jsolomon

I apologize about jumping on the bandwagon late. The turnip truck broke down and I had to hitch on the hayrack. I'll give my hope for your second question. I want the females at restaurant table with me to feel as comfortable ordering a bottle of wine from a list of unfamiliar wines as I (a male) am. I see this as wine consumption in a social setting in the US has deep roots in the socio-sexual roles of dominance (typically seen as masculine) and submissiveness (typically seen as feminine). This is exhibited in wine choice by the men typically ordering the wine per expectation while on a date with little constructive help from the partner (or worse a proscription of "nothing weird"--GRR!). Perhaps an additional hanger-on for number two would be a reduction in the sexualization of wine. I don't want to think I'm buying wine so I can make the beast with two backs (yay Shakespeare). I want to think I'm buying the wine because it's tasty, traditional, and a damned fine complement to what I'm doing when I drink it. Perhaps some kind of media campaign where you show wine by a glass of milk with the tag line "Yes, it's that fundamental."

Don't get me wrong, I've been to a couple (unfortunately, not around here) that have been quite good. Locally, I've even had some vegetarian dishes that were really good. But, at the local joints, the dishes that I had that were good were generally footnotes on the menu. The ones that highlighted their vegetarian cuisine either just served the same oversteamed sides you'd find at a typical joint as main dishes, or served the schizoid type of things that I'd need to go on a serious Mary Jane bender on to really enjoy appropriately.

Schmalz is rendered chicken fat. Easy to make on your own. You could probably sub duck fat or shortening, but the flavor and mouthfeel of the end product would be different. potash (pottasche) in cooking is potassium carbonate. You can sub sodium carbonate (baking soda) at a rate of 84% by weight. For sweet cream, heavy and whipping cream are the same, I believe. As for Pfefferkuchengewürz, the Babelfish just called it pepper cake spice, so I'm at a loss. The german wikipedia has this entry, but my translation skills are much better in Japanese or Spanish than German. Edit to add: the Wikipedia comes through! Pfeffperkuchengewurz: 35 g cinnamon 2 g allspice 2g coriander 2g ginger 1g cardomom 1g nutmeg 1g mace

Wouldn't that be a murderer and make you a cannibal? I would suggest finding a hunter with a deer in his/her crosshairs or (if they are true sportsmen) open sights.

1/2 full I think is more than simple temperature expansion of the bags, though. I'd be concerned. If you know a microbiologist, have them open the bag and smell.

On the other side of the coin from faux-meat dishes, I have been to a couple vegetarian places that err on the other side of the coin. Their dishes are so off the wall and incongruous that I left feeling like I had just gone through an art show where three-year olds had attempted to paint like Van Gogh. The composition and balance was not just off, it was schizoid and unencumbered by the requirement of being very enjoyable. I should have known that I was sunk when I was taken to a "Vegetarian Cuisine" restaurant. No one I know has ever visited Vegetaria, nor emigrated from there. I can understand vegetarian restaurants that do things like Vegetarian Italian cuisine, or Chinese, etc. Things where I can understand the basis and composition of the dishes, but I've been to so many where it seems like the person just throws darts at their list of available ingredients and cooking methods to fill out their menu that I don't have the hope that I should. And, it's sad, because I really enjoy a mushroom and pickled pepper filling on a potato roll for lunch. Edit to add: why is it that at non-vegetarian places with well-designed vegetarian dishes, my sexualityy gets called into question when I order vegetarian dishes?

That's very interesting. My lab has new (less than 3 years old) soapstone countertops, and they have no patina. They are quite hard and durable, IMO. Are there different hardness of soapstone you can get, or have I been working without a respirator too long?

Who do you normally eat with when you cook? If it is just yourself, I have suffered through those food blahs, too. What helps me a lot is cooking for people and having a proper kitchen to cook in.

Yeah, I'd toss in an application, but Gary can't afford me as a barrista. Something about wanting to repay my student loans Thanks for the encouragement!

No, it's The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska

Hi all, I have a paranoid question for your experiences. My local coffee roaster is fantastic. He's spectacular. In my opinion, he roasts to the level of Intelligentsia. But, that's all he does. He roasts, and he sells some small coffee making supplies. Filters, Chemex carafes, melitta one-cups, and very very good coffee. He's going to start offering actual coffee drinks at his store, and open a second one in our town. What have been your experiences of your roasters branching out? On the plus side, my roaster will be opening a coffee shop within two miles of my house, which is tres magnifique, but I'm still concerned that my quality of coffee will drop. Am I just being Chicken Little?

Caramelize and eat on savory crepes and spicy sausages

I don't think the word "porn" is as gauche as you would think... Food porn thread started by Jason Perlow.

I steel mine with every use, and in 6 years of ownership, it has yet to see a stone. Nice and sharp, too. I suppose the tip could use a little service, though.

It's your proximity to Kansas that's your problem. That would cause a problem for the brewery I used to work for Spilker Ales can only sell their stuff chilled as it's not pasteurized, filtered, or chemically preserved (aside from ethanol and hops content). I apologize for your lawmakers' short-sightedness.

Lauren, the advice that I have is not quite so learned as Daniel Rogov's or Brad Ballinger's, but it is equally as important. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. When you are trying to pairings, be ready to evaluate them on their own qualities. In my cooking and drinking experiences, I have made some really tremendous missteps. I have a group of dinner friends who you can simply say "brussels sprouts" and they will dissolve into laughter because of a grandly misguided attempt at hote kweezeen. It missed haute cuisine by a long shot, but it was a fun dinner. Wine shouldn't be considered unapproachable. It wouldn't be in so many different cultures if it were. Wine should be looked at like an old friend always welcomed to the table, not the boss who should be approached with great deference and probity. Have fun with your learning. You'll be glad that you did. Mistakes are just new experiences in another light.

Too late.

mr. solomon, u are good; but, how many level Tbsps = 32g? ← See, that's the problem. Density (weight per unit volume) for packed things isn't a constant function. Based on size and other variables, they pack differently. That's why your cereal box, while full to the top at the factory (or close) is never full when you get it home. Likewise, differences in particulate size, humidity, and amount of static electricity from the grinding process will cause your ground coffee to pack differently each time, so it's really difficult to give you a general rule for fresh ground coffee. However, the weight will never change. 32 grams in will give you 32 grams out. Check out The Kitchen Scale Manifesto in the recipegullet.

Prices vary from place-to-place. At the coffee roaster I go to, I can get any coffee I want from between 8.50 and 9.00 per pound. If I go to a grocery store, I'm paying 11.00-14.00 per pound for crap. Price depends on many factors. For 24 ounces of finished coffee, I would expect 2 ounces of hold-up by the filter and coffee for starters, and see where you end up when you experiment from there. For your volume question, that depends a lot on the grind, the alignment of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and Uranus. But, to produce 32 g of ground coffee, I start with 32 g. On my conical tubes that I carry my coffee to work in, it ends up at about 45-50 ml of ground coffee per 12-ounce cup, so you will want between 90-100 ml of ground coffee. I get this coming to about 6.7 ~=7 Tbsp of coffee. Go by weight. It'll never lead you wrong.

jgould, a good number of us measure our coffee by different methods, that is likely the reason none of us answered. Personally, I like 16 grams of coffee per 12-ounce cup. That would be 32 grams of coffee for 24 ounces of finished product (3-8 ounce cups) For Guatemala coffee I generally have been drinking Huehuetenango (way-way-teh-nahn-go). For your measure question, 1 Tbsp is 3 tsp. For how much to use, that's largely an issue of personal taste and roast. I suggest starting out with one scoop per cup and seeing out it tastes and adjusting from there. You might end up using $1.00 worth of coffee to do it, but you'd be out more than that if you went to your local coffee shop, so I don't think you should be too put out by this.

I would that this were not so true. It reminds me of the BetaMax vs VHS wars. There are many technically superior things on the market than most of the wines I find in the restaurants I go to, even at the same price point. But, due to laziness, ignorance, neglect, or any of a number of reasons, the industrial wines and the kool-aid wines I see again and again are inferior, but better recognized. That works for small economies, but not economies of scale, so you would go back a couple of hundred years in either size, or distribution, I think. Not that this wouldn't be bad if you had good producers available for everyone, but there would still be grand disparities in a system like this (at least given the current market pressures).

In a low-markup, cut-throat market, I agree with you. When your margins are razor-thin, you need volume. However, when I go somewhere like a dedicated wine shop, or an upscale restaurant, I go there for a higher level of knowledge, service, and care in all aspects of my restaurant experience. Here's my question of you, JohnL. The simplistic situation is that you markup all of your wines the same percentage. Salesperson 1 sells 5x the units of salesperson 2, but the wines salesperson 1 sells are 1/5 the price. So, they make you the same money. Salesperson 1 gets perfunctory business thank-you cards to your business. Salesperson 2 gets heartfelt thanks from the people he/she sells to. You have to lay one of the two off. Who do you lay off?

If Bubba Co. is hiring, I'm looking! I already think food... and dessert. Dessert is very important.

Do you still admire them when they get it wrong? Here in Nebraska, there are a couple of places that do this sort of thing that I've got to, but most of the places get it obfuscated. If it isn't completely obfuscated, they highlight the less important (to my selection criteria) flavor profiles that make choosing the wine yet another unenlightened shot in the dark. What it really seems like is that they try to make a broad selection from the wholesaler, and then attempt to shoehorn in their wine purchases. It's not exactly an optimal situation, but it's vaguely workable now that I have some experience with wine and am not prepared to be bullied about my wine choice.

I'm thinking of starting brewing again (mostly due to this thread) and I have two questions about my setup. 1: I have a woefully underpowered apartment-styled stove. How should I handle having a wort that's slow to temperature? 2: I have no dishwasher. How do you suggest I sterilize bottles? And I have one question about my recipe. Suggestions to make? I really like dry-hopped recipes, but I haven't brewed for almost 10 years, so I am looking for something tasty, but pretty simple.