slkinsey

Yea, that's what makes me wonder if they're using a lower gluten flour. Honestly, I think a more pliable crust would probably be an improvement at Franny's.

That pizza was extremely thin! If you look slightly North of center, you can actually see that the crust is so thin that you can see the green topping through the pizza. I don't remember how I took that picture, exactly, but it wasn't like he was holding up a stiff, entirely stable crust. That said, I'm not surprised that it's different now. One thing I think is cool about Franny's is that they are continually evolving. Possibly they are using a more tender flour now?

That's where the bartender/mixologist comparison comes into play. It is perfectly possible for someone to have relatively advanced knowledge about cocktail history and formulae, to be able to create good cocktail recipes, and to be able to mix great cocktails in one's home. Doing this in a busy bar is another matter entirely. PDT has been a somewhat unique opportuinity for some advanced home mixologists (and, again, one that Julie touches upon upthread) in allowing them to grow bartending skills out of their mixological skills when the opposite is normally the case. This is made possible, of course, by the relatively low volume and relatively high bartender-to-customer ratio at PDT. Needless to say, their bartending skills have grown tremendously due to their experience at PDT (as have their mixological skills, due to increased flexing of those muscles over their time there). That said, whether or not this particular kind of experience would prepare a PDT bartender for something like Friday night at Flatiron Lounge with four times the volume and still only two or three bartenders is another story.

Was there some proto bar where all three of them worked, or are those three separate roots? No. But the three of them are fairly close, have a good professional relationship, work together on projects, tend to draw from a similar pool of talent (it's not unusual for a bartender to work/have worked at multiple bars in this group -- e.g., both Pegu and M&H), etc. All three have collaborated and/or partnered on projects, etc. More to the point, and this is something that Julie touches on above, these three owner/manager/bartender/mixologists are the ones who really have a strong and well-developed training and mentoring system in place. This is especially true of Julie's and Audrey's bars, simply because they are so large. As Julie aludes to in her post, these places are known for taking people in as barbacks and, if they have the talent and drive, training and mentoring them into the City's cocktail superstars of tomorrow. Just like musicians or writers or athletes, cocktailian bartenders don't spring from Jerry Thomas's forehead fully-formed and armed with a shaker and spoon -- they have to be born and made. These three have done most of the making, and they're seem to be the only places that are training people from the bottom up.

Thanks. That's good to know. I couldn't remember if Herbsaint had been used from the beginning or if that came later. As much as some would like you to think that Herbsaint is necessary or "traditional" for a Sazerac, in fact Herbsaint only dates to 1935. The Sazerac is around a hundred years older.

Heering did stop distributing to the US for a while, but that was so they could change bottle designs (the old bottle looked like this and the new bottle looks like this). That was a while ago, however.

The Sazerac absolutely calls for absinthe.

NY Metromix has a nice roundup of cocktails in the city with elderflower flavor. Some that we may know:

I always make my pecan pies with Steen's Syrup, which I bet would be awesome in a drink like this.

Well, find it and post it! I have been finding mirto and scotch a good combination, although they have to be balanced carefully lest one take over from the other.

Don't worry too much. If you get grease on the inside of the bag near where you want to seal it, just wipe it off with a paper towel.

So, do it like they do it at the deli: Put a square of wax paper on your scale; start cutting slices of bacon; lay them out on the wax paper side-by-side; when you cover one sheet, put another sheet on top and continue; when you reach twelve ounces, set that stack aside and put a new sheet on the scale; continue until you have used up all the bacon. Mainly, though, I think you'd save yourself a lot of time by cutting out all the extra hand-washing. Start with clean hands and have a fresh, clean kitchen towel handy to wipe grease off your fingers. After all, this stuff has been preserved with salt and smoke, and you're going to be cooking it through anyway.

I don't understand why you're making this so complicated. Just wash your hands once; slice all the bacon, put the bacon slices onto roughly square sheets of wax paper, stacking one sheet on top of another until you have the amount of bacon you want to seal in one package; continue this until you have stacked up all the bacon in wax paper-separated bundles; then fold a bundle in half, slide it into a pre-made FoodSaver bag and seal; repeat until all bacon is sealed. If your hands are incredibly greasy after the bacon stacks are completed, then wash then. Otherwise, a swipe with a clean kitchen towel should suffice. You're not doing open heart surgery, for Pete's sake. Your hands don't need to be sterile. If you cut the bag long enough, you shouldn't have any problems with bacon fat fouling the seal.

This is a really, really good point. Not for nothing did I post upthread that all the top-level cocktail spots (and even most of the second tier spots) come from the Julie/Audrey/Sasha tree. It's because these are the places that have really done the lion's share of the work in developing, mentoring and training cocktailian bartender talent in the City. Julie's and Audrey's places, in particular, have their additional challenges due to their significantly larger size. But it's hard to think of any bars that have turned out more "rock star" bartenders than these.

I wonder how much cooking with absinthe will happen while the available examples in the US are North of 50 bucks for a bottle.

Made this one again last night, and it was met with approval.

This most likely indicates that the HFCS version is manufactured in the US, where economies favor HFCS over sugar. The non-HFCS version would therefore not be manufactured in the US. This may account for the observation some people have made that the Cordial version is often darker colored than the Juice version -- if the Cordial is imported, it's likely quite a bit older. My understanding (and this is mentioned upthread) is that there is a special version of Rose's formulated with a nominal amount of alcohol so that it can be sold in liquor stores in states that would otherwise prohibit its sale in liquor stores. This would be purely a legal thing. It sounds like I'm wrong about the US-based differentiation of Juice versus Cordial -- but I'm pretty sure that there is a Rose's Lime Something sold in liquor stores in certain states with around 1% alcohol. This is my thinking as well, and reinforces my suspicion that any "Cordial" we see in the US is imported and not originally intended for sale in the US.

Here is the dictionary definition: The OED has "cordial" as: a medicine, food or beverage which invigorates the heart and stimulates the circulation; a comforting or exhilarating drink. Comm. Aromatized and sweetened spirit, used as a beverage. Here is the legal definition for the US: § 5.22(h) defines "cordials and liqueurs" as: products obtained by mixing or redistilling distilled spirits with or over fruits, flowers, plants, or pure juices therefrom, or other natural flavoring materials, or with extracts derived from infusions, percolation, or maceration of such materials, and containing sugar, dextrose, or levulose, or a combination thereof, in an amount not less than 21/2 percent by weight of the finished product. This is why, I think, the Rose's Lime Cordial sold in the US has some alcohol in it (also necessary for it to be sold in liquor stores in some states). This is also why the US seems to be the only country where it is mainly known as Rose's Lime Juice (minus "cordial"), with Rose's Lime Cordial being most common internationally. If we are seeing the "cordial" version in the US with no alcohol, perhaps these are imports? From a practical standpoint, when I hear "lime syrup" I think of just that: a lime-flavored sugar syrup. When I hear "lime cordial" I think of sweetened preserved lime juice, with acidity and some of that preserved funk that lime syrup doesn't have.

I think you have to look at the cocktail and decide whether the pastis was used as an absinthe-substitute or not. Generally, this can be discerned from the date of the cocktail and the amount used. If it's a dash or a rinse, you're probably okay-to-better if you use absinthe. If it's a quarter ounce or more, you should probably figure out the date of the formula you are using. The French Pearl, for example, dates to the "modern absinthe era" in the US. Clearly it was designed with Pernod in mind, and absinthe probably would not be an improvement.

The sides of All-Clad's "French Skillet" are approximately 20% as tall as the diameter of the pan (e.g., the 11-inch pan has 2.2-inch sides, the 9.5 inch pan has 2-inch sides, etc.). This means that the sides are lower than those of a traditional sauté pan, which would be 25% as tall as the diameter of the pan. At 20%, these pans have more or less the same arrangement between diameter and sides as a traditional cast iron skillet, which usually measure out to between 20% and 14%. I haven't found this configuration particularly useful (the sides are a touch too low for truly easy tossing of food, and too high for easy spatula access) and therefore tend to use my cast iron skillets only for tasks where iron's special thermal properties are useful. Otherwise, I'd rather use a frypan or a real sauté pan. This All-Clad pan is kind of a "tweener" -- neither frypan nor quite sauté pan. Some people might like it.

One can hope that the Pegu Club cocktail recipe will be revised in the new edition.

What? You don't want a First Edition?

The amazing thing is that, as a general rule of thumb, there is an inverse relationship between the "hautness" of the restaurant and the quality of the web site. Cases in point: Daniel's horrible web site versus Landmarc's pretty good web site.

I did something smiliar not long ago. Bagged chicken thighs with buttermilk and seasonings. Cooked SV. Cooled. Added the bag liquid to some additional buttermilk (why not get the extra chicken flavor, right?), coated and fried. As you point out, one of the major advantages of this technique is that it goes much faster. And, of course, you don't have to worry that it might be overcooked. Since I like my fried chicken closer to room temperature, it doesn't even need to be heated all the way through when it is fried.

Isn't there some kind of rule that all restaurant web sites have to suck?