved) sauteuses are AKA a ”fait tout”, I have reasoned that a curved sided one should be no different based on what Sam has said. Thus my hope is that getting this pan first would allow me to delay the need for purchasing a separate fry pan for a while (to eventually replace the 8” one I’m retiring, as without it, the only fry pans I will have will be the cast iron and the crepe pan). In any event, I don’t want to replace the 8 inch fry pan with I have with a new one the same size as I find this to be kind of small.
Two things here:
1. I'd recommend you look at the curved sauteuse evasée rather than the straight sided one at this size. I think the curved design works better when you're looking for something that will function mostly as a souped-up sauté pan. This also allows you to go with the Falk pan instead of the Bourgeat pan, which us usually a fairly substantial savings. The rolled lip, IMO, does not make a significant difference in the usefulness of this kind of pan, but if it's important to you, it is worthy of note that Falk's curved sauteuse evasée does have a rolled lip.
2. I'm not sure a sauteuse evasée, whether curved or not, makes a good replacement for a fry pan. They have entirely different designs and entirely different uses. This, of course, assumes that you have been using your fry pans as fry pans and not mostly as sauté pans with sides that are too low and too curved.
2) I think I will need at least one “normal” (non-reducing) sauce pan. I honestly have no idea why I originally purchased so many ( 1, 2 and 3 QT) all those year ago. To replace them, I want to start with only ONE pot and think it should be Tall Saucepan so that I can heat up soup, blanch veggies, etc. Since I am limited the number of pieces, I need to maximize versatility both in terms of size and what the pan can do. Thus, I would like to know what you think about:-Size/capacity
-Straight gauge vs. disk bottomed? (which ones give me more cooking options?)
-Preferred material for whichever construction you suggest
-Brands?
Disk bottom is the way to go for a tall sauce pan, with a heavy stainless body and a thick aluminum base. I think something like 4 - 4.5 quarts is a good size. I have this one and like it very much. No reason to get rid of your existing saucepans, though, unless they're taking up too much room. Scanpan is pretty decent stuff (I like their new Scanpan Steel line) and even the crappiest thin stainless pan is just fine for boiling water or steaming vegetables. Is the Scanpan 2001+ nonstick? That would be too bad, and a reason I'd think about getting rid of it.
3) Smallish saucepan/butter warmer thingie? To melt butter, heat enough milk for one person, small amounts of sauce, whatever… Can the larger tall saucepan do this job? My worry is putting smaller amounts of liquid in a large diameter pan if I don’t want to reduce the liquid.) If I need a smaller saucepan/butter warmer, what should I get?No, you really don't want to be working with one quart of liquid in a 4.4 quart pan. So your instincts are right there. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend. Amazon often has deals on All-Clad pans. You could get this 1 quart All-Clad LTD saucepan for 30 bucks. Or, if you're willing to go through one of the Amazon resellers, you could get this 1 quart All-Clad Stainless saucepan for as little as 18 bucks. Or you could get something bigger, like this 2.5 quart Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized saucepan for $20. Most likely, one of these pans will be good enough for your uses. After that, it's a big jump up to the big boys. It'll run you $115 or so for a 1.6 quart saucepan or a 105 for a 1 quart sauteuse evasée from Falk.
-Straight gauge is what you say is needed when the diameter of the pan is smaller than the burner diameter. I am not sure I understand why this is so?Perhaps this graphic will help explain:
Here we have two disk bottom designs and one straight gauge design. On the regular disk pan, as you can see, the layer of thermal material doesn't quite cover the entire bottom of the pan. The area where the stainless steel body curves up from the bottom of the pan to the sides of the pan is exposed. Now, normally this won't make much difference. All it means is that there is a small ring around the outside of the base that isn't quite as hot as the rest of the pan. No big deal -- it won't affect your cooking.
However, when the flame is bigger than the pan, heat comes directly from the flame onto the exposed curved stainless steel area. This means there is a small ring around the outside of the base that is a lot hotter than the rest of the pan. Not good. This can mean scorching.
The encapsulated disk pan attempts to solve this problem by making the disk as large as the diameter of the pan. As you can see, this leaves some voids underneath the curved part, and as a result these disks have to be encapsulated in a thin layer of stainless steel. There is still a a small ring around the outside of the base that isn't quite as hot as the rest of the pan, but because it protects the curved part, it eliminates the situation where there is a small ring around the outside of the base that is a lot hotter than the rest of the pan. This is a step up, but it is not without its troubles. If the flame is sufficiently large, it can travel up the thin sides of the pan to cause overheating and scorching there. In addition, encapsulated disk pans are significantly more expensive than regular disk pans.
The straight gauge pan, on the other hand, doesn't suffer from any of these problems. No matter how large the flame is, the heat is always coming into the pan through an even layer of thermal material. No hot spots, no scorching. Straight gauge pans tend to be more expensive, but since we're talking about small pans a reasonably priced one can usually be found.
-Given that straight gauge is your preference, which material/brand do you suggest for such a pan?This is one of those "how much is it worth it to you" questions that only you can answer. To my mind, the All-Clad pans I referenced are cheap enough that there is no reason not to get one (I have several). For melting butter and warming milk (two things that I almost always do in the microwave anyway), there is no reason to spend any more money. Now, I also have a 1.3 quart stainless lined heavy copper sauteuse evasée which I use to do things like making intense reductions and delicate emulsified sauces, and very dark caramels. If you don't do this sort of thing, there probably is no reason to spend that kind of money.
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This whole "no pork" thing is really putting a damper on my potential recommendations.
Here's a good one using chicken where I would normally use pork or lamb: make a sauce with crumbled chicken sausage, sautéed onions, lots of mushrooms and a touch of tomato paste (brown the sausage and reserve, get the onions good and brown, then add the tomato paste and get that kind of browned over on the side of the pan, add quartered mushrooms and get those going, add the sausage back in along with a touch of whatever wine you have around, put in some rosemary if you have any -- the sauce should be very thick). Get some good penne, get that to "not quite al dente" stage and cook it together with the ragù, thinning the sauce as needed with pasta water. Then, when you serve it at the table, put a knob of soft goat cheese on top of the pasta in every bowl. The hot savory pasta with the occasional bit of cold, creamy chevre is very cool.
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Another easy one is just "in bianco." Simply pasta glazed with some reduced chicken stock and butter, with some grated parm-reg on top. It helps if you have really primo pasta for this, of course.
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Sam, I hadn't thought of using the onion half trick, as that's a great solution when someone prefers not to eat onions.
This is actually a staple of Italian sauce cookery: cooking something in the sauce for the flavor it imparts, but then taking it out. It's actually fairly rare, for example, that a sauce or a sauté of spinach will actually be full of little slivers of garlic. More likely than not, the garlic will be put in whole for the flavor and then fished out later. Same thing with celery. My mother told me that her family's cook when they were living in Rome would make a sauce that included whole stalks of celery that were removed and discarded once the sauce was finished.
There are a lot of things you can do to teach yourself the minutiae of basic pasta sauces. Try the tomato and butter sauce. Then try one where you soften the onion in the butter first. Then try softening the onion in evoo instead of butter. Then try onion and celery. Then try onion, celery and carrot. It's very interesting to see how the flavor, depth and intensity of the sauce changes just due to these minute variations. I once tried splitting a can of San Marzano's in half, and did the cold pan tomato/onion sauce I described above using butter as the fat in one pan and evoo as the fat in the other pan. That was the only difference. Then I cooked up a big batch of spaghetti and tried the two different sauces side-by-side. The differences were huge. So huge that I've been meaning to write it up (haven't got around to it yet).
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Very nice work, JJ! Here's a small excerpt for posterity:
The prices at Angon are much higher than they were at Mina Foods, the portions are smaller, and the menu omits some Sunnyside favorites like lamb tawa and chat potti. But before anyone passes judgement, diners must first take a bite of heavenly halim, a stew of lamb and seven types of lentils, or Azad's pungent chicken dopeaja. The dishes justify the price increase. The food is as vibrant as it was in Sunnyside, because Azad still refuses to cut corners, preparing each dish to order. She is also happy to cook old hits from Mina Foods for anyone who asks and will even send out dishes that she invents on the spot, which show up on the bill as "Mina's Choice." -
My go-to quick pasta sauce is simply one large can of San Marzano tomatoes (or the best quality you can find); a medium onion, peeled and cut in half; and 4 nice tablespoons of butter. Start all the ingredients together in a cold pan, bring it up to temperature slowly over medium-low heat, barely simmer until the butter emulsifies into the tomato and the onion is soft. Toss out the onion (it has given its flavor to the sauce) and use the sauce. Good with dry pasta, amazing with fresh pasta, and mind blowing with gnocchi (I have a very quick/easy recipe for ricotta gnocchi, if you're interested). This is what it looks like when it's ready:
Puttanesca is a quick and easy sauce for dry pasta: lots of evoo; slowly cook a whole lot of best quality anchovies until they liquify; toss in some onion and garlic to soften; throw in some good canned tomatoes and plenty of good capers; bring it up to a slow simmer; toss in some olives and you're ready to go.
Another good one is smoked salmon and cream. Soften some onion. Add slivers of smoked salmon and the cream. Bring up to temp. Ready to go.
Almost any seafood (scallops, clams, shrimp, calamari) is good just "bianco di scoglio" -- simply and quickly cooked at the last possible minute with a touch of garlic and tossed with the pasta together with chopped herbs and plenty of evoo.
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The Lillet Cocktail recipe in cocktailDB calls for three parts Lillet Blanc to two parts gin, so your ingredient list sounds like a more modern invention with the same name. I'm guessing the place that makes your cocktail is Parkside in Vancouver?
What you describe sounds to me almost like a "Reverse Sidecar" with Lillet serving as the reversing ingredient (a Sidecar is brandy, Cointreau and lemon juice). As chance would have it, reverse cocktails is something we're discussing right now in another thread.
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The folks at Bullfrog & Baum sent around an interesting Sidecar-related release about some variations their clients are doing:
BLT Steak pays homage to local transportation with the 6 Train Side Car, an intriguing blend of Marie Duffau Armagnac, Gran Torres Liqueur, and fresh lemon juice with a sugar in the raw rim.Lever House makes their Calvados Sidecar with fresh lime juice, calvados, cointreau, and apple crisp garnish.
At Sapa, apple brandy takes main stage in the Hennessey Apple Side Car, a heady fruit cocktail with the classic Cognac, Berentzen Apple Liqueur, fresh lime and a sugar rim.
At minibar in Los Angeles, the classic comes cold in their Frozen Sidecar, the time-tested combination of lime juice, cointreau, and brandy blended with ice.
In Las Vegas, Michael Mina Bellagio has does the Sidecar West Coast style with his Cable Car, a concoction of spiced rum, orange cointreau, and fresh lemon juice.
I'm not sure I'd call these all Sidecars, but they show the interesting things you can do riffing on a classic.
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All these things quoted by halloweencat are interesting, but the people quoted are either talking about fish (an entirely different kind of organism) or are speculating and anthropomorphizing whereas the Norwegian scientists actually set out deliberately to answer the question about pain.
First of all, it helps to understand what pain is. Pain is a perception, not an objective neurological phenomenon or physical state. Advanced animals, like human beings, have specialized nerves called nociceptors that respond to high levels of mechanical, thermal or chemical stimuli. The activation of these nerves combines with other sencory stimuli and is processed inside our complex brains into the perception we know as pain. The perception and processing part is the important part, not the stimulus part. There is an entire theory of how pain works called "gate control" which asserts that pain happens only in the brain. No brain, no pain.
Lobsters do not have a brain so much as they have some grouped ganglions. Lobsters have an extremely rudimentary nervous system -- several orders of magintude less complex than vertabrates (10^3 versus 10^9). Lobsters do not react to many situations we would ordinarily think of as causing pain (losing a leg, for example) in a way that indicates the perception of pain. Lobsters do not "think" in a way we would recognize as "thinking." And as a result, we can say fairly definitively that lobsters do not experience anything akin to what we would call "pain."
Now, does this mean that they don't react to certain stimuli with avoidance behaviors (and other behaviors)? Of course not. So to oysters. Are we going to start saying that we shouldn't eat raw oystrers because it hurts them?
For those with some understanding of neurophysiology, this page may be of some interest. Here's some text dealing directly with the subject of pain:
Do lobsters feel pain? This question has been asked by many a person who tosses a live lobster into a boiling pot or slices the live lobster down the middle to bake stuff. The answer is not at all clear. The lobster's nervous system has been extremely well-studied because it serves as a "simple" model of neural circuitry in something less complicated than the highly cephalized vertebrates. Lobsters do not possess any kind of receptor akin to our pain receptors. However, they do possess stress receptors and certainly perceive the slice of a knife. It is not known whether they possess any kind of temperature sensitivity, although each species is adapted to live in a certain range of temperatures and will eventually die if forced to live beyond its normal temperature range.Presumably (although one can't say for sure without reading the paper) the Norwegian scientists did tests specifically to determine about pain, and those tests came up negative.
Drive the point of a large, sharp knife downwards through the center of the head, then pull the edge down and forward, essentially slicing the tiny brain in half more or less instantly.If you watch a few Iron Chef reruns, you'll eventually see this method demonstrated.
If you've ever done this yourself, you've noticed that some movements and actions remain active. As the abovereferenced site says, this may be due to the fact that the lobster's "brain" is so rudimentary that some higher functions actually happen in a different area:
Much seemingly normal behavior can occur when the circumesophageal connectives are severed, pointing to many higher level functions of the subesophageal ganglia. -
Kathy, that's a cost question only you can answer. There's nothing other than the price that would rule out Blantons for mixing.
I've occasionally used Bookers in a cocktail, and that sells for around the same price as Blantons. But Bookers has some natural advantages for certain cocktails due to its intensity of flavor and high proof. I wouldn't use Bookers often in a cocktail, I use it sparingly and only in cocktails where I think it will make a big difference. Similarly, I have a few bottles of fancy rye I only use for Sazeracs, whereas I use Old Overholt and Wild Turkey Rye (both very good products all on their own, but significantly less expensive than, e.g., Michter's).
So... would Blantons be good in a Manhattan? I'm sure it would. But I wouldn't use it to make a Whiskey Sour.
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If you can get the Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year in the $25-30 range, you should definitely buy it.
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I don't particularly care for the reverse Manhattan, though.
Yea, I can see how that might not be the most interesting drink in the world. Obviously, a Reverse Martini or Reverse Manhattan depends highly on having a vermouth you really like and also on having a "reversed main ingredient" that is assertive enough to make its presence felt through the vermouth. If I were to make a Reverse Manhattan, I'd probably start with two parts Vya red vermouth (which I think it good enough to drink all on its own) to one part Bookers, and plenty of bitters.
One of my all-time favorite old-school cocktails is a reverse one, though: the Rose, a Parisian drink from the teens or twenties (I may have posted it before; I can't recall). It requires 2 oz dry vermouth (N.P. for me), 1 oz kirschwasser (I like Trimbach for this) and 1 teaspoon raspberry syrup. Mmm-mm.Would you say that, as a general trend, cocktails have increased in alcoholic strength over time? Clearly, for example, some of the old "loggerhead thickened" drinks weren't all that high in alcohol. It's interesting, because when I searched cocktailDB for "Rose," I found some interesting variations on the drink you describe. This one is 1:1 kirschwasser and gin, which is somewhat similar; and this one is a bit more similar to your recipe, being 5:4:1 kirschwasser to dry vermouth to grenadine. Both are substantially more alcoholic than the recipe you give, and I wonder if they are more recent formulas.
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@SQC also carries a chili hot chocolate with chipotle and cinnamon
Really?! I haven't been there in an age. Perhaps this is telling me I need to go back.
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I would love to make reverse martinis, but I never see vermouth in the stores that's not Noilly Prat or Martini and Rossi. Where do people get good vermouth? I'm in the Chicago area and it's true I haven't explored liquor stores that much, but I would for this.
Noilly Pratt is actually very good stuff. It's not in the same league as Vya, but would certainly make a good Reverse Martini. A drop (not a dash) of orange bitters is good in a RM, too.
Q&A -- Understanding Stovetop Cookware
in The eGullet Culinary Institute (eGCI)
Posted
Although I'm still not an expert on wok cooking, I thought I'd return to this subject a bit. This week's NY Times food section features an article entitled The Well-Tempered Wok by Julia Moskin. Here are some excerpts that I thought were salient to our discussion here:
This is interesting, because apparently cast iron is a traditional wok material. Also, carbon steel, the other traditional material, has an even higher specific heat per cubic centimeter than iron (3.78 versus 3.53 W/cm^3 K). This means a greater heat capacity, but the poor thermal conductivity also means that the wok to be preheated for a long time before the heat evens out and the whole wok is at the correct temperature.