Duskie, is that you? UPDATE: Duskie made it through to next week. Stay tuned. Despite the mega-watt grin, makeup and pigtails, Duskie Estes isn’t a chef to be messed with.Which is exactly what Alton Brown and her fellow contestants find out on the premiere of The Next Iron Chef (Food Network, Sunday @ 8pm). Oh, boy do they find out.
After screening the premiere (minus the elimination), let’s just say Duskie made a serious impression. There are some roller-coaster highs and lows for the SoCo chef, but I’m putting my money on Duskie making it through to the next round.
Her pigs will never forgive her if she doesn’t. We can’t tell you everything, but we can say that a whole suckling pig, a large cleaver, homemade sausage and lots of sand were involved. There were also some tense moments with Mr. Brown and her fellow chefs.
“I’m very competitive” she said while cooking up a harvest luncheon yesterday at Michel-Schlumberger. Duskie’s keeping mum on the details (spilling anything has major legal ramifications) and Estes said that even her husband doesn’t know the outcome. The usually mellow Estes said she worried a bit about how she’d come off after having a pointed exchange with host Alton Brown, but hey, the camera adds few extra pounds of, uh, intensity to us all, right? The real sourpuss of the show, however, is lemon-faced judge Donatella Arpaia. You just want to hate her for tirelessly kvetching about her “palate”, making all sorts of dramatic coughing and gagging, being “bored” with the food and generally having anything to do with the show. Can we vote her off? Estes will be screening the show on Sunday at Zazu as a benefit for the Ceres project and no doubt telling a few pre-approved anecdotes about her time on-set for the show. Just don’t ask her about the pineapple.
Zazu restaurant + farm hosts dinner and a showing of the premiere of The Next Iron chef (featuring Duskie, natch) this Sunday at 5:30pm. All proceeds go to the Ceres Project. $97 for dinner, wine & viewing, $39 for wine, viewing and popcorn at 8pm. 3535 Guerneville Rd, Santa Rosa, 523-4814.
Big news: Santa Rosa’s beloved Rosso Pizzeria and Wine Bar is hoping to expand to a second location in Petaluma. Co-owner and partner Kevin Cronin confirms that they’re eager to find a new audience and that he’s “talking to people” in Petaluma.
But that’s not all. Cronin said he’s also looking at spaces for a raw bar and grill in Santa Rosa that would be dedicated to sustainable seafood in Santa Rosa. “Think Swan Oyster Depot meets Sam’s,” he said. The concept would be casual and neighborhoody, he said, while serious about good seafood.
So far, nothing’s been inked, but Cronin’s optimistic about finding just the right space for Rosso’s expanding empire.
Vote for Tiffany, help Food For Thought
Local chef Tiffany Friedman, who runs Butterroot Personal Chef Services, is one of 24 chefs competing in the Sears Chef Challenge — a nationwide talent search featuring some of the country’s best young culinary talents. And she needs your help.
As part of the months-long contest, each chef raises money for food banks around the country, and Tiffany’s choice is Sonoma County’s Food For Thought. Depending on the number of rounds she wins (which depend on user votes), she could win up to $20,000 for the organization.
Friedman, a young mother who lives in Cotati, lost her father to AIDS several years ago and felt a connection to the Forestville-based food center that supports people with HIV and AIDS. Her introduction to cooking was at her father’s New York restaurant, and she has worked at Plumpjack in Lake Tahoe, The Village Pub and the Lark Creek Inn. So far Friedman has participated in a number of video demonstrations for Sears and her continued success in the contest is dependent on the number of votes she gets from visitors to the site. That’s where we come in…
To vote for Tiffany and to follow her quest on the Sears Chef Challenge, cast your vote (there’s no fee involved, just a mouse click) at the Sears Chef Challenge site (searschefchallenge.com) and click on the VOTE NOW button. Tiffany’s in the LA crew. Voting for Round 2 ends October 9. It’s a win-win for all of us. Said Tiffany: “It has been hard work, lots of burns, some harassment and tons of fun. It is a journey that never ends and always grows. When you keep the fire burning the flame will continue to blaze.”
The town of Sonoma is mourning the loss of Zino Mezoui, a longtime presence in the town and operator of Zino’s on the Plaza. The 57-year-old moved his restaurant to Lake County in 2006. Sonoma Town Hub blogger James Marshall Berry wrote this about the death:
Zino Mezoui, 57, owner of Zino’s Ristorante and Inn in Kelseyville, died from injuries sustained in a Friday morning collision with a vehicle at Highway 29 and Siegler Canyon Road. According to a report in the Lake County News online, The California Highway Patrol and the District Attorney’s Office were investigating the crash on Friday, with the driver of the vehicle fleeing the scene afterward, as Lake County News has reported. As of Sunday, no arrests in the case had been reported.
CHP Officer Dallas Richey said Friday that Mezoui had been flown to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
You have to love getting a physics lesson from a simple kitchen task: Gravity, for example, seems particularly enamored of demonstrating to me her unwavering commitment, most often when I’m in a rush, by recasting my own kitchen floor as some vast cemetery plot for the night’s dead soldiers, the busted egg shells, the shattered crystal of a wine glass, the shards of a Pyrex prep bowl, the inevitable seasoning of too much floor-spice. But nowhere is your high school science teacher more elegantly remembered than in the humble pot of boiling water at the heart of this post: Thermodynamics, chemistry, and physics, all roiling away together, just so we can eat pasta for dinner.
Most of us, however, don’t boil our pasta water correctly, because adding salt to water in order to cause the water to boil more quickly remains one of the enduring urban legends of the home kitchen. In point of fact, salty water takes longer to boil than pure water, because salt in solution raises its boiling point; a higher boiling point means that the water must get hotter in order to boil, and to get hotter requires a larger transfer of energy from your burner to the water; and thus, if your burner is already maxed out on ‘high’, then there isn’t much you can do to get the water hotter, except to wait longer. (Unless you have a Spinal Tap burner that goes to eleven, but that’s more a question of technological metaphysics than it is of thermodynamics.)
Thus faced with a pot of water, a burner with fixed number of maximum BTUs and a package of uncooked pasta, what, then, is the home cook to do? As I understand it, it’s all about why water bubbles when it’s boiled, which is a story about lots of tiny water molecules careening into one another so rapidly that they literally knock each other out of the pot and into the surrounding atmosphere. (Somewhat off-thread, but this also explains why water boils at lower temperatures above sea level: With less atmospheric pressure leaning down on the surface of the water, it takes less energy to kick the little guys up and out into the thinner air.) The specific phenomenon about which home cooks everywhere have been misled for generations is called boiling-point elevation, and dictates that the point at which a liquid will turn into a gas – a fancy way of saying “it boils” – will rise if you incorporate something n0n-volatile (something itself not prone to boiling, such as salt – alcoho, with its lower equilibrium vapor pressure, would have the opposite effect) into it.
I have an entirely unconfirmed pet theory about the root of the confusion: At some point, in some kitchen, some cook who didn’t ditch chemistry in high school figured out that if adding salt to water makes the water boil at a higher temperature (which, as we’ve discussed, is true), then it should also make the food quick more quickly (which also happens to be true – hotter water, faster cooking). But then somewhere down the line, in a multi-generational game of kitchen telephone, some cook who skipped class a bit more frequently, erroneously conflated cooking quickly with boiling quickly – when, somewhat counterintuitively, the two are actually opposing concepts.
Armed with this knowledge, we can definitively settle the proper approach to boiling water: If you want the water to boil more rapidly, you should add the salt only after the water begins to boil, and then return it to the boil before cooking. The salty water will, upon boiling, be hotter, so you might think you’d have to worry about cooking times, but the practical reality is otherwise, because you’re unlikely ever to use enough salt to matter: The conventional advice for salting pasta water, for example, is to use about an ounce of salt per quart of cooking water. But such a quantity will only raise the boiling point by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or less than 0.5%.
Class dismissed!
So, apparently baby carrots went and got all cool on us when we weren’t looking. You know, those little shaved-down nubbins of carrot (you didn’t think they actually grew that way) that are the perfect size for dipping into some ranch. Or blue cheese dressing. Or clam dip.
Word is that the baby carrot growers are shelling out $25 millionto make this sweet and crunchy little vegetable your teen’s new best friend – instead of that bag of Doritos.
A flood of quirky ads, an iPhone game, a high-energy website and carrot vending machines are among the roll-out, pitching folks to eat ’em like junk food. Cha, right.
But really, you gotta applaud the effort, because for all the billions and billions shelled out by the processed food industry, this is a considerable venture by the produce industry to market (shocker) healthy food. Behind the campaign are a number of large-scale carrot growers led by Bolthouse Farms, of California.
Of course, nothing’s perfect: There’s plenty of controversy about the processing and complete nutrition of these “babies”, but in the end, we all have to admit that eating a carrot of any stripe is probably better than eating a bag of cheese puffs. Do you buy it? Is it a good idea to try and repackage something healthy to look like something naughty? Do you think it will work? Sound off.
Prost! As millions conclude their annual Oktoberfest revelries in Munich, Germany (Sept. 18-October 4), Wine Country’s beer-centric affairs are just getting started. So grab your steins, oompa-attitude and Das Boots and head for sudsy events around the county… Oktoberfest 2009 at Barley and Hops
BITECLUB PICK Barley and Hops: Third Annual Oktoberfest (October 1-3, 2010)
The beer-friendliest pub Sebastopol and Bodega Bay, Barley and Hops, goes all-Bavarian for three days during their Third Annual Oktoberfest Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They’ll be bringing in special Oktoberfest beer served in traditional liter steins, serving up authentic Bavarian eats and decking out the entire staff in lederhosen and dirndls — which you can see from the picture is worth the trip alone. Owner Noah Bolmer, who owns the bar with wife Mirjam, is a beer aficionado who walks the walk 365 days a year, so he can show you the ropes when it comes to Weizens and Marzens. Looking for a boot to sip from? This year they’ve brought in glass cowboy boots to guzzle your wiezen. 3688 Bohemian Hwy, Occidental, 874-9037 Harvest Brew Tasting @ The Harvest Fair (Oct. 2) : Wine Country’s more than just wine. Microbrew tasting from 1-5pm at the Village on Saturday only. $15 for a souvenir glass and four taste tickets. Additional tastes $3. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 21+ only. Big Oktoberfest Bash (BOB), Oct. 8: Lagunitas, Russian River Brewery, Third Street Aleworks, Ace Cider and several other breweries and wineries will be pouring at the Sonoma County Museum’s annual bash from 5-9pm, October 8. The event includes tastings, live bluegrass music, food, beer-making demos and more. Flamingo Resort and Hotel, 2777 Fourth St., Santa Rosa. $40 per person. 579-1500, 21 and over. Oktoberfest Petaluma (Oct. 16): This family-friendly event sponsored by the Rotary Club features Lagunitas beer, polka dancing, costumes and food. 4-10pm, Petaluma Community Center, 320 North McDowell Blvd, Petaluma. Adults $12, kids $6. Ticket info at petalumavalleyrotary.org/ok. Cotati Oktoberfest (Oct. 9): Get out your lederhosen and practice your yodeling for the upcoming Cotati Oktoberfest. Wunderbar German food and beer, plus the oom-pah-pah of Karl Lebherz and his Bavarian band. Activities include; Wiener Dog Race, Tankard Hold, Beer Stein Carry, Best Adult & Youth Costume. Tickets include dinner, a stein and a glass of beer, wine, or root beer (for kids and designated drivers). Adults, $25, kids 12 and under, $10. 12pm to 6pm at La Plaza Park, Downtown Cotati at the corner of Old Redwood Hwy and West Sierra Avenue under the giant tent. Details: Cotati Chamber of Commerce at (707) 795-5508 or email chamber@cotati.org. Oktoberfest in Cloverdale (Oct. 9): Cloverdale’s Annual Oktoberfest celebration in the Downtown Plaza includes German food, wine and beer tasting, live music, silent auctions, raffles, street vendors, children’s activities, and more. 3-8pm, Downtown Cloverdale Plaza and Museum. $15 in advance for a meal. 894-2039. Biketober Fest Marin (Oct. 16)
Cylocross and beer tasting from more than 20 West Coast brewers. Fair Anselm Plaza, 765 Center Blvd., Fairfax. Beer tasting $25. biketoberfestmarin.com Oktoberfest Wine Country Lunch at Schug Winery (Oct. 17)
A Harvest Celebration wine country style inspired by Walter Schug’s home region of the Rheingau. Enjoy Federweisser (fermenting white wine from the barrel)& Zweibelkuchen (savory onion cake) along with traditional German fare and live Polka music! 11am to 4pm. Advance reservations required. $25/person, 602 Bonneau Road, Sonoma, 939.9363 x207. Adventures in Brewing Tasting & Pairing (Oct. 20)
Scattered across the globe, there exists a small cadre of revolutionaries dedicated to liberating civilization from the clutches of boring beer. They operate independently but share a common goal; to produce the finest beers imaginable. Share their history and adventure of brewing – and your opportunity to taste it! Whole Foods Coddingtown (which also features the new Tap Room pub onsite with 16 beers on tap). Don’t miss: Fresh Pretzels with Sweet Mustard: Not too hard. Not too soft, but just right. Big beefy pretzels made on-site daily. Coddingtown Mall, Santa Rosa. Pre-registration required for the Oct. 20 event: email coddingtowninfo@wholefoods.com Restaurant and Brewpub Scene…
Cafe Europe: Through October 24, Cafe Europe is celebrating Oktoberfest with imported Munich’s Octoberfest Spaten, live music on Friday and Saturday evening, Monthly menu specialties include Munich Weiswurst and Bavarian sausage. 104 Calistoga Road, Santa Rosa, 538-5255. Lokal: Sonoma’s new Euro-style pub honors Oktoberfest with a “happy hour” from 4–6 everyday and a Beer Stein challenge every night where guests can win a 1 liter SPATEN stein. On the menu: $5 Beer & German Dog, $8 Brat W/ Salad & Kraut, $4 Happy Fries. Plus: $5 ½ Liters and $10 One Liter Steins. 522 Broadway, Sonoma, 938-7373. Through October 24. Bear Republic Brewing Co.: The Healdsburg brewery will release their Oktoberfest beer, a late-harvest lager and serving up several German beers (including a Sticke Alt) starting Oct. 2. 345 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg, 433-BEER. Third Street Aleworks: Releasing their Marzen-style beer (with just a hint of sweetness) will be released in mid-October, just in time for their Oct. 16 “Meet the Brewmaster” dinner ($40, limited seating, reservations required). A little lower-brow is their weekly Best of the Wurst, an all-day sausage fest featuring hot dogs, Polish sausage, bratwurst, knockwurst and sausages on a hoagie roll for just $5.50. 610 Third St. Santa Rosa, 523-3060. Yanni’s Sausage Grill: Okay, so they’re more Greek than German, but a sausage translates in any language. This bare bones walk-up eatery takes its sausage seriously. On the menu, eight flavors of sausage — from Loukaniko, a rustic Greek sausage with citrus and spice; garlic mint, sweet and hot Italian, chicken limoncello; Olympic Flame (extra hot made with brandy); greek kalamata olive and feta; and lamb sausage served with tzatziki. All are under $6, most under $5. Buy a couple because you’ll likely want another after scarfing down the first. They’ll burn your tongue and scorch your fingers, but slowing down to savor these dogs just ain’t an option. 10007 Main St., Penngrove, 795-7088. Got an Oktoberfest-inspired event or eatery you want to share? Shout out!
Mac-n-Cheese v1.0 with Italian-style cheeses
OK, it’s Monday, enough of the booze chatter. We promised to engage in the pursuit of mac-n-cheese perfection, and here in the Proximal Kitchen, we don’t take such promises lightly.
If you caught my previous post on mac-n-cheese, despair not yet another sermon from the culinary pulpit, because today’s post – our introductory foray into the mac-n-cheese sweepstakes – is all business. I have little doubt that my previous wax-on, wax-off meanderings will return to this thread; but not today. This post will run longer than I (or you) would prefer, but that’s only because I have to set the Ground Rules, and I still owe you a recipe.
As a one-time career student, I usually start any new research project with a review of the literature, so I’ve been reading up on mac-n-cheese. The Internet produces information overload: Lots of great-sounding recipes, a vastly larger number of suspect ones, and all sorts of claims and factoids, both interesting and banal, about the history of this profoundly American dish (who knew that Thomas Jefferson loved to serve a baked macaroni and cheese?). Fortunately, Emily Weinstein, writing for the New York Times, has done much of the work for me, and I highly recommend her article, as well as the recipes referenced therein, many of which helped define my jumping-off point.
My first realization: I will need to focus and compartmentalize this project. I am not going to try every conceivable variation; nor do I think I have to, because I have a pretty good idea about what I want the final result to be, and it doesn’t include broccoli, brie, or chemically engineered low fat substitutions. Thus, after trudging through the requisite forest of recipes, commentary, and philosophical rants concerned with such things, and superimposing my own mental palate, I’ve delineated my take on the critical underlying choice variables:
Unadorned or Dressed Up: You can make a compelling case for mixing in diced ham or broccoli, for a crispy shallot topping, for any number of additions that raise the apparent sophistication of the dish. I don’t object to any of them, so long as they serve a purpose. But none of them are essential, and that is what I’m after: Howsoever wonderful bacon may be, the soulof mac-n-cheese does not depend on it, and neither will our recipes. (I’m undecided on breadcrumbs; my intuition says “no”, but I’m kind of a sucker for crumbly toppings, so I’m reserving the right to try it.)
Sauce or Just Cheese: Most of the classic recipes start with some version of a bechamel sauce, and then build a cheese sauce from there – essentially, a variation on the classic Mornay. But not everyone agrees; there are those who would argue that flour has no place in a true mac-n-cheese, and that cheese alone should suffice to bind the pasta. Like the question of adornment, I don’t need to cook to answer this one: I will never get the texture and depth of flavor I want – both crusty, gooey, and creamy all at the same time, with layers and layers of flavor permeating into the noodles – without some sort of a mother sauce in which to embed background flavors, to mix and bind the cheeses, and to fill in the the spaces between the layers of pasta. Thus, all of our recipes will start with a basic white sauce based on the classic bechamel.
Cheddar vs Other Cheeses: Most of the recipes I read, and particularly those of the more “classic” variety, depend heavily, if not entirely, on cheddar cheese. I’m unconvinced, and this is where I expect to invest the most time, because, quite obviously, the dish will ultimately fail without the right mixture of cheeses. Furthermore, when I think about the classic cheese sauces, typically some variation on Mornay, I tend to think of Swiss, Alsatian, and Italian cheeses, more than I do cheddar (both Larousse and Michel Roux, in his essential Sauces, agree). Cheddar also presents some textural challenges, as I find that it has a proclivity for breaking (the fats separate during cooking) and turning grainy. For all these reasons, I’m going to try Swiss- , Italian-, and Cheddar-styled cheeses before taking my final stand.
Choice of Pasta: It may seem oxymoronic to debate the shape of pasta for a dish that is named after one particular shape, but in fact the Italian root– maccherone – is used to refer to most any tube-shaped pasta cut into short, regular lengths. The more important feature, it seems to me, is how particular shapes hold the sauce and whether they maintain their integrity during the second cooking (baking in the sauce after boiling). Also important is how a particular shape sets up because – no disrespect to the oozing-pile approach – I’d prefer to serve a structurally coherent slice of the final product without it spilling all over the plate.
A quick inventory of the cheese drawer yields some aged Provolone, a chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano, but no real cheddar or Swissy-type stuff. The pasta shelf has a few options, most of them (spaghetti, capellini, and a variation on the corkscrew the kids are fond of) inappropriate to the task at hand. I spy some ziti regate, an over-sized, grooved version of penne, which sounds like a good test-case of a larger, straighter tube than th elbow-macaroni benchmark, and also strikes me as fine in its own right. As regular followers already know, I depend heavily on leftovers (indeed, I take the creative and productive use of what is already sitting around to be a badge of honor – it saves time and money, it reduces waste, and it forces me to think like a cook), and thus my first attempt at mac-n-cheese is born of a Provolone-based white sauce over some big, fat pasta tubes. Mac-n-Cheese, v1.0
This recipe is sized for the pie dish I wanted to bake it in and will generally be “small”, so size it up for larger casseroles.
Cook the pasta: Boil about a 1/2 lb of dried, large-ish tubular pasta, preferably grooved to help grab on to the sauce, such as ziti or rigatoni, in a large pot of salted water (I tend to cook a little extra and then adjust the final quantity of pasta to match the final volume of sauce). Cook only until just barely al dente – the pasta will continue to cook in the oven, and you don’t want it turning to mush. In practice, assuming you are using an Italian boxed pasta that has been packaged for American distribution, this will generally mean you want to pull it off the burner about a minute before the low end of the recommended range (and certainly no later than said lower end). While you’re at it, pre-heat the oven to 350F.
While the pasta is boiling, start the sauce: Make 1/4 cup of blonde roux by cooking 3 tablespoons of flour in 3 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat. You want to cook the flour, but whisk it around and watch the heat so as not to let it color. Scald 2 cups of whole milk or even cream (although, honestly, I used 2% and it still came out fine) add it slowly to the roux, whisking constantly to avoid lumps (if it gets lumpy, your milk was likely not hot enough, or you added it too quickly; you can always strain it out if that happens). You have what is now a bechamel sauce, but you need to season it – add a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (maybe 1/8th of a teaspoon – not too much), white pepper (black pepper will screw up the color – this isn’t sausage gravy, it’s a white mac-n-cheese), and salt. Don’t skimp on the salt; it’s important to season each layer of the dish, or the final result will be under-seasoned and bland. Bring to a gentle boil and cook until the sauce thickens up and you no longer taste a raw, floury taste. Don’t forget to take the pasta off the heat and drain it while this is going on!
Stir in the cheeses, starting with about a half-pound of shredded, aged Provolone (slices will melt OK as well). I would not use Mozzarella (not the right texture for melting, or flavor profile, really), but a 50/50 blend of Provolone and Fontina would probably work very well. Once the Provolone has melted completely and the sauce is hot, turn off the heat and stir in most of a gently packed cup of finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano, either by itself or mixed with a little Pecorino Romano for extra bite; reserve a small handful. Check the final sauce for seasoning and adjust, if necessary.
Combine the pasta and the cheese sauce: Transfer most of the pasta back to the pot from which it came, or to a large mixing bowl (glass better than metal, because everything will still be quite hot), pour most of the sauce over the pasta, and gently fold them together to avoid damaging the pasta. Reserve a small amount of pasta and sauce so that you can adjust the quantities, if necessary. Make sure to distribute the sauce uniformly in order to coat all the noodles. The stuff should look like almost as much sauce as pasta, with every noodle heavily coated in a thick slathering of the sauce.
Bake the pasta: Gently fill a small, buttered casserole dish, pie plate, or earthenware crock, pouring the pasta and sauce down in layers; delicately compress the pasta as you go in order to ensure it is basically solid and of a uniform density throughout. Pour any remaining sauce over the top and then sprinkle with the reserved cheeses and dot with butter. Transfer to the bottom rack of a 350-degree (F) oven for about 20 minutes; it will be done when the top and sides are bubbling and just starting to brown. Turn the oven to broil – this will brown the top and create a bubbly, cheesy crust. But watch it carefully, now is not the time to do anything else! (I never, not ever, turn the broiler on without setting a timer for a minute or two.)
Let it set: Do not attempt to taste or serve for at least 10 minutes – 15-20 is probably better (I’m assuming your kitchen is pretty warm; if not, adjust accordingly). Like any baked pasta, you need to give it time to cool and bind up with some structural integrity; it will also save you and your family from a blistering case of pizza-mouth. Alternatively, if you’re worried about the top getting cold, or timing it for service, remove it from the oven when it’s done, but before broiling it, let it set, and then return to the broiler just before you’re ready to serve it.
My family had the version pictured above for dinner, and found it very satisfying, an overall solid effort. If I’m splitting hairs – and, in the pursuit of cheesy perfection, one must always split hairs – it was a little too sharp for the kids, but I knew going in that this would be a more adult version (the same basic recipe with some mild Fontina, for instance, would be more kid-friendly, and I suspect have a superior texture to boot).
As we’re only beta-testing, I’ll definitely change some things next time:
I’m not sure the large pasta shape was ideal; next time, I’ll either use a smaller shape like penne, or the classic elbow macaroni.
The cheeses had great flavor, but were a little one-dimensional, so I’m going to move into the Swissy or Cheddary families next, although I can definitely envision a cheese blend including some of what was used here (particularly the final sprinkling of Parmigiano). Also, the texture was good, but not perfect – the final sauce, out of the oven, would ideally be a bit smoother and more consistent.
I think I would raise the proportion of cheese in the sauce in order to make it slightly less like a cream sauce and slightly more chew in texture.
In short, this is very much worth making, but stay tuned for future upgrades.
I’m not a big drinker of cocktails in general, and I’m even less of a drinker of gin. That being said, cocktails clearly have their place: Less so with food, and more before – or after, or occasionally instead of; as an alternative to beer, when the weather or environs don’t seem conducive to wine; and certainly, as a welcome to guests who have just endured the Bay Area’s northbound assault on wine country on the first Saturday in August, a category which counted my wife’s brother and his family as victims a month or so ago. Gin, for its part, is still rarely my favorite, but I’m being slowly won over by two things: First, I’ve had some exceptional gin cocktails, most recently a crisp, refreshing, and generally excellent Cucumber Collins, with just the right balance of aromatic gin, citrus, sweetness and acidity, at the new SpoonBar here in town – in point of fact, the Cuke Collins was so good, I skipped the other 8 pages of the bar menu and ordered another straightaway; second, gin does exceptional things with lime juice and, as a rule, I can’t get enough limes in my cocktails. I cannot tell a lie, I do in fact have lime trees in the yard.
Thus, with guests on the road, the fog burning off, and a small vat of lavender simple syrup in the fridge, I tooled around with the idea of a lavender-infused Gimlet. If you like odd factoids from history, spend a few minutes reading about the history of the Gimlet at the Thinking of Drinking blog. For our purposes, the salient facts are that (a) the Gimlet, named eponymously for a British naval surgeon in the 1860s, Dr. Gimlette, was invented as a means to get sailors in the Royal Navy to ingest their ration of lime juice, and thereby to prevent scurvy; (b) the historical use of the Rose’s Lime Cordial dates to the same period, when Lauchlan Rose invented Rose’s Lime as a means of preserving the citrus juice for long journeys without the use of alcohol. (One can infer the history of the derogative “Limey” easily enough from there.) You have to love the British sense of irony: Mr. Rose patents a means of preserving lime juice for sailors without the use of alcohol, and a Royal Naval surgeon simultaneously invents a cocktail with which to get sailors to drink it.
Long and sundry is the list of arguments and citations to the effect that a Gimlet must contain Rose’s, but I can’t agree, and I think the argument stops here: The modern-day Rose’s is no longer the same stuff as it was in 1867 (it now includes natural flavors other than lime, artificial preservatives, and – in the US, where I would buy mine – high fructose corn syrup in lieu of sugar). The other thing about Rose’s is, well, it’s kind of disgusting, a bit like the liquid that squirts out of those ill-considered gums and candies my middle daughter is so inconceivably enamored of.
Since Rose’s is basically just sweetened lime juice with preservatives, and since I’m not subject to the uncertainties of 19th century refrigeration technology, I figured, how hard can it be to make a proper lime cordial from fresh lime juice? Equal parts lavender simple syrup and freshly squeezed lime juice (which I passed through a strainer for seeds and pulp), and voila, a fresh, homemade, lavender-infused lime cordial. Mix with an equal part of your favorite gin or vodka for a Gimlet, or add soda water and serve over ice for a quasi-Rickey, and garnish with sprigs of mint, fresh lavender, a lime peel, and a straw, if it’s watered down and over ice. Whichever way go, the perfume of the lavender really plays off of herbal aromatics of the gin, and the limes speak for themselves; you just can’t go wrong. Lavender Gimlet
Mix about a quarter-cup of equal parts fresh-squeezed limed juice and chilled lavender simple syrup with your favorite gin. I like Sapphire, as I find it less assertive than some gins, so if you like a more pronounced herbaciousness, try something like Junipero. (Gin, more than most liquors, varies greatly in style from brand to brand, so it really comes down to personal preference.)
For a straight up Gimlet, shake over ice and strain into martini glass or tumbler.
Or, add 1/2 to 1 cup of water – plain or sparkling (the latter making something like a Ricky) – and serve over ice in a high ball glass or, as I’ve done here, with the cut up limes in a mason jar. This version is highly recommended for a warm weekend afternoon, and would be well-suited to a by-the-pitcher version. I also made a version of the watered-down, over-ice and cut-limes version with Hanger 1 vodka – maybe not quite as interesting or complex as the gin version, but an outstanding cocktail in its own right.
Kampai. Drink copiously when possible, and always responsibly.
I have a pretty strict rule of approving every comment but responding to none, no matter how profound and insightful or vacuous and petty they may be. It isn’t always pleasant, but it is fair, which might be the most one can hope for in the blogosphere. It is also how I’ve managed, pending this post, the acrimonious chatter suffusing the comment box for my latest missive. Some bloggers thrive on lowbrow, anonymously angry debate, and I suppose that’s their prerogative – another de facto truism of blogland – but that’s not me. I’m not here to argue with you; I’m not here to insult you; I am simply here to share with you – with the benefit of a career spent reading and sifting through data, a few hot pans and some really sharp knives, and no small amount of reflection – whatever small thing that I think I may have learned about the world, through the lens of my kitchen. You may love it, hate it, or simply relegate it to the dustbin of uninteresting bookmarks, but all I ask is that it gets read.
Having said that, every so often the level of discourse gets so pervasively toxic, and with such little substance, that I feel compelled to drag it some small distance from the gutter. There are precious few actual arguments buried in the aforementioned slew of invective, and I see little point in responding to every childish and ignorant comment, but to those of you who actually tried to say something constructive, I wanted to say that I’m listening, that I take your points seriously, and here are my few cents’ worth of response:
If I insulted you vicariously because you love the show, it wasn’t intentional and I’m sorry for the slight, but I stand by my point: You’re worse off for having done so. Not a worse person, a person who is worse off. There is a difference.
Some of you took issue with my incomplete characterization of what the show is about, which is true enough, although irrelevant, because whatever additional content the show may offer, whatever entertainment value it may provide to you, is not the point. The show itself is not the point. The point is (or was meant to be) that I love to cook and I love to eat and it saddens me that so many of our attitudes toward food belie precisely what is most wonderful about it. The point is that certain aspects of shows like Man v. Food may entertain, but at the cost of propagating the very worst of these attitudes, and these costs are real and material, if nonpecuniary. The point is, you should love what you eat, and what you eat should love you back.
I readily concede that I could simply change the channel (just as you could navigate away from this thread), but I reject the implied criticism as specious and, when taken to its logical limit, dangerously irresponsible. Should we never speak out about that which we feel is wrong, so long as we can conveniently avoid seeing it? Really? (Isn’t this why you wrote the critique, and why it’s incumbent upon me to allow you to post it?)
As to the rest, if you consider wallpapering me with unoriginal and small-minded insults under the guise of a pseudonym to be a productive use of your time, then the most I can offer is to say that I’m really very sorry that your mother didn’t breastfeed you long enough.
So we’re clear: You are welcome, and indeed encouraged, to disagree with me. No matter how well or poorly formed your argument, no matter how kindly or rudely you express it, and always provided that you don’t violate my paper’s editorial guidelines, I will post it without qualification. That being said, I would respectfully request that you keep the dialogue intelligible, on-thread, and civil, in which case you’ll stand a far better chance of being taken seriously about whatever it is that got your knickers in a twist in the first place. Conventionally acceptable spelling and grammar are nice, too. You are, of course, perpetually free to ignore me, although I’d prefer to disagree than never to know one another. At least, in the main.
