slkinsey
-
Posts
11,151 -
Joined
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by slkinsey
-
-
I think it's possible to do that in development, and it can be a good learning tool, but not consistently in execution.
-
. . . Part of the art may be to allow for human variability. Your example implies that there is a "right" way for a drink to taste. Maybe it would be more interesting to have multiple similar but different variations on a theme.
No. Accidental, error-based differences are not "part of the art" of making a cocktail. This is not skilled "variation on a theme." Rather, it is variability based on a lack of precision in measuring. The busy Friday night bartender should be able to make the drink exactly the same as the slow Wednesday night bartender. Would you think it was "part of the art" if you went to a restaurant on a slow Wednesday night and got your steak exactly medium-rare with a perfectly calibrated sauce, and then when you went there on a busy Friday night the steak was cooked medium and the sauce was less salty and more acidic? Of course not.
Intentional variation of amounts, which may be appropriate to some cocktails (e.g., the Martini) far more than others (e.g., the aforementioned Tantris Sidecar), is another thing entirely. But a big part of this has to be that the bartender knows what he's putting in the glass, and how much of it. I have never had a truly outstanding freepoured Martini. And it should be pointed out that mixing a cocktail is related to, but not the same thing as cooking.
First of all, the vast majority of cocktail ingredients are far more standardized than the raw ingredients available to a cook.
Second, a cook preparing, say, a tomato sauce can taste, add a little bit of this, a dash of that, maybe a pinch more salt... and eventually come up with a sauce that is more or less in the acceptable range of his usual marinara, and no less delicious for being prepared by an entirely intuitive, entirely unmeasured, "make it up as you go" process. This is not really possible with a cocktail. It doesn't take multiple hours to prepare a cocktail, and there are not multiple opportunities for tasting and adjustment. Pre-tasting cocktails is largely a matter of error-correcting: you're trying to make sure the lemon juice isn't off and that you remembered to put in the simple syrup rather than trying to figure out whether the indeterminate splash of vermouth you threw into the glass is too much or too little for the Blood and Sand you're making. A bartender isn't going to "taste his way into a great cocktail" the way a cook can "taste his way into a great marinara sauce." Indeed, there is some question in my mind as to whether tasting for any reason other than error correction has much validity when you are tasting the ingredients pre-dilution, pre-shaking and at room temoperature. Meanwhile, the bartender's ability to make mid-course corrections after the cocktail is chilled and strained are extremely limited.
The best bartenders coming up with the best cocktails, in my observation, often spend hours trying endless variations on a theme (try it with this bourbon, then that bourbon, then that other bourbon, then how about rye, then how about a mix of rye and applejack, then this much lemon juice, then a little less, then a mix of lemon and lime, etc, etc, etc.) until they have refined their creation to its best possible iteration. This is the time for a "dash of this and a splash of that" technique, although needless to say, measuring the constituents of the experiments is key to reproducing the successful outcomes later. Phil Ward's "Cooper Union", for example, is already going to turn out different, and probably not as good, if it's made with Jameson's instead of Red Breast, and a rinse of Talisker instead of Laphroaig. It's surely not going to turn out quite right if it includes 50% more St. Germain than it's supposed to have. This means the customer would be getting a cup of mediocrity instead of a symphony in a glass. Again, if you're making a Sidecar and you want to go 2 ounces cognac, 1 ounce Cointreau and a touch less than an ounce of lemon juice because the cognac you're using is a dry one... using a jigger is just the right way to know that you're really putting in just a touch less than an ounce.
Or if you prefer a musical analogy, would you want a live concert to sound just like the CD?Since classical music is my business, this makes perfect sense to me. What I want is for the piece to be rehearsed, and for the performance to reflect that rehearsal. I don't want my aria to start and for the conductor to make an error and go 50% slower with twice the volume from the brass. I don't want my cocktails to be like a bunch of guys in their garage thinking they're the next incarnation of the Grateful Dead.
I also think that even working with jiggers still allows for some creative flair. Just because a full one is 25ml (or 1oz) doesn't mean that you have to pour 25ml, but at least you know when you are or you aren't.Yes, exactly. Making some intentional changes in a deliberate way, where you understand the change you have made, just how much of a change you have made, and the likely effect of that change is not the same as having changes happen due to measurement error.
-
Yea... I'm with Steven on this one. There are certain tasks for which tongs are indispensable (I'd say that my main use is to fold pasta together with the sauce during the last-few-minute cooking together), but all in all I rarely use them. Strangely, my most commonly used utensil is probably a heat-proof rubber spatula. Much of the time, I don't use any utensil at all.
-
I think, and I am going on memory here, that Dave Wondrich explained in Imbibe! that the julep strainer got its name because it was originally placed on top of the ice in an actual julep to make it easier to drink without getting a facefull of ice.
-
But... it's chemicals!
-
I certainly wouldn't suggest that one try to make several cups of roux in a 5 inch diameter pot. But I'd think that a 9 inch saucepot with decent thermal characteristics and a stainless interior would (1) be a lot easier to judge the level of browning than a cast iron skillet; (2) undoubtedly have a much more "flawless" interior; and (3) would have more even heat (I have yet to find a piece of cast iron cookware thick enough to avoid a "heat ring").
-
I suppose you could have all your ingredients chilled and dilute with chilled water, etc. But this doesn't seem very practical in a real-world environment to me.
-
One doesn't have to use a cast iron skillet to make roux, however. Any heavy saucepan will do. And, indeed, since large wide space is not needed for adding/cooking additional ingredients, a narrower/taller cooking vessel like a heavy saucepan would offer greater control. I have used the ice-bath method to stop the browning of a caramel many times. I make caramel in a large, heavy copper saucepan that will be as hot as any flour-and-fat roux that is not burned (375F is about the right temperature of dark caramel, 350F is typical of a dark roux). So far, nothing bad has ever happened when I put the hot pan into the ice bath. Indeed, this is a standard method for rapid cooling.
-
Still seems like too much trouble. I guess if I were that scared of bacteria, I'd blowtorch the outside.
-
But getting back to our hypothetical machine, we have agreed that it would not replace a bartender because of the human element. If a perfect machine can not replace us, (touch wood god forbid) what is it that makes it a better drink?
I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Theoretically, the more accurately measured and balanced and calibrated for perfect temperature, etc. that a cocktail may be, the better the cocktail. Ultimately, it seems likely that a sophisticated machine could achieve far higher levels of accuracy and consistency than a human being. Whether the difference in possible levels of accuracy and consistency is above or below the threshhold of human perception (I suspect below) is another question. But this is not a real-world question, I believe.
Would we go out to a bar that has the ingredients for a widows kiss, premixed in a bottle and perfectly balanced measured to a 0.0001 ml per drink. If all the bartender does is pour it in your glass, I guess not.This is true of many top cocktail bars that do any real volume. Take, for example, Audrey's famous "Tantris Sidecar" that has been a signature cocktail at the Pegu Club since they opened. It contains one 1 ounce pour, four half-ounce pours and two quarter-ounce pours (that's seven pours to make one cocktail). All the bartenders, of course, know how to make this cocktail to order. But when it comes to busy Friday and Saturday nights, the cocktail (perhaps minus the citrus?) is batched and then shaken out on an individual basis.
If this is the norm we could just as well say that every bartender should have a book in front of him when he is busy lest he forget an ingredient from the recipe, which I can virtually guarantee could happen under pressure in real world conditions.Again, many of the top cocktail bars have a copious collection of historical recipe books, as well as a database of house formulae. I never think there's anything wrong with the bartender referring to a book if it's a non-standard cocktail. On many occasions I've had a bartender mix me something from a book they had recently been perusing (recently this included, for example, the Parkeroo and the Hoffman House Fizz).
Lets face it more than half the argument for jigging is the showmanship, it looks (when done properly) fantastic in the right establishment for the right drinks. The same can be said about “free pouring morons”. My customers like it when I free pour, They can see I put my heart and soul in the effort, they can see I have a passion for my job and I try to make Every drink the best one I have ever made, I’m not saying they don’t see it when I jig but THAT is the human element and it is my style. Just as free pouring has its place behind the bar so does jigging, neither is a sign of a better bartender nor experience nor results in the significantly better drink. IMHOI don't know that I agree that jiggering is about the showmanship. But, honestly, flair is just not a big part of the NYC cocktail scene. Efficient and graceful movement, a particular shaking movement, perhaps a flick of the wrist as the tin is taken away... that's about as far as it goes.
I guess I have to disagree as to whether I think jiggering is a sign of a good cocktailian bartender and a good cocktail bar. Or, rather, I would say that in my experience freepouring is usually, if not unequivocally, a reliable sign that one is not in a top-level cocktail bar. There are a few outstanding counterexamples, of course.
-
The problem with keeping your spirits in the freezer is that a proper cocktail requires some dilution. A Martini is not supposed to clock in at 45% alcohol.
-
If you cook shortly after you grind, it's not clear to me that there is a great deal to be gained by par-boiling the meat. I also have my doubts as to how much "sterilization" there is to be gained by doing this, since two minutes is probably insufficient time (15 minutes of boiling being the usual recommendation for killing most bacteria).
-
. . . Like many serious about beef, we buy our beef by the half from a farmer we know --- without any overhead, it is surprisingly economical at only a couple dollars a pound. After aging, the locker packages the cuts we want and grinds the rest into hamburger . . .
Douglas, what you are talking about, essentially, is grinding up the trimmings. If I had access to a custom-aged half of a beef for a few dollars a pound, I'd grind up the aged beef I didn't want for steaks or stewing/braising meat too!
The question is whether you want to spend 30 bucks a pound for dry aged prime ribeye steaks and then toss them into the grinder rather than cooking them whole as steaks.So, call it $15/burger? Would I pay that every day, or when feeding a crowd at a picnic? No. But once, to give it a shot? Hell yes. I'm not exactly in a position to buy dry aged beef by the side, so no trimmings for me: the only way I am ever going to get a dry-aged, prime, fresh-ground burger is if I make it myself from a normal steak cut. And I think it may be worth trying. Later. When the economy is better...
I have a hard time paying $15 for a hamburger that a restaurant is cooking for me, and which typically includes fries, never mind paying $16.50 (adding $1.50 for bun, condiments, vegetables and possibly cheese) per person for a hamburger I'm making at home. No, if I'm paying $30+ for me and Mrs. slkinsey to have dry aged prime beef for dinner, it's going to be in the form of a steak. Would it be worth trying once for the sake of curiosity? Sure. But no matter how good it was, I can't imagine that becoming my standard burger.
-
First off, while you may be able to accurately free pour 5 ml (that's one teaspoon for those of you in the New World) in perfect conditions, I can virtually guarantee you can't accurately give repeatable 5 ml pours under pressure in real world conditions.
As for the machine... let us suppose for a moment that it is possible to create a sanitary, affordable, reasonably-sized machine capable of mounting 300+ different bottles. While we're at it, let us suppose that the machine is also capable of adjusting for acidity levels of citrus, muddling herbs, etc. -- everything a bartender can do. It isn't possible, which makes this part of your argument moot, but let us suppose that it is. If it were possible for a machine to do everything that a bartender can do, then from the standpoint of what is in the customer's glass, there would perhaps be an infinitesimal improvement in quality and consistency. This would, however, remove the human interaction element that is as big part of the cocktail bar experience. And it would also make it prohibitively difficult for bartenders to create variations or new cocktails all' improviso.
But it is a false argument to assert that jiggering and robotics are fundamentally similar. You want the creative element, sure, but you also want reproducibility. I may want an architect to design my gallery by inspiration, but I want the guys building it to use measuring tools. I am the first person to say that a bartender can create a great drink using the "little bit of this and a dash of that" freepouring method. But if he has no real idea how much of this and that he put in the glass, there is no way he will be able to make the same thing next time around -- much less help another bartender at the bar learn how to make it. And if I go into a bar wanting their Such-and-Such Cocktail, I want it to be the same as I had last time. I want it to be the one I like. I don't want that "just barely there" subtle hint of Chartreuse that your friend made me on a slow Wednesday night to hit me in the mouth when you make it on a busy Friday night because he poured 4 ml of Chartreuse and you poured 7 ml (both thinking it was 5).
But, really... the bottom line is that I am not aware of very many freepouring cocktail lounges that do heavy business and serve a wide variety of complex cocktails a top quality. I'm sure a few exist (and even more assume they are) but the vast majority of which I am aware use jiggers.
-
Peter Luger actually uses chuck supplemented with trimmings.
-
The question is not whether it would be good to turn some dry aged ribeye meat into burgers. Of course that would be delicious. The question is whether you want to spend 30 bucks a pound for dry aged prime ribeye steaks and then toss them into the grinder rather than cooking them whole as steaks. To my thinking, it's a bit insane to grind up a whole dry aged prime ribeye for hamburgers. Scraps from trimming 50 dry aged prime ribeyes, on the other hand? I'm all over that.
ETA: I would also suggest that there is a fundamental difference between eating a steak, seasoned simply with salt and pepper and cooked to order with a nicely maillardized crust, is fundamentally different from eating a burger, between two pieces of bread with various condiments and vegetables. One is the pure expression of the meat, where the quality and character of the primal (only) ingredient is not only the central thing, but the only thing. In the other treatment, much of what makes a great steak great is obscurred. It's like making a Sidecar with "Paradis" cognac. The Sidecar is worth plenty of respect, just as the hamburger, but it's still not a good use of zillion-dollar cognac.
-
The only non-insane way to have ground aged prime beef is to save enough scraps from trim. Which means that, unless you are a butcher or run a steakhouse, it's unlikely.
-
The flavor change in ground beef comes primarily from oxidation. This is not so when you age whole primal cuts. Needless to say, I don't think anyone wants to eat "21 day old dry cured ground beef."
-
I'll go down as another who doesn't think Dolin Rouge is particularly bitter. I tried some last night in a Martinez (1.5 each Hayman's Old Tom and Dolin Rouge, 1 tsp Luxardo Perla Dry, 1 dash Abbott's bitters). I found it very nice. Lighter flavored and less rich than Carpano Antica Formula, which allowed the Old Tom's character to come out nicely. I'll have to experiment more. My feeling, based on limited tasting, is that it won't necessarily stand in for Italian sweet vermouth in some of the more emphatically flavored cocktails, but will make an interesting substitution for dry vermouth in certain cocktails and will work interestingly in new concoctions.
-
Michael guessed it: Ridiculous rent hike. This is something that I have been seeing quite a bit on the 90th-to-110th Street stretch of Broadway. Businesses of long standing forced to vacate by greedy landlords, or buildings knocked down and replaced with new construction, which storefronts stand vacant for months or years due to a lack of tenants willing to pay the landlord's rate. I note that the old Oppenheimer space has been vacant for some six months...
-
Most bar mixing glasses are tall and narrow, thus not particularly good for swirling -- especially when you want them to be as full of ice as is practically possible.
-
So... you're reducing the amount of beef fat in your home grind, but then putting butter into your burger patties?
-
Right. That would be the "hope that some of the holdover heat will finish the browning" bit I wrote above. Does seem that the level of darkness would still be somewhat variable, and that there would be a learning curve to using this method as you figured out through trial and error exactly when you had to pull the pan off the heat for your own individual equipment, volume of roux and desired level of color. I note that you say, "haven't burned one in years" -- which suggests that you burned a few (and perhaps had a few batches come out too light) in the process of figuring out just when to pull the pan to the side so the browning was finished just how you wanted it by residual heat. Of course, once you do figure out the process, you're good to go.
You could make the process easier (if a bit more messy) by transferring the roux to a thin stainless bowl then put it in ice water. That would shock the roux faster than leaving in the pan (even if the pan's material is highly conductive) and you could bring it closer to doneness without worrying as much about overcooking.
Yea, you could. But I don't think it's generally recommended to be pouring something at that temperature (and with that ability to stick to the skin) from one vessel to another. In addition, depending on how dark you wanted to go, you could certainly go too dark in the time it would take to pour out the roux into the stainless steel bowl (which you are hopefully doing carefully enough so that none of it splashes on you).
It's actually quite easy to just take your saucepan off the fire and stick it directly into the ice bath -- and it's probably the fastest way as well.
-
Right. That would be the "hope that some of the holdover heat will finish the browning" bit I wrote above. Does seem that the level of darkness would still be somewhat variable, and that there would be a learning curve to using this method as you figured out through trial and error exactly when you had to pull the pan off the heat for your own individual equipment, volume of roux and desired level of color. I note that you say, "haven't burned one in years" -- which suggests that you burned a few (and perhaps had a few batches come out too light) in the process of figuring out just when to pull the pan to the side so the browning was finished just how you wanted it by residual heat. Of course, once you do figure out the process, you're good to go.
Princeton Study on Sugar Addiction
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted · Edited by slkinsey (log)
I think you will find that the text from Dr. Hoebel's Princeton web page paints the research in a different light:
None of this precludes, say, binging on very fatty foods from producing a similar kind of reaction in the brain. This doesn't necessarily point to sugar as an inherrently addictive substance in the way that, say, nicotine is. It does point out that it is possible to "get hooked on sugar" and suggests that this is likely a broad problem in American society due to the prevalence of sugars in our foods. It does not mean, however, that eating the occasional cookie or drinking the occasional full sugar coke will turn us into shivering sugar-fiends.