slkinsey

What's your definition of a "high end steakhouse?" Are we talking Peter Luger, Wolfgang's, Sparks, Berns, et al. or Ruth's Chris, Zentner's, Shula's, Gibson et al.? I would be shocked to learn that the former are using a Jacarder.

And I've given up on figuring out what a Perfect Martini or Manhattan is. Yep, "perfect" usually means using half sweet red vermouth and half dry white vermouth for the vermouth portion of the drink. An example of a Perfect Manhattan would be 2 oz of rye or bourbon with 1/4 oz of sweet red vermouth and 1/4 oz of dry white vermouth.

On a day that has now become somewhat legendary in the Kinsey family, my parents awoke one morning around 15 years ago to find the front yard awash in morels. They picked them all -- an obscene amount -- and freeze dried most of them in my mother's lab. They still have a bag of them in the freezer. We have occasionally found incredible amounts of Craterellus cantharellus near our place in the Western North Carolina mountains, but not this year for some reason.

Richard, what you are describing is what I would call a "low casserole." This is essentially a saute pan body with two small loop handles instead of one long handle. My gut feeling is that a low casserole isn't really all that useful. I have one, and it's the least-used pan in my battery. More to the point, however, I can't think of any reason why enameled cast iron is an advantageous material to use in this kind of pan.

Since spaghetti and meatballs is a totally American-Italian thing, I figure it makes sense to go the American-Italian direction. This means a long cooked Am-It style sauce (see here), plenty of meatballs (beef, pork, veal, bread crumbs, parsley, garlic, onion, egg -- lightly browned and briefly simmered in the sauce, served on the side), maybe a braciole or two. Spaghetti, never fresh pasta.

I'm curious: what's your basis for saying this? I have a hard time believing that a "high end steakhouse" is poking its dry aged prime beef full of tiny holes to tenderize it. My own personal experience in cooking dry aged prime beef, and even lesser grades/treatments, has also demonstrated that such treatment is not necessary for a strip, sirloin or similar "steak cut" of beef. I've certainly never cooked a strip steak from Lobel, Citarella or Fairway and found myself thinking it wasn't tender enough.

If I asked for a martini with a twist, I would absolutely expect there to be no olives. And I think it would be totally fine to ask the bartender to mix another one if it came with olives in it. This is fairly dependent on the type of bar you're in, though. In bars of a certain kind it is not reasonable to expect a high level of mixological skill, so you order a martini at your own risk and take what they give you.

Hmmm... some of these urban areas strike me as pretty far out. Washington-Baltimore? Maybe. Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City? Eh, probably not. Boston-Worcester-Lawrence? Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint? Miami-Ft. Lauderdale? I don't think there is any meaningful way, in terms of culture as it might relate to resaurants, that these places hang together as single units.

Interesting idea. Here is a list of the top 50 cities in the US by population in 1990. I'll give the top 20. --------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Density | | | Land| (average | | | area| popula- | | | (sq.| tion per Rank | Place |Population| miles)|sq. mile) --------------------------------------------------------------- 1 New York city, NY *...... 7,322,564 308.9 23,705 2 Los Angeles city, CA..... 3,485,398 469.3 7,427 3 Chicago city, IL......... 2,783,726 227.2 12,252 4 Houston city, TX......... 1,630,553 539.9 3,020 5 Philadelphia city, PA.... 1,585,577 135.1 11,736 6 San Diego city, CA *..... 1,110,549 324.0 3,428 7 Detroit city, MI......... 1,027,974 138.7 7,411 8 Dallas city, TX.......... 1,006,877 342.4 2,941 9 Phoenix city, AZ *....... 983,403 419.9 2,342 10 San Antonio city, TX..... 935,933 333.0 2,811 11 San Jose city, CA........ 782,248 171.3 4,567 12 Baltimore city, MD....... 736,014 80.8 9,109 13 Indianapolis city, IN *.. 731,327 361.7 2,022 14 San Francisco city, CA... 723,959 46.7 15,502 15 Jacksonville city, FL *.. 635,230 758.7 837 16 Columbus city, OH........ 632,910 190.9 3,315 17 Milwaukee city, WI....... 628,088 96.1 6,536 18 Memphis city, TN *....... 610,337 256.0 2,384 19 Washington city, DC...... 606,900 61.4 9,884 20 Boston city, MA.......... 574,283 48.4 11,865 It's interesting to me in that I would never put the likes of San Diego, Phoenix and San Antonio above Washington, DC in terms of food. Would be interesting to look at the list by population density. The only cities that come even close to NYC are San Francisco and Jersey City, all at ~9,000 less per square mile.

My Florentine friends would insist it's not the same unless grilled over vine cuttings. :whatever:

Yes, povero Alino. You'll have to suffer with plain old dry aged American prime.

I'd say the best way to go would be to get the thickest porterhouse or t-bone you can get (2 - 3 inches). Then grill the steak (duh!). Let it rest (duh again!). Cut it into pieces and drizzle with very best, peppery Tuscan extra virgin olive oil. Sauteed greens would be a wonderful side, keeping in mind that Italians don't tend to have a lot of side-dishes with the main event -- especially starchy ones. FWIW, I've had probably several dozen Fiorentine in my day, and none of them had the slightest hint of rosemary. That's probably about as close as you can get in America. When you're cooking something as elemental as steak, differences in the source ingredients can make a huge difference. As others have pointed out, bistecca alla fiorentina is made with beef from chianina cows. These cows are slaughtered at a younger age than American cows. The beef is not as fatty and marbled as good American beef. They are fed a special diet. I'm not sure the steaks are extensively dry aged like the best American beef. The result is a flavor and texture that is completely unlike American beef. Unless you can source someone who is raising Chianina beef in America and trying to mimic the whole process top-to-bottom, it's highly likely that the best you can do is approximate the experience to about the same degree as one might approximate Japanese style kobe beef with dry aged American Black Angus. Which is to say, something that's totally delicious but fundamentally only reminiscent of the real thing. I've done this at home a few times, and have always enjoyed it -- as I'm sure you will too. pmathus: what makes it "Florentine" is the whole thing I described above. One cannot really obtain Chianina beef raised, fed, slaughtered and butchered as it is around Florence anywhere else.

Re the dry manhattan, I can see where confusion might have happened. The "dry" in "dry martini" has completely changed meaning over the life of that drink. Whereas "dry martini" used to mean making the drink with dry white vermouth instead of sweet red vermouth, now it means using a very small amount of vermouth. The idea of making a martini with sweet red vermouth doesn't even exist any more. I imagine most bartenders would follow the modern day martini convention and simply use a smaller amount of sweet vermouth when asked for a "dry manhattan." The tendency to make this assumption would be reinforced by the fact that most customers asking for a "dry manhattan" would likely do so with exactly that meaning in mind. That the staff at this restaurant did not automatically make this assumption and mix the manhattan with a smaller proportion of sweet red vermouth, and instead took the time to make sure they knew what you wanted, speaks to me of mixologist competence rather than incompetence.

If some of my past trips to New Orleans are any indication, some of what happens in New Orleans must stay there because no one remembers exactly what happened anyway.

This just happened, right? So...?! Inquiring minds want to know.

Perhaps that's a "Bloodhound in the Sand?"

I think someone here needs to design a drink called "I Dropped the Baby" for Ned. Ned? What do you like?

Okay, this is awesome:

Like jsolomon I am also very sceptical that this device will eliminate, or even mitigate a hangover resulting from overconsumption of alcohol. There are several components to a hangover, and several contributing factors. As jsolomon correctly points out, dehydration is a major factor and the dehydrating effect of alcohol is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. There is also some evidence that the presence and amount of congeners (non-ethyl alcohols like amyl alcohol, propyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, etc.) contributes to the headache component of a hangover. As for the idea that direct-to-bloodstream delivery of alcohol leads to less stress on the organs and fewer "residual toxins," I don't see how this can possibly be true. The organs of the human body only process alcohol to the extent that the alcohol is able to enter the bloodstream. If alcohol doesn't enter the bloodstream, it doesn't get processed by the liver, etc. In fact, it would pass right through you like the olestra from a bag of no-fat potato chips. I should point out, by the way, that one of the big advantages of drinking alcohol, as opposed to injecting or breathing it, is that there is an enzyme in the stomach called alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down a lot of the alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. This means that if someone drinks 1 ounce of 70 proof vodka, only a small percentage of that alcohol will actually enter the bloodstream (the percentage varies according to how much alcohol dehydrogenase that person produces). If, on the other hand, someone injects an equivalent dose, all of the alcohol will go straight into the bloodstream. The AWOL's aerosol delivery to the lungs probably lies somewhere between drinking and injection in terms of alcohol making its way into the bloodstream. Other than that, it sounds like a modestly interesting novelty. According to their web site the customer selects a spirit, one shot (1.5 oz, I assume) is placed into the device and is nebulized with oxygen over the course of 20 minutes. Their materials also say it shouldn't be used more than twice in a 24 hour period. Given those parameters, it seems unlikely that people who use this device are getting drunk -- and if using the device is in any associated with lessening of hangover effects, it is likely due to the relatively small amount of alcohol consumed. The claimed "euphoric high" I am guessing is more related to breathing pure oxygen than the alcohol mist. Although I see this device mostly being used by the club set, it does sound like it might be an interesting way to really experience the aromatic components of some liquors. Unfortunately, when I think of some of the liquors that might be most interesting to try this way -- say, Bookers bourbon or Lagavullin scotch -- I'm not sure I'd want to be putting a lot of that stuff on the inside of my lungs.

Hmmm... I was going to say "Fried Dumpling," but they also serve sesame pancakes and hot and sour soup (not to mention items on the menu like Lo Mein, which they apparently only serve for breakfast ). Beard Papa only sells creampuffs, right?

I agree with cdh here. Scotch and juice strikes me as a little odd. For me, though, there is also something about orange juice. Unlike lemon and lime which are all extremely acidic, or grapefruit and cranberry, which bring bitterness and astringency to the table, respectively, in addition to the acid, regular old orange juice doesn't typically pack much of a punch and tends to bring a lot more sweetness to the game. Many of us, myself included, would only use sour oranges in an "up" cocktail. This, in my mind, makes orange juice an ingredient that works in an entirely different way from the sour juices. I definitely would have had an easier time accepting the concept of the Blood and Sand had it been made with lemon juice instead of orange juice -- especially when thinking about pairing it with scotch.

Sambuca from Italy. Pastis (Ricard, Pernot, etc.) is basically an absinthe substitute and strikes me as not quite in the same family as ouzo and sambuca, although they are all anise-flavored. The French version of ouzo would be anisette. If I were going to make a gross overgeneralization, I'd say that it tends to be the case that sambuca is better than ouzo is better than anisette. YMMV, of course, and individual examples will contradict this generalization.

Right. #3 was meant to be Smirnoff Ice.

Well, right. I got that, and I have no trouble believing that her arancine are awesome or that her method works when properly implemented. Rather, I've been thinking more from a historical/tradtional perspective. Today, of course, people everywhere use medium grain arborio rice and make stirred risotto-style rice dishes, regardless of where they live. But that doesn't make is a traditional food in all the regions where it is now cooked. It's not surprising that someone living in Sicily today would use risotto to make arancine, because people in Sicily have accesss to medium grain arborio rice, are aware of risotto and make risotto these days. I'm just not sure it has been this way for more than, say, 40-50 years. People in the Val d'Aosta use extra virgin olive oil today, too, but that doesn't mean that evoo is a traditional ingredient of the Val d'Aosta (afaik, it isn't). My understanding of risotto has been that it is a traditional food of the North, which makes it unlikely, I would think, that it is a traditional constituent of arancine all the way down South in Sicily. This is not to say, however, that they aren't actually better made with risotto. It has always been my belief and assumption that they are.

Thanks for the info, Doc. This brings two thoughts to my mind: 1. It strikes me that cookcooks often proceed from the assumption that one is going to make the entire dish from scratch, whereas many Italian dishes were developed specifically to use leftovers. I still wonder whether, historically, rice was made expressly for the purpose of making arancine or whether, as I suspect, arancine were develped as a way to use up leftover rice. 2. We've been proceeding under the assumption that arancine should be made with risotto rice and either leftover or fresh risotto. Except... Arancine are traditionally Sicilian, right? But risotto isn't a Sicilian dish, is it? Do Sicilians traditionally use that kind of medium grain rice? Do Sicilians traditionally make stirred risotto-like rice dishes?