slkinsey

In my kitchen I created two long "rails" suspended from the ceiling, and all my cookware hangs from these on hooks. I bolted ceiling plates directly through into the studs, screwed in lengths of threaded bar, and fastened black pipe to the bottom using screw-together threaded O-rings. Has a kind of industrial-but-finished look to it that I like. And there's certainly nowhere else I could put all that stuff!

I've been meaning to buy a bunch of these. Is there any reason to pay the markup for clear containers over the white ones? Is seeing inside them that much of an upgrade?

It is a two kilo (4.5 pound) loaf of bread. Consider that the "standard" boule is one pound. So in effect you're getting four loaves at around £5.25 apiece. Not cheap, but not outrageously expensive either.

Only four bottles is a tough one. Personally, for me it would be: 1. La Favorite (white rhum agricole). After a number of years trying to convince myself otherwise, I gave in to the realization that non-agricole white rums are kind of crappy. Some drinks calling for white rum will taste "not entirely traditional" with Favorite (e.g., the Daiquiri), but to my taste are usually better with Favorite. 2. Smith & Cross (pot-stilled traditional Jamaican rum). I am not sure that there is a better cocktail-grade rum on the market, but I have not yet found a cocktail it wasn't good in. Great in all kinds of tiki and caribbean drinks, as well as in punches, and dashed into cocktails. 3. Lemon Hart 151 (overproof demerara rum). Indispensable in swizzles-type drinks, and many tiki drinks. 4. Mount Gay Sugar Cane (medium-body amber rum). I care less about this #4 rum than I do about #s 1-3, but I recently had some of this and found it quite nice, and suitable for drinks calling for amber or Barbados rum. If you want to add more, it gets more interesting. 5. Coruba Dark (good as a "dark rum" when you want that caramel bomb instead of Jamaica's funk 6. If you must have a "Cuban style" white rum, I'd suggest (in order of preference): El Dorado 3, Flor de Caña Extra Dry or Brugal white) 7. The aged El Dorado rums are excellent 8. If you must have a spiced rum, Kracken is the one you want A lot of people like the Appleton rums, but I don't have much use for them.

Interesting! What do you think would be a workable reasonable approximation of the older Plymouth style, at least in spirit? Damrak? Damrak mixed with modern Plymouth? Modern Plymouth mixed with Bols genever? Modern Plymouth mixed with Genevieve? Ransom Old Tom?

Too conductive and, for the "long handle" family of pans, too soft to bear up under the stress without bending. That's pretty much what I figured... if you're putting a steel handle on an aluminum pan or an iron handle on a copper pan, it's rivets or nothing. This (in addition to the aesthetic considerations) explains why All-Clad rivets handles even on their fully clad cookware: they're not going to change production methods over from riveting to welding for only two of their lines.

Right. So perhaps slightly malty but still highly aromatic?. Anyway, not all that much like what they're selling now, I suppose is the point. Some malty-ness certainly would have made it possible to differentiate as a stylistic category of gin distinct from London dry. The guys at Breuckelen Distilling might be making something a bit like this, as they are distilling their base spirit from wheat mash. Whether and to what extent they have knowledge about making gin, I couldn't say. I might see if I can catch a taste of it somewhere. For a just released spirit out of a distillery that just made its first run in June and settled on gin botanicals in mid-July, almost 40 bucks a bottle is a bit too rich for my blood for all the reasons previously stated.

Someone like Dave W could speak authoritatively on this, but I am led to believe that the historical Plymouth style was different from London dry in having a touch of "genever-ness" to it. Forget where I read that.

That's an interesting thought. My understanding is that Plymouth style gin used to be fairly different from what it is today, and kind-of split the difference between London dry and genever. It's unclear to me that there is a meaningful categorical style difference between today's Plymouth gin and what may be called London dry gin.

So, this is more a feature of the cheap materials used in the pan than riveting per se? Is it possible (or, more to the point, reasonably easy and cheap) to weld a handle onto a raw aluminum pan? Are there any raw aluminum pans with spot welded handles?

I'm curious... are you sure it is the rivets that are soft aluminum and wear loose? Or couldn't it be the aluminum body of the cookware that is stretching over time around the holes and making them larger? I'm just curious about this because I've got a number of aluminum cookware pieces with riveted handles, and none of the rivets appear to be aluminum. I've also never heard of rivets wearing out on riveted stainless steel or heavy copper cookware, which makes me wonder whether it's really the rivets that are causing this problem. If you put a lot of repeated stress on a hole in a piece of aluminum metal, eventually that hole is going to deform.

Happy to provide. This from a 2003 post of mine:

I wonder if people here are overlooking the fact that ranting about vegetarians has long been entrenched as part of Bourdain's schtick (along with a host of other things). Might it just be possible that he does it because he's expected to do it? Because this is one of the things about Bourdain that makes a certain segment of his admirers think "fuckin-A yea, man! what an outlaw this Bourdain guy is! just like me"? I'm reminded about the way Gordon Ramsey became such a horrible parody of himself in his various television shows where it became clear that he knew he was expected to yell abuse at people and would contrive reasons to do so.

So why not drink beer with a chewable vitamin? All the goodness of white bread, but it will not stick to the roof of your mouth. What is the bioavailability of a twinkie? I'm not sure what your point is. I think there are plenty of good reasons to each whole wheat bread. I am simply pointing out the fact that whole wheat bread is not necessarily more nutritive than white bread, all other things being equal. There are documented historical cases where a people which depended on bread for subsistence had to switch from white bread to wholemeal bread for one reason or another, and this switch resulted in certain nutrition deficiency-mediated medical conditions.

Hmm, I would disagree with this. I think there's a misconception that if it doesn't have meat in it, or if it's healthy, then it must taste awful. This is such a close-minded view, it's actually a real shame. Jenni, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not saying that it must taste awful. We have evidence from traditional vegetarian cuisines that it can taste delicious. But the fact is that Western vegetarian cooking very frequently does taste awful. And I would suggest that a primary reason Western vegetarian cooking frequently is not delicious is because the deliciousness of the food is not the primary objective of the cooks. Look at Indian vegetarian food for example. Often among the things that helps Indian vegetarian to taste so delicious is the liberal use of fat. Well, for a health-minded vegetarian, this simply will not do. There are more or less two different kinds of vegetarians in the world: (1) obligatory vegetarians, who observe a vegetarian or mostly vegetarian diet due either to religion or poverty/scarcity; and (2) voluntary vegetarians who observe a vegetarian diet for some other reason. There are some noteworthy things about this second group: First is that almost all of them live either in the UK or the USA. Second is that, when asked to give the reasons why they were vegetarians, the vast majority give "health" as the reason, followed by (believe it or not!) "not sure" and with "ethical reasons" at a distant third. "I love vegetables" or "I don't like meat" are not even on the radar. These two fundamentally different reasons for having a vegetarian diet produce two fundamentally different approaches to cooking. For the obligatory vegetarian, the issue is simple: These are the foods I am able to eat, now go forth and make it delicious. There is really no complex calculus that has to be performed. If simmering those beans in 2 cups of ghee for 5 hours makes them delicious, then that is what is going to happen. Deliciousness is the objective. For the voluntary vegetarian, what comes first has to be the reasons. Most voluntary vegetarians are first concerned with satisfying whatever their goal of being vegetarian is, and deliciousness has to come second. This isn't going to change with respect to Western vegetarian cooking unless the reasons for being a vegetarian somehow change. I guess the other part of Bourdain's rant is that if you're a voluntary vegetarian, than you can voluntarily decide to not be such a hard ass about it sometimes (especially if you're not among the tiny percent that does it for ethical reasons that are actually lived up to in all facets of life). If you're a voluntary vegetarian but you wear a leather belt or eat cheese, you can suck it up and have some pho in oxtail broth if it's offered to you. Just the same way I have sucked it up and choked down eggplant to be polite.

As far as I can tell, Bourdain's disdain for vegetarianism is probably rooted in the fact that (non-vegetarian) restaurants hate having to cater to them. Probably related to this is the fact that the majority of Western vegetarians (most of whom are found in the UK and USA) are vegetarians primarily for health or ethical reasons, and this rather than the goal of deliciousness is the fundamental principle that drives their cooking. The result is that Western vegetarian cooking as a generality is not very tasty or interesting compared to Western omnivorous cooking. In contrast, vegetarian cuisines that are grounded in religion tend to be delicious because the goal of the cooks is not, e.g., to "have a high fiber, low fat diet that provides sufficient protein and vitamins" or to "avoid the subjugation of our animal friends" but rather simply to pursue deliciousness within the culinary playing field defined by the religion (or economic circumstances). This is why dishes created in vegetarian cultures, most of which are non-Western and are almost always mediated in their dietary practices by religion, or vegetarian dishes created in omnivorous cultures due to scarcity or economics tend to be far more delicious than vegetarian dishes prepared by health- or ethics-minded Western vegetarians: the primary culinary goal of the formers is deliciousness and the primary goal of the latter is not. Generally speaking, of course.

Thank you Dave for articulating the core of my argument here in a way that is both infinitely more succinct and also more far more clear than I was able to do.

Speaking of which, if the web site is accurate, Astor Wines has a very good deal going on Bols Genever at $33 a bottle ($42 being more common around here).

Where I grew up in Boston, this was simply the way one pronounces "genever." And those Bostonites were originally from . . . ? Ireland and England?

Where I grew up in Boston, this was simply the way one pronounces "genever."

Of course it matters, otherwise you're just complaining for the sake of complaining. The way I'm reading it is that you have an issue with products that aren't juniper-led calling themselves gin, the point I've repeatedly made is that there is a grey area because there isn't really anyone who decides if something is juniper-led or not. I disagree that it's "complaining for the sake of complaining" anymore than if would be "complaining for the sake of complaining" to remark that most of the Fee Brothers "bitters" products aren't actually bitter, and that this represents a defect in these products. Inherent in these comments and complaints, I suppose, is the premise that the regulators are getting it wrong. Considering that the current regulations were more or less put in place at the behest of certain producers who thought that their spirit category was being infringed upon, I suppose it's not impossible that they will agitate for more regulation of juniper character at some point in the future. Out of curiosity (and I ask because you may know the answer to this question, which answer I do not know)... are we sure there is no person or persons who decides if the product has a predominant flavor of gin? If there aren't such persons, then what is the point of having legal regulations, standards of identification, etc. that involve these qualitative distinctions? Why not simply say that you're allowed to call it gin so long as you throw some amount of juniper berries into the still and have done with it? What? That Tanqueray makes Rangpur? You certainly haven't heard me saying that I think it's a great product. Well, we part ways there. I don't believe it is "beyond ridiculous" to observe that there are a lot of products coming out of micros that cost 40% more than many brands of notably higher quality (not all of which are made by the international giants, I should hasten to add). I don't believe this is beyond ridiculous because there is abundant evidence before us on the shelves of bars and liquor stores that it is indeed possible to make a small batch product that evidences an understanding of the spirit category and is reasonably positioned vis-a-vis other brands on a quality/price basis. A good example of this might be Redemption Rye whiskey that just came out. They haven't been around long enough to compete in terms of age, but they have managed to make a very interesting product by doing a 95% rye grain mash bill and releasing it at high proof. It's a couple of dollars more per bottle than Wild Turkey and Rittenhouse, and a few dollars less per bottle than Baby Sazerac. Ultimately, Redemption Rye isn't quite as good yet as these other products because it isn't aged long enough. But it's a very high quality product made by people who clearly love, understand and respect the tradition, and it has the additional interest of having an amplified rye character that maybe makes you reach for it sometimes rather than some other ostensibly higher quality brands. So, giving some consideration to the "price spread" this rye is pretty competitive on a quality and a price basis. Meanwhile, this is a lot more difficult and expensive to do with whiskey than it is with gin. Another example might be Ransom Old Tom. This stuff is priced at around ten dollars more than Tanqueray, but is such an interesting product of high quality and historical interest (and it also isn't made with GNS) that it more than justifies the price. Still another example is Anchor's Junipero, an outstanding product of high quality and broad usefulness made by people who clearly understand and love gin. Only around $5 more per bottle than Tanqueray. Both of these products, albeit in different ways, compete very well on a price and quality basis. So maybe we should call it something else? I think it's noteworthy that "genever" means "juniper" and so this juniper-flavored malty/sweet spirit evolved into a herb-forward sweet juniper-flavored spirit which then evolved into a herb-forward dry juniper-flavored spirit. And what's the common thread there? Juniper. So, I don't necessarily dispute that some other evolution may be taking place, but part of what happens in evolution is that sometimes you don't end up with some evolved form of the same species, but rather a new species. At some point it's no longer Homo erectus and now it's Homo sapiens. And maybe sometimes this is mostly clear in retrospect. I think it's noteworthy, for example, that we don't typically call genever "gin" anymore. We understand it as being different from this herb-focused spirit we call "gin" today. That some evolution may be taking place seems clear. Whether this will be a lasting evolution or a momentary departure last remains to be seen (wine coolers and white zinfandel once seemed like they would stick around, after all, and we even seem to finally be seeing the end of calling every cocktail a "something-or-other Martini"). But I think it's reasonable to suggest that if it evolves away from containing the noteworthy presence of juniper, maybe it has evolved into a different species that isn't "gin" any more (fwiw the word "gin" is etymologically derived as gin > geneva > genever > "juniper"). Time will tell. In the meantime we will see some interesting and not-so-interesting products.

If we take this view, however, wouldn't it at some point be possible to market aquavit as "gin"? Although I suppose you could make the argument that gin and aquavit are already the same thing: GNS that emphasizes the botanicals over the base spirit. I suppose I could get behind a new category of gin that means "there's a touch of juniper in there somewhere, along with a bunch of other stuff that's in the forefront." But considering that these products are all really, when it comes down to it, representing themselves as having a commonality with traditional gin ("riding their coattails" one might say), I agree that the chances of them doing that are exceedingly slim. Something like that would be fine with me... and it would also free the various producers from using token amounts of juniper.

Chris, I am sure that's part of it. It's true that there is a desire among people to drink something called "gin" for whatever reason. I do fear however, that these people can be a bit like those who wanted to drink a "Martini" out of the V-shaped glass without actually, yanno, liking Martinis. Right. Part of the difficulty there is that this person likes the product they have been served, but doesn't necessarily like gin. But now having this idea that such-and-such product is "gin" they go and try an Aviation or a Ramos Fizz or a Martinez or a Clover Club or a Gin Gin Mule or a Gimlet with this product, and: "Yuck! It completely doesn't work. It's terrible. I'm sticking to my North Shore #6 'Fleur de Lys' cocktail that has those flowery flavors that go with it." An actual juniper-flavored gin, of course, would work in all those drinks. So what we have is not someone who likes gin. but rather someone who likes North Shore #6, which is more or less sui generis. (NB. I am using North Shore #6 purely as an example spirit based on KD1191's description of it as high quality and floral but not very gin-like -- not saying anything bad about it.) Yea. I will say that that's pretty cool.

Not for nothing was it recently suggested to me that many of these were designed as spirits that don't particularly taste like gin by people who don't particularly like gin to be sold to to people who don't particularly like the taste of gin but for some reason want to drink something called "gin." Honestly... if you don't like juniper, then why would you want to drink gin? And, again, I am in no way saying that any of these products is necessarily a bad quality product. The quality of the product is an entirely separate issue.

In the spirit of making a few replies here to see if the discussion can move forward... I don't think the issue of who decides matters overly much to the general subject at debate. Clearly, whoever makes the regulatory determination has decided that some products with very little juniper character are allowed to call themselves "gin." Otherwise these products wouldn't be on the market. Whether this continues, who knows. I imagine that it will, so long as the big producers are able to make money selling a product labeled "gin" that doesn't particularly taste like gin. It's a bit like the SUV loophole that allowed these vehicles to be legally classified as trucks rather than cars, and therefore subject to lower emissions and efficiency standards. It still didn't make them actual trucks. But everyone was making money on them and no one was complaining, so on it went. But this is quite separate from one's ability to debate or indeed complain about the prevalence of products out there calling themselves "gin" that don't seem to have the predominant flavor of juniper which is the single most important defining characteristic of the spirit. As to this point, naturally, people who agree that a defining characteristic of gin is having a predominant flavor of juniper may reasonably disagree as to whether a specific product does or does not have such predominant flavor. This is why we have these discussions. Suggesting that one shouldn't debate or complain about these things is a bit like saying that one isn't allowed to debate or complain about bitters that aren't bitter or transplantation of American rootstock onto European grape vines because that water has run under the bridge. What you seem to be arguing -- and perhaps I have simply misunderstood you -- is that having a predominant flavor of juniper is not a defining characteristic of gin, but only a defining characteristic of London dry gin, and that the so-called "new western dry gins" simply exist as a different designation of gin that does not include having predominant flavor of juniper as a defining characteristic. If it is incorrect or mistaken, I would like to hear your position on this stated in a similarly clear manner. Or are you, rather, arguing that it's all a judgment call so we should stop debating/complaining because who can say one way or the other (more on which below)? Anyway, what's unclear to me is what difference it could make one way or the other as to the "right" or propriety to criticize self-proclaimed gin products that do not appear to have a predominant flavor of juniper. All that means ultimately is that one disagrees with the judgment of some governmental panel. My strong suspicion, for whatever little it may be worth, is that so long as some amount of juniper can be detected, these products are all getting a pass. If one is arguing that predominance of juniper flavor is not important, that is a different story. It seems to me that both the United States and EU regulations as to what can be called a "gin" under any designation quite clearly specify that the spirit must have a predominant flavor of juniper. Would you agree that's true? You seem to have argued (and again, please correct my misinterpretations of your arguments where they exist) that it's only "London dry gin" that needs to be "juniper led." Perhaps you could start by explaining what "juniper led" means? This is a term I have only heard used by you. How is this different from "having a predominant flavor of juniper"? It also seems to me from reading the EU regulations, that many of the "juniper deprived" new gins out there should be able to qualify as London dry gins if they wanted to. The main difference between "distilled gin" and "London gin" as outlined by the EU regulations is that "London gin" has to be made exclusively by distilling high quality ethyl alcohol in the presence of natural plant materials to 70% abv, whereas "distilled gin" only has to distill juniper berries with a lower quality of ethyl alcohol, is allowed to use essences, etc. for the other flavorings and does not seem required to distill up to a specific percent abv. In fact, the EU regulations for London gin don't say anything about the presence of juniper flavor at all, except to say that it is "a type of distilled gin" which presumably means that it is subject to the same requirement that the "juniper taste is predominant." So, for example, if Hendrick's gin (which has already apparently passed the "predominant flavor of juniper" test) were flavored exclusively by distillation instead of adding cucumber and rose essences, there is nothing about the flavor profile that would prevent if from proclaiming itself a "London gin" despite not being "juniper led." Genever, by the way, is not classified in the EU regulations as a "gin" but rather a "juniper flavored spirit drink," the requirements for which are simply that ethyl alcohol be flavored with juniper berries and possibly other flavorings, and that "the organoleptic characteristics of juniper must be discernible, even if they are sometimes attenuated." "Discernible, even if attenuated" strikes me as a significantly lower bar to clear than "juniper taste is predominant." Again, whether or not these EU regulations are the absolute last word as to the traditional characteristics of these spirits is another matter. But, needless to say, I think part of the issue is absolutely about them being called gin if they barely taste of juniper, or if what juniper character there is is obscured behind a bunch of other flavors. Really, that's what it comes down to. I don't think it's a matter of debate that these new-generation gins are moving juniper character ever increasingly into the background. And, as I said earlier, one can disagree as to whether a particular gin does or does not have a predominant character of juniper. Personally, I'd say that a pretty decent bar is to nose a glass of it and if the first thing you notice is juniper, then it has a predominant character of juniper. If the first thing you notice is cucumber or citrus or something other than juniper, then it probably does not have a predominant character of juniper. Of course, different people have different sensitivities to different scent molecules and interesting disagreements can arise. But I don't get the sense from the foregoing that you have argued that a lot of these "new breed gins" do have a predominant character of juniper. Rather you have seemed to argue something along the lines of "this is a vast gray area because who gets to decide if something tastes predominantly of juniper so stop complaining about it." I say, on the contrary, that this is the whole point of having conversations like these. Now... on the other hand, I could get behind your argument that there needs to be a different designation for these "gin like" spirits that have other flavors which are stronger than juniper, so long as the designation makes this clear. "New breed gin" or "new western dry gin" don't satisfy this requirement for me, because they still lead to the expectation that the spirit will have the traditional juniper flavor that defines gin. And they are clearly presenting themselves as being more or less in the same category of spirit. But, for example, "infused gin" or "flavored gin" wouldn't particularly bother me. Both those designations would make it clear that the product was going to have some prominent flavor other than the traditional flavor profile of gin, but that the traditional juniper component would be in the background somewhere. And these kinds of designations would also make clear that it isn't really gin. One doesn't expect a whole lot of whiskey character in "flavored rye whiskey," and one also doesn't expect that "flavored rye whiskey" is going to behave like rye whiskey. Perhaps this is what you're getting at? It would be a bit like Orangerie calling itself a "Scotch whisky infusion." What I see through all of these traditions except for some of the "new breed" is juniper. And I would argue that it is juniper character that has enabled gin to work in such a vast repertoire of cocktails throughout the ages.