slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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And if you look down any top-50 cities list by population, it correlates pretty well to a list that gourmets would make, though there are exceptions like New Orleans and Las Vegas, both of which are smaller cities that have managed to occupy unique culinary niches.
Interesting idea. Here is a list of the top 50 cities in the US by population in 1990. I'll give the top 20.
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| | | | Density
| | | Land| (average
| | | area| popula-
| | | (sq.| tion per
Rank | Place |Population| miles)|sq. mile)
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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 11,865It'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.
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Soak rosemary branches and toss them over the coals as the meat cooks if you don't want it on the steak.
My Florentine friends would insist it's not the same unless grilled over vine cuttings.
:whatever:
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A well prepared approximation will do just fine until the next trip to Italy can be arranged.
Yes, povero Alino. You'll have to suffer with plain old dry aged American prime.
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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.
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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.
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...of course some of what happens in New Orleans must stay there ;->
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.
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This just happened, right?
So...?!
Inquiring minds want to know.
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Perhaps that's a "Bloodhound in the Sand?"
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I think someone here needs to design a drink called "I Dropped the Baby" for Ned.
Ned? What do you like?
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jgarner53, the general perception of Nancy Silverton among sourdough types can be summed up as: great bread recipes, possibly the worst starter advice of any book in publication.
There are two real problems with Silverton's starter advice:
1. The amounts of material she calls for are ludicrously oversized. If you follow her starter recipe, you will end up with something like seven pounds of starter. Unless you are planning on baking something like 300 pounds of bread, this is way too much.
2. One of her main premises (that the grapes supply beneficial sourdough microorganisms) is incorrect. This was discussed to some length not too long ago. To briefly summarize: there is no reason to use grapes or any other fruit; just use flour and water.
I personally recommend acquiring a stable sourdough culture from a friend, or purchasing one from Sourdoughs International However, some people do enjoy the challenge of creating their own starter. If this is you, I'd recommend the following procedure:
Mix 50 grams of white wheat flour with 50 grams of filtered water using your hands. Place the mixture in a glass jar with a loosely fitting lid. Leave it out on the countertop. Wait 12 hours. Remove the flour and water batter with a soup spoon, leaving a small amount (around 10 grams) stuck to the side of the jar. Don't bother cleaning the spoon, just leave it in the jar. Discard the batter you just removed. Put in another 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of filtered water. Stir it up with the spoon. Continue doing this every 12 hours until you see that bubbles are forming in the batter in between feedings. At this point, decrease the feeding interval to 8 hours. Keep this up for a day or two and you have an active sourdough culture. To store the culture, close the jar tightly and put it in the refrigerator approximately 1 hour after feeding it as described above. To reactivate the stored culture, remove it from the refrigerator, leave it out for an hour or so until it comes up to temperature and shows some signs of activity (usually around an hour). Then feed as outlined above (not forgetting to remove most of the batter first). When the newly fed starter comes up to full activity, it is ready to use. I recommend reactivating and feeding a stored starter at least once a week.
The feeding procedure above has a very good advantage in that it enables you to bake from any sourdough recipe. All sourdough recipe authors keep starters that are slightly different. Some may have more water, some may have less, etc. So, unless you are making their starter recipe, you have no idea what to put in when the recipe only sais "use one cup of starter." Using my method, you are only using the starter to maintain the culture. When you want to make an actual recipe from, say, Nancy Silverton's cookbook, all you have to do is look at her starter recipe to see how much water and flour she uses. Then you can mix up some batter to her starter specifications, "infect" the batter with a tablespoon of your storage culture, wait around 8 hours for the batter fo froth up, and you're off to the races. When you want to make a recipe from someone else's cookbook, repeat the pricess making a batter from their starter formula. The other advantage of keeping a 50 gram starter is that you don't have a big bucket of starter taking up room in your refrigerator.
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Okay, this is awesome:
While I waited in the kitchen for the tasting to conclude, I tried an utterly unblinded taste test of my own, putting the wine in two completely different glasses, to boot. The un-Clipped wine in the cactus glass tasted the same to me as the Clipped wine in the daisy glass. That was what I was expecting, of course, and I don't know from wine anyway. -
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Right. #3 was meant to be Smirnoff Ice.
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Ana Tasca Lanza is Sicilian, yet she is the one making it with a risotto. Of course she is quite a bit more worldly and sophisticated than the average Sicilian. They were the best arancine I've ever had when I had them at her place.
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.
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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?
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Who are you going to believe, John, Tasca Lanza or me?
Seriously, though, it if works for her it must work. That said, her results notwithstanding I can't imagine how it woud work if you did it with warm, fresh risotto. AFAIK, arancini di riso were "invented" to use up leftover rice.
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Those are awesome, Janet! You must go out now, get a digital camera and take some pix of those things in use!
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Thanks for the report, Gary.
For those of us not in the know, what are xiaolong bao? Is there a more common English name by which we might know them? Also, what are the characteristics of first-rate xiaolong bao we should be looking for?
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A couple of suggestions:
1. Make the arancine from leftover risotto. If you know you want to have arancine, make extra risotto a day or two earlier. The cold storage time seems to firm things up. This is the only time I tend to make arancine: when I want to use up a bunch of leftover risotto.
2. Make sure the risotto is a dense one. No vialone nano rice sull'onda.
3. Make sure that the risotto recipe you use is a mostly-rice risotto rather than one with a lot of chunky ingredients. Risotto alla Milanesa is perfect. This doesn't sound like it was a problem for you, but its worth mentioning.
4. The egg binder is a good idea. I also stiffen the mixture with extra grated parmigiano reggiano and fresh untoasted no-crust bread crumbs. The idea is that the mixture is relatively dry and coherent when you start to form the bals. The use of fresh bread crumbs, in particular, seems to give the arancine structural strength without making them tough or heavy.
5. Don't overfill the arancine. If you're filing with ragu, peas and mozarella, I assume you're only using a tiny bit of each.
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I have found Luksusowa to be the least expensive vodka that is good enough to be a premium vodka for mixing.
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I have to confess that using something relatively delicate like Plymouth in a G&T seems like a waste of premium booze to me. If I were going to use an expensive gin, I'd want something like Junipero, which has an assertive flavor that's heavy on the juniper.
As always, I cowtow to slkinsey.
Hee!
Eeeexcellent. My evil plan is working. Now, if only I can get everyone else to fall in line...That's why I use Beefeaters for G&T's. It tastes like gin, it tastes good, and it's not expensive.Beefeater is actually an underrated gin, I think. It's got a nice clean taste and the juniper's right out front iirc. Now that I think about it, once I run out of the huge jugs of Bombay and Gordon's I got on sale, I'm getting a 1.75 of Beefeater.
Urban Vs. Suburban Restaurant Food
in Restaurant Life
Posted
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.