Entries tagged with 'Wall Street Journal'
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©iStockphoto.com/YinYang Eric Felten, the drinks columnist for the Wall Street Journal, seems to think so. He cites this year’s edition of Food & Wine’s annual cocktail compilation, Cocktails ’09, as proof of vodka’s demotion in the cocktail world. This year’s book has only ten vodka-based drinks, Felten notes, whereas the 2005 edition had 60. He openly celebrates the decline of all kinds of -tinis in favor of drinks based on gin, brandy, and other intensely flavored spirits. “As a way to inject unobtrusive alcoholic content into sugary drinks,” he writes of vodka, “the spirit is unsurpassed…But vodka's neutrality and uniformity would seem to be at odds with the slow-food crowd's embrace of robust flavors reflecting specific locales.” Is vodka...
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Nettle soup. ©iStockphoto.com/adel66 Wild lettuces, forest mushrooms, gathered berries—there are plenty of foraged foods we’re used to seeing at the market or on the menu. But stinging nettle? The plant ranks right up there with poison ivy for its effect on the unsuspecting hiker—a single touch can bring on an immediate, painful sting. But according to Seattle foraging expert Langdon Cook, author of Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, properly-prepared nettles make a perfect stand-in for spinach—whether in soups or pastas, as a cooked green, or as a base for pesto. Of course, nettle-eaters should handle the raw plant with care—using gloves when holding the uncooked green, and blanching the leaves in order to get...
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The bar at The Foundry. As if the booze-pump wasn’t primed enough for the advance of craft cocktails and other well-made drinks, an article titled "Bar Wars" in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal highlighted another recent shift that has the potential to bode well for good imbibing: high-end restaurants are placing a greater emphasis on their bar and lounge areas. What’s prompting restaurants such as Per Se in New York and The Foundry in Los Angeles to expand their bar offering, of course, has less to do with a sudden desire to promote bibulous artistry than with the simple need to survive during catastrophic economic times. As Katy McLaughlin writes, Around the country, proprietors are turning their restaurants—or significant parts...
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The crap economy has forestalled Guinness's plans to open a "super brewery." St. James Gate, the company's historic Dublin brewery, was to consolidate older buildings and sell off the freed-up land to finance the new operation. But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, that's down the drain now....
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Lock the doors and bar the windows—the new Noilly Prat dry vermouth is coming, and, according to Eric Felten in the Wall Street Journal, your martini will never be the same again, and that's terrible news. Or maybe not. While Felten praises the aperitif qualities of the new style of vermouth—which isn’t new at all, but rather the European blend of the wine that has been sold pretty much everywhere except the United States for decades—he dismisses the vermouth’s qualities as a mixer in cocktails such as the dry martini, going so far as to call a martini made with the European vermouth “a mess”. Which is strong language, considering Noilly Prat’s history with vermouth. The dry, or French style,...
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Quince (left) and kabocha (right), two of this fall's "it" foods. The Wall Street Journal’s list of top ten foods to eat this fall is ... surprising. Gone are the apples and pumpkins of posterity, replaced with such oddities as quince and kabocha. And yet, such "unseasonal" staples as pine nuts and thyme made the cut. My prediction? This guide will become the "how to look chic at the farmers market" manual. My advice? Sometimes chic comes less from the unexpected and more from the obvious: Shop around, but don’t forget where you came from. There's a reason it's apple- and pumpkin-pie season. After the jump, what the cool kids are eating this fall....
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We somehow missed this last week, and I kick myself for that because it's such a cool story. The Wall Street Journal has a charming feature on L.A. Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier and his nascent food blog. Mr. Ethier knows where to find the best throat-meat tacos in Los Angeles, the juiciest Salvadoran papusas and the city's tastiest Romanian chicken stew. He waxes poetic about the pinto beans in his native Arizona, where they're often pureed with cream and lard. "Here they want you to taste the bean, not the lard, which is... different."In June, Mr. Ethier began snapping pictures of the dishes at some of his favorite restaurants and posting them on a blog he calls Dining With 'Dre....
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