slkinsey

The point is, I think, that the Per Se service model isn't the cocktail lounge service model. Which goes back to what I posted earlier saying that the "Per Se of bars" would completely miss the point. I should also point out that, even in most Per Se-like restaurants, the standard is that someone checks in with you within seconds of you taking your seat, and you can have a drink in your hand and an amuse on the table within minutes.

Hey, those people pay the bills. Keep in mind, by the way, that a good percentage of the people eating at places like Babbo and Per Se don't have a real appreciation of what the kitchen is doing either.

I had a chance to try some of the new NP at Death & Company last night. It's actually a very nice product with a lot of interesting potential. That's not the issue -- which is nice, because it so often is the issue (cf. Zacapa 23 turning into the inferior Zacapa Solera). The problem is simply that we'll no longer be able to get the old formula, so all the drinks will not be different -- not necessarily bad, but different. As Phil said, and I agree: "Drinking a Tanqueray and Noilly Pratt Martini with a dash of orange bitters and a lemon twist is a pretty big and important part of my life, and now it doesn't taste the same anymore." What I honestly don't get is why they wouldn't make this new "throwback" formulation NP's version of "Antica Formula" and have both on the market. They're really quite different.

My guess is that "funk" as we are using it here could be boiled down to the presence of a relatively small family of esters.

(Mods: Perhaps this fork of the discussion could be split out?) Among the things that have interested me about cocktails are the parallels with my work performing opera. For example, a large part of what we do with opera is go back to try to find out the true original score of the piece and try to form an understanding of the way opera was performed when it was composed -- and then, understanding that singing techniques and the aesthetics of opera have irrevocably changed, try to arrive at a way of performing the music that is at once respectful of the original and also compatible with modern techniques and audiences. This is a little like what we do in uncovering old cocktail recipes and figuring out how to make them work for modern palates. Anyway, here is another parallel that recently struck me: Italian opera prior to the mid-19th century was designed by the composers to include certain improvisations and embelishments by the performers. What was written was not what was performed. As this tradition evolved away, the popular Italian operas came to be encrusted with late 19th century embelishments that more or less became "standardized." When musicians began re-examining and revitalizing this repertoire, one of the first things they did was strip away all the late 19C standard embelishments. Sometimes, an opera like Barber of Seville might be performed "come scritto" (strictly as-written with no embellishments). This was not as the music was meant to be performed any more than the late 19C altered versions were. But they were a necessary step in working back to a performing tradition that better respected the operas' contemporary performance practice. Perhaps there is a parallel evolution going on in cocktails where people are attracted to the idea of a quiet, respectful, "four star cocktail lounge." But I don't believe that an "Alain Ducasse at Essex House of cocktails" would reflect what cocktails are all about.

Hmm. It's hard to express all the various ways I disagree with the foregoing. First and most obvious, I take serious exception with the premise that larger cocktail bars such as Flatiron, Pegu Club or Clover Club aren't "real Serious Cocktail Lounges." And they're certainly not "minority niche places" either. They're places where most anyone can get in and get a properly made cocktail at a level of inventiveness equal to just about anyplace you might care to go. Second, I think Dale's quote from the NY Times article today (in which I and other eG habitués are quoted) is right to the point: Don and I are later quoted in a similar vein: Now, I'm sure that there are plenty of quotes around here from me about appreciating cocktail spots for the gustatory quality of the drinks rather than the "scene" and so forth. But at the end of the day, it's still booze. This was meant to be fun, folks! I have to believe that every revered bartender from Jerry Thomas and The Only William up to Dale DeGroff and Audrey Saunders would be dismayed at the idea that real Serious Cocktail Lounges must be 30-seater, hushed little out-of-the way spots with a scrupulously limited door where the cognoscenti gather reverently to Recieve Light from the Altar of Cocktailery and Devoutly Consume the Master's Gifts. I am also with Phil is suggesting that it is establishments and organization that are largely responsible for long ticket times at cocktail bars. There is simply no reason, especially at some of these tiny bars with multiple 'tenders, why anyone should have to wait 15 minutes to have a drink in front of them. I'd call that unacceptable. Now... in a big cocktail bar during the after-work rush on Friday? I'd still expect to be able to get a drink on average as quickly as I might be able to get a shot and a beer at most any other similarly crowded bar. IMO, Dale's gold standard is the gold standard. That's not to say that other people won't choose to have a different experience, to linger and discuss their choices, etc. But I don't see anything wong with setting the bar at, "you walk into a bar, you sit down, someone takes your drink order promptly, and within a very short time frame you have a well-made drink in your hand." I just disagree with the premise that freepouring is necessary to meet this bar.

It would be interesting to do a contest to prove freepouring skills. I'd suggest something like: 5 two ounce pours from a full Smirnoff bottle 5 3/4 ounce pours from a half-full Cointreau bottle 5 3/4 ounce pours from a 1/4 full juice bottle with a different pour top 5 1/4 ounce pours of rich demerara syrup 5 two ounce pours from a 1/4 Smirnoff bottle 5 3/4 ounce pours from a full Cointreau bottle 5 3/4 ounce pours from a 1/2 full juice bottle with a different pour top All on the clock against a time previously establised by Phil Ward jiggering the same amounts. Needless to say, anything less than matching the test time would be considered a failure, since time is the presumed advantage of freepouring.

Having studied a fair amount of cognitive and perceptual psychology on the way to getting my psych degree, I think it's likely that a serious bartender could be trained to be extremely accurate with free pouring under optimal conditions. That said, I suspect that this would not be possible or realistic in amounts of 1/4 ounce or less using standard pour tops. Sub half-ounce accuracy with freepouring might be possible using pour tops that restrict the flow more than the standard ones, but this would not be practical and would eliminate many of the presumed efficiency advantages of free pouring. Those are under optimal conditions, where the bartender is rested, alert, able to focus, not under a great deal of time pressure, etc. Needless to say, these conditions are not particularly found in a busy cocktail bar. There are times when near-optimal conditions are found in a cocktail bar, but these conditions also allow the bartender the time to use jiggers. Since the only reason to prefer freepouring over jiggers is the time efficiency advantage, it's not clear that there is any advantage to freepouring in contexts where the bartender would have sufficient time to use jiggers. But the impact of "non-optimal conditions" extends beyond the pressure of maintaining discipline in frenetic and busy cocktail lounge during the rush. What technique is the bartender using to measure his free pours? If he is employing the usual "count" method, then optimal conditions would insist that all bottles be of a similar size and geometry, all are full to a similar extent and all have similar pour tops. If any of these things is different, the flow rates coming out of the bottles will be different. This means, for example, that a "4 count" which results in an ounce out of a 3/4 full Tanqueray bottle will not equal an ounce out of a 1/4 full Cointreau bottle. Avery makes good points with respect viscosity, etc. I suppose it's possible that a freepouring bartender could have skills of such high development that he could compensate for these variables, but I highly doubt it. Now... I've seen some inaccuracy from jiggering bartenders during a rush. That 3/4 ounce jigger might be a little underfilled or have a little oversplash when the bartenders are seriously weeded. But I have a hard time believeing there is a freepouring bartender alive that could maintain anywhere near that level of accuracy under that kind of pressure. What methods are freepouring bartenders using for accuracy other than the "count method"? I have serious doubts that anyone who is simply eyeballing the mixing glass will have accuracy suitable for anything more complicated than a highball.

Why on earth would they stop shipping the old one, which has been a cocktailian staple for years and years and years? I can see bringing out a different one in addition to the formerly standard formula. But this is just not good business sense. The "New Coke" of vermouth?

Wait. Are they introducing a new product alongside the old product? Or replacing the old product with a new formulation?

Here I was thinking, "wait a minute... that's my half hot/half cold grenadine method." And then I realized I had never posted my method to this thread. D'oh. Turns out more than one person can have a good idea. Anyway, another variation on grenadine. From the applejack thread: I also sometimes add a touch of orange flower water and vanilla. I make large batches, and have found this technique and formula keeps for as long as a year. For the "storage" bottles, I'll float a bit of vodka over the surface (the grenadine is thick enough that the vodka will stay in a separate layer until shaken in).

There is definitely some kind of pie quantum physics to be explored here. For example, Schrödinger's pie. This is where someone may have eaten the last piece of pie, but you won't know whether it has been eaten until you go into the kitchen in the middle of the night looking for pie. Until that moment, the pie is neither eaten nor not-eaten.

Sure you could have. But, for something like this, a regular heavy-duty ziplock bag that you suck the air out of would have worked just fine. The only improvement you would get from pulling out more air is that you can use less butter (if you pull out all the air, even a tiny amount of butter will coat the shrimp completely with a thin layer of buter -- and the shrimp doesn't know the difference between a thick layer or a thin layer of butter). Since conserving butter doesn't sound like an issue for you, it's probably not worth worrying about sucking out more air in this context.

Thanks for the tip. I first simmered the heads and shells in the butter (which already had garlic, shallots, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary and dried herbs). Then I cooked the shrimp for about 7 minutes at 180-190. I was planning to cooked them only 5 minutes, but the temperature dropped a lot when I added the shrimp. Other than using massive amounts of butter, I guess there isn't a way to avoid that drop. This is where using at least a modified SV technique comes in handy. You could have put the shrimp and the butter into a large ziplock bag, sucked out as much air as you could and sealed the bag. Then you could have heated up a large stockpot of water to your target temperature (I like 47C/117F for cooked-through-but-not-hard shrimp) and dropped in the bag. The large thermal capacity of the water would keep the water bath temperature from dropping too much, amd your shrimp would cook in a few minutes. The easiest way to do this would be to overheat the waterbath by 5 degrees or so, drop in the bagged shrimp and then adjust the temperature downward with cold water. If the stockpot is fairly large, you shouldn't have to boost the temperature back up during the short cooking time. If this is what you think people do when they cook sous vide, then it's clear you have no real understanding of the technique. Leaving aside the fact that one is normally regulating the temperature automatically, it takes literally only a few moments to cook something like shrimp. The example I outlined above is more or less the same as using a large bain marie to heat the butter.

Looks like they have some serious consistency problems.

On the LTH Forums posted a few weeks later it's given by Toby as:

I've done this very well with shrimp. First I cooked the shells in the butter to infuse the butter with shrimp flavor, then I bagged the butter with the shrimp and cooked it sous vide (which, in this context, is simply a way to poach the shrimp without using a ton of butter). Worked great.

Could be that the beans were old and/or not stored under optimal conditions. And maybe some varieties just never attain that creaminess that you're looking for? Possible, certainly. Although these were pretty reliable beans I had made other times with good results. I'm just wondering about McGee's statement that cooking with salt can result in a mealy texure. Thinking back, the times I've had a resolutely mealy texture were times I was cooking the beans with salty meat (confit, Spanish chorizo, etc.) from the beginning using the no-soak method.

I'll be interested to do some experiments with texture. I will say that I have been frustrated a time or two with beans that should be creamy but came out mealy no matter how long they were cooked. I wonder if salt was the culprit.

It depends on how you understand the cooking process and how salt contributes. First, there is the oft-repeated but incorrect notion that adding salt raises the boiling point of water. Yes, this is true, but to such an infinitesimal degree that it is meaningless in the context of cooking. Salt can "speed up the cooking process" in conditions where the food already contains plenty of water. It does this by hastening the breakdown of that food item. For example, if you cook chopped fresh tomatoes without salt, the pieces can retain most of their integrity even when fully cooked. If you add salt at the beginning, the tomato pieces will break down because he salt helps to draw the water out, etc. Legumes, even when fresh and certainly when dried, are dry and full of starch that needs to be softened. This is the opposite from cooking a tomato. Beans are also finicky because the only way for water to get inside and soften the starch is through the skin of the bean. If you add certain things to the cooking water (acid, sugar) this can reinforce the structural stability of certain substances in the bean and slow or prevent them from softening entirely. As for salt, adding salt to the cooking liquid slows the rate at which legumes are able to absorb water and therefore leads to longer cooking times. The solution to this is to add the salt at the end, after the beans have fully softened. Interestingly, McGee says that adding salt at 1% to the soaking liquid can greatly speed cooking times by increasing the solubility of cell wall pectins. However, he also points out that salt reduces the swelling and gelation of starch granules within the beans and will produce a mealy texture rather than a creamy one. According to McGee, the best way to sped legume cooking times outside of using a pressure cooker is to blanch the beans in boiling water for a minute or two to fully hydrate the seed coat and soak for 2-3 hours in cool water, after which time the beans will have absorbed approximately double their initial weight in water. Since fully hydrating the bean is the major hurdle in bean cookery, starting with fully hydrated beans makes a big difference.

"Chef" (a boss of a professional kitchen and creative force behind a restaurant) has come to be as misused as "maestro" (a conductor of an orchestra or music teacher of great eminence).

Five of us went through one recipe of Regent's Punch for Thanksgiving. It's a bona fide sensation among my friends. Fish House Punch is a 40+ year tradition in my family, so that's not new news for me. So now I'm wondering which punch I should make next...

How many of us had pie for breakfast this morning? We did.

I have a Pro 2300 from these guys, and have not found bagging with a fair amount of liquid to be any problem. For Thanksgiving, I made several Keller dishes from Under Pressure (more on this anon) which included much larger amounts of liquid than I would ordinarily ever put into a SV bag. For various reasons, it proved impractical or unfeasible to pre-freeze the liquids. I figured I'd just keep my eye on the vacuum chamber and hit the "manual seal" button if a lot of liquid started coming out of the bag. I never actually had to do this. I held the bags so that there was always a clear "channel" for the air (no air pockets at the back of the bag). The air was always evacuated first, and while a small amount of liquid (perhaps 1/4 tsp) would typically come out of the end of the bag, the machine would always go over to sealing just at that moment -- before I had a chance to hit the manual seal button. The result was bags sealed with plenty of liquid and no residual air.

Meh. Why? The reward isn't that great.