slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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Yea... I think that "fast food" and "cheap eats" and "street food" and "junk food" and "low cuisine" have all been conflated with one another in much of the popular imagination, so that to many people they are all synonymous.
Burger King's "Whopper," for example, may be "fast food," "cheap eats," "junk food" and "low cuisine", whereas Shake Shack's "Double Shackburger" is perhaps better described only as "low cuisine."
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. . . I have been trying to figure out what the hell a tincture is exactly. . .
I don't think there is any cut-and-dried definition of tincture that would apply to our usage.
In medicine, a tincture is an alcoholic solution containing the extract of a non-volatile substance. For example, tincture of opium or tincture of iodine. An alcoholic solution containing the extract of a volatile substance was called "spirit of [whatever]."
For our purposes, what we're talking about is the extract of some substance, both the volatile and non-volatile parts in an alcoholic solution. The best way to do this is using as close to pure alcohol you can get.
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I just read the review. $14 for two cups of gazpacho does seem a bit extravagant for an apparently funky vegan joint. I think that a Michelin 3 star might not charge quite so much for such a simple and cheap dish.
I don't know how we got the idea that it was $14 for the gazpacho. The price was nine dollars for the gazpacho, not fourteen. Nine bucks seems like a pretty reasonable price for two cups of al-organic gazpacho.
The "reviewer" complains of an entree salad at $14 (the real price appears to be $13) and a sandwich of raw cashew "hummus" with chopped lettuce, guacamole, sprouts and tomato on onion "bread" at $14. These prices are by no means cheap, but certainly not outrageously high either.
One of the things I think a lot of people forget about restaurants like this is that it is quite a bit more expensive to run. There is no cooked food. Cooked food has a longer shelf life. Food with preservatives has a longer shelf life. Frozen food has a longer shelf life. They can't take advantage of any of this. The onion "bread" on the sandwich? Has to be made in-house by a laborious process that takes 24 hours or more to do. And, unlike real bread, it doesn't last for several days. These things all drive up the price.
You can see the menu here. Nothing seems particularly overpriced to me. But, then again, my frame of reference isn't the $5.95 all-you-can-eat buffet at Cici's.
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Maybe it's just me, but I'm not a hard-core "either or" kinda gal. In most larger cities, there are vegetarian/vegan/New Age etc. restaurants, many of them quite famous, that do wonderful things. I'll admit I usually find that sort of menu more appealing for lunch than dinner, but I definitely seek them out and patronize them.
Who knew? So, what raw vegan restaurants have you been to?
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It doesn't sound to me as if she insulted her intended customer base. I think she made her point loud and clear.
I agree that "she made her point loud and clear." And a large part of her point may not have insulted her "intended" customer base, but it definitely insulted a large percentage of her potential customer base.
I think this, as a general rule of thumb, may be true. However, I don't think it is likely to be the case with respect to people who might be customers at a raw vegan restaurant. This kind of thing is preaching to the choir, really.
A "regular" lacto-ovo cooked food vegetarian restaurant might have concerns about turning off the curious. But it's not like hamburger-eaters are ever going to make up a percentage of this restaurant's clientele lerge enough to even measure, never mind worry about turning off. If anything, bashing back at a banquet-eating, bacon-scarfing nonbeliever is likely to attract vegetarians or dilletantes... much in the same way that fire-and-brimstone preachers may turn off most people, but still manage to increase their flocks.
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That was stupid on the part of the restaurant, of course. But, having taken a few minutes to peruse the reviewer's other reviews I have to say that Ms. Blackwell has some valid points. Why would a person whose other reviews reflect a fondness for very cheaply priced all-you-can-eat buffets along the lines of Golden Corral and Cici's, and who does things like complaining that one breakfast buffet didn't have enough bacon -- why would this person think she would like a middlebrow raw vegan restaurant?
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By "menthe" one assumes you are referring to what we in the English-speakling world call "mint" flavor, and not the naiad from Greek mythology?
I'm curious as to your basis for asserting that the Savoy Book is "menthe happy." From what I can tell there are 24 cocktails in the Savoy with crème de menthe (the Alexander's Sister Cocktail, the American Beauty, the Caruso Cocktail, the Castle Dip Cocktail, the Cold Deck Cocktail, the Diana Cocktail, the Dixie Whisky Cocktail, the Ethel Cocktail, the Fallen Angel Cocktail, the Fantasio Cocktail No. 1, the Fantasio Cocktail No. 2, the Hell Cocktail, the Hurricane Cocktail, the Knock Out Cocktail, the Mint Cocktail, the Mint Cooler, the Monte Carlo Imperial Cocktail, the Pall Mall Cocktail, the Pousse Cafe, the Shamrock Cocktail, the Snowball Cocktail, the Stinger Cocktail, the Virgin Cocktail and the White Wings Cocktail). Now, 24 cocktails seems like an awfully large number. But in reality it works out to only around 3 percent -- and perhaps even less when we consider that 5 of these cocktails are variations of brandy with crème de menthe. We'd hardly call a book of 100 cocktail recipes that contained 3 calling for crème de menthe "menthe happy."
I'm curious as to your basis for asserting that "the classic mate pairing is with menthe." Do you have a reference somewhere to this effect?
Classically I would think that yerba mate isn't paired with anything at all, but is rather consumed by itself. After that, it's not clear to me that mint has a place of preference when it comes to combining yerba mate with other flavors. For example, a google search for yerba mate mint yields 54,200 results. But a search for yerba mate orange yields 186,000 results. Even yerba mate grapefruit yields significantly more results than mint, clocking in with 143,000. Other than the fact that yerba mate and mint are both asterids, they don't even seem particularly related from a botanical standpoint. They are in entirely different Orders (yerba mate being a kind of holly, while mint is a flowering herb). The sole google hit relating yerba mate with "menthe" is... well, from bostonapothecary.com. This doesn't give me a lot of confidence that mint is "the" classic pairing with yerba mate.
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I think the extra 3.75 grams is likely to be quite significant, being as it is nearly an entire extra tsp of sugar, and many, myself included, would consider a tsp of sugar nearly sufficient in itself to balance out half a lemon.
Really? A teaspoon of sugar weighs 4 grams. Many people seem to think that lemon juice and 1:1 simple syrup "balance" at more or less equal volumes. That would mean, more or less, 13 grams of sucrose to balance the 3/4 ounce of lemon juice in Dale's drink. This would all depend on the sourness of the lemon, of course, and the inherrent sweetness of the base spirit. All of which is to say that 4 grams of sugar with 3/4 ounce of fresh lemon juice in a 2 ounce base drink doesn't seem as though it would "balance." Rather, I would expect it to be "tart" to "very tart." Now, that might be pretty good (for example, I like a Daiquiri with a half-ounce of lime juice against somewhat less than a teaspoon of sugar) -- but I would expect it to be quite sour. More of a bracer than a sipper.
I have often marvelled at the apparent sweet tooth evidenced by the recipes coming out of the NYC cocktail scene. For my own palate I can often easily cut the sugar in half as a starting point and still have a drink that is plenty rich and balanced.Interesting. I actually think that we're seeing a trend in some NYC cocktailian circles towards a fairly austere "brown spirits stirred with bitter flavors" style that, while having great appeal to me personally and the cocktail geek crowd in general, perhaps doesn't have as broad an appeal. I'd be curious to know which cocktails you're thinking of.
One thing to keep in mind is that, for example, some of Audrey's most famous cocktails (e.g., Tantris Sidecar) were developed perhaps as many as ten years ago or more, during an entirely different era of American mixology. Certainly this is true of just about all of Dale's iconic drinks.
I did have to learn the hard way the lesson Mr. DeGroff explains in the linked article, that my palate is not the palate of the public, but I do find often that the heavy use of simple syrup can sacrifice complexity in the name of drinkability ("smoothness").Two good points there. Obviously one needs to create and serve cocktails that the public will buy and enjoy, but at the same time being mindful of the fact that we'd like to evolve the public palate and also that sweetness shouldn't be a crutch.
At the same time, I belive that a palate that is biased too far in the direction of sour or dry can also sacrifice complexity. For example, one isn't able to appreciate the suave smoothness of cognac in a Sidecar where the lemon juice still "bites" in the mouth or leaves behind that "raw" citrus aftereffect. Similarly, I feel that drinks which would like to use minute amounts of modifiers miss the whole point of the cocktail. (Not that you are advocating any of these things, I should hasten to point out.)
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Yep, I get that. Interesting find.
I'm not so sure that this was a lifelong practice or principle of Dale's, so much as a way that he dealt with the challenge of making a sour with only 2 ounces of spirit that needed to look good in an 8 ounce glass back in his early days. By using 1 ounce of 1:1 simple instead of 1/2 ounce of 2:1 simple, he got a bit more volume and decided that looked better. Not a bad idea if you have to use a gigantic glass, although I think it's preferable to use a smaller one.
Of course, he could have shaken the drink a bit longer and got the extra dilution that way, but that's neither here nor there. What's interesting to me is that one ounce of 1:1 simple does not have the same amount of sugar as a half-ounce of 2:1 simple. A half-ounce of 2:1 simple contains around 14 grams of sucrose. An ounce of 1:1 simple contains around 17.75 grams of sucrose -- 26% more. In real terms we're only talking about 3.75 grams of sucrose difference, which is relatively small but perhaps significant.
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My mistake. I guessed I assumed you would have seen plenty of recipes from books written prior to, say, 1980 (viz. Jerry Thomas' Bartender's Guide, Savoy Cocktail Book, The Gentleman's Companion, Old Waldorf=Astoria Bar Book, Stork Club Bar Book, etc.). When you wrote "classic and otherwise" I assumed you were referring to classic recipes rather than modern re-writings of recipes for classic cocktails.
The point I was making was simply that the recipes in these pre-1980 (or so) cocktail books seem to use simple syrups of widely differing strengths, often in the same book depending on who they cribbed recipes from, and not often clearly or transparently.
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In addition to Sam's good points above, I'd add that most of the cocktail recipes I've seen, classic and otherwise, refer either to 1:1 or 2:1 syrups.
I'd say that depends greatly on whose recipes you're reading. Certainly most of the modern bartenders in the US have designed their cocktails around 1:1 or, significantly less commonly, 2:1 simple syrup. And often when someone provides a recipe for a very old recipe using modern measures (e.g., ounces instead of wine glasses, etc.) the volume of syrup is often standardized to 1:1 or occasionally 2:1.
But if you go back to the original sources, often times formulae that seem odd (e.g., a half-ounce or more of lemon juice balanced with "two dashes" of simple syrup) will make a lot more sense once you understand the saturation of the simple syrup being used. This is, of course, further complicated by the fact that old recipes were often cribbed verbatim, so just because a certain recipe is found in a certain book does not mean that it calls for the same kind of simple syrup as other recipes in the same book that might be creations of the author or cribbed from a different source (there's the even further complication of "what did this guy mean by 'a dash,'" but that's for another discussion). All of which is to say that I don't necessarily think it's safe to say that the simple syrup specified in pre-revival recipes is necessarily 1:1.
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I think that a lot of US bartenders use a 1:1 simple syrup because it's easy to make without heating the syrup and, if you're really doing a lot of volume, slight under/overpours are less of a problem. I like to use a more saturated syrup for home use, because it has better stability.
I would be surprised if Dale said that he liked to "bulk up" his drinks or increase volume by adding simple syrup. Do you have a reference for this?
I have my doubts as to whether a 9:1 syrup is really practical to make and use. Is that what you use? My experience is that, unless I incorporate gum arabic, it's difficult to go as saturated as even 4:1 without significant recrystallization in the bottle. Clearly with the right technology and know-how it's possible to make an extremely saturated syrup that doesn't recrystallize. Lyle's Golden Syrup is a good example of this. That said, a supersaturated syrup such as Lyle's is not particularly congenial to work with. It's so thick that it's difficult to measure and difficult to mix into the rest of the drink.
I also don't quite understand how/where the tradition arose of calling supersaturated syrup "gum" or "gomme" syrup when it doesn't contain gum arabic (this seems to be mosly a UK thing). For example, Jerry Thomas's recipe for (faux) "gum syrup" (see: here) works out to something like 24.8 grams of sugar per fluid ounce. This is actually less saturated than a typical 2:1 by-volume simple, which works out to around 28 grams of sugar per fluid ounce.
I am a huge fan of gum arabic, which not only gives a great silky mouthfeel but also is great for stabilizing foams. The latter property is often overlooked, but can make a big difference for egg white drinks or any drink where you would like to have a "head" on the drink. I've often thought it might be useful to have a syrup made entirely of gum arabic that could be added to drinks specifically for the silky mouthfeel or foam-enhancing properties without adding any sweetness.
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Robert, I'm not sure what exactly you tested here.
You were somehow able to test the accuracy of the temperature probe directly?
Or did you hook up the various controllers to some kind of water bath and test whether the temperature the controller gave for the the water bath matched the temperature your fancy logging thermometer gave for the water bath? If so, what setup did you use? And did you place your fancy probe exactly alongside the controller probe when taking the temperature readings?
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Jeff, I think she's asking for Luxardo Cherries (like these. These are quite difficult to find at retail, and fairly expensive.
I gather you're thinking of Luxardo maraschino liqueur. Much easier to find.
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I've used both the powder kind and the kind you mix with water. My thinking is that the liquid kind is a little easier to apply to something that's likely to have a bunch of crags and slivers and little crannies in it like a chuckeye that you've dug around in with a knife to remove the sinews and the big pockets of hard fat. You can just brush it on with one of those silicone brushes and really get it in to all the hidden places where you need binding.
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Is there a way to break down the gelatine in a sauce so that it does not coagulate?
I assume you're referring to the "scum" that coagulates when you boil the exuded meat liquid from a sous vide bag? That's not gelatin. I find that it's quite easy to remove this by skimming as much as possible while gently simmering, then turning off the heat and allowing the coagulant to settle, then pouring off the clear liquid (through a fine sieve, if you like).
NOW--I like the texture of 48 chuck or short rib at 131, but I don't like the fat. Could I cook them at 131 for 40 hours then a few hours at a fat melting temp and keep the texture I got from the gelatin formation?The texture you got is not only from the conversion of collagen to gelatin. It is also due to the fact that you didn't exeed the boundary temperature for "medium rare." If you raise the temperature -- and certainly if you raise the temperature high enough to melt out significant fat -- you will lose this texture.
The only way to not have this fat is to trim it out, preferably before cooking. If you can get your hands on some Activa, you could trim out most of the hard pockets of fat and re-bind the meat before cooking. I've done this with a chuckeye roast.
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I normally do 1000 grams of AP flour with 700 grams of water and perhaps a half-teaspoon of yeast. That's enough for three large pizzas.
You only get three pizzas out of that? That's going to be roughly (I didn't do the math, so...) 16-20 oz per pie. I usually do about 6-9oz per pie. Perhaps you have a gigantic oven or I'm missing something.
That's 20 ounces of dough per pizza, that's right. These are not individually-sized pizzas, however. Usually I stretch it out into a rectangle that's approximately the same size and shape as my baking stone. This works out to right around the same square inches as a 17.5 inch round pizza. If I were going to do a 12 inch Neapolitan-style "personal" pizza, this has approximately half the surface area, and I'd use half as much dough per pizza. For a 10 inch pizza, I'd use one-third as much dough. So, if you're making 10 inch pizzas with around 7 ounces of dough per pizza, we're using the same amount of dough. This assumes, of course, that we're using approximately the same hydration.
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To answer a few questions:
Eliza: No need to scale up the yeast. Just ferment longer. I normally do 1000 grams of AP flour with 700 grams of water and perhaps a half-teaspoon of yeast. That's enough for three large pizzas. If I were going to double the recipe, I wouldn't add any more yeast. If I were going to increase the recipe ten-fold, I'd increase the yeast (or I'd start with a poolish).
tino27: No salt because salt isn't traditional. The toppings will be salty enough. Salt is only really needed in the dough when it's going to be a thick crust and the lack of salt would make the pizza bland.
saturnbar: I ferment in a large covered bowl on the counter overnight. After that, it goes into a large plastic bag and into the refrigerator for 5 days or more. The reason I like to do the initial overnight fermentation at room temperature is so that the very small amount of yeast I use has a chance to really get going before I bring the temperature down to a level where it will start to inhibit yeast growth. If I put it directly into the refrigerator, it would take forever to ferment.
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I believe that the "releasing a thin film of trapped oil" bit is a myth. Read dougal's good explanations above (starting around here).
I should also add that I've got antique Griswold that has been in my family for around 100 years, and it is not what I'd call "nonstick" by the standards of a PTFE-coated pan. -
For sure a frozen mixing vessel with a high thermal mass can make a huge difference.
I agree that it's possible for a cocktail to be too cold. And I'll go one further and suggest that it depends on the cocktail. I often find that stirred cognac cocktails are better after they've had a chance to warm back up a bit. On the other hand, a Martini can't be too cold for my palate.
More to the point, however, is the fact that your cocktail can always warm up a bit after that bracingly cold first sip. But it's never going to get any colder than it is when the bartender puts the glass in front of you. Better then to err on the side of too cold.
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-Any ideas on what the flour to water ratio of an ideal thin crust might be? (i wasn't sure if mroybal's 100:68 recipe is used for thin-crust)
I do 70% hydration (water weighs 70% as much as the weight of the flour) with AP flour. If you use bread flour, which I do not recommend, you'll have to use more water to get a similar amount of extensibility. No salt. No fat.
-Does a thin crust have less to do with recipe and more to do with simply "rolling" it very thin with your hands?
There's not much to a "recipe" for pizza dough. Mix a bunch of water and flour together with some yeast, fement, bake. The higher the hydration and the longer the fermentation, the more extensibility you will get. You do not want to "roll" the dough, because this will work out any little pockets of air in the dough that you want to keep. Just put the dough on your work surface and poke it with your finger tips until you get the thickness you want. A wetter/longer fermented dough makes this a lot easier.
-Is there a realistic way to make a large batch of dough, enough for 15 or 20 10-in. pies, without a giant Hobart mixer?
Yes, use a no-knead recipe.
-Does a longer rest minimize the kneading/mixing time, as it does with Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe? (I know there's a no-knead pizza dough recipe floating around, but it hasn't gotten great feedback)
If no-knead pizza dough has had bad feedback, I'm not aware of it. My standard method is 70% hydration with AP flour, a very small amount of yeast, no kneading, overnight fermentation and then retarding the dough in the refrigerator for several days. Works like a charm every time. If you don't have time or space to retard the dough, just let it go 24 hours at room temperature, turning the dough over every so often. Still, though, nothing beats the slackness of a long-retarded pizza dough. When I started retarding the dough for 5 days or longer, my wife immediately noticed an improvement in the final product.
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See discussion here.
The impression I get from the Italians I know is that they don't think it tastes any different than it always did. My hypothesis is that the "old formula" Campari in the US tastes different due to the effects of aging/oxidation.
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Eh...? I think you'll find that if you drop an egg into your cast iron pan with no fat and do the same thing with your PTFE-coated pan, you'll see that the PTFE-coated pan is significantly more nonstick than your cast iron pan.
Cast iron can be realtively nonstick given certain parameters. One of those parameters is the presence of plenty of fat. You want to cook up some sausages? Nonstick. Coat the inside with oil, heat it up and cook some cornbread? Nonstick. Crispy-skin fish without breaking the skin? Not likely. Scrambled eggs in minimal fat? No way.
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I have made sous vide duck confit many times. I salt and herb overnight, rinse off in the morning, seal each leg individually with a tablespoon of frozen duck fat, and cook 8-10 hours at 82C, chill in an ice bath, and in to the back of the refrigerator until I need it. Works like a charm.
MexChef: If you're doing it sous vide, why the time constraint? One brilliant thing about sous vide cooking is the "set it and forget it" aspect. If you can cure them beforehand, why not also cook them beforehand? It's not like you have to be awake and standing over the circulator while the duck legs are cooking. Do them overnight while you sleep. Heck, do it a week ahead of time. Do it a month ahead of time. So long as you keep it below around 4C (i.e., coldest spot in the refrigerator) it should last a long time.
What Makes A Burger Place Fast Food?
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Interesting. On reflection, it strikes me that "fast food" really should be "fast food restaurant" because it describes the way the food is produced, sold and consumed more than it does the food itself.
You could have two hamburgers that were more or less identical, but one could be "fast food" and the other not.