slkinsey
-
Posts
11,151 -
Joined
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by slkinsey
-
-
. . . My commercial (10 liter) rice cooker heats from the bottom, and the natural convection OUGHT to equalize the temperature. . .The temperature at the bottom of the pot and at the 2/3 point read 134.9F. The temp at the 1/3 point, and close to the surface (where there is some evaporative cooling) was 138.8F.
Your measurement would seem to contradict the eariler supposition that natural convection is effective at equalizing temperatures in this kind of vessel. I'd say that a 3.9F/2.2C difference in temperature is significant.
-
A broken yolk is an abomination, if I do say so myself. I've no idea why the broken yolk meme is part of a fried egg sandwich, or in any fried egg application.
In the world of NYC delis/bodegas that Mitch was talking about, it's simple expediency. There's not enough time for the griddle man to truly blend up the egg and scramble every order of "egg and cheese on a roll" and if they egg yolk isn't broken, the sandwich will be too runny.
Typically, they crack an egg on the griddle, attend to a few more orders while the egg sets up, "scramble" the half-set egg (which breaks the yolk) and flip it, put a piece of cheese on top, attend to a few more orders while the cheese melts a bit, slice the roll, put in the egg and cheese, wrap it and hand it to you. Takes maybe 90-120 seconds, and in the meantime they've served the same thing to 3 other guys, plus made a few omelets, etc.
I suppose you could specify "scrambled egg and cheese on a roll" -- but I don't think it would taste meaningfully different in the end, and you'd just piss off the guy working the griddle if you did it every day.
Interestingly, all these places seem to work with whole eggs, and none seem to have that big bucket of pre-blended eggs you see in so many other places around the country.
-
The dial on the lower left specifies the safety cut-off temperature. If something goes wrong and the temperature goes above the setting on that dial, the breaker will kick in and the unit will turn off.
-
As Slim Pickens said so memorably in Blazing Saddles: Ditto.
-
Huh. I wouldn't necessarily have associated that with California.
After all, one of the earliest Pegu Club recipes calls for 4 : 1 : 1.
Harrington's recipe calls for 3 : 1 : 1.
Dave's Esquire formula discussed above, and the one that seems to be standard at most NYC bars, is even more citrus-forward at 8 : 3 : 3 (for better comparison to the previous two, perhaps best stated as 2.6 : 1 : 1).
Ultimately, I'm not sure any coast or area can lay claim to a formula that balances equal parts of citrus with sweet. Harrington's formula, BTW, calls for Cointreu rather than curaçao.
-
What is the "California Sour style"?
-
I have found that, if you cannot make ginger syrup of the kind Toby is using (fresh ginger juice mixed with sugar -- which is not very practical for home mixologists) then you can do very well by aggressively muddling plenty of thin slices of fresh ginger with simple syrup and double straining on the way out to catch all the tiny pieces of ginger.
how about microplaning some ginger and infusing in simple, then straining? may be a more attractive option depending on your preference for serious elbow grease (muddler) vs. shredded knuckles (grater)...
Yes, you could do this and it might work very well. The problem is that, in my experience, any fresh ginger syrup doesn't keep its "bite" for more than a couple of days at most. So, unless you are planning on using a lot of ginger syrup around the house, it is not practical to make fresh ginger syrup in any amount that would make the process of microplaning worthwhile. If you want access to fresh ginger syrup of the occasional evening, it's better to keep some fresh ginger in the refrigerator or freezer and muddle-up your ginger syrup to order (you could microplane instead of muddling, but this strikes me as more trouble than it's worth in this context).
-
I have found that, if you cannot make ginger syrup of the kind Toby is using (fresh ginger juice mixed with sugar -- which is not very practical for home mixologists) then you can do very well by aggressively muddling plenty of thin slices of fresh ginger with simple syrup and double straining on the way out to catch all the tiny pieces of ginger.
-
There's the Juniperotivo...
2.0 oz : Junipero gin
1.0 oz : fresh lime juice
1.0 oz : simple syrup
0.5 oz : pomegranate molasses
2 sprigs of mint
And Phil had a riff on this called the Arraquiri that more or less subbed the Juniopero out for arrack
-
Speaking of NY pizza. I recently learned that Sal of Sal & Carmine's on the UWS passed away.
-
By that criterion, should not Philadelphia's Italian pork sandwich with greens and aged provolone be on your list?
I'd say so. Although I put this in the larger category of "juicy hot meat sandwiches" along with the cheesesteak.
Also I'm not up on New York city subs or whatever they are called there. Are there any options that surpass Sarcone's Deli or Salumeria?If you're talking about Italian-style cold-cut sandwiches on a long Italian roll, I'd say that it's pretty well developed here, with a number of well-known places. It's the hot, saucy* sandwiches, IMO, where Philadelphia really has a clear advantage.
* Perhaps there is a better way of saying this than "juicy" or "saucy." Clearly NYC offers a very high level of hot meat sandwiches, but these are things such as pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, which strike me as categorically different from cheesesteaks and Italian pork sandwiches in Philly. Moisture seems to be one salient difference (a Katz's pastrami sandwich isn't going to shower your shirt with juice if you don't lean over when you bite it, whereas an Italian pork sandwich probably will) but I imagine that someone like you, Holly, could articulate this difference better than I can.
-
Not only does mint not need to be heated and/or pureed to release its flavors, this is actually detrimental in both cases and will result in the infusion of bitter and vegetal flavors. Most of the minty oils are produced near the surface of the leaf. Light presure at most is all that is needed to release these oils.
Once you start large-scale breaking of cell walls, you release undesired flavor compounds. This is why Mojitos, Juleps and other cocktails made by really crushing the mint can be brown, bitter and brackish and need a lot of sugar to balance out those otherwise unpleasant flavors.
Cooking the mint has other undesirable effects, notably in driving off or otherwise altering the volatile oils that convey that wonderfuk "fresh minty-ness." Some people swear by hot-infused (and often pureed) mint-flavored simple syrup, but most people I know think it has an off-flavor and most anyone can immediately tell the difference between a drink made with hot-infused mint syrup and fresh mint.
I don't know how well mint oils infuse into something fatty such as cream, but I would experiment with using a large amount of mint leaves, lightly pressing (not to the point of crushing!) them in the cream, and leaving that to infuse overnight.
-
So, the difference between the two batches you tried was that the second (better) batch had been reduced in proof by the addition of water in which you had boiled the solids? Am I getting this right?
I just wonder what it might be like if, for example, you had done the initial infusions in (Brita filtered?) grain alcohol and then, once you had boiled the solids in water, if you had reduced that water down until it was, say, only 25% of the volume and then you would end up with 150 proof bitters that should have all the same flavor compounds, but wouldn't louche, etc. Another potential advantage to keeping the bitters at high proof would be that you could incorporate "green" flavors from fresh herbs without worrying about those colors and flavors browning. I have a friend who infused a green herb into solutions with different concentrations of alcohol, and found that the infusion into high proof grain alcohol stayed green over time while the 100 proof and 80 proof samples browned. So, potentially, you could make a high proof bitters flavored with fresh marjoram, fresh lovage and fresh lemon verbena that would be a brilliant green and stay fresh.
-
When subbing for specific salts in recipes, is there a guide to use?
for example, I want to make salted fudge brownies, and the recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon Maldon sea salt. I haven't found any in my area, so I'm going to have to use what I have.
My choices are:
morton kosher salt
fine sea salt (penzey's)
coarse sea salt (penzey's)
I'm guessing 1/2 tsp kosher salt would be OK, or maybe 3/4 tsp coarse sea salt?? (I read Maldon's is saltier than regular salt, I'm guessing I should use more regular salt??).
I'm guessing that this recipe calls for the salt to be sprinkled on the top of the brownies? If not, it would be a tremendous waste of Maldon salt, since sea salts differ primarily due to their shape.
Maldon salt is a particularly coarse (i.e., not dense) salt that forms into fairly large flakes of salt as opposed to the typical "chunk" or "pebble" shape of most salts. This is why it may be described as "saltier" than other salts. Not because 5 grams of Maldon salt dissolved into a cup of water would make the water taste saltier than 5 grams of kosher salt dissolved into a cup of water -- but because when you put a flake of Maldon salt on your tongue, it dissolves onto your tongue almost instantly, whereas a chunkier piece of salt will take longer to dissolve. So, with the Maldon salt, you taste all the salt all at once.
Anyway, if your recipe calls for sprinkling the surface of the brownies with Maldon salt, you should choose the most coarse salt you have in order to give some kind of textural interest. If you use Morton's (relatively fine) kosher salt or a fine sea salt (which IMO tends to be pretty useless anyway), you won't get this effect. So you should use the coarse sea salt, and I would use it in approximately the same amount as you would use Maldon salt. Certainly you wouldn't want to use more of any other type of salt, because this would almost certainly result in putting more salt on the brownies than the recipe calls for.
-
Andy, I would actually think that diluting the alcohol down is much more an economic expedient for the commercial producer than the home hobbyist. When one is speaking of real dollars, two tanks of industrial alcohol costs twice as much as one tank. I think it is also the case that products like, say, Angostura bitters are made at an incredibly concentrated strength (this way they don't have to use as many tanks to make it, again reducing cost) and then diluted down to a more reasonable intensity for use.
I get that 80 or 90 proof bitters may give you "more botanical smell less booze smell" coming out of the bitters bottle. I'm more wondering whether this is true once you have dashed that bitters into three ounces of booze and modifier that will all end up at around 72 proof or less once it's diluted by ice.
-
Oh I have no doubt that there's some of everything in NY, but unless I've been reading the NY boards wrong, I get the sense that folks are usually bemoaning the lack of either choice or quality in Indonesian, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Mexican, etc.
I think you have to understand the psyche of the NYCer in this respect. We'll bemoan the lack of Mexican restaurants because there isn't an outstanding one on every corner delivering to our apartments.
Looking at, say, Mexican food... The reality is that the city has had quite a large influx of Mexican immigrants over the last 15 years or so, and there has been a huge increase in good Mexican as well as the various take-offs of Mexican food. The reality is that neither Philadelphia or NYC can be counted a great city for Mexican food, of course, and this is not likely to be meaningful to Kent, who lives in Texas.
Similarly, NYC can't hold a candle to a city like Houston when it comes to Vietnamese food. But whether or not it can hold a candle to Philadelphia when it comes to Vietnamese food? Probably. Same thing with some of those other categories. If Philadelphia has a couple of great Malaysian restaurants, NYC also has around the same number of Malaysian restaurants at right around the same level. But, again, 2 great Malaysian restaurants out of a total of around 30 does not seem like "a lot" to someone who lives in NYC. It seems likely that neither NYC nor Philadelphia can be counted as a "great city" for Vietnamese or Malaysian food.
What Philly, IMO, seems to kick most everyone's ass at is the big sloppy juicy hot sandwich. The New Orleans po' boy is perhaps the only other contender for top honors.
-
What's the rationale behind diluting the bitters down to 90 proof? Why not leave it at, say, 150 proof?
-
Just as points of data, because I agree that there are any number of things in Philly that are either better or not available in NYC:
We have really excellent Indonesian food: Hardena (1754 South Hicks - get somebody to take you...)We have a good selection of Malaysian: Penang, Banana Leaf, Aqua, Asia @ cafe.Malaysian in NYC. Skyway and Fatty Crab are standouts.
As has already been mentioned, we have very good Vietnamese food, which may not be completely absent in NYC, but seems to be rare. It's routine here.Vietnamese in NYC. Not Houston, by any means, but 74 restaurants.
We've got two Laotian restaurants; Cafe de Laos and Vientianne.No Laotian restaurants of which I am aware, but many of the dishes served at e.g., Sripraphai are actually Laotian.
What's the Ethiopian dining scene in New York like?Around twelve Ethiopean restaurants. Zoma is especially good, which it would have to be to turn Fat Guy on to Ethiopian food (see thread in the NY forum). There are a number of other restaurants serving the various cuisines of different African culinary traditions.
-
Genevieve is really, in my experience, "genever-esque." It has some similarities with "real" genever, but is much more aggressively flavored and is also a bit "hot."
All of which is to say that there really is no substitute for Genevieve. If you want a traditional genever of excellent quality, seek out the new Bols bottling. But it won't work the same way that Genevieve does.
Damrak and Zuidam also strike me as "genever-esque" but in the other direction. They're more in-between genever and London gin (a bit short on the malt character) whereas Genevieve is more like genever that has been pushed past it's usual characteristics by amplifying the flavoring and pushing up the proof.
-
i have a feeling that its just like extract in wine. of course there are ridiculous amounts of compounds but when people say its over extracted it just means there is too much of all of them to be elegant...
My understanding is that "over extracted" in wine means that the wine has been left on the skin and pulp for too long, thereby extracting too much flavor and other compounds from the skin and pulp.
-
Maybe. Maybe not. It's difficult to say without being able (a) to see a chemical analysis of the components of lemon and lime juice, along with their various concentrations; and (b) to have, or be given an understanding of the properties of the various components identified in the analysis.
-
I don't understand the question. Do I think the difference in their aromatic compounds is substantially due to the difference in the acid concentrations? No. I imagine that you could spike some lemon juice with a touch of acetic acid, and it would still taste and behave like lemon juice. But it might be worth trying. It's possible that a difference of 0.005 grams per ounce of ascorbic acid could be primarily responsible for the difference. I just don't think that it is.
Rather, I think that it's a well understood fact that different aromatic compounds have different properties and different thresholds of sensitivity and different volatility, etc. And I think that a lemon has a lot of aromatic compounds that a lime doesn't have, and vice-versa. And I think it's possible that one has a greater concentration of certain aromatic compounds than the other. Or perhaps that this works both ways. And I think that is what is responsible for the difference. Complex, but ultimately simple. They taste different because they taste different.
-
I'm not sure how much difference the pH of the juice makes so much as the total acidity of the juice when it gets into the drink. Similarly, I don't know that I think the sugar content of the juice makes a huge difference, within reasonable boundaries, since the acidity will be balanced by sweetness and other flavors in the drink anyway. These all can make a huge difference in drinking the juice all on it's own, but that's a different story.
Lemon juice and lime juice are remarkably similar in their acid content. Lemon juice contains around 1.44 grams of citric acid and 0.014 grams of ascorbic acid per fluid ounce, whereas lime juice contains around 1.38 grams of citric acid and 0.009 grams of ascorbic acid per fluid ounce.
Other than the slight difference in ascorbic acid content, they are quite similar. So, then, the main difference between these two juices will be the aromatic compounds they bring to the table.
My overall feeling is that lemon juice has the unique ability of being able to provide bright acidity to a cocktail and yet withdrawing into the background. A Sidecar, for example, does not scream "LEMON!" To highlight the clear presence of lemon, we need a lemon peel twisted over the surface of the drink. A Daiquiri, on the other hand, certainly does say "LIME" loud and clear. Lime juice, I feel, is overall more assertive and its flavors (really aromas, I suppose) tend to "cut" in a way that lemon juice does not.
-
Grating cheese over the plate is always a good accent for something like this. As is minced parsley. Or a pinch of crushed red pepper.
Once you go much beyond that, you're not really in a "simple tomato sauce" any more. Then, the possibilities are infinite.
I'm not sure how you contemplate incorporating things such as spinach, arugula or watercress. Finely chopped and added as a herb at the end?
Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 5)
in Cooking
Posted
It's probably rust from a different source, actually.
I've found that it's not a bad idea to periodically soak the whole bottom apparatus in a strong solution of water and CLR.