slkinsey

I just picked up the Rocky doserless. Looking forward to giving it a try.

Steven, Have you ever thought of using a electric medical heating pad (like this one) wrapped around a big carton of milk? I have an adjustable one you could try out. Makes yogurt and it's good for earaches and muscle pains!

Hendrick's is at the moment the martini gin of choice chez slkinsey, mixed 8:1 with Vya white vermouth, stirred and garnished with a paper-thin slice of cucumber.

I wonder why no one has come up with an extra-wide channel knife for cocktail twists?

Patrick O'Sullivan is the real deal, and I encourage anyone in the Carnegie Hall area to drop in for a drink at the bar.

Naples 45 has pretty good pizza, actually.

It is not standard practice -- at the NYT anyway -- to include such information in a review unless the chef de cuisine, pastry chef, etc. are somehow noteworthy due to the exceptional excellence of their work, the depth of their participation in creating the cuisine, etc. (e.g., Psaltis at Mix, Pasternack at Esca). This makes it an unusual and critical omission that Kunz' contribution was not mentioned, but not so for the other players. Restaurant reviews aren't like movie credits that list everyone involved.

Man... tasting 39 of the oldest drinkable scotches around. That must have been horrible.

You were there? I thought I saw someone who looked like you.

Not to mention... Spice Market: three stars. Asiate: one star.

Along similar lines, what is your take on pairing strong drink with food? I recently went to an Irish whiskey dinner (described here) that was interesting, but I definitely noticed a certain anaesthetic effect of the strong alcohol on my palate which interfered with the full experience of the flavors in the dishes I was eating. Also... some high end restaurants (Trotter's in Chicago, for example) are deciding that they will not serve before-dinner cocktails because the alcohol "dulls the palate." What's your take on this? My personal experience at the whiskey dinner as well as the known anaesthetic effect that alcohol can have on the taste receptors leads me to believe that a glass of vodka would probably not be the ideal accompaniment to a subtle and nuanced meal, but I also think any such effect is short lived and that one cocktail isn't going to carry through the entire dinner.

Gary, When you use Vya (my favorite), do you find that you need to use less so the vermouth doesn't overwhelm the drink? For example, I typically do 5:1 or 6:1 gin to vermouth with Noilly Prat, but with Vya I might go to 8:1 or 9:1. I love Vya's sweet vermouth in a Manhattan, or together with their dry in a perfect style Manhattan, or in my little riff on a perfect style Manhattan Have you ever tried King Eider vermouth from Duckhorn Wine Company?

That's probably because they didn't taste Duke's.

A 50/50 martini? Very interesting. I'll have to try that (although, obviously one would need a relatively light vermouth). Were they allowed to pre-chill any of the ingredients? Taking the gin and vermouth out of the freezer might work well for this kind of martini, because the large amount ov vermouth would cut down the alcohol content quite a bit and the dilution from melted ice wouldn't be so important (plus, of course, there would still be some dilution from melted ice).

More importantly, perhaps, why are there so many "Newfie" jokes?

Steven, why did you boil? Was that in the instructions/recipe you have? Sounds like most people here just heat to 100F and add teh culture. Also, what kind of milk did you use? Regular supermarket milk (Tuscan/Dearle/etc.) or something like Ronnybrook? Skim? Whole? 2 percent?

Post-WWII, I think. July 22, 1948 was when they voted to join Canada.

My understanding was that this dish is served with "Italian poached eggs" -- which is to say, eggs poached in olive oil. Have no idea where I got that idea, though.

My sister used to be married to a Dominican, so I got to know their cooking pretty well. AMong my favorites are: Mofongo: roughly mashed green plantains with lard, pork cracklings and garlic sauce Tostones: double-fried green plantains sprinkled with salt and lime juice (the plantains are cut into chunks, friued until soft, squashed cflat and then fried until crisp). Sancocho: a kind of "refrigerator stew: with many different kinds of meat (beef, pork, goat, chicken, etc.), many different starches (green plantains, yucca, malanga, potato, etc.) and vegetables. Usually served over rice with a big slice of avacado. Moro de guandules (sometimes con coco): rice with pigeon oeas (and sometimes coconut milk). A great web site for Dominican cooking recipes and information is Aunt Clara's Dominican Cooking.

We've had it seems like 20 threads here on eGullet about how to mix a martini, the proper ingredients and the proper ratios. I have your martini book, so I am somewhat familiar with your take on it, but I'd be interested to hear you hold forth on the subject a little. For instance, many people seem to prefer the "rinse out the shaker with vermouth and pour out the excess" method, which I think is ridiculous -- they might as well be drinking gin or vodka straight from the freezer with a splash of water for all the difference that tiny amount of vermouth will make. Several well-known bartenders, I understand, have begun serving dry vodka martinis with no vermouth at all! I noted with interest that your vodka martini recipe actually calls for more vermouth than your gin martini recipe. Why is this? Although I am not generally a vodka martini drinker, my usual thought has been to use less vermouth to compensate for the vodka's relative lack of flavor whereas you seem to go in the other direction. Similarly, I tend to use less vermouth in gin martinis when the gin is a delicate one or if the vermouth is a strongly flavored one. I'd also be interested to hear your thoughts on the new full flavored vermouths like Vya and some of the new uniquely-flavored gins such as Hendrick's and Tanqueray Malacca with respect to their suitability for Martinis.

Of course.

The reigning expert on chowder these days is probably Jasper White, and I recommend his book 50 Chowders : One Pot Meals - Clam, Corn, & Beyond. I would point out a few things about chowder: 1. there is really no definitive version or list of ingredients for chowder. 2. it is only supposed that "chowder" may be related to or derived from the French word "chaudiere," and this supposition is based mainly on the seeming similarity between the words. Another equally likely candidate would be the 16th Century English word "jowter," meaning "fishmonger." 3. another possibility is that chowders have no European derivation at all, and were first prepared by Native Americans (usually supposed to be the Micmac, either with or without the use of European iron vooking vessels).

One often hears it said that there are certain dishes that every cook who aspires to a certain proficiency should master as a fundamental (the classic French omelette, for example). For someone who admires cocktails, would like to have a well-rounded knowledge about properly formulating and presenting them, and would like to create his/her own in the future, is there a certain repertoire of cocktails that you think every mixologist should master? Again, I'd be interested in hearing from both of you, and why.

This is great! I'll definitely be seeking this out when it's on the market. I love all kinds of bitters, and think that the role they play in cocktails is underappreciated to say the least. In my book, it just isn't a Manhattan without bitters, and too many new cocktails leave out this wonderful accent and point of interest. It will be very interesting to taste the your orange bitters, as all I have had thus far is the Fee Brothers' incarnation. As much as I like their orange bitters, I think their "old fashioned" bitters is even better -- I like it a lot more than Angostura.

Um... yes.