slkinsey

Isn't the Spanish word for avocado aguacate?

This technique is probably better described as "fractional freezing" than "freeze distilling." Distilling required boiling as a matter of definition. I don't think it has ever been particularly significant once people were able to get a proper still knocked together. One reason for this is that fractional freezing does not offer any way to get rid of the impurities, congeners, fusel oils, etc. that are removed or controlled through careful distillation. A lot of this is discussed over in the applejack thread where Doc had this to offer: I later offered this quote from a NYT article: So, to sum up: distillation (separation of substances based on differences in boiling points) is preferable to fractional freezing, and was practiced in the rural US extensively by the late 1600s.

What is advocatenborrel? Advocaat ("lawyer") + Borrel ("drink") = Advocatenborrel ("lawyer's drink"?). Maybe a lot of Dutch lawyers drank egg noggish drinks?

Freezing the liquid is probably the best method, although I have also had pretty good results using a long bag as NY_Amateur suggests. One technique I use is to use NY_Amateur's "long bag" method and then manually seal the bag again much closer to the food items. I have not had any difficulties achieving the vacuums necessary for 99% of sous vide applications using a bag sealer. I also noted looking at the pictures in "Under Pressure" that plenty of the bags had small amounts of internal air clearly visible.

Avocados are native to Central and South America, it was likely being cultivated in the Caribbean by the end of the 17th century, but I rather doubt it was in sufficient quantities to be incorporated into a "traditional" drink there. So, we would likely be talking about South America. Considering that the first rum distillery in North America dates to something like 1664, I have a hard time believing there was sufficient distilled spirit being made or available in South America for such a drink to be popular enough to give rise to advocaat as in imitation. Also, fwiw, Suriname and Recife do not appear to be significant producers of avocado. Doesn't it seem more likely that this drink evolved from the same tradition that gives us egg nog? And that advocaat is related to advocatenborrel?

I use my sample Wine Clip to keep notes stuck to the refrigerator...

Having just leafed through my copy, I think it definitely has some usefulness to home cooks. That doesn't mean that I'll be recreating any of the dishes precisely, but I can absolutely envision cherrypicking techniques and preparations from one recipe or another.

Bring multiple cases of liquor from Texas to NYC as checked baggage? Surely you're not serious. Kent, does your friend have access to a car?

This goes back to my earlier point: Local foods and culinary traditions evolved with local grapes and winemaking traditions because there was nothing else the locals could use. Add a thousand years or so, and you end up with some good combinations. Part of the point Mario was making is that, if you go to Firenze and they have a certain tradition of pairing wine with food, the chances are that it's going to be pretty good. Are there other possibly good, or even better combinations? Of course. The so-called "Super Tuscan" wines were unknown 100 years ago (it's also likely that the Chianti of 100 years ago would be largely unrecognizable to us, but that's neither here nor there). The other part of the point Mario was making is that, if you want your meal to taste as "Tuscan" as possible, then you should use Tuscan ingredients. This includes the wine, olive oil, etc. It's not going to taste worse if you use an olive oil from Sicily and drink a California wine. It just won't taste as close to the way it tastes in Firenze.

"Pan frying," for most people, has the connotation that you are "shallow frying" (which is to say, cooking the food partially submerged in fat) in a skillet instead of a deeper vessel. See my remarks above about how this is not really "frying" -- which is neither here nor there, since this is a commonly accepted meaning. The problem is that it has shifted meanings: "fry" now often means "boiling in oil" and "sauté" now often means "fry." If one is using the "correct" meaning of "fry," then there is no need to preface the word by saying that it is done in a pan. All frying (which is to say, cooking food in a limited amount of fat, mostly by letting it sit still) is done in a pan.

What do you have in mind? Grenadine is a good one. Easy to make, very stable if you make it highly saturated, and light-years away from the commercial stuff.

You will find more information about this in the simple syrup thread. To sum up: 1. The best thing you can do to increase stability is to increase the concentration of sugar. Bars typically do a 1:1 syrup because it can be mixed up without heating, overpours are not as critical, and because they've got enough turnover that it's unlikely to spoil. For home use, I have found that 2:1 is far more stable. You do have to adjust the amount you use, however. 2. Refrigerate your syrup. I have managed to keep even 1:1 syrup for multiple months in the refrigerator in a bottle with an open pour top. I have managed to keep 3:1 syrups for months unrefrigerated in a sealed bottle. 3. Pour a tiny bit of high proof booze into the top of your syrup bottle once the syrup has cooled. Not sure why this works (the percent alcohol should not be enough to make much difference), but Dave W reports that it prevented funkage of his unrefrigerated syrup. 4. Citrus-infused syrups seem to last a long time if refrigerated. Herbed, spiced and gingered syrups don't tend to last as long without spoiling and/or serious flavor degradation. Things like mint syrup tend to taste weird almost immediately, IMO, and many "spicy" chemicals such as the ones that give ginger its distinctive bite degrade fairly quickly (for this reason I muddle fresh ginger with regular simple to-order). Very saturated fruit syrups made from already-pasteurized juices (e.g., >2:1 grenadine made from reduced POM) last more or less forever. Things like pineapple syrup made by soaking pineapple chunks overnight in simple syrup (4:1 if you're me) may not last very long. 5. I have taken to making my 2:1 syrups right in the bottle for added sanitation. Just put in your sugar and water, then put the bottle in the microwave on "reheat." Carefully monitor and turn the microwave off when the sugar is all dissolved. When the bottle cools, put in a pour top and refrigerate.

Traditionally, it seems quite clear why peoples in various parts of the world would combine foods that grow in that locale and are harvested at around the same time. What else are they going to do? Filter that through however many centuries of selective breeding and culinary invention, and you end up with some pretty good-tasting combinations. Of course, most foods can go with most other foods if you put your mind to the task. That said, I'm sure there are plenty of counterexamples. Does butternut squash go well with apples? Sure. But I wouldn't say it's a great match with cabbage or cauliflower, both cold-weather crops. Indeed, I'd think that it does better with tomatoes, a warm-weather crop. I don't see why there would be any answer more complicated than this.

Anyone know where I can get some? To cook at home?

What I like is the pan griddled tuna fish panini sandwich they sell at the the Hotel Auberge's Osteria Tavern in Lake Lago.

Sauté is so often misapplied that even the common American restaurant-industry BOH usage is incorrect, such that "sauté" has come to be more or less synonymous with "fry in a small amount of fat" and "fry" has come to be associated with cooking partially or entirely submerged in fat (which I would call "boiling in oil"). I believe this misapplication, at least in restaurants, comes from the fact that the so-called "sauté station" probably does more frying than it does sautéing and also the ubiquity of deep "frying." In the popular imagination, again due to the association with "deep frying" I think "sauté" has been used in place of "fry" because it seems lighter and less greasy. I'd be interested to see when the transition started happening from "fry" to "sauté." Anyway, the point is that you can't sauté a trout fillet, and there's a reason we don't call it a "sautéed egg." Anyway... what I would call something that sits in the pan for an extended period, then gets tossed, then sits in the pan for an extended period (repeat as needed until browned) is: "frying." Technically, one could call the act of tossing the ingredients by shaking the pan "sautéing," at which point the process would go back to frying until the next shake... but that's splitting hairs. This is not to say that the pan has to be in constant movement. At some point, one is tossing the ingredients frequently enough that it becomes "sautéing." I'm not sure it's possible to put a number on this (or that anyone would agree on that number anyway), but I'd say that you can't walk away from the stove for very long and still call it "sautéing" -- perhaps 60 seconds or less between shakes? Another way to think of sautéing is "stir-frying, but shaking the pan instead of using a utensil to move the ingredients." Basically what you are doing in your mushroom example is frying, and using a shake of the pan to flip the mushrooms instead of tongs or a spatula. Clearly, if you had turned the mushrooms with tongs, you wouldn't be asking the question. Most likely, and this is a reason I think most home cooks rarely if ever sauté, on a high-powered restaurant stove and in single-portion amounts such as are prepared at restaurants, you wouldn't need to let the ingredients sit in the pan in order to brown -- you would be doing a true sauté.

THE market in NYC is the Greenmarket in Union Square. Try to arrive bright and early on Saturday morning.

If the diameter of the pot is the same, there should be no difference. The only difference will be that the larger pot will offer greater versatility. Question: What's wrong with the "perfect" 6-quart pot you already have that you need to buy a new one?

Actually, I don't think that Plymouth gin is supposed to be botanically potent. Plymouth is not only a brand of gin, but also a style of gin that is similar to, but not quite the same as London dry gin. As far as I am aware, it's been more or less the same recipe for some 200+ years, producing a softer, sweeter, less botanically intensive product. I agree about the price, however. It's getting far too expensive. And I have to say that I disagree with Lan4Dawg that raising the price a couple of dollars a year is reasonable. For example, if we're seeing Plymouth at $30 today and assume a two-dollar rise every year, that would mean that the price rose twenty five percent since 2005 and thirty three percent since 2004. Not reasonable, and not likely to put Plymouth on too many shelves IMO.

Heh. Seriously, is there any spirit "generally regarded as first-rate by the cocktailian community" that you like?

My understanding is that the primary effect of forcing people to wear gloves is to protect against insufficient post-bathroom hand-washing. And it works quite well at this. A good example is the Hepatitis A outbreak in Onondaga County in the 1980s, where a county of around 500,000 was getting 40% of the Hep A cases in New York State (~19 millon people -- you do the math). They cracked down on enforcing the gloves policy and the outbreak went away. And Hepatitis A is spread by? Everyone? That's right: feces. One would assume (hope?) that, in higher-end establishments, this is not an issue and therefore perhaps bare hands would be better.

Speaking of my wedding (which was more like 80 people), we had Phil's "Jersey Lightning" punch, and several batched cocktails served by the venue bartenders. I think they were the Tantris Sidecar (shaken/up), Vieux Carree (stirred, rocks), two champagne-topped drinks (Champagne Apricato and Prince of Wales), Last Word (shaken/up), and maybe something else I can't remember, plus wine, etc. One thing we found that worked very well, especially at the beginning of the party (which was a cocktail party with passed hot and cold hors d'oeuvres rather than a sit-down or buffet dinner) was having the bartenders shake and pour multiple iterations of one cocktail, which would then be circulated on trays around the room by the waitstaff. Is there going to be any staff? Who is going to be picking up empties and making sure you have enough clean glassware, etc?

HA!! Perfect!

It's hard to go wrong with Fish House punch. Phil gave us an amazing Applejack-based punch for my wedding party. Included tea-infused vermouth, as I recall.

Did he say that he wasn't a professional bartender? Well... the time I met Kent for drinks and we talked about what he did for work, professional bartending didn't come up. So took that as a reasonable indication that he's not a professional bartender. Regardless, shaking out specialty cocktails in an open bar for 125 people by yourself wouldn't be easy even for an experienced professional bartender.