slkinsey

The problem with granton edges on non-slicer knives, in my opinion, is that they shorten the usable life of the knife. Once you sharpen to the point where you're getting up into those divots, you've got a screwey edge.

This is an odd recipe, Todd, because the soup is actually mixed in to the filling. I don't see how this would produce what we commonly understand to be xaiolongbao filling (i.e., a meatball surrounded by soup). Not sure why people think otherwise, but pork skin is chock full of gelatin. As these guys at the NC State School of Engineering say: "The best raw material for the derivation of gelatin is pork skin."

You can still post links, yes! That said, it's not considered good form to post a "deep link" (i.e., one that goes directly to just one image on a page rather than to the whole page in the context intended by the creator/owner).

A harder steel can keep an edge longer, but it also takes a lot longer to get it sharp again once it does go dull. Hard steel is also usually more brittle and prone to chipping. This is not to say that harder steel isn't as good as softer steel... but it's also to say that it isn't definitely better either. It's always a tradeoff of sorts wrt hardness. Full carbon knives go in the opposite direction. They're soft and lose their edge fairly rapidly... but at the same time they return to a razor's edge with a swipe along a steel or a brush across a stone Is one better than the other? Not really. Just depends on what you want.

Again, for posterity, a short quote from Expatica:

Mmmmmmm... splenocytes! If you're able to read the article, I'd love it if you could post your thoughts and maybe a short quote from the abstract.

For posterity, it is always halpful to include a short excerpt: Some related BSE talk on eG here.

As you can see, I have edited some posts upthread. I'd like to take a moment in my moderator's hat to remind everyone of our Copyright & Fair Use Policy. Two things in particular: You can't post a picture without permission if it is owned by someone else. It's a copyright violation. This includes pictures from other web sites. You can't post pictures that reside on another web site, unless you have permission or unless that web site belongs to you. This is called "bandwidth theft" because every time that image displays on our site, it uses some of the originating site's bandwidth... bandwidth that they pay for. Thanks for understanding and cooperating!

Are we to gather that you are of Finnish, Italian and Japanese ancestry?

Here are some of my knives. They are custom made, cast (not forged) "dendritic steel" with Brazilian ironwood handles. I like a heavy, Western-style knife. Here's a closeup where you can see the dendritic pattern:

Everyone is going to find a reason to qvetch if their favorite vodka wasn't tested. But they reasonably couldn't taste them all. 21 vodkas is a lot. What they said was: "Notable brands that we omitted included Chopin, Finlandia, Rain and Tanqueray Sterling. But our tasting included 5 of the 10 best-selling unflavored vodkas in the United States and the 5 best-selling imported vodkas." 5 of the top 10 best-selling and the 5 best-selling imports plus 11 others in that price range strikes me as a reasonable sampling of high end vodkas. One could argue that they all pretty much taste like nothing. And indeed that seems to be part of the point the panel is making. If the top ten list is "heavily weighted with mixing vodkas" it is because the panelists found these brands better than the super premium vodkas that did not make their cut (which brands include Ketel 1 and Cîroc). By the way, according to these guys, the world's top selling vodkas are Smirnoff, Absolut, Stolichnaya, Bols, Finlandia, Skyy, Gordon’s, Koskenkorva, Gorbatschow and Grey Goose. Presumably, the top-selling brands that were left off the list were omitted because they were not considered premium or superpremium vodkas. As they say, Smirnoff was only left on there as a sleeper they didn't expect to do very well.

I don't know the brand, but it's frozen in rectangular double plastic bags. If you ask the guy which brand of coconut milk they have is best, this is what he will show you.

Ditto Orik and JJ on the Mosco Street place. If you're thinking of going with a premade paste, I believe they sell some that they make themselves. They also sell what is IMO the best coconut milk you can get in the City.

Gothamist says "brick oven," which could mean any number of things. It suggests wood burning to me, but as you know not all wood burning ovens are created equal.

Those green ones on the left look suspiciously like the thick, doughy, disgusting (to me) steamed vegetable dumplings sold by the typical UWS/UES "Ming's Empire Cottage Balcony Garden Chinese" delivery place.

What the text I quoted above suggests to me is that the Smirnnoff "distillery" doesn't actually do any distilling. It would seem that they get the raw neutral spirit from Archer Daniels Midland (or similar), then treat that spirit in different ways to make the different brands. In other words, perhaps they send the spirit through a charcoal or quartz filter for Smirnoff but not for Popov. Increased "improvement" of the raw spirit may explain the difference in price -- although, as noted by the panelists, sometimes a product is priced higher simply because this increases the perceived quality of the product. For sure, they aren't using one grain and one still for Popov and a better grain and better still for Smirnoff.

Very interesting article in today's NY Times, in which a panel tasted and compared 21 different vodkas. There is also a nice interactive feature on the web where you can hear the various panelists talk about their experiences and impressions in the tasting. The most interesting result, to me, was that the "new breed" of expensive super-premium vodkas did not fare particularly well. The most expensive vodka to make the cut was Belvedere at thirty-four dollars a liter. More interesting yet was the hands down winner: Smirnoff at thirteen dollars a bottle. Noted brands that did not make the cut include such top-sellers as Grey Goose and Ketel One. The panelists did observe perceptible differences between brands, but these differences were described by one panelist as "microscopic." Another panelist observed that, while there are some distincs differences between brands, they are also clearly not the reasons why people buy one brand over another (those reasons largely having to do with brand image and marketing). I found this bit of information especially striking: Interesting stuff. They apparently sampled the vodkas at room temperature, but do note that cocktails are "overwhelmingly the vehicle for consuming vodka." One wonders how a tasting would come out in the context of a chilled cocktail.

I think you're better off, for the sake of versatility, adding the simple syrup to taste as you drink the stuff. That way you could have a sweet kaffir lime leaf cordial by mixing it with some simple syrup, but you could also make a kaffir lime leaf cocktail that wouldn't taste like drinking maple syrup out of the can.

I've only had the commercial kind, but I've made tons of infused alcohols over the years. Couldn't be easier: Get 1.5 liter bottle of good vodka. Pour out several ounces into a jar. Stuff in a whole lot of fresh kaffir lime leaves. Top off with vodka from jar. Test a teaspoon or so every day until vodka reaches desired intensity of flavor. Remove kaffir lime leaves. Voila! Kaffir lime leaf vodka.

No point of using it if you only use a few drops at a time, my friend. I think you'll find, however, that a Martini is much better in the 4:1 to 6:1 range (I'll even go 3:1 with a good vermouth and a flavorful gin).

Excellent. Now I know what I'm having before dinner. Scotch after dinner of course, what with it being Burns' Night and all.

In re to traditional Neapolitan pizza... Unlike some, I have been to Naples and had the "real thing." Una Pizza Napoletana is probably the closest thing we have in the City. For a good illustration, those curious might compare the picture of a pizza Margherita from Una Pizza Napoletana in New York Metro and one from Da Michele in Naples snapped by our own MobyP. They look very much the same to my eye. To add to the dialogue, here is a snippet from Arthur Schwartz's The Food Maven Diary: As for the price, that's up to everyone to decide for themselves. It's a fact that, for some people, "really good flatbread" in a sit-down restaurant will never be worth what Mangieri charges. Clearly, for many it is worth it. But, at the same time, for many the paradigm of pizza as an inexpensive food, or as a food in which the toppings are the most important feature, will never be changed. Similarly, for many people, sushi can never be worth $350. Rather than bog this thread down with any further debate on whether "pizza can be worth seventeen bucks," I'll ask those who are interested in pursuing this discussion to do so in another thread. I will observe, though, that there is already ample evidence that people of different minds on the value of a certain foodstuff are unlikely to find common ground.

Different strokes for different folks, as they say... Some people are into the whole crustcentric, minimal toppings thing and some people aren't. Luckily, there are enough choices in the City to please most everyone.

I'm sure he'll hear the grumblings and drop his prices just as soon as he can catch his breath from having so many customers he has to beat them away with a stick. I won't hold my breath. In other words: different things have different values to different people.

I am confused.. When you say crust you are refferring to the entire top of the pizza.. Or actually just around the edges. As mentioned above, you want the entire pizza (bottom and edge crust) to cook in 3-4 minutes so that the seafood does not overcook... (i.e. if the pizza took 10 minutes to cook the seafood would be rubbery!) You could parbake the crust surely?? 5 - 10 minutes then add the seafood yes?? ← Wouldn't really work... The juices from the seafood wouldn't cook into the crust the same way. The way to do it is: easy on the toppings, very thin crust, very hot oven, very thick stone. 3 - 5 minutes in the oven.