slkinsey

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.

Well, I am probably somewhat uniquely equipped to answer questions about Rossini. His heroic "baritenore" roles (Otello, Antenore, Agorante, Pirro, etc.) are a specialty repertoire of mine, so I have made it my business to learn about him. When I was at the Rossini Opera Festival, I had a Pizza Rossini or two at the osteria C'era Una Volta ("there was a time") just up the street and around the corner from the Teatro Rossini. It is a regular pom/mozz pizza topped with several quarters of hard cooked egg and drizzled with mayonnaise at the table. As you may imagine, there are any number of dishes to be had in Pesaro named after Rossini. I doubt he had anything to do with the pizza Rossini (although he did do his best work in Naples, the pizza capital). A relatively thin homemade mayonnaise with egg yolks and olive oil is definitely the way to go here.

I see several recommendations for the Child/Bertholle/Beck Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I am rather of the opinion that these are not particularly useful books for beginning cooks, and especially those who do not have a strong interest in French cuisine. The book to which I turn the most often for advice is Julia Child's The Way to Cook. This book offers well-illustrated techniques on how to prepare just about any kind of food. It focuses on the techniques rather than specific recipes, but also provides certain "master recipes" for classic dishes or uses for classic preparations that the cook can use as a jumping-off point.

Here is a link to the blurb in Gothamist, which had this to say: Here is their menu on menupages. The place next door, Numero 26, is an Italian wine and soccer bar owned by the same people. What happened is that the people from Numero 26 bought the space next door and opened Numero 28. This Gothamist blurb explains it all: No. 28 sounds like a place worth checking out. Edited to correct No. 26/28 confusion

Vya is, IMO, hands down the best vermouth on the market. Both the white and red versions are good enough to sip by themselves on the rocks with a twist. The gold standards for mixing, IMO, are Noilly Pratt for white vermouth and Cinzano for red. Not sure I'd want to sip either one of these on the rocks, though. I keep my vermouth in the refrigerator capped with one of those rubber "wine saver" cork thinks you use to suck out most of the residual air. Have kept vermouth in excellent condition up to 6 months this way.

According to this, I think you forgot a half-ounce of lime juice, no? Great drink, btw, and I thank you for bring it to my attention.

Stone: do you mean the raw product, or restaurants serving it? For the raw product, I am not aware of any retail places that keep it in stock. But any small full service butcher (e.g., Oppenheimer Prime Meats) should be able to order some for you on a few days' notice.

Hmmm... I just might have to have a Hendrick's martini tonight. Interesting to read my 8:1 ratio from almost a year ago, as I am going in a significantly wetter direction these days (4:1, 3:1 or even a "reverse martini" at 1:2).

Some nice stuff about Landmarc in this Sunday's NYT Magazine's food article by Sam Sifton: The article is, more or less, about "cheating" in an attempt to replicate Landmarc's pork chop dish at home. Landmarc chef, Marc Murphy, takes Sifton through the process of making their pork chop dish and later Sifton describes his "cheat" for making it at home. Along the way, Murphy dispenses with culinary wisdom like this bit he let drop as he was salting the chops for the grill: "You want to get to the point with the salt where your relatives are looking at you and saying, 'what are you doing?'"