slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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I don't think you want to re-post the blog entry to the forum so much as you want to be able to pull the blog entry and somehow display the content incorporated into the megadiscussion site in a reasonably organic way that also preserves the individuality and graphics of the blog. You would want to make it possible for people to comment on the blogs using the same login that they used to post to the forums.
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I think these are largely valid points. Certainly the various megadiscussion sites have lost a certain amount of the leading-edge currency they had 5 years ago.
I also believe that the first online discussion forum that figures out a way to aggregate participating blogs from a wide variety of platforms in a seamless way that manages to preserve the individuality and control of the blogs for the bloggers, makes it convenient for participants to find, view and comment on a large number of blogs that interest them, and which also preserves the "start a thread and have a group discussion" aspect of the megadiscussion forums, will stand a very good chance of becoming or remaining the "next big thing." This is, of course, largely a technological matter.
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If you want to re-crisp roasted chicken skin, may I suggest a blowtorch?
(No, I'm not kidding.)
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The flavor is different if you saute the onions (which also destroys the effect of starting everything together cold) Try them side-by-side sometime. When you just put in a whole onion, it contributes a very subtle but discernable flavor and perhaps a touch of sweetness to the sauce, but the sauce remains fundamentally light and tomato-flavored.
You discard the onion because, after it has contributed its flavor to the sauce, it is mushy and flavorless.
Adding whole aromatic vegetables to tomato sauce which are later discarded after having contributed their flavor is a fairly common Italian technique. When my mother lived in Rome after the War, their family cook used to simmer tomato sauce with a whole stalk of celery that was discarded at the end. And, of course, it is quite common to simmer the sauce with a few whole cloves of garlic that are either discarded or not intended to be eaten.
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Needing to be in Pforzheim of an afternoon for a business meeting, I am interested in knowing what the top fine dining restaurants are in this city. Anyone here have any ideas?
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My personal belief is that American-made tomato sauces for pasta (which is to say, not a sauce where the tomato plays an equal role with other ingredients such as bucatini all'amatriciana) typically suffer because (i) they have an overabundance of herbs, frequently dried; (ii) there is too much garlic; (iii) they are overwrought, with far too many ingredients; or (iv) all of the above.
The very most that might be needed for the most elaborate basic tomato sauce would be a one or two lightly crushed cloves of garlic, a medium onion, a stalk of celery, perhaps a touch of carrot for sweetness and a few branches of thyme. Once you go beyond that and start throwing in the dried basil and oregano and celery seed and rosemary and fennel and mushrooms and red wine and sausage and peppers and olives and sun dried tomato and etc, etc, etc. . . . To my taste, it just becomes muddled and not all that good.
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Seems to me that it's a lot easier and more effective to bring the liquid up to a hard boil so that it does coagulate, then run it through a fine sieve.
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I have long shared the goal Nargi described here!
I learned about Samuel Lloyd Kinsey's tomato sauce only here
so have yet to try it!
Here is what I do toward the goal Nargi described:
Ah yes, the classic "simple" project sauce. A mere 14 ingredient, nine step , three and a half hours preparation-and-cooking tomato sauce.
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Blend it smooth, thin it out with a little water or white wine, maybe swirl in the merest whisper of cream and you've got yourself a pretty nice bowl of tomato soup.
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A quick question here, do you need to pass the tomatoes in a mill to get a fine texture in order to achieve a better emulsion with the butter? Would chopping the tomatoes on a cutting board work as well? I do have a food mill but I generally like a bit of texture in my tomato sauce.
Do it however you like. You can hand-crush the tomatoes to whatever texture you like, you can pass them through the coarse die on a food mill (what I usually do) or you can put them in there whole and crush them with a fork or potato masher after they're cooked.
I added garlic and basil to mine since I'm such a rebel.Honestly, to me it is the simplicity of this sauce -- and particularly the absence of garlic -- that makes it so special.
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Yea. It's the same "school of mixology" as at all of the other Petraske-partnership places. This is a fairly conservative school, I find, and most of the drinks are either classics (e.g., Brooklyn, Rye Silver Fizz) or neo-classic style (e.g., Red Hook, Silver Lining). Occasionally there will be a drink from this school that breaks out of the style just a bit, such as the Penecillin. All of which is to say that I find you can get more or less the same cocktails all in more or less the same stylistic space in all of the Petraske-partnership bars, and it doesn't tend to be mixology that is forward-looking in the way that it is at some of the other top cocktail bars in the city. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, by the way. I think it's wonderful to be able to avail ourselves of such fine craftsmen working in the "classic style" aesthetic space.
Whether the ice makes a difference to you is hard to say. I think it's pretty cool. But all the top cocktail bars are already using pretty good ice at this point.
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Try it with the best canned tomatoes in your budget, and I think you will be well satisfied.
This is a recipe and technique that I think is in one of the Marcella Hazan books. But I was first introduced to it by my friend and ace cook Joe Bavuso, so to me it has always been "salsa alla Bavusiana."
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Yep. I thought I had re-posted on this, but guess I hadn't got 'round to it. I asked Richie and he said that, as of right now, it is only Dutch Kills that is using the clear commercial block ice. At some point I plan to go there and take some photographs when they break down the 300 pound blocks.
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Just about anything. I've used it with penne and spaghetti (usually with crushed red pepper and parsley). I've used it with fresh pasta (where the inclusion of butter makes it work much better than oil-based tomato sauces). And it's my go-to sauce for gnocchi.
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What do you figure it will cost to get a strong, sanitary, food-safe weld on that thing? More than the cost of a new one, I'm guessing. And what do you figure heating it up to welding temperature will do to the rest of it -- specifically, that fancy enamel coating that's the whole reason you paid that much for it.
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It's not going to help, I'm afraid. Think about it: What are you going to do? Melt the iron back together? Using what? And at what expense? And what would that do to the rest of the pot?
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I have done side-by-side comparisons making this sauce using butter in one and olive oil in the other. There was no comparison. The butter version was lightyears better. The olive oil version, in fact, actually wasn't all that good. All of which is to say that butter is crucial to this sauce.
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No, there is no way to save the pot. I even doubt it would be possible to get a free replacement under Le Creuset's lifetime warranty, although it may be worth a try.
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I'm not saying that these people wouldn't be successful at doing those traditional foods. I'm just saying that there would be a healthy amount of skepticism from the people working in those culinary areas. And I'm also saying that it's not automatic -- not by a long stretch -- that Ferran and Albert would ever be good enough at whole hog barbecue to compete with Ed Mitchell. I mean, for goodness sake, give these other guys some credit for the decades of experience that made them this good at what they do.
Is it possible that the Adriás could make brilliant pizza? Sure. Of course. They're good cooks, and I have no doubt that if they approached opening a pizzeria with the same rigor that they employ in their work at ElBulli, it could possibly be very good. But, at the same time, I have a hard time imagining that this pizzeria is going to become Ferran and Albert's new post-ElBulli restaurant. So how much attention are they really going to be able to give it, when they're doing ElBulli-type stuff with such intensity for so much of the year?
Of course, if it were just some schmo in Spain who was going to open a pizzeria, no one would care to comment. I think that people are saying something because there are going to be automatic assumptions as to the "greatness" of such an undertaking simply because it is associated with Ferran and Albert Adriá. And make no mistake, this pizzeria is going to have to be absolutely outstanding in one way or another, or it will be considered a failure. The reputation of the Adriás desn't afford them the luxury of opening a "pretty good" pizzeria any more than it was okay for Luciano Pavarotti to sing a "pretty good" high note.
To me, it's a bit like when Shaquille O'Neill proclaimed years ago that he thought he could be a pretty good professional football player in the NFL. On the one hand, you look at the guy and you think that he's got a pretty good body type for football, he's clearly an elite athlete in peak physical condition, he used to play football back in high school and had some success, so why not? On the other hand, I would expect such a move (i) would generate huge media attention and an automatic assumption by plenty of fans that he would translate into an elite football player; (ii) would be treated with a certain amount of skepciticism by working NFL players; and (iii) wouldn't necessarily mean that he'd be the next Reggie White and have anywhere near the success in the NFL that he was having in the NBA. It's not surprising that the Adriás are getting a similar reaction from people who have devoted careers to a culinary niche in which the Adriás have yet to dip their toes.
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My best advice: Forget all the herbs and spices and multi-stage preparation. You want a brilliant tomato sauce that is inexpensive and mind-blowingly delicious? Get a can of high-quality tomatoes, an onion, and a nice big lump of butter. Skin the onion and cut it in half. Crush or mill the tomatoes to whatever consistency you would like. Put the onion, butter, tomato and some salt into a cold saucepan. Turn the heat on low. Allow the sauce to come up to a gentle simmer over around 20 minutes, by which time the butter will emulsify into the sauce and the onion will have contributed its flavor. Discard the onion and use the sweet, tomatoey sauce. Add a little crushed red pepper or some minced fresh parsley off the heat, if you like. But nothing further is necessary.
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I suppose they are reacting in the same way Ed Mitchell might react if Ferran and Albert Adriá said they were going to open up a whole hog barbecue place, or perhaps the way Asturianos might react if Alain Ducasse (or, better yet, Grant Achatz) announced he was going to open a restaurant dedicated to fabada.
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taion, I don't know whether or not the size of the bar area is an "accident" or not (I suspect not), but what I think you don't understand is that the size of the bar area is not the reason there is not much breadth within individual spirit categories there. The reason there is much breadth within individual spirit categories there is because there is not very much storage space. Bars don't store their spirits in the bar, for the most part. That's just where they keep the bottles they're using (or perhaps as much as one additional bottle of each). Most bars have a big back room or a basement you never see, where they keep their inventory of spirits. The smaller your storeroom is, the smaller the inventory you can keep. The smaller your total inventory, the less breadth within individual spirit categories you can have, because you're using up all of your storage space just to have enough categories of spirits, nevermind breadth within them.
The reason it's unlikely that a bar so small would ever be able to have much breadth within individual spirit categories is that it becomes uneconomical to devote more than a certain percentage of your square footage to things like storage that aren't making you any money. Understanding that, we understand that a tiny bar will necessarily have a tiny (or perhaps almost nonexistent) storage area. Spirits, on the other hand, take up a fixed amount of space. Since cases of bottles are the same size whether you have a big storeroom or a small one, it's easy to understand how it is that tiny bars with tiny storerooms have their hands full just making sure they have enough room in there to stock a case each of a good brand for all the basic spirits and modifiers -- having 4 different kinds of rye is out of the question.
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"Profitably" was a poor choice of words there, my bad. I should have said "can't stay in business" rather than "can't be done profitably".
Ultimately, people get into this business to make a profit -- not just to stay in business.
It really doesn't seem to me that the size of M&H's bar area is purely due to the size of the space; M&H has 4 seats at the bar vs 24 seats at tables (more if some are used as 5-tops). I'm pretty sure this is the lowest ratio of any of the serious cocktail bars out there, and to me is actually a strike against them. And in part this contributes to their low volumes, since only one bartender can work at a time; this is especially a waste, since the person serving the drinks has always been, as far as I could tell, another bartender.I'm not sure if you're talking about the physical size of the space or the selection of booze. The latter is easy to figure out: It is a tiny space with serious storage constraints, and the liquor inventory and selection is curated accordingly.
As for the size of the bar area. . . It seems to me that a bar can take up quite a lot of room that could be occupied by paying customers. They don't really need any more bar space to serve 24 customers, and it strikes me as likely that there is no way they could have a larger bar without sacrificing capacity -- and they're already about as small as you can get and still make a buck.
I'm also not sure that the size of the bar are or the fact that one bartender is servicing 24 customers at capacity is the reason the volume is lower than it is in other places. Heck, at Flatiron Lounge on a Friday night, the bartenders are serviging a lot more than 24 customers each, and they do a ton of volume. Rather, I think that the very nature of Milk & Honey, the very things that make it a cool place to hang out (more quiet, more intimate, less frenetic, etc.) lend themselves to a slower pace of imbibing. And, of course, because of their reservations model, tables may go empty for as long as 30 minutes while they wait for the next people in line to arrive. These things all act to reduce volume.
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In at least the eariler days of my going to M&H, the hostess would also take orders. She'd constantly be shuttling between the bars and the tables, conveying patrons' requests and bartenders' recommendations -- although some of the hostesses had a pretty admirable knowledge of different cocktail possibilities themselves.
If she was Italian, then she was also a bartender.
Tired of the Alice Waters Backlash - Are You?
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
As I've mentioned before in other threads, "organic" doesn't necessarily mean any of these things. An organic farmer can practice intensive, non-sustainable agriculture and use any number of pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, etc. so long as those things are all "organic." In the United States, for example, an organic farmer can use copper sulfate. Copper sulfate has been banned in Europe because it is a permanent soil contaminant that has high toxicity for both humans and fish. But it is organic.
Similarly, as pointed out in this article at Huffington Post:
Personally, I have always felt that small farmer was far more important than organic, although I recognize that boutique small farmers will never be able to grow enough food to feed this country, and that we need to figure out ways to do large-scale industrial farming and raising of livestock in a more responsible and ethical way.
I think that some of this can be a matter of cutting Alice some slack because she's preaching to the choir, and in this instance you're the choir. To a certain extent, she's preaching to the choir to me as well, and I don't find her personally all that annoying to me, but putting myself into someone else's shoes, I can understand how she might be to them.
I have some experience with this sort of thing myself. I am a lifelong performer and consumer of classical music, and I believe that our society would be a lot better if the arts were a larger part of our educational curriculum and everyday lives. I also believe that, as a culture, the popular music and art that most of us consume is pablum, and not only reflective of but contributing to, in a vicious cycle, the dumbing-down of our society and our cultural lives. At the same time, I recognize that, as much as I believe it would make our society better for people to listen to Radiohead less and Benjamin Britten more, I'm not going to accomplish much by telling people that if they stopped spending so much money on Nikes and start spending on tickets to the Metropolitan Opera, they would figure out that Kanye West (or whoever) is crap, and would improve their cultural lives -- despite the fact that I actually believe this is true. And, believe me, I could easily make some "Alice Waters-style" comments about the musical listening choices of most of the people who participate in these forums that would make you feel like I was talking down to you and turn you all off to my message just as much as Waters can with the way she expresses her message sometimes. Meanwhile, plenty of my like-minded colleagues in the world of classical music wouldn't see any reason why people might be turned off at my plainspoken statement of something that is not only self-evident but also aimed at "helping these people be better."