slkinsey

Rock on, brother. You're one step closer to qualifying for the secret eGullet handshake.

And then there's the new Soylent Vodka everyone's talking about. That uses...

Grappa and Marc are distilled from the "must" left over from the winemaking process. This consists lategely of grape skins, stems and the like. Fundamentally, one can make vodka out of just about anything so long as it is refined to the point where it loses any particularly distinctive flavor, color and mouthfeel. Someone made the point on these forums recently that the water used to dilute vodka down to bottle proof probaby has as much, if not more influence over the character of the finished product than the ingredients that were distilled.

Yes it is. American bourbon.. hmm... Just as another data point my hubby reminded me that Dad loves Royal Salute.. (I assume you all know what it is even if I dont ) Royal Salute is a special, super-expensive kind of Crown Royal aged 50 years (although one can't really say how long a blended has been aged, since the neutral spirits in the blend are not aged at all -- presumably this means that some of the malts in the blend were aged 50 years). $250 or so a bottle, which strikes me as obscenely expensive for blended scotch considering that you could get 25 year old Springbank single malt for less than that. Booker's, on the other hand, is <$60 a bottle.

Let me see if I understand... home is presumably overseas, right? If so, I think it makes the most sense to get him some American whiskey which, for all intents and purposes, means Bourbon. Personally, I think Booker's whiskey is one of the best and most interesting whiskeys money can buy. It's aged extra-long and is bottled at cask strength right out of the barrel without filtering.

FWIW, I do something like this.

I third Aberlour being good stuff. That said... I'd like to point out that, for under 40 dollars you can get things like The Macallen 12 ($39), Laphroaig 10 ($37) and Highland Park 12 ($37). These are outstanding malts. Highland Park in particular I think is one of the best single malts made. So, for a few dollars you can get a big jump up from the likes of Glenmorangie, Glenlivet and Glendiffich. (NB. these prices are from Sherry-Lehman, an expensive NYC liquor store. I assume better prices can be found.)

You really think so? I've never been much of a Glenlivet fan. I had always thought Glenlivet's profile was so large because they were the first single malt to do large scale advertising and exporting. As a result, especially in America, Glenlivet became the first single male scotch of which many people were aware. Since the jump from Dewar's, et al. to just about any single malt is such a large one in terms of guality and flavor, Glenlivet became the "best" scotch before things like The Macallan, Highland Park and Lagavullin became relatively ubiquitous. It helped, I think, that Glenlivet is a relatively unchallenging malt. Glenfiddich, I believe, was the second scotch to jump on this bandwagon. Anyway, that's my two cents. I agree with David that Glenmorangie is the cream of that crop. I don't think any one of the three is particularly interesting, but they all would work fine as an introduction to the world of single malt scotch... better yet might be to track down a whole bunch of smaller bottles in a range of styles to taste the range.

Thanks for your kind thoughts, Greg. Welcome to eGullet and I hope you decide to stick around and poke your nose into a few of our other forums. We have a strong, expert and informed group of members from the midwest -- so you might try asking around the midwest forums about places to buy cookware in Chicago, etc. You never know what these guys can turn up. Even a lot of long-time New Yorkers don't know about Bridge Kitchenware, for example. I recently read on the forums about some great places in the Twin Cities to buy salt water fish, which is something I might not have expected in a city so far from the ocean and something I bet many Minneapolis-dwellers don't know about either. Who knew? That's why this is a cool place to hang around.

Suzanne, it is absolutely a fact that you can burn seasoning. For example, if you put a cast iron pan in an electric oven and set it to "self clean" the seasoning will be entirely burned off. This is the recommended procedure for "restarting the seasoning" when the original seasoning is damaged. As I said before, there is definitely a darkening with "seasoning-like" appearance that happens through extra high heat cooking, and I have little doubt that there are some elements of seasoning that are retained in a grill pan that is consistently heated to the point of smoking and used over extra high heat. But I also don't think this is quite the same thing as the seasoning I have in my other cast iron pans. It is relatively well accepted, I think, that extra high-heat cooking is bad for seasoning as it is usually understood and implemented, and most people seem to believe that you can "ruin" several decades worth of careful seasoning by heating an empty cast iron pan too hot. That said, I also doubt it is the case that extra high heat cooking burns of all of the seasoning, so I suppose a certain amount does remain. In any event, I would imagine that the extent to which the seasoning is burned is highly dependent on the amount of time the pan remains at high heat before the food is introduced, as the "cooling" action of the food may protect the seasoning to one degree or another. If the food goes in before the pan gets smoking hot, there may be relatively little burning of the seasoning. Two things here: First, I hope I am not being misunderstood when I speak of a smoking pan. What I am talking about is a pan that smokes when it is empty. Obviously there is a certain amount of smoke that is generated from the food once it is put into the pan. Second, assuming the grill pan is cleaned reasonably well after each use -- and I naturally assume this is the case with your pan -- I would think that the amount of actual food residue left behind is negligible and unlikely to create much smoke. Whatever smoke-creating food residue that does exist should burn up and cease smoking fairly quickly. This has always been the case, for example, when I have decided to reuse a stainless-lined skillet I had just used and didn't bother cleaning it out before slapping it on the burner to preheat again. And, in these cases there was clearly a visible residue from the previous use in the pan. When one cleans a cast iron pan, one generally makes sure that no visible residue is left behind. All this is to say that I think it's unlikely that a significant amount of the smoke coming off an empty grill pan is from food residue (other than the food residue that creates seasoning). Given what is understood about seasoning, it seems reasonable to conclude that a significant amount of the smoke coming off an empty seasoned cast iron pan preheated to high temperature is coming from the seasoning itself. I'd be interested to know how you're cleaning the pan and whether or not this effect might be due to the fact that you are preventing the usual seasoning build-up. I know that my smoking has also diminished over the years, and largely attribute it to my cleaning techniques. Once I get the food out of the pan, I like to pour in some water and perhaps a touch of dish soap to boil up as much residue as possible -- pouring the whole thing into the sink while it's still bubbling furiously. Then, after dinner when the pan has cooled down I scrape it out with a stainless scouring tool and a little water, after which I put the pan back on high heat for a minute or so to dry the pan off. Usually there is no smoking during this second heating. After that, I wipe the pan down with an oil-moistened cloth to prevent rusting and hang it back up. My grill pan smokes a lot less since I started treating it this way than it did when I treated it like my other cast iron pans and actively tried to build up the seasoning. Again, I don't necessarily advocate taking extreme steps to prevent seasoning to build up. It is the nature of cast iron that a certain amount of seasoning or seasoning-like effects will happen on the surface of the pan over time. Oh well... when it's all said and done, people should just do what makes them happy. I doubt there is a definitive answer to what one should do, as it depends on one's stove, usage, etc. And I understand that my thoughts on leaving cast iron unseasoned for extra high heat cooking go against a certain amount of cast iron dogma. Perhaps it will be my fate to be boiled in oil in a well-seasoned cast iron cauldron as a heretic.

Hi Boris! Thanks so much for relating the experiences with your new heavy copper pans. I'm glad to hear you are enjoying them. It would be a little awkward if I had been saying so many good things about copper and you had said, "This stuff sucks! Damn you eGullet for recommending copper!"

Hi there, person with inscrutable handle! Thanks for your kind remarks, and I'll see if I can address some of your questions below. Nope. Bourgeat makes one too. That said, if you can get an amazing deal on a Mauviel "regular" sauteuse evasee, there's no reason not to get one of those instead. Right. That sounds like probably more Rondeau than you need. Absolutely! This is a great first choice pan for all the reasons you describe and many more. You should get it. Good instinct. Go for something at 12+ quarts, and try to get one with a disk bottom. It really depends on what you want to use it for. Do you find that the 2.5 quart size is useful to you? What do you plan to use the pan for? If you want to sauces and do reductions, and it's something you do fairly frequently in a pan of that size, then a heavy copper sauteuse evasee (aka flared saucepan) might be a good choice. On the other hand, it may be the case that you use the 2.5 quart pan mostly for reheating stuff, boiling/steaming and thin liquids. In that case, heavy copper would be a bit of a waste and you might do better with a disk bottom design. If that is the case with the 2.5 quart pan, but you do want a heavy copper pan for making sauces and doing reductions, you might want to consider getting a smaller saucepan or sauteuse evasee (say, 1 to 1.5 quarts). I hope this helps you somewhat. Please feel free to follow up with more details and questions if there is more information you would like. ...and let us know how you like that copper saute pan!

I have actually heard this said about many different locales... usually the locale in which the person saying it resides. I had always heard growing up that newscasters used "unaccented Eastern Seaboard English." It would make sense that I would hear that, as I grew up on the Eastern Seaboard. I've lived and spent time in just about every major region of the United States, and what I have gleaned is that every single one of them has some kind of distinctive regional accent. Now... does this mean that everyone in those regions speaks with the accent? In my experience, no. My father, for example, grew up in rural West Texan, lived in Boston for 30 years and now lives in Houston. There is not, nor has there ever been, the slightest hint of an accent in his speaking voice. Similarly, most people who know me would say that I don't have any regional accent, despite the fact that I grew up in a city with one of the thickest and most distinctive accents, and lived for five years in a part of Wisconsin known for its regional accent. Generally -- but not always, of course -- one finds that regional accents are less prominent among people from higher social and socioeconomic strata (especially among the "vieux riches" as opposed to the "nouveaux riches"), and among people with higher levels of education. There are plenty of counterexamples, of course (Bill Clinton, for example, is highly educated), but I have found this to be a reasonably reliable rule of thumb.

If you're not using the pan at high heat, then undoubtedly the seasoning is building up and staying on -- so it's definitely not an "I'm right and you're wrong" situation. You are definitely right in the context of your use of the pan. That said, if you find smoke coming out of the pan after preheating it empty over high heat for 5-7 minutes, that smoke is coming from the seasoning burning off. There are no two ways about it -- that's what's happening. Now... this is not to say that a grill pan used consistently over high heat doesn't eventually turn black and take on many of the superficial trappings of seasoning. This is from the carbonized oil and whatever else that ends up sticking to the pores in the iron. But it never does take on the slick, smooth, slightly shiny look of well and truly seasoned cast iron. Again, if you don't use high heat, it's a completely different story. In re to FG's suggestion of anodized aluminum... I'm not so sure I'm down with that. Aluminum has a significantly lower specific heat per unit volume than iron -- so low, in fact, that an aluminum pan would have to be several times thicker than an iron pan to have a similar heat capacity. Heat capacity, as explained in my eGCI cookware tutorial, is especially important when cooking foods where you want the heat to start high and stay high throughout. On the other hand, since the actual surface contact is so small in a grill pan it's possible that the influence of heat capacity is mitigated somewhat, in which case aluminum might have some advantages due to its having much better thermal conductivity.

I'd like to be the voice of dissent here and explain why I don't think seasoning is important or even desirable on a grill pan: 1. If you are using the grill pan appropriately -- which is to say, heated until screaming hot -- (a.) real seasoning will never develop, only a carbonized coating; (b.) any "seasoning" that does build up will burn and be damaged every time the pan is subjected to extremely high heat (which should be always) -- this is why "seasoned" cast iron grill pans smoke so much even before there is any food in them. 2. The main advantages of proper seasoning are (a.) makes the pan less reactive, which prevents rusting and also mitigates food reactions to some degree; and (b.) imparts a certain amount of "nonstickness" to the pan. These advantages do not particularly apply to cast iron grill pans for a variety of reasons: (a.) as explained above, it is virtually impossible to build up and maintain good seasoning that confers the advantages described above on a grill pan if it is being used with appropriately high heat; (b.) because grill pans are not used to cook foods where chemical reactions with the food are a concern, the reduction in reactivity conferred by seasoning is not important (I'll get to rust later); and (c.) due to the fact that the food is only contacting a tiny surface area of the pan (the ribs), and at very high heat, sticking to the pan is not a significant concern -- especially if the food is lightly oiled before putting it in the preheated grill pan. So, really the only advantage of seasoning in a grill pan, as I see it, is the prevention of rust. For that, I simply wipe on a thin coating of oil before I put the pan away. This is not to say that I think one should actively try to keep the pan totally raw, but I think it doesn't make sense to go to the trouble one normally takes to build up and maintain seasoning. This means that I think it's ok to clean the pan with water, detergent and a scouring pad after use, and I don't think one should bother going through all the rigmarole of brushing the pan with Crisco and baking it in the oven and all the other things that go along with seasoning. In my experience, the more "seasoned" a grill pan is, the more smoky it is. And, in my apartment anyway, using the grill pan is smoky enough without the additional smoke created by burning away some seasoning. (NB. Of course, this doesn't apply if you don't use the grill pan over super-high heat, but IMO it doesn't make much sense to use it any other way.)

I still can't get over the idea of powdering meat. Good grief, think of the possibilities! Squab pixy stix! Alligator tea! Elk puffs! Shredded wheat "frosted" with pork! Porterhouse Pocky!

Um... isn't the first T pronounced? I've always heard: [mõ-tRa-Se], and [mõ-Ra-Se] just doesn't seem right to me. (NB. I'm using a big "S" in place of the usual IPA symbol for "sh" which doesn't seem to work in Explorer; the big "R" means it is uvular). Ya heard wrong. It's just a quirk. There's no rule supporting mon'rashay, it's just the way the name is pronounced. Perhaps it's a trick to ferret out spies. I stand corrected. Now that I think about it, is it perhaps the case that "Mont Rachet" was combined over the years into "Montrachet?" That would make perfect sense to me. Kind of like the Italian word "cosi" which should really be pronounced "co-SEE" rather than "co-ZEE" because it is a contraction of "come si." Of course, the spy ferreting aspect can't be ignored. We used to spot 'em up in New England when they didn't know Dedham = "Dedh'm" while Waltham = "Walth-ham" and Gloucester = "Glost'r" (or "Glost-ah") while Dorcester = "Dore-chest-er" (or "Daw-chest-ah"). One should be mindful of ferret spys as well, as they tend to drag one's things under the bed and hide them.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I pronounce all of these correctly. It's "noo-queue-ler," right? As in the "noo-queue-las" of the atom?

Um... isn't the first T pronounced? I've always heard: [mõ-tRa-Se], and [mõ-Ra-Se] just doesn't seem right to me. (NB. I'm using a big "S" in place of the usual IPA symbol for "sh" which doesn't seem to work in Explorer; the big "R" means it is uvular). One of my favorite mispronunciations, which I think is mentioned in one of Mario Batali's books, is when people say they want their pasta "al dante." As in, "please prepare my pasta in the style of the guy who wrote The Divine Comedy."

Interesting thoughts, Joe. I wonder to what extent the aesthetic and intellectual aspects of food can be separated from the sensual and gustatory pleasure aspects. For me, for example, one of the main pleasures of single malt scotch has been intellectual. I like the fact that one can taste the peat, the sea, the heather and the oak and glean something about the place of origin, raw ingredients, distillation process and subsequent treatment. Whether or not it tastes really good is, in some ways, secondary to my enjoyment. In fact, an argument could be made that well-done blended scotches taste better than single malt scotches but are not as intellectually interesting. Certainly I can envision food that might be very interesting from an intellectual standpoint but might not necessarily taste all that great. And, for me, I am willing to go down that path to a certain extent. But I am sure everyone has a certain distance they are willing to travel in that direction. For most people I imagine there is some minimum level of sensual and gustatory pleasure they feel must be met. This has real parallels in the music and art worlds. For example, although Maria Callas has legions of admirers and was undoubtedly a great interpretive artist, I have always had trouble listening through her technical flaws and the fact that her voice often sounded like a cat being beaten with, er, another cat. These considerations are, it seems, quite relevant to El Bulli, but might make an interesting wider topic all on their own.

Nothing wrong with it at all... It's just not a cocktail, and it sure ain't a martini. But nothing wrong with it per se.

well, Gin with Lime Juice, I find they don't put enough Triple Sec. My Gimlet recipie calls for some form of london dry gin, jose cuervo's marguirita mix in place of the normal lime juice, and about a 1/4oz triple sec. mmmmmm Inspired by your post, I just made gimlets for myself and the GF. 2.5 ounces Junípero and 0.75 ounces Rose's. It was a good mix. Junípero is very heavy on the juniper (as the name would suggest), so the flavor of the gin shines through the Rose's, which is present in sufficient quantity to impart the requisite sour and sweet flavors.

This is an interesting and salient point, Jonathan. Steingarten has remarked several times that newborn children are not repulsed by the sight or smell of rotting and/or maggot-infested meat.

Have a family house in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Had plenty of souse meat, head cheese and the like there... but no squirrel brains.

You know, "Adam," I find it ironic that you decry my alleged argumentative nature on one side of your mouth while at the same time the other side impugns and slights me. As much as you would like to pretend you are the "wounded party" here, the sarcastic remarks and personal comments have generally come from you and I have barely replied in kind. I thought my "silly argument" (another disparaging characterization from you) illustrated well the point I was making. You said: To which I replied: The example was used to illustrate the point that, even though one may have to look "long and hard to find a tradition," this does not in and of itself mean that the tradition doesn't exist. Your contention, on the other hand, was neatly contradicted by your own statement downthread. If people have been eating rabbit brains on a regular basis, that strikes me as a "time-honored practice." If, as you profess, you had wanted to have a discussion about tradition and Adria's cooking or the tradition of eating brains -- or if you had even wanted to ever directly respond to any of my points, you always had that option. Looking through this thread, however, it seems fairly clear that you chose not to travel down any of these paths. The fork in the road was your sarcastic post of Nov 3 2003, 11:21 AM. If you want to engage in any discussion of substance without the personal remarks -- as you are clearly capable of doing -- I and others would welcome it. Any more of the same, I don't have the time for. I think that kind of thing is more common in Varmint's neck of the woods (which is to say, Appalachia).