slkinsey

That's kind of hard to reconcile with the fact that mozzarella comes from Campania.

This has to do with many things. Most of the Italian immigrants to America in originally came from the South. They also came during a time when local dialects were more commonly spoken in the home and around town than pure Italian. In fact, most of them probably didn't even speak much Italian (I still know some older people in small Italian towns who speak mostly dialect and have marginal Italian language skille). Many of the Southern dialects and accents soften certain consonents. Thus, "s" often becomes "sh," "k" often becomes "g," "p" often becomes "b" and so forth. Many Southern Italian dialects and accents also minimize the final unaccented syllable, and sometimes the unaccented initial syllable as well. Thus, "mozzarella" becomes something like "m'zzarell' " and "prosciutto" becomes something like "brosciut' " and coppacola becomes something like "gobbagol'." You can imagine, then, what happened when a bunch of Italians, many of whom spoke different dialects, came to America and intermingled. The first generation born and raised in America generally had very little fluency in either Italian or dialect. What they had were the sounds of the words as spoken by their parents and/or grandparents and the parents/grandparents of their neighbors, etc. These Southern dialect-influenced, accented pronunciations became sort of "averaged" across the various dialects as immigrants from different Southern towns intermarried and became, to them, the "correct" way to pronounce various words. Toss in a generation or two of English speaking Italian-Americans who speak little or no Italian and include only a few words of "Italian" in their vocabulary, and "m'zzarell' " is turned into "muzzarell," "gobbagol' " becomes "gabagool" and so on. Your Italian friend was correct. It's not Italian. It's Italian-American dialect. And Italian-American words are related to the Italian language around as much as Italian-American food is to Italian food -- which is to say that you can see the roots, but it's not close enough that it is recognizable as Italian.

Let's call the whole thing off. (Someone had to say it )

In re to the Illy deal, do we have any idea as to how much coffee or how many pods you get for the 400 bucks? I'm wondering, because I just ordered 20 lbs of Liquid Amber from Sweet Maria's for around 80 bucks. That's approximately 450 La Marzocco triple baskets full, or 900 shots of ristretto... a little less than 2.5 shots per day for an entire year (530 double baskets for 1,060 regular shots). Let's call it 9 months worth of coffee at 100 ristretto shots or 118 regular shots a month, so it would be around 100 bucks for a year's worth of green coffee at these rates. Toss in a Hearthware iRoast at 190 bucks, and for around 300 dollars you have a year's supply of coffee that will blow the 400 dollars worth of Illy pods out of the water.

Are you referring to this thread? I think it was the OP who expressed a preference for stainless. I just mentioned that there is no reason to fear aluminum from a health standpoint. The moka pots I have used, I think, have all been aluminum. My last one, the Brikka, I think was aluminum, but it's been a while and I gave it away when I got the Rancilio.

In French it does. And in Italian it has not one "L" but two! And don't even get me started on German with its "Z" and "W"

What I like is when people mispronounce things, not because they are naive or ignorant of the correct pronunciation, but out of a mistaken sense of trying to "snob things up." My favorite was related by Mario Batali who remarked at the people who would come into his restaurants and specify their pasta "al DAHN-tay." The first thing that comes to mind is that ordering pasta is not like ordering a steak where you specify the degree of doneness. And, of course, if you have to remind the restaurant that you want your pasta al dente, you should probably choose another dish. The second question, relating to the pronunciation, is wondering why anyone would cook pasta in the style of the author of La Divina Commedia.

I think it probably depends on which bar owners you talk to. No one is suggesting, I think, that some bars havent been hurt by the ban. No doubt some of them will be hurt to the extent that they are not able to remain in business. Indeed, I would be surprised if this hasn't already happened to several bars in NYC. That said, most of the bars I pass on the UWS during drinking hours seem to be packing them in just like they always did. This is, of course, by no means a thorough sampling and there are many reasons (Columbia students) why these bars continue to do big business. The thriving bar and nightclub scene in (smoke-free) California suggests, however, that the business in NY will eventually fully adjust to the smoking ban.

Somehow I have the idea that one of the laws (either the NYC or NYS one) has an exemption for owner/operator/sole employee-type places, but the other doesn't. Regardless, I have a hard time believing that bars with no employees (i.e., operated exclusively by the owners) would comprise more than 1 percent of all bars. So functionally it really doesn't make any difference.

Thanks for the link, Steven. I found this one of the most interesting things Kunz had to say: I, for one, await the opening of Cafe Gray with great anticipation, and look forward to experiencing it more than any of the other TWC ventures.

AFAIK, there is a certain (relatively low) percentage of alcohol above which the sorbet will not freeze.

As promised, the posts surrounding Amanda Hesser's review that were not substantially about Spice Market have been split off and will be reappearing shortly in another thread. Stay tuned.

Hi maxmillan. If you are talking about a Bialetti, you are talking about a moka rather than an espresso maker. There is no such thing as a stovetop espresso maker. One place to look for information is the thread The Pleasures of Moka, espresso's poor cousin. Another place would be the Bialetti web site. Bialetti is certainly a good place to look, as they do seem to be the leading maker of moka pots. Personally, of the Bialetti moka pots, I always preferred the Brikka. Another thing you might consider is a caffettiera Napoletana (Neapolitan coffee maker) like this one. As for the aluminum vs. stainless steel question, the supposed health risks of cooking on aluminum have been thoroughly debunked for years.

Well... it would be important to make sure it was a sweet potato and not a yam. Although the darker sweet potatoes are moister than the light ones, when baked they seemed plenty dry enough to me. Baking them split in half should anyway be able to control the moisture issue.

Are you so sure that sweet potatoes can be simply substituted for boiling potatoes? Boiling potatoes, maybe not, but certainly for baking potatoes. I'd just bake them until fully cooked, which should solve spoonbread's moisture problem, rice them in a foodmill, add a few egg yolks, a few gratings of nutmeg and enough flour to bind it. Most people aren't such purists as we when it comes to potato gnocchi (you and I like to use boiling potatoes and no eggs), using starchy baking potatoes and eggs.

Strange. I never make asparagus in cast iron because I always drizzle on a little vinegar at the end, which would react with the iron. Are you positive there was no acid in the pan?

Just a reminder: this is a thread about Spice Market and not about the journalistic ethics and the disclosure/non-disclosure of personal relationships in restaurant reviews. As it so happens, there is a nice thread already devoted to the latter subject, and I would request that any discussion not substantially having to do with Spice Market be continued over there. I'll move or copy a few posts from this thread to the other thread to frame the discussion if I get the sense that there is a real interest in continuing this fork of the discussion. Thanks.

Welcome to the Gull, Debra. Sounds like you don't really need a recipe. Just use your favorite potato gnocchi recipe, maybe include some nutmeg, and serve in sage/brown butter. Sounds like a good plan to me. The only comment I have is that gnocchi really need to me made a la minute unless you plan to bake them. Plus, they need to be eaten fairly quiclly after being prepared or they aren't so good, and they are not good as leftovers. Considering that, I am not sure they're a good choice for Thanksgiving.

FWIW, I do something like FG's brisket technique. First I caramelize a ton of onions and puree them, then I make the liquid with the inion puree, reduced red wine and reduced veal stock. Since I braise at a low temperature in a big enameled cast iron pot with a heavy lid, I like for the braising medium to already be fairly thick. I am also likely to use a few sprigs of fresh rosemary. Slow roasted onions and carrots would be just the thing.

I saw something in the recent Saveur that interested me. It was a recipe for a braised "BBQ" brisket, but I see no reason it shouldn't work with any seasonings. The brisket was browned, then braised until tender to the point of a knife, at which point it was removed from the braising vessel, cooled slightly and cut into slices. Once cut, the brisket is reasembled in a braising vessel sized just large enough to accomodate the brisket in one layer more or less the way it was before it was cut (i.e., with the slices "standing up on their edges" rather than piled up). Then the dish is braised again until the slices are meltingly fork tender. It struck me as an interesting solution to a common problem with long-braised brisket: that the brisket is so tender it crumbles apart when it is sliced.

Good idea, Dave. And, if the beans are really fresh (i.e., not completely outgassed), the moka should be able to produce a reasonable facsimile of crema.

I know you must hate this, but aren't they both hot water pushed through coffee. I'm not being a smart-ass, I really don't know. Well... it's just not the same thing. The water isn't pushed through the same way, and that makes it come out different. The temperature of the water is lower and the pressure higher in an espresso machine, and these two elements are probably responsible for the difference. I take your point, of course, but in a certain fundamental way all coffee is the same. The hot water is forced through drip coffee too, after all... by gravity. I just want to clarify- melkor's was home roasted... Oh, I know. That's why I went off on home roasting. I've been using Espersso Monkey Blend from Sweet Maria's, but I just bought a doserless Rocky grinder, and I think I'm going to switch over to their Liquid Amber when I calibrate this thing up.

Hmmmm... full dark caramelized simple syrup might be interesting to use in place of regular simple syrup for some drinks. Thanks for the idea.

Moka pot coffee and espresso are two entirely different products. Also, you cant steam milk with a moka. That's a good point, and true. But it is also worth making the point that practically every street corner in Italy has a little bar where you can get a shot of excellent espresso for a dollar or less. Home roasting, IMO, is the single most important thing one can do to improve the quality of espresso. Even though I lust after Melkor's and phaelon56's fancier machines, I also know that I would totally kick their asses if we compared home-roasted coffee in my machine to store-bought coffee in their machines. In my own experience, home roasting has pretty much eliminated the need to do the kind of "tweaking" to my Rancilio that phaelon56 mentioned above.

Well, yea. But brewed bellybutton lint is better than what an awful lot of places serve.