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slkinsey

eGullet Society staff emeritus
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Posts posted by slkinsey

  1. I recommend grinding all the beans you want to use for the individual coffee-making session into the doser. Then use a small brush or other implement (I used the end of a small flathead screwdriver I kept on to of my Rancilio to unscrew the screen for cleaning) to sweep any extra ground coffee from the chute into the doser. Then place whatever receptical you are using under the doser and click the doser until all the coffee is dosed out. If you like, you can sweep out the coser chamber as well -- although I think this is overkill and I normally didn't bother with that.

    Owen's points are well made about the amount of stale grinds that can be left behind in the chute (and, to a lesser extent, in the doser). However, this is much more significant when making a shot of espresso than it is for a big old pot of press pot coffee. The reason is that the left-behind stale ginds might make up a significant percentage of a single espresso shot, but they are unlikely to make up a significant percentage of the (much larger) amount of coffee beans used to make several cups of presspot coffee.

    Just in case anyone is curious... due to the design of the Rocky doserless grinder it is impossible to sweep out the extra grinds from the chute. Therefore, the only way to ensure 100% freshly ground coffee is to run the grinder for a second or two and discard those grindings.

  2. And I've always pronounced it "li-lay" -- short i, with the accent on the last syllable. Now I'm wondering --isn't that right?

    AFAIK, there is no {I} (as in "is") vowel in French, only the {i} (as in "see") vowel.

    Strictly speaking, I would pronounce "Lillet" as: lee-LEH (in the International Phonetic Alphabet: [li-'lE]). If I were saying "Lillet" while speaking French, I'd hit the "Ls" very lightly with the tip of the tongue. When saying "Lillet" while speaking English, I'll use regular old American English "Ls." If I were singing "Lillet" in French, I'd even go so far as to linger on the double "L" between the syllables.

  3. The recipe is something like this:

    2 parts Ciroc Vodka

    1 part Pineau des Charentes (a sweet blend of Cognac and wine-grape juice)

    Dash Grand Marnier

    Garnish

    The first two ingredients are stirred with ice and strained into a cocktail glass that has been rinsed with Grand Marnier.

    For this they are charging 17 dollars? We're talking about maybe 4 dollars of ingredients.

  4. Re: zeppole, Lo Zingarelli says...

    zeppola ciambelle o frittelle dolci che si preparano sopratutto per carnevale, o per S. Guiseppe, a Napoli, in Calabria e in altre regioni meridionali

    Ring shaped cakes or sweet fritters that are prepared above all for carneval, or for San Giuseppe, in Napoli, in Calabria and in other Southern regions. The plural is zeppole.

  5. Katie, I'm still not sure that one can buy true bison grass vodka in the US. While the Bison Brand people do go out of their way to make it seem like it's true bison grass vodka, my suspicions are aroused because 1) Bison Brand Vodka has long sold a bison grass flavored (as opposed to bison grass infused) vodka in the US, and 2) when I see things like this on their web site:

    . . . one thing's for sure, as an ingredient [bison grass's] essence makes for one hell of a great tasting vodka. Bison Brand has replicated this flavor to a tee, and as an undeniable reminder of is predecessor, still places a blade of this mystical grass inside every bottle.

    I also note that nothing I have read suggests that the ban on true bison grass vodka containing the blood-thinning chemical has been lifted.

    This suggests to me that they have figured out a way to remove the "dangerous" chamical from the blade of grass in the bottle, but that the Bison Brand "zubrowka" sold in the US is still flavored to taste like bison grass vodka rather than being true bison grass-infused vodka. I don't know... maybe they figured out a way to entirely remove the chemical from zubrowka without screwing up the taste, but I doubt it.

    Here is some relevant information from polishvodka.com:

    he source of Zubrowka's wealth of qualities is a plant of unassuming appearance called sweet grass, holy grass, Seneca grass or vanilla grass, or in Latin Hierochloe odorata. In Poland we call it bison grass (bison in Polish is zubr). Bison grass contains coumarin, a glycoside with a distinctive fragrance, once generally used to flavor tobacco, cakes and beverages. Today, because coumarin has been found to have anticoagulant properties, it is allowed only in tiny amounts which the Polish health authorities deem harmless.
  6. Is it even possible to get zubrowka here in the U.S.?

    No. There's a chemical component of the grass that is classified as a "hallucinogenic agent" or some such nonsense, and hence is treated as a controlled substance, much like cocaine or heroin. :wacko:

    Actually, IIRC, the reason it is banned is that there is a chemical component in the grass that acts as a blood thinner, the fear being along the lines that someone will get drunk on a lot of buffalo grass vodka, pass out and bleed to death from what would otherwise be a minor cut.

  7. Dude when she says it she sound like that girl skunk that followed around PePe Le Pew...there's a way to speak a foreign word where you are paying respect to the way that word is pronounced with its mother tongue and then there is the exagerated accent which hints that perhaps English is not your first language, when in fact it is...the latter I find an annoying phenomenon amoungst the pretentious

    " -Oh la la they do not serve Leeeee lay here, we should go somewhere else Non?"

    vs

    They don't have (phonetically) Li'lay, lets go somewhere where they do

    - Its pet peeve of mine, she's not the only one

    Gotcha. Affectations of any sort are annoying as hell, I agree.

    regards,

    trillium

    All the moreso given the fact that such affectations are usually incorrect. Anyone who called it "leeeeeee lay" would have the acceeeeeeeeent on the wrong syllaaaaaaaable.

  8. I honestly have to say that I don't really see why the writers cooking skill comes into play at all. I mean, there are plenty of sports writers who are not and have never been athletes at all, never mind in the sport about which they are writing. God, if that were a requirement, can you even imagine what would be written about boxing?

    All this is to say that I think there is a big difference between being a writer who understands food and who understands cooking, and being a writer who is a good cook. I wouldn't think that a sufficiently skilled writer would even need to be a good cook to write a book about how to be a good cook, so long as he/she had the necessary information. After all, plenty if not most of the best teachers of certain crafts are not the best practitioners of that craft... else they would be professional practitioners instead of professional teachers.

  9. Hmmm... still, that oven cleaner stuff sprays on like a foam and doesn't drip off (else it would run down the walls and drip off the ceiling of your oven). I bet it would work well.

  10. They're a bitch to clean, of course!

    I wonder how they would clean up if you sprayed in a whole bunch of industrial-strength oven cleaner, let the whole thing marinade for a few hours, and then went after it with a hose fitted with a spray nozzle. How do you clean these things, usually?

  11. I am going to be laughing about this all day. She WILL explode if I try to fill her tub with citrus juice and dead pig.

    This is great. I need to rope her live-in BF in on this.

    Dude (and I say "dude" in the non gender-specific sense :smile:)...

    Do you have any idea how awesome it will be if you actually do fill your exploding friend's bathtub with a citrus-brined whole pig? You'll have conversation fuel for years to come!

    Oh, and pictures are a must. Lots of pictures.

  12. If yours is frozen (fairly likely, I'd say), I recommend defrosting and brining it at the same time overnight in the bathtub.

    There is *absolutely no way* I will be able to get this girl to put a dead pig in her bathtub. I'm having enough trouble resigning her to the idea of putting it in her car.

    Well... where are you going to put the pig, then? I say you present her with a fait accompli: "Oh... well, I naturally assumed we'd have to defrost it in your bathtub overnight. Otherwise, we'll all be eating raw pork tomorrow. Wherever shall we put the pig? Whatever shall I do?" Or, hey, you could always get one of those kiddie pools...

    BTW . . . your typical brine?  Sometimes I brine pork in vanilla brines, or juniper brines.  Would this be worth it with a pig meant for the pit?

    See... you're thinking about it, aren't you? I would think that flavored brining wouldn't work very well with most kinds of roasting because the flavor from the brine would be obscurred by the smoke. With luau style, however, it should work very well. I also stuff the cavity of the pig with fresh herbs. I'm not sure that a vanilla or juniper bring is really what you might want for a pit cooked pig, though. I'd consider dumping a few big bottles of lemon and lime juice and a few jugs of orange and grapefruit juice into the brine. That would be tasty.

    Oh... I agree with Brooks about the farting. Be sure to keep her away from any open flames. :smile:

  13. You should have seen how much trouble it was getting my hog on the cooker last October.

    I'll bet it wasn't anymore difficult than the trouble that Sam had getting that guy out of the trunk and into the hole. :raz::laugh:

    It's much easier if you run 'em through the band saw a few times first.

  14. Just wrap it in a sheet of heavy plastic. A couple of heavy duty large trash bags would probably do the trick too. Or, you could always treat it like a body and wrap it up in a rug. But I tend to do that kind of thing only when I'm driving to a secluded spot in the woods with a couple of shovels.

    In all my previous pig-roasting experience, the pig has been frozen pretty hard when I took delivery and keeping it refrigerated was the least of my concerns. If yours is frozen (fairly likely, I'd say), I recommend defrosting and brining it at the same time overnight in the bathtub.

  15. Sounds good. I didn't bother raking out the fire, I just wrapped the pig in lots of cheesecloth and chicken wire, dropped it in, then pushed the rocks on top of it and buried the pit. The fire goes out right quick when you do that anyway. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a buttload of big rocks, though, as they are the only meaningful source of heat.

  16. My one word of advice... make sure you get a lot of rocks, and burn a big-ass fire in the pit for several hours before you throw in the pig. Otherwise, you wind up with a lot of rare pork.

    The web site I reference above was a big help to me when I did my (200 lb) luau style pig.

  17. Though the son's comment was impolitic, it was also true: ""Luger is a factory. You're seated, then you're pushed out." I essentially refuse to go to Luger's for dinner anymore, because it's just not pleasant to be treated that way: reservations are only theoretical and you often have to wait, you're in and out in an hour, and it's a lot of cash to drop that quickly on a meal. Lunch is the only time when I can really enjoy myself there.

    Interesting... my experience has consistently been the exact opposite. We have never been rushed, and have always felt as though we could take all the time we wanted. Now, that said... as you know, we at the slkinsey household prefer to eat at a somewhat later hour than many. Our typical reservation time at Peter Luger is somewhere in the neighborhood of 9:00 PM. This means that we are probably the last turn of whatever table we occupy, and we typically close the place down. Someone going in with a 6:30 reservation might very well have a totally different experience in this regard. Lucky for me, porterhouse steak at 6:30 has never appealed to me. For one, I feel strange having a pre-dinner Manhattan at 6:00.

  18. NeroW, how are you planning on roasting the pig? There are several "pit roasting" methods:

    • Turning on a spit over a pit
    • Placed whole into a closed smoker (this is what Varmint did at the pig pickin')
    • Butterflied and roasted over an open pit (as described in this eGCI course)
    • "Luau style" "roasting" where the pig is wrapped and buried in the ground with hot rocks (as described here)

    I've done whole pigs using just about all these methods at one time or another. And yea, it's the whole (gutted) pig, head and all. I have no idea if the brain is removed from the skull.

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