slkinsey

I tried the arrack/genevieve drink several days ago. I found it an interesting quaff, but not one for the ages.

true, but one takes over and snuffs out the other. i know there are health nuts that are into lacto baccilus fermentation and they talk about minimizing the activity of other types like alcoholic to get the results they want. I used to have a keen interest in the microbiology of sourdough breads, which involves fermentation with both wild yeast and various lactobacilli. So I can tell you for sure that this is not correct. Are there certain conditions one could establish that minimize either yeast or lactobacillus conditions? Sure. But this isn't, generally speaking, one of them. You also have to understand that, in a spontaneous fermentation like this, there are going to be plenty of microorganisms in there fermenting away in addition to yeast and lactobacilli. Think of lambic beers, for example, or any of the many potential contaminant organisms of homebrewed beers. In a sugar-rich environment like this, the lactobacilli eat sugars and excrete acid. For sure, fermentation by lactobacilli will increase acidity (I should also point out that their activity is also largely halted beyond a certain pH). But, you know... all the microorganisms in there will eat a little bit of most things in the mash.

"How many rums do I need?" is not really a question that can be answered. Or rather, the answer is: as many different ones as there different drinks and styles of drinks that you want to make, depending on how picky you are about specificity. Here are a pair of posts I made in a similar thread a while back: So, it really depends on what you want to make. If you like tiki drinks, there are certain rums that you're probably going to want for that, and those won't be the same rums you want if you mostly like things like Daiquiris, and those won't be the same rums you want if you want mostly to make Swizzles, etc. I would say that you can probably get by with a Cuban-style white; a cognac-style light amber rum (Appleton?); a darker, funkier rum like Lemon Hart (get the 75.5% one for greater flexibility); and a dark rum of moderate funkiness like Myers. This would allow you to at least approximate most styles of drinks using rum. Later on, if you find yourself increasing interest in a certain style, then you can increase your collection almost infinitely in that direction. (Edited to fix typos)

To clarify, I don't think that Inner Circle is so much lamented because it is demised, rather that it is lamented because it is no longer imported into the US. This is because, I am given to understand, the Inner Circle people were such pricks that the importers got tired of dealing with them.

Interesting about this one. I happened to run into a cache of LH 151 bottles the other day, and bought them all. My impression is that the only difference between Lemon Hart 40% and Lemon Hart 75.5% is that the lower proof stuff has a lot more water added. I've made cocktails using the overproof stuff as the base liquor, you just have to make sure that you get a lot more dilution. Ultimately, however, if you bought the 75.5% and watered it down to 40% yourself with spring water, you'd save quite a bit of money I imagine. Simply add 665 ml of spring water to each 750 ml of Lemon Hart 151, and you end up with 1415 ml of 40% Lemon Hart (that's almost two bottles of 40% for the price of one bottle of 754.5%!). (Edited to fix percentages)

In any spontaneous fermentation like this, there is going to be some fungal activity and some bacterial activity.

Very cool. Looking forward to more!

I'd say that's more an indictment of the bars than the bartenders. But bartenders in a shot-and-a-beer joint aren't the same thing as civil servants whose job is to determine which spirits may be sold in a state and how they will be classified.

How can it be that people whose very jobs necessarily require familiarity and expertise in spirits are so clueless?

FWIW, I've mostly heard her mentioning Pegu Club (maybe it's an easy commute from the MSNBC studios?). But, if you read above, Katie says that she ran into her at D&C.

I don't think your point is very well made here, Janet. First of all, you can't compare Rachel Maddow to Katie Couric, et al. when it comes to cocktails. Rachel is someone who is a major cocktail enthusiast, who has mentioned her love of cocktails and NYC top cocktail spots many times in the media, and who is known to pass the time at NYC top cocktail spots such as Pegu Club and D&C with some frequency. She is a political pundit by trade, and one who is known for her casual, irreverent persona. So, as far as that sort of thing goes, a more relevant point of comparison might be any number of the people who post in this very forum. Second, recommending Calvados if one cannot find Laird's bonded applejack is not in any way analogous to recommending mezcal if one cannot find 100% agave tequila. Her recommendation is apt for any number of reasons. It is a simple fact that the majority of New Yorkers can't find Laird's bonded on a regular basis, never mind people in Peoria and Knoxville. It's also a fact that Laird's blended applejack simply doesn't have sufficient strength of flavor to work particularly well in a Jack Rose (in contrast, there are plenty of mixto tequilas out there with sufficient strength and quality to work in a Margarita). Clearly, in my opinion, an inexpensive Calvados is the right choice over Laird's blended if one is making a Jack Rose. Importantly, she does go to the trouble of mentioning what applejack is, and that bonded applejack is the correct spirit for the drink. (She also uses my favorite way of explaining the difference between whiskey-like applejack and cognac-like apple brandy, Calvados, etc.) Third... yea, she uses crap grenadine. Given an impromptu 2.5 minute throw-together in a radio studio, I am willing to forgive her for not working in the time for a lecture on the evils of bottled grenadine and how to make your own at home (never mond the fact that she probably couldn't get her hands on any). So to sum up... On the plus side: 1. She tells us that bonded applejack is the historically correct spirit of preference 2. She recommends the best alternative spirit if one cannot find bonded applejack 3. She tells us what "bonded" is (mostly) 4. She mentions the importance of measuring* 5. She talks about the importance of fresh juice 6. She talks about putting some real energy in to shaking 7. She gives good advice about shaking until it's "too cold to hold" 8. Her formulation seems reasonable * I dispute that she didn't measure the lime. She uses half of a lime, and it seems likely that mention of this was edited out since they do a jump-cut right there. On the minus side: 1. She doesn't say much about blended applejack 2. She doesn't devote time to grenadine and making at home, and uses bottled crap 3. She doesn't mention the possibility of using lemon instead of lime All in all, I call this a clear win. If Katie Couric did something this good, we'd be dancing in the streets. Hell, if Mark Bittman had done something this good, we wouldn't have complained about him so much. Honestly, I don't know how we could possibly want something more from a clearly off-the-cuff little segment like this.

Seems sweet enough to me that it I would consider it a liqueur. Certainly you're not going to use it as the base spirit in a cocktail.

See here.

From what I have been able to glean, Monel is actually better described as a copper-nickel alloy, being comprised of up to 67% nickel). It is extremely hard and durable, but has terrible thermal conductivity, somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.26 W/cm/K compared to around 4.01 for copper. Better than stainless steel, but barely.

Is anyone making cookware out of this material?

It should be noted that cooking the tomato paste by itself until it browns a bit and then adding liquid produces a flavor entirely different from putting tomato paste into the liquid and then cooking the liquid sufficiently to cook out the raw flavor from the tomato paste.

Probably a rant for another thread, but is anyone else annoyed by the rampant wrong use of "caramelized?" It wouldn't be so bad, except, 1) the biggest offenders are chefs, who should know better, and 2) it's a whole lot easier to just say "browned." I think this probably stems from the fact that the Maillard reaction has really only come to common culinary parlance in relatively recent times. Also because most cooks are familiar with caramelization from, well, making caramel. You take the observed browning (just like making caramel!) and the fact that Maillardization often produces some sweetness (hey! caramel is sweet too!), and it's easy to see how this got started. Then, once one person said "caramelized onions" it was off to the races.

Hmm. Pincé means "stiff" in French; pincée is the past participle of pincer ("to pinch"), meaning "pinched."

What language is this, out of curiosity? I've never heard this term. Italians might call this rosolare ("to brown"). Actually, tomatoes (generalized) contain around 2.6 grams of sugars and 1 gram or protein per 100 grams. So, we're talking about maillard reactions.

The fundamental difference between ricotta and cottage cheese is that ricotta is produced from the second curdling of whey from which curds have already been extracted, whereas cottage cheese is from the primary curdling of milk. Homemade "ricotta" is actually homemade cottage cheese. A salient practical difference is the fact that you can get much better quality ricotta than you can get cottage cheese.

I think that copper or aluminum disks make some sense as flame-tamers or ways to even out the heat for low/slow cooking with cookware that might not have perfectly even heat. For example, I always use an aluminum disk underneath my Le Creuset enameled cast iron casseroles. Whether it could be used as the "thermal layer" with cheap, thin stainless cookware. I don't think it would work very well. Once you put down the metal disk over the burner, essentially what you have is not that different from one of those flat electric cooktops.

From The Microbiological Safety and Quality of Food By Barbara M. Lund, Tony C. Baird-Parker, Grahame Warwick Gould:

I get my extra virgin olive oil for between 16 and 21 a liter, depending on how it's being priced at the market. It usually takes us around 2 months to burn through a liter. So, I don't consider this expensive enough to bother with keeping a big bottle of something cheaper around for frequent use (especially with limited space in a NYC apartment kitchen). I keep some highly refined grapeseed oil around for the few times when I'm concerned about off flavors from heating the oil. I should probably amend my previous remarks to say that, if there are times I'm concerned about burning extra virgin olive oil in a high-heat sauté but still want to use olive oil, I find it easy to throw the vegetables in the pan first, followed by the oil.

Possibly: http://www.amazon.com/Pasta-Bible-Definiti...s/dp/0785819096