I really liked the vegan month this year and last year, and it would be even better if it wasn't a vegan month so much as a vegan and healthy eating section of serious eats, the same way burgers and za are treated. Just my 2 cents.
Kenji,
What about adding vodka to 1% ABV of the sauce and lightly simmering with a tight lid on? Would that not yield the ideal alcohol content more consistently?
And my number 1 tip for going vegan is that you don't need to do it all at once. I started by removing most meats. Then I cut down on my use of dairy. Then I cut fish and seafood. Trying to do that all at once is incredibly challenging, going from a diet where every meal centers around meat to one that always centers around produce. If you switch to a mainly vegan diet over the course of a few weeks to a month then you can get used to it much more easily.
Winter is a hell of a time to start a vegan diet. I know because I've been eating vegan most weekdays for the last 2 months and I've been longing for summer produce to keep things interesting. I buy 10-20 different veggies and fruits each weekend at the farmers market, but even then theres not much difference between kale, cabbage, chard and radish greens so its not 10 or 20 completely different things.
The pastry used for Jamaican beef patties is similar to a pie crust and typically there is curry powder and/or tumeric mixed in. Some of the better Jamaican beef patties I've had (and made) use fat left from making goat curry instead of butter + spices. But when I'm not in the mood to make goat curry one day and then Jamaican beef patties the next, I'll simply put my butter in a pot and add a bunch of whole curry spices like cardamom, fenugreek, cinnamon, allspice, black pepper, cumin, etc., then I heat the butter with a lid on the pot for 5 minutes and then kill the heat and let it cool down with the lid on. An hour later I strain the whole spices from the butter and put the butter back in the fridge to solidify, then use that spice infused butter for making the pastry. Its phenomenal.
Another thing you can do is take blue cheese and slice it and cover the entire outside of a stick of butter in blue cheese then wrap that tightly and let it sit there for a day or two. You will have butter that has all the aroma of blue cheese. Try that for a beurre monte or a hollandaise, its pretty special.
You already know the answer to this question. You know it's because they don't care.
And for great dim sum, go to Yank Sing on Saturday morning, they make awesome xiao long bao, shanghainese soup dumplings. Do it Saturday as thats the only day they have soup dumplings as far as I've found, and you can go by the Ferry Plaza farmers market before or after as well as its a block away and best on Saturdays.
Also, go by The Sentinel for a sandwich M-F 11AM-2PM. Earlier the better as they run out of their house baked bread. Even if you get there late, they'll always have at least a few types of sandwiches available at 2PM.
State Bird keeps 10 or 20% of their tables available for walk ins every day. I use that often. Just show up before 9:30PM, ask them to put you on the walk in list, give them your cell number, go down the street and have a drink at Fat Angel, then head back to State Bird when they text you that your table is open.
@Fox
Yes, its worth it. They have 4 or 5 bar stools pulled up to the counter in front of the open kitchen. One of my favorite restaurants I've been to in years.
I bought a bakers pride p22 a few years back for a little over a grand and it has served me quite well. It's electric but that hasn't really been an issue. It comes with two decks but the way the heating elements are setup you really only get 1 chamber if you want it to be hotter on the top and cooler on the bottom, which is typically what I want when making pizza. it goes from bottom to top, heating element, bottom corderite tile, middle heating element, top corderite tile, top heating element, each heating element has its own potentiometer to set its output. You can lower the bottom and raise the middle and then cook a really nice pie in the bottom deck. Temps get well over 700 degrees which is plenty for cooking NY style pies in 4-8 minutes (depending on how you make your pies) but it might be difficult to get it tuned to making traditional neopolitan pies, but I have a separate oven for that so I've never bothered trying to force the bakers pride to be a neopolitan oven since it clearly is not.
Its about 2.5' cubed in size and weighs about 100 lbs, 22 inch deck. I keep it in my garage, had to get an electrician come out and do some wiring and connect it to a new breaker.
All of the above! No need to try to pick the worst out of a bunch of losers, this isn't a Gordon Ramsay reality show. Dry, wet, stale, burnt, I'll take none of that.
Cold squid with mayo? I don't even see any seasoning involved here. That sounds... I don't even want to point that much thought into it.
>It's served on a dense housemade brioche-style bun (baked on Mondays), which is more than sturdy enough to absorb all the juices from the burger.
Huh? Did you get the burger on Monday? Because I don't see how it could be anyone's favorite burger on Sunday, what with a 6 day old bun and all...
I don't think the health department is going to approve of using money as food packaging.
I visited Manhattan over the memorial day weekend and did as much of a bucketlist as I could. Ate way too much but with places like these, what can you do? Tip: Don't ever, ever try to eat a knish after devouring an entire Katz reuben.
Eataly
Maffei's Pizza
Minetta Tavern
Joe's Pizza on Carmine
Russ & Daughters
Katz
Yonah Schimmel's Knishes Bakery
Le Bernardin
John's of Bleecker
La Pizza Fresca
What day/time did you go? A friend of mine is one of their managers. I'll bark up her tree if she was working then. That burger has no excuse or reason for being.
>Big Kahuna. I have no idea why it's named that—it's not Hawaiian nor is it super large.
You have obviously not watched Pulp Fiction anytime recently.
A WORLD OF PAIN! Mark it 8 and you are entering a world of pain!
@John
Fish sauce is a really specific flavor, and yes, quite pungent. If it's too pungent in a recipe, you can tone it down to your tastes. Use less of it, period. Or, since fish sauce is relatively salty, pungent, and sour, you can cut some fish sauce and replace it with soy sauce and vinegar. Soy sauce has a distinctive flavor too so you could try going with a simpler product. I've seen and use "liquid aminos" which are basically soy sauce with most of the taste and less of the aroma. The taste of liquid aminos + some neutral vinegar is pretty similar in my oppinion to the taste of fish sauce. The aromas of liquid aminos + neutral vinegar is rather muted, so mixing it with fish sauce keeps the savory tangy/sour taste pretty similar while reducing the aroma of the fish sauce to a background player.
Definitely gross.
But I can't help but wonder if "4 bacon" was really just short for "for bacon", as in give us fiddy cents for bacon
I'm guessing we're talking about the situation where the cheese and toppings separate from the crust/sauce. And when this happens, its typically because theres too much sauce, too much cheese/toppings, or both.
One important point about "lobster mushrooms" is that they aren't actually one fungus, but two fungii. You start with the base mushroom which could be any of many different types. Depending upon where you're harvesting, the base mushroom of a lobster mushroom is likely to vary according to the mushrooms that regularly grow int he area. The orange/red color on the outside of a lobster mushroom comes from the second fungus which is actually eating the base mushroom.
The flavor can and will vary for lobster mushrooms. I'd highly recommend going fresh or not bothering for this type. Dried porcini are ridiculously good (presuming you buy good ones). I'd go with porcini if you can't find good fresh mushrooms.
It can absolutely be done with unsweetened chocolate.
Here's Heston doing this same technique:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g28-9NVUHj0
If I had a restaurant, I'd make sure every member of the staff knows that if someone comes in and flashes a "Reviewer Card", they are immediately asked to leave and informed police will be called promptly so they can be charged with trespassing if they do not leave promptly.
I actually can't wait to see which restaurant does this first.
Until today, I've always used unseasoned bread crumbs indiscriminately for recipes like meat loaf and meat balls and for breading eggplant/chicken parm, etc. I had never once tasted the unseasoned bread crumbs I'd buy before using them in a dish. Today, for the first time, I decided I'd taste the bread crumbs. I immediately noticed they weren't simply white bread, there was definitely whole grain. I looked at the packaging and noticed the ingredients had a laundry list of grains listed.
In any case, bread crumbs have never been an ingredient that I've given much thought too. Anyone ever taste their breadcrumbs?
The oven at my (rented) house has been broken for over a month now and the slum lord is taking his time fixing it. I *was* baking lots of pizza, and I'm sick of waiting, so I ordered one of these babys:
http://www.bakerspride.com/specs/Hearthbake/HB_P18S.pdf
It tops out at 680F and has seperate top and bottom heat controls. NY style pizza is on the menu first when it shows up. I'll make sure to submit some MPM photos.
I've heard/read that after you seperate curd from whey and before heating/pulling you can hold the curds around 90-100F for a few hours and that this will develop acidity and flavor. Anyone with experience doing that?
So I made my first attempt at turning milk to cheese. Problem is all the videos/photos I see of people making fresh mozz, their cheese comes out way softer and more velvety than mine. My fresh mozz is coming out the texture of a dry/aged mozz. This isn't bad, its just not what I want. I'm using high quality, really fresh, raw milk and the flavor is spot on.
So, anyone who makes their own mozz that can point out why this would be happening? Am I squeezing out too much whey when pulling the cheese?
Here's the method I compiled after reading lots of different sets of instructions:
1. Combine a half gallon milk with ~1/4tsp citric acid (mixed with water first to avoid shocking the milk) and heat to 89 degrees farenheit and hold it there for 15 minutes
2. Add in rennet (again mixed with water to avoid shocking the milk). All the recipes I found said to use rennet tablets, which I couldn't find so I'm using liquid rennet and was told when purchasing that it's "double strength". I'm not sure what that means but since rennet is just an enzyme I figure the amount doesn't matter too much as long as its not way too much or way too little, so I went with 8 small droplets, maybe 2ml worth.
3. Hold the milk at 89F for 10 minutes then bring it to 105F and hold for another 10 minutes until you get a clean break between curds and whey.
4. Strain off the whey and squeeze the curds to force out extra whey.
5. Heat the curds to 125F and hold it there while you pull the mozz
6. Let the pulled balls of mozz cool in some salted whey.
Of course I continued on to boil the remaining whey to make ricotta which came out excellent. And again, the mozz flavor was great, but the texture was not at all like the beautiful fresh mozz I'm used to.
Any thoughts which steps I'm messing up here? Anyone make their own cheese at all?
The Daily Slice from today showcases a by-the-slice specimen where a cheese slice had toppings applied post-bake/pre-reheat. What are you're thoughts on this?
I am opposed. In fact, if it was my pizzeria I don't think I'd even allow it. Without getting into a long rant and far too much detail, I think toppings added post-bake/pre-reheat are a hallmark of mediocre (or worse) pizza.
So I was in New York a bit ago and stopped by the Spotted Pig for some LaFrieda beef. The quality of that meat is unassailable. However, I found the burger and the accompanying fries to be overwhelmingly salty, and I like salt.
That aside, I used the bathroom in the upstairs area before leaving, the stall on the left to be precise, and I noticed two striking things.
Frisk-of-all, that upstairs bathroom smells pleasantly like fries, which is a welcome distraction from what bathrooms usually smell like. I'm pretty sure the vent/window is right by the exhaust covering the fryolators in the kitchen. Not a bad touch, though I can't at all imagine it was on purpose.
And second-of-ly, I noticed someone had etched "No more salt PLEASE!" into the wall at eye-level above the commode. I laughed. Whoever that was, good job.
I've had tons of people say to me, or have over heard them tell others, that the reason you can't get good NY pizza outside of NY is because of the water. To which I always interject, the reason they can't get good NY pizza outside of NY is because they can't find anyone who makes it right. Its not about the water, but the process. I don't dispute the water has slightly different trace amounts of minerals/chemicals, but I find it extremely unlikely such trace amounts affect taste, texture or color of bread and/or pizza dough.
So that being said, has anyone ever done any side-by-side comparisons of doughs using distilled water vs. your local water? If so, what did you find?
So I assume many of us Serious Eaters have seen this article that was linked:
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/why-i-got-kicked-out-of-a-restaurant-on-saturday-night/
And also this response to it that was linked today:
http://trueslant.com/susannahbreslin/2010/05/12/dont-go-in-the-kitchen-and-other-tips-from-a-former-waitress/
Anyone have any thoughts on this? It feels to me like the "former waitress" who did it for a *whole* 2 years never actually worked in a truly nice restaurant and doesn't understand fine dining (which I presume Tribeca is fine dining).
A point-by-point rebuttal to her response:
- "Eye Contact"
I've been to really nice restaurants and the servers have gone out of their way to not be noticed. Forgot about eye contact, I mean ninja-napkin folding without anyone even noticing, glasses filling up as the table is distracted at how good the food is, etc. Never have I been in a nice restaurant and felt like I had to make eye contact with the waiter. Now that is awkward.
- "Don't make a mess"
Note to the "former waitress", clear the table and its not an issue. No ones going to be throwing "paper", "scraps", or "gunk" on their plate that has food on it. Second, why are there paper, scraps and gunk on the table in the first place? What kind of table setting is that?
- "The check"
I didn't realize how traumatic of an experience it is for this "former waitress" to handle the incredibly detailed act of ... handling the check. Seriously? If you get angry at a customer in my restaurant for how the customer handles the check, you're out of here. Try being a reasonable person.
- "Stay out of the kitchen"
I agree that a customer shouldn't walk into the kitchen on their own. But acting like its sacred space where customers can never set foot is ridiculous. Got something to hide, eh? Take a note from the French Laundry, everyone is offerred the opportunity to observe within the kitchen, during service. They're proud of what they do
I expected typical sports bar mediocrity at Scotty's Brewhouse, but instead I got a kick-ass burger in the kind of place I'd actually hang out at if I lived nearby. More
Linguine is mixed with pieces of tender chicken and broccoli flowerets and coated with a rich, satiny Alfredo sauce featuring Campbell's® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup, milk, Parmesan cheese and black pepper to make a quick and fabulous dish. More
Awesome! Thanks much!