slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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I'd love to find a corn oil that actually tastes like corn. google suggests the unrefined organic corn oil made by Spectrum, but I'm wondering if any eGulleter has a personal recommendation.
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Gordons changed its strength a few years ago in response to a duty increase
Gordon's has been 80 proof in the US for as long as I can remember, and continues to be 80 proof here. Is it lower than 80 proof in the UK now, or you mean that they reduced the proof in the UK down to 80 proof from something higher? I know that historically Gordon's had a fairly high proof, but I thought it was reduced in strength considerably more than "a few years ago."
It is interesting to see how certain gin brands vay in proof by location, presumably due to various tax laws. For example, in the US Tanqueray is considered a "high proof" gin at 94.6 proof. But in the UK it is only 86.2 proof, and in Canada it is only 80 proof. Similarly, Beefeater is a "high proof" gin in the US at 94 proof, but sells in the UK at only 80 proof. It sounds like very few spirits in the UK sell at much more than 80 proof, and lower strength is not uncommon. Interesting because, in the US, for many of our most iconic spirits, it is difficult to sell them at less than 80 proof.
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The other thing you could do is act on Dave's suggestion and bump up the modifiers a bit. That will already lower the proof somewhat, which you could further lower with extended shaking.
I wouldn't just bump up the modifiers. That's one effect, but I think the ratio needs re-evaluation. If, at 4:1:1, there's not an approximation of satisfaction, then I think Steven needs to give up on Sapphire and get some Plymouth.
But 4:1:1 represents a bump up in the modifiers from the 6:1:1 is normally does. I would think that 2 ounces of gin with 3/4 ounces each of sweet and sour probably represents the highest level of modifiers someone might want.
You, Sam (and Audrey and Janet), taught me that proof for proof's sake isn't the only factor. Proof can also mean additional flavor. If that flavor isn't wanted, then there's no point in dilution, other than some economical effect, which is easily remedied: buy a lower-proof gin and give the other stuff to a friend.According to Steven, it's not the higher intensity of gin flavors that he doesn't like (which makes sense, considering that Bombay Sapphire isn't all that intensely flavored anyway) but rather the alcohol "bite." This suggests that he needs to find a palatable way of reducing the proof to a level that he will enjoy while still keeping the intensity of flavor that he will enjoy. Considering that he's doing a 6:1:1 "Gimlet Sour" I would think that s 4:1:1 "Gimlet Sour" with a touch more extra shaking should do the trick.
In general, if he likes the lower proof, he's a lucky man -- Gordon's at 80 proof is the most reasonably-priced gin of quality one is likely to find. If he likes Gordon's, which is an interesting combination of (slightly) lower proof but more intensity of flavor than Plymouth, then there's no reason not to stick with it.
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Good point, Dougal. I was going to say that I think it's unfortunately more likely that most brands vary or determine the proof of their products based upon profitability and tax law rather than flavor and intensity considerations.
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That seems a bit of trouble. I'd try shaking the drink longer and see what happens.
If you're starting out with 3 ounces of booze and 1 ounce of non-booze, and you're getting around 25% dilution when you shake (1 ounce) -- all you need is around another half-ounce of dilution to get to the same ballpark final proof.
The other thing you could do is act on Dave's suggestion and bump up the modifiers a bit. That will already lower the proof somewhat, which you could further lower with extended shaking.
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Most likely the solution is just to shake it longer. The longer you shake it, the more dilution you're going to get, and eventually you'll find a dilution that's to your taste.
Not sure that'll work. In my reading of the critical shaking researching done at the FCI "Cooking Issues" blog lately (click here for info) and such, after about 10 seconds or so, your drink starts to drop below 0C, which means that you'll not get additional dilution while shaking. Letting it sit or "cook," post-shake will allow the ice along the container's edge to melt a bit; give it a stir after 30 or 60 seconds and you may find some happy dilution level.
You might like to give it another read. Have a look at this chart here in particular. Dilution continues to increase over time, long after the mixture goes below 0C.
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Ah. I'm remembering ones from several years ago when that would have been deemed "too much lime."
Most likely the solution is just to shake it longer. The longer you shake it, the more dilution you're going to get, and eventually you'll find a dilution that's to your taste.
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Any suggestions for a white-fleshed fish that does well with SV treatment?
I am looking for something that will not become mushy, and will have some firmness to it.
The idea that I have is to glue together a rectangular "sheet" of fillets in a quarter-sheet pan with Activa, then spread on a filling of fish mousse (made with the trimmings), minced parsley, and something like crab or chopped shrimp. Then I'd roll the whole thing up into a tube around the size of a soda can, roll in plastic film and twist the ends, bag, bind, and cook sous vide. Hopefully, when it comes out of the bath, it can simply (and carefully!) be cut into slices and plated.
I could always do this with something like salmon, but I'd like to try it with something leaner and less expensive (this will be for a large group dinner).
Suggestions are welcomed.
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Steven, if you're still making your gimlets the way I remember the Shawpiro Family Gimlets being made, then you're making them extremely lean. This means that there isn't a whole lot of other stuff in there to counterbalance the intensity and alcoholic strength of the gin, and you're getting more or less a glass of straight gin with a little touch of some other stuff in there.
This doesn't mean you can't use a higher proof gin, but it does mean that you need to get more dilution in order to lower the proof if you don't like the "bite" of the alcohol. Or, of course, you can start off with a softer, lower proof gin such as Gordon's or Plymouth.
As with any spirit, you have to consider the intensity of flavor and the alcoholic proof when you are deciding which brand to use for the cocktail you would like to make and for your own personal preferences and mixological practices. For example, when making a long drink with other strong flavorings (a Gin-Gin Mule, for example) you might like to choose a strongly-flavored and higher proof gin like Tanqueray or Beefeater. This is because you need the intensity of flavor and higher proof in there, or the gin and alcohol will get lost and you might as well be drinking a glass of mint-spiked ginger beer. If you're making a modern-style "extra dry" Martini, you might rather choose a soft, lower proof gin like Plymouth.
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I'm with you, Steven. Love pecorino romano. Love pecorino fresco, for that matter.
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Mine is not dissimilar from Dave's
Rittenhouse bonded rye whiskey
Laird's bonded applejack
Tanqueray gin
Bols genever
Louis Royer Force 51 cognac
Noilly Prat dry vermouth
Carpano Antica Formula vermouth
Vieux Pontarlier absinthe
Cointreau
Angostura bitters
Ack. I forgot maraschino. I guess, if bitters count, I'd replace the absinthe on my list with Luxardo La Perla Dry.
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Mine is not dissimilar from Dave's
Rittenhouse bonded rye whiskey
Laird's bonded applejack
Tanqueray gin
Bols genever
Louis Royer Force 51 cognac
Noilly Prat dry vermouth
Carpano Antica Formula vermouth
Vieux Pontarlier absinthe
Cointreau
Angostura bitters
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Yea, a Thai-style Michelada (perhaps using a touch of curry paste?) is about the only non-revolting cocktail use I can think of for fish sauce.
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A few thoughts on batched cocktails:
If you batch the spirits separately from the citrus and combine to-order, you will preserve the brightness of the citrus better. It's not such a big deal to put in the citrus at the last minute.
Or, on the other hand, how about batching cocktails that don't need "bright? citrus? Plenty of punches (I think immediately of FHP) benefit from aging with the citrus.
Rather than pre-diluting and/or serving on the rocks, just get an oversized shaker and shake them out on site. This is what the cocktail crews have always done at the big charity events Audrey organizes (where everyone typically batches for at least 500).
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Oh, I agree that its not necessarily the case that people in NYC want to spend 40% more on food. I think it's a function of (1) higher prices at the grocery store, and (2) significantly more restaurant and delivery eating.
And yea, I'd expect good service for a $25 breakfast.
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I'm not sure how the quote of mine you pulled is germane to this discussion.
I'm sure it is true that, by and large, commercial food costs are similar between NYC and Philadelphia. I would not expect this to be true between, say, New York City and Kansas City, however.
For most dishes (e.g., a plate of pasta with a $2 food cost), the lower rent and other costs in Philadelphia make it possible for the Philadelphia restaurant to price the same dish at a lower price. And this is reflected in overall lower prices in the Philadelphia area. Steakhouses are a special case, however. Unlike many other kinds of restaurant, steakhouses have the highest food cost and the lowest markup over cost. If the food cost is the same, it is not possible for the steakhouse in Philadelphia to price the steak much lower than the steakhouse in NYC and still make money. Indeed, the prices are right around the same at steakhouses in the two cities. Yet, it seems like a no-brainer that there are a lot more people in NYC willing to spend 100+ bucks on a night out at a steakhouse than there are in Philadelphia. This is because (a) there are a lot more people earning high salaries in NYC; (2) people in NYC spend 40% more on food, and eat more frequently in restaurants; and (iii) people in NYC are used to paying higher prices at restaurants and in the grocery store, so $40 for a steak has a lower "psychological cost." In cities like Kansas City, where there are even fewer people earning high salaries and people spend a much smaller amount of money at restaurants, there is only one way to keep the price down to something that the local public will pay: buy less expensive, lower quality beef.
I think it's a bit silly to put one's head in the sand about the reasons NYC is the steakhouse leader. It's manifestly true, so there must be a reason. Similarly, it would be silly to ignore the extent to which NYC's extensive public transportation system, ubiquity of taxi cabs and low overall car use have contributed to NYC being the leader of the cocktail revival.
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David, the statistics, which as you point out are widely available, show that New Yorkers pay a lot more for housing than people in Philly -- which does account for a large percentage of the difference in cost of living. But the statistics show that they make a lot more money, and more germane to this discussion, also that they spend about 40% more on food (which figure, as you surmise, includes significantly higher-than-average dining out).
Thus: if a NYCer is used to spending $1.40 on food for every $1.00 that a Philadelphia resident spends, then it stands to reason that a $40 steak won't seem as expensive to the NYC resident.
As a point of comparison: A representative "date night" dinner at a middlebrow restaurant in NYC will run around 60 bucks in Manhattan. This is not considered expensive, nor are these restaurants considered "fancy."
So, again... what this adds up to is that there are a lot more people in NYC who are willing to drop 40 dollars on a top-quality steak than most other cities.
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I haven't visited any of the New York steakhouses in question and am not likely to when I next head up that way, because (1) the great steakhouses are wildly expensive
This is something that's worth exploring, and I think i goes a long way towards explaining why the best "American steakhouse" restaurants are mostly in NYC.
Perhaps more than any other kind of restaurant, with the possible exception of fish restaurants, the quality of a steakhouse depends upon the quality of the ingredients. There is no room for skill or technique to obscure or mitigate differences in quality. If two restaurants are broiling 2 inch thick porterhouse steaks in the same broiler to the same degree of doneness, then the only thing that can differentiate them is the quality of the steak. And there are huge differences.
So, there are a few things going on here. First is that there is only so much "prime of the prime" beef to go around. This drives up prices. Second, the meat has to be dry aged, etc. This drives up prices. But perhaps more important is the fact that there is a certain fixed cost associated with prime of the prime dry aged beef. Unlike many other commodity foodstuffs that may be less expensive in some cities than others, there is no way a prime of the prime dry aged short loin can cost meaningfully less in Philadelphia or Kansas City than it does in New York City or Tokyo. In fact, the cost will be right around the same. So, while something like milk is likely to be less expensive in Philadelphia or Kansas City than it is in Manhattan, this will not be true of prime of the prime dry aged beef.
So what's different? What's different is two things: cost of living and average salary. Things cost more in New York City than they do in Philadelphia and Kansas City, and people living in New York City make a lot more money than they do in Philadelphia and Kansas City. On average, to maintain the same standard of living, a person living in Manhattan needs to earn 78% more than a person living in Philadelphia and more than double what a person living in Kansas City makes. This means that a 40 dollar steak is much less expensive to a NYC resident than it is to a Philly or KC resident. NYCers spend on average around 42% more on food than people in KC and Philadelphia, so that means that the effective cost of the $40 steak to the NY person is around 28 bucks in "KC and Philly dollars." I note, by the way, that the "steak for two" is only 5 dollars more at Peter Luger compared to Union Trust, and it's around 5 dollars less at Wolfgang's. This reflects the fixed-cost nature of the prime ingredient and makes Union Trust a much more expensive restaurant for locals -- especially when one considers the fact that Peter Luger definitely and Wolfgang's most probably are serving a higher quality ingredient.
Needless to say, there are a lot more people living in NYC who are willing to pay 40 dollars for a top of the line steak. And this is the last piece of the equation: Compared to other similarly expensive and high-salaried cities (San Francisco and Los Angeles come to mind), New York has a booze-drinking, cigar-smoking, red-meat-eating kind of culture that most of these other cities do not have. American steakhouses are just not part of California culinary culture the way they are in NYC.
So, you have a situation where 95% of the quality is determined by the raw ingredient. And that raw ingredient is very expensive. And the price of that raw ingredient is still going to be more or less the same wherever you are. And you have one city where cost of living is high, salaries are high and there is a longstanding tradition of meat eating. It's no surprise, then, that most of the best beef goes there, and that there are more places there set up to serve the best beef in this kind of context. And even the NYC places don't all have access to the same quality of beef. There is that little to go around.
The rare exceptions are typically destination places in tourist locations (Bern's in Tampa comes to mind, and there may be perhaps a few places in Las Vegas) likely to be visited by red meat-eating tourists with money in their pockets.
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I would add to the above, if you want to be scrupulous: inoculate with desired surface mold.
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Getting back to the original question, it seems like Chris Amirault could simply have wiped down the exterior of his sausages (perhaps with a mild vinegar solution?) and they would have been just fine -- especially if he continued to age them and the green mold did not reappear.
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Joerg, there is some fairly detailed information on this in Dave Wondrich's book, "Imbibe!" If you don't have a copy, you should get one.
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As far as I know, the common mold that grows on the exterior of fermented cured sausages is from the penicillium genus. These can be white, but the fruiting bodies are frequently green.
In Salumi: Savory Recipes and Serving Ideas for Salame, Prosciutto, and More, author Joyce Goldstein writes:
. . . The moisture continues to reduce and the characteristic -- and vital -- penicillum mold begins to grow on the exterior of the casing. This mold, called fiore, or "bloom," in Italian, acts as a natural antioxidant and protects against rancidity. As long as the mold is present, the rich flavors of the meat will continue to develop. This is whty the mold on the most authentic salame is always kept intact until serving, and why it would be rare to find an Italian eating a product without mold.Every traditionally cured salame generates a mold on the outside of its casing during fermentation and aging. While modern processors employ science to maintain an aesthetically pleasing white mold, nature on its own will normally generate an artist's palette of colors.
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I was going to say... doesn't making Sam Sifton the reviewer pretty much throw in the towel with respect to supposed reviewer anonymity?
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It definitely helps to have enough water in the right kind of pan so that strand pasta can be completely immersed in boiling water from ths start.
Gin proof
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
I don't believe any "spirit" (vodka, whiskey, gin, genever, rum, tequila, etc.) can be sold at less than 80 proof in the US.