slkinsey

Translation: This is a very bad and dangerous idea. Don't do it.

Just noticed that from the enzymatic clarification link you posted slkinsey. Do you think using a modifier to adjust the pH would remedy this? I don't know why you would want to do this, since the sourness is what makes sour orange juice interesting. It's hard to tell from this line whether they are referring to regular orange juice which they deem to be a tart juice, or regular orange juice that is especially tart, or juice from sour oranges.

On the flip side of this, it is difficult to overstate the amount of disposable income a 25 year old first year associate at a major law firm can have. It's true that law firms are cutting lawyers and cutting salaries, but it is still the case that an unmarried 25 year old lawyer in NYC can be making $150,000 a year before bonus. After you finish making accellerated payments on your huge student loans and paying the astronomical rent on your super-swanky Manhattan apartment, you've still got a LOT of money left over for fancy dinners. There are other industries for which similar economics are at work (although less now than 2 years ago, of course).

That's too bad. I guess the fresh blood oranges I buy from central valley farmers' at the market are better than the ones you get in NY. Or I suppose it could mean that we have much better juice oranges. I've had Moro and Sanguinello oranges in Italy... still didn't think they were all that special if you took away the color.

I have, as a general rule of thumb, found blood orange juice to look a lot better than it tastes. A few days ago I squeezed some fresh regular juice oranges, and they were far better than any blood orange juice I've ever had.

It appears to me that chef koo is seeking to clarify fresh fruit juices, and not "juices" or other liquids that are either typically cooked or are not significantly altered for the worse by cooking. I don't think anyone wants orange juice that has been boiled with egg whites. Gelatin or agar syneresis would seem to be the method that can be accomplished with easily available ingredients, but the yield isn't as good.

This is, needless to say, not a new idea, and in fact there is a thread here on hot dog-infused vodka going back to 2006. I don't think my thoughts on bacon-infused vodka have changed all that much since I wrote this a little over a year ago: So far there has been one interesting iteration of bacon-infused booze: Don's Benton's Old Fashioned, made with bourbon fat-washed with Benton's bacon fat.

Enzymatic clarification is the way you want to go.

Interesting. It seems as though "1/3" is equal to right around one "6-out" (0.75 versus 0.83)? ETA: The problem with the gill is that an Imperial gill is 5 US ounces and a US gill is 4 US ounces. Indeed, the US gill is approximately 5/6ths of an Imperial gill.

I wonder. On the other hand, as far as I know, the correct spelling of the Scandinavian toast is Skål.

I can see the argument for either one making sense. But the quote from Barflies and Cocktails hardly seems definitive either way. If we suppose that the jigger is more or less the same amount of liquid as the "wine-glass" from Jerry Thomas's day... then looking at most of the recipes in JT's book, it would appear that they call for around 1.5 ounces of liquid plus the odd dash or two of this or that. I wonder when notation of recipes in thirds became the style?

If the idea is that a jigger is equal to 1.5 ounces, and we have McElhone saying that one side of the measuring device holds "2/3" and the other side holds "1/3" -- wouldn't that make "1/3" equal to a half-ounce?

What is our basis for supposing that "1/3" is equal to 3/4 ounces?

Interesting. I would have assumed that "Oom Paul" was a strange misspelling of "oop pah" -- as in "oom pah pah" waltz music played by German/Austrian brass bands.

This topic isn't about the pizza of today, though. is it? This fork of the discussion grew out of a post upthread asking whether there were "something like Ray's where I'd go to get something like a definitive 'New York style' pizza" today. Probably the blend of cheeses and oven temperature (which is likely fairly low), as well as the sheer volume of cheese. From the way people are describing Ray's, I don't gather that a simple "extra cheese" would suffice.

I would say that the "standard" amount that seems to work well for recipes that specify an amount of citrus fruit rather than an amount of citrus juice is that one lime has three-quarter to one ounce of lime juice and one lemon has an ounce and a half to two ounces of lemon juice.

Well, I should stipulate that I am not primarily concerned about the Ray's of 1973 eaten in the context of 1970s-era NYC pizza and now viewed through the sentimental lens of time. I'm talking about the Ray's of now and the last 15 years or so, compared to what is available now. It doesn't seem reasonable to hold up a pizzeria making a style of pizza that may not have exited beyond a relatively short period of time 35 years ago as an exemplar of a style of NYC pizza. Ray's may have been a kind of "Di Fara of its day" (which is to say, a pinnacle of the NYC steel deck oven category) but it certainly isn't now, nor has it been for a long time. The fact is that today, anyone can go into a reasonably good local pizzeria and ask for a pizza with quadruple extra cheese and get a pizza that will be as good, if not better than what any branch of Ray's is turning out today. As to the old days, I think that Alan Richman put it best in his recent essay on pizza across America when he wrote, ". . . a beloved pizzeria is almost always about memories." But, to the extent that it may one day be possible to travel through time to 1973 and have a slice of Ray's pizza, on day it may be a "destination worthy" style to consider. Absent that possibility, I don't think it's worth a special trip for someone with an interest in pizza for all the reasons I outlined above.

Baker's Pride makes the HearthBake ovens. The new electric ones go up to 800F. They appear to be using a single-deck version of this one, which if gas-fired goes to 650F.

I think they probably also have a modern specialty oven that will fire at higher temperatures than the typical Blodgett or whatever (those typically max out at 650F, and almost no one runs them at maximum output anyway).

Really? I've never had pizza anywhere quite like Ray's on 6th & 11th. One may or may ot like it, but it is or at least was unique. It was NY style steel deck pizza by the slice on cheesified steroids. For this pie, the cheese came first with every thing else support. Fundamentally I don't think it breaks any stylistic boundaries, no. You go to pretty much any place and tell them to put quadruple extra cheese on the pizza, and you'll get something similar. One can quibble about the spicing of the sauce or whatever, but its nothing genre-defining. All we're talking about is stainless steel deck oven pizza with a sh!tload of extra cheese. No big deal. I'm not saying that it was not something that couldn't be duplicated, but it wasn't - at least noty in my experience. It doesn't work to go in and ask for extra cheese on a slice. either it was on from the beginning and served fresh or it didn't work. It may not have been a big deal in terms of its level of simplicity, but I've never seen anyone else pull it off the way they did. Their hay day was before your time in NYC and before Steven's coming of age. By the mid 80's when I was in Med School it wasn't the same anymore. All I'm saying is: (1) It isn't all that interesting to a pizza lover in terms of a "destination pizza" and doesn't represent a category of pizza they are unlikely to have experienced so much as an iteration of a very familiar category. I think that either today or back in 1977, someone would come to NYC and most likely say, "okay... this is just like Luigi's pizza back home, with a ton of cheese on it." Whether it's perceived as good would depend on whether or not they're into that sort of thing. and (2) Most anyone can get more or less the same pizza in their home town by going to their favorite pizzeria and ordering a whole pie with quadruple extra cheese.

It's not clear to me that they're using a steel deck oven at Great Lakes. Some places use gas-fired ovens that are more like the wood-burning ones (Fornino here in NY, for example). I have heard that the oven at Great Lakes only takes two pizzas at a time. Also, having looked at many pictures of Great Lakes pizzas, I wouldn't say that the crust appears outstanding, but it's certainly a lot better than what they're doing at Di Fara, and I think it's likely that the inventiveness of the ingredients (and, let's be honest, Di Fara is more or less just doing modestly upscaled versions of standard pizza parlor toppings) pushed it to the top.

Really? I've never had pizza anywhere quite like Ray's on 6th & 11th. One may or may ot like it, but it is or at least was unique. It was NY style steel deck pizza by the slice on cheesified steroids. For this pie, the cheese came first with every thing else support. Fundamentally I don't think it breaks any stylistic boundaries, no. You go to pretty much any place and tell them to put quadruple extra cheese on the pizza, and you'll get something similar. One can quibble about the spicing of the sauce or whatever, but its nothing genre-defining. All we're talking about is stainless steel deck oven pizza with a sh!tload of extra cheese. No big deal.

If you consistently go at the wrong time, Grimaldi's will be consistently bad. If you consistently go at the right time, Grimaldi's will be consistently good.

There is no single definitive "NY Style" pizza. What you will find is a variety of styles. For truly old-school NY pizza, you want to go to one of the old-school coal-fired oven places. I think that the best are Patsy's in East Harlem (not any of the others, which aren't related) and Grimaldi's in Brooklyn. Second tier includes Arturo's and Lombardi's. Then there are the new NY neo-Neapolitan places that have become important in the last decade or so. Franny's, Fornino, Keste, Co., UPN, etc. Then there are the NY steel deck oven "slice shop" places. Of this genre, surely the greatest by a long measure and really the only one in this style worth making a special trip to visit is Di Fara. If you're a pizza-lover, there is no branch of Ray's that's likely to wow you, and frankly it is a style that plenty of places around the country do on a level that is at least roughly comparable.

Yea. I think the big problem with this cocktail as you made it, Erik, is that the Savoy formula sucks. I've found it good with 2 ounces of gin and either a half-ounce each of lime and curaçao or three-quarters of an ounce of each. Never had any difficulties with London dry gin. Dave's post here talked about an early published formula he found in Cocktails, by "Jimmy" late of Ciro's published around 1930 (none seem to come from any earlier than 1920). This would have put it firmly in the dry gin era, and it gives a formula of 4:1:1 with dashes each of orange and Angostura bitters. With respect to the curaçao, I think the sweetness of the curaçao makes a big difference in getting the cocktail to balance correctly. Curaçaos such as Marie Brizard and the like tend to balance well with lime juice in approximately equal volumes. Grand Marnier, on the other hand, sends up on the tart side when mixed in equal volumes with lime juice. This can result in a refreshingly bracing drink 4:1:1, but I find the Pegu Club a bit raw if mixed using Grand Marnier and a ratio of two ounces gin to 3/4 ounce each of the modifiers.