I think the better question is what don't I serve with biscuits; they go with pretty much everything, though I do avoid using garlic biscuits for strawberry shortcake.
All sorts of veg, along with meat from whichever cow my friend's parents most recently slaughtered (cause the only thing better than good beef is free good beef).
@akay1: Whether I'm behind the bar or serving, I try to keep a particular eye out for women (and men too) at the bar alone who are clearly there just to have a drink or two and not to pick up/get picked up by anyone (see eg the earlier From Behind the Bar post on creepers). But I think it's also necessary that women learn to say "Hey, just having a quiet drink here, bud, not interested in talking to you" without worrying that they'll seem rude and without prefacing this with "Sorry." After all, it's the stranger who presumes a woman alone is seeking male company who is really the rudely presumptuous one; you and I and any woman who wants to go out by herself do not need to apologize for being intruded upon by dudes and their dudely privilege.
I guess if I had to pick one part it'd be the belly.
@nycpunk1: You succinctly hit the nail on the head. Because we live in a sexist world, women experience the world differently than men, so attempts to correlate their experiences will always fail. I have worked in bars since 1995, and I know a number of men and women who are career bartenders in that their only or primary source of income is tending bar. However, the oldest career bartenders I know are men in their 60s, which means they were born in the late 1940s and probably started working in bars in the mid to late 1960s. How many women do you think were allowed to tend bar in 1965? 1970? And therefore, how many women who took up bartending in the 1980s and 1990s had female career bartenders as role models/mentors? Even though female bartenders may be commonplace now, it's important to keep in mind that making a career, vs having a job, requires more than just showing up to work. It requires working for people who see you as capable of having a career, people who help you along the way. As we see in studies of other careers, it can take decades from the time when an industry first hires women for women to move up the ladder into positions of permanence and influence. Assumptions like "I should hire a man because women will just get knocked up and quit" color hiring decisions in all fields and become self-fulfilling prophecies when men who want babies refuse to allow the women who bear their children the support necessary to continue their careers. So, Mr. Neff: Wanna see more female career bartenders? Come up with staffing and staff education plans that acknowledges the need for mentoring and the possibility of breeding. Yeah, it's hard, but is it really any harder than the myriad other hard calls involved in operating a bar?
@GirlPrince: That $&^% ticket printer sound is THE MOST STRESSFUL SOUND IN THE WORLD! I've heard from mothers of newborns that the sound of any baby crying makes them start, er, leaking; the sound of that printer, whether at my bar or any bar/restaurant, starts a flood of adrenaline that can only be shut down by sheer force of will and liberal application of whiskey.
When I get in the weeds (like this Saturday, when a great fundraiser for a great cause brought hordes to the bar such that by 8PM we'd already hit average sales for an entire Saturday night), I just try to make eye contact with as many people as possible to let them know that I know they exist. Also, yes, that guy who tipped fifty cents on a top-shelf martini then orders three more while I'm going full tilt is going to have to wait a few %$#&^ing minutes while I serve people tipping $2 per bottle of beer.
My sister gave me some mead jelly that she was told would pair well with blue cheese and it did! Or, if you aren't into jelly-making, what happens if you reduce it to a syrup and pour it on stuff (ice cream, sharp strong cheese, whisk a little into a vinagrette for bitter greens...)? Or use it as a poaching liquid for fruit (fresh or frozen) and make a cobbler or pie or topping for french toast or waffles? (N.B. I've never had vanilla mead, so this is all just speculation on my part).
I'd love to see an ice cream commemorating the St Valentine's day Massacre: Black and white ice cream with gummy dudes filled with some sort of oozing cherry goo and maybe some little black licorice sprinkles to represent bullets. That's what you were going for, right?
Both Redemption and Bulleit are lovely. I took a flask of Bulleit to a party and, as I was lacking pockets, the flask got tucked into my waistband, and I was very pleasantly surprised at how the flavors shifted as the whiskey warmed up over the course of the evening. I suspect that this is similar to the flavors that emerge as the spirit warms and opens up in your mouth (and now I'm gonna stop before this starts sounding dirty).
I am also sans microwave, and I wonder if steaming the taters would work, maybe laying a clean kitchen towel on top of the potatoes and under the lid to prevent condensed steam from dripping back onto the potatoes, or maybe even lining the steamer so the potatoes are heated but don't actually come into contact with the steam.
@Adam: Female creepiness is similar to male creepiness in that it 1) involves behavior that makes the creep-target uncomfortable; 2) does not quite approach the level of intrusiveness that results in being immediately bounced; 3) demonstrates an inability or unwillingness by the creep to respond to subtle "leave me alone" cues. But female creepiness is often perceived as flattering to male targets or a sign of the creep's patheticness, whereas male creepiness is more likely to set off red flashing clanging alarm bells in female targets, because women are at much higher risk for sex-based assault than are men and thus women are trained to see creepiness as a potential threat rather than a mere nuisance.
Salted butterflied chicken roasted at 475.
Creepiness is not necessarily lecherous in intent; I finally got a guy 86'd from the bar where I work after he kept inviting himself to other female and male people's tables because he took their failure to tell him to get lost as a invitation to sit. And creepy women abound too, but female creepiness tends to have a different tenor than male creepiness. Particularly when a male is being what I think of as creepy towards women, it can be hard to tell if the women agree with me, because women in our society are well-trained to be polite and never tell someone, especially a male someone to F*&% OFF. So patrons: never underestimate the power of public shaming. If someone is being creepy and bugging you, simply state in a clearly audible voice, "Excuse me barkeep, could you help me get this creep to leave me alone?" (and then follow up on that assistance with a nice tip!).
You forgot the best way to learn about wine: date a sommelier, or someone studying to become one. Ever had the experience of dating someone who is so immersed in the minutiae of a particular subject that they physically yearn for someone to whom they can impart all of that knowledge? In this case, instead of being bombarded with details of the latest research into, say, highway traffic pattern analysis, I get to drink someone else's research wine!
Last night I had a risotto with spinach, taleggio, and strands of prosciutto.It was so freakin good that I want to bathe in it.
Excellent post! As an award-winning latke maker (and no, the award was not given by a family member), I am happy to report that I disagree with you on almost nothing, but I wouldn't be a Jewish cook if I couldn't find something to argue over, right? So here goes: I grate the onion into the food processor first, then the potatoes, and let that all sit in a bowl until the grating is done. Then I drain it all and retrieve the starch. Sitting in that watery onion-potato juice slurry seems to infuse the potato strands with onioniness (a latke brine, as it were), and then wringing out the potatoes eliminates that onion juice problem as well as the big-chunk-of-onion thing that happens when chopped onions meet grated potatoes.
Any knife that's sharp and clean will do
The first knife I got that I learned to sharpen myself; don't recall the brand, but it was so much sharper than anything I'd used before!
sweet and white in the AM, black later in the day
Room temp, unadorned.
One technique that I find quite productive, whether cutting people off or defusing a potential fight, is to avoid any comments about the patron and to focus instead on my role as bartender and the other patrons around them. For instance, I had a couple come in the other night, order one round, and start yelling at each other really loudly and angrily about halfway through their drinks. I went over to their table and said,"Hey folks, whatever's going on here is none of my business, and it's not the business of anyone else here either." The guy got up and left, the woman apologized and followed, and my boss (who was a bit in his cups at the time) was amazed that I'd gotten them to leave without even having to ask them to leave! When I'm cutting someone off who starts to get belligerent, I break out the "mom" voice: "Since you can't behave around the other children, you have to go outside and think about why you are misbehaving." Works like a charm!
That would be the first time I had bacon, age 17, Brandywine Diner, Schenectady, NY.
Bread, butter, and a heap of arugula or parsley or watercress or celery leaves (or any bitter green, really).
Manhattans and brussel sprouts for everybody!
I got SO excited when I saw the 15% off code for D'Artagnan because some years ago I got great truffle flour from them, but they don't carry it any more! Poking around the internets turned up various companies carrying the stuff for wide-ranging prices, so I'm wondering if anyone has gotten some lately that they would recommend.
I got a huge (10-12 lb) head of cabbage at the farmer's market and I'm on day 3 of my first attempt at making sauerkraut and kimchi. My kitchen is about 60-65 degrees, with a little more warmth for a couple hours when I've been cooking. Everything's been sitting for about 3 days. Both are doing some of the things that they are supposed to- the amount of liquid in the sauerkraut jars is steadily increasing, the cabbage in both is getting wiltier and a bit translucent- but I can't tell if actual fermentation is happening. There's no scum on top of the sauerkraut brine, no bubbling in the kimchi. So how do I tell if stuff is fermenting, and if it isn't, can I still get it to?
In a moment of ridiculousness I promised my fella a birthday cake that involves 3 lbs of chocolate. Obviously decoration takes care of some of it- I'm thinking of rings of truffles on top, or hershey's kisses if I'm running short on time. And ganache is a no-brainer. But I'm having trouble figuring out how to incorporate a significant amount of chocolate into the cake itself, since most recipes use a fairly small amount. Suggestions?
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Cucumbers!