Cocktail Glass Smash
Last month I railed against the impropriety of calling a cocktail glass a martini glass. Lest there be any confusion, it’s called a cocktail glass.
The irony of this of course, is that while I enjoy the martini cocktail, I hate the cocktail glass.
What a horrendous design for a piece of barware. Sure it’s iconic. But it’s a mess. It’s top heavy. All too often the cocktail is filled to the rim. And sometimes it is just huge.
I am not even going to go into the ridiculous permutations with zigzag stems or other uncalled-for architectural flourishes.
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The First Rule of Wine Pairing
A friend of mine suggested recently that the appreciation of wine is really all about pairing. And by that, he meant putting a wine together with a meal that would in turn:
1) Make the wine taste better than if served without the meal.
2) Make the meal taste better than if served without the wine.
3) Make the overall experience greater than the sum of its parts.
Some people have unrealistic expectations for what wine can accomplish.
That is not to say the above scenario is impossible. It is entirely possible. But it doesn’t happen all the time. And given the idiosyncrasies of taste, just because it happens for you doesn’t mean that it will happen for everyone at the table.
And no amount of wine and food knowledge will allow you to find the “perfect pairing” all the time. The best pairings are often ones you stumble upon. Just like trying new wines, I encourage you to try new pairings. Taste things for yourself to determine if you like them or not.
That said, there are a few things to consider that can help stack the deck in your favor.
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How Cheese Came Into My Life: Living in California
If it’s Saturday, it must be time for another part in what seems to be a never-ending saga of my love affair with cheese.
If you are reading this, it is either by accident and you haven’t read the past two weeks where I talked about my fussy childhood and college experiences with cheese, or you did read those and are just a glutton for punishment.
Today I may very well inspire you to seek out a local cheesemonger again, or at the very least reconsider cooking dinner on some warm summer evening.
At this point in the cheese story, I find myself in California, and somehow I am kind of an adult. I have an advertising job at a small agency in San Francisco. And I have a commute. But I am not that far removed from the person I was in college.
Still, with a job comes income. And while the entry levels of agency life are not the greatest-paying of the workforce, it was refreshing to have some spending money. One of the many things I would spend this money on was dinner. I still had not really turned on to food, but I was moving in that direction.
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Dare to Compare
For those of you who may not follow the comments here on a regular basis, something interesting happened yesterday.
I received a lengthy response from Steve Barnes to my June 5 post, in which I criticized the policy of the Albany Times Union for determining which restaurants receive starred reviews.
I am thrilled that someone from the paper came to speak up in defense of my criticism. And I am glad that it was Steve. He and I do not always agree on matters of taste, but we manage to respectfully disagree.
So first: Thank you, Steve, for your thoughts, and I appreciate the new link on your blog.
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Seeing Value in the Wine List
The answer is, “Not always, and sometimes it is actually the worst.” But being who I am that really was insufficient.
A few weeks ago my sister asked, “Is it true that the second from the cheapest is the best value?” So instead of giving her the pat answer, I thought more about how to find values on a wine list. And I realized all my strategies required having a good wine list. Now, having laid the groundwork, I’m ready for my full answer.
Quantitatively, you will never get a wine value in a restaurant. That is, unless the restaurant happens to also be a wine store. But I tend to speak in generalizations, so work with me on this.
Personally, I don’t believe restaurant markups are highway robbery. I feel better about paying the markups when a restaurant actually pays attention to its wine program. And that means large-bowled thin-rimmed wine glasses, a well-trained staff that can speak to the wines, and a wine list that is accurate and reflects available vintages, with selections that extend far beyond the largest producers and most common varietals.
How one looks at value can be a matter of perspective.
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Italian Goddess of Fussy
There are no pictures on this blog. Maybe you didn’t notice.
Some people say they love cookbooks. But often what they love about them is the large glossy pictures of professionally styled food. It’s food porn. We all know it.
You may be one of these people. But I am betting, since you keep coming back here to this picture-free bastion of fussiness, that you might be convinced to swap sides. In cooking, I believe it is much more useful to have the 1,000 words than the carefully composed and exposed image.
Let me introduce you to a serious woman who will use all of those words and more to teach you what Italian food can be.
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Burger Chain Gang
I was never good with New Year’s resolutions. One year I made a vain attempt at eating healthier. And I resolved to only eat one hamburger a month.
This was a big deal for me, because at the time I was probably eating at least one per week. And I love hamburgers.
Surprisingly, this was the first resolution that I ever kept for a full year. In fact, I did so well that I kept making the same resolution year after year. But all of this self-denial led to an unintended, but possibly expected, consequence:
Every hamburger I ordered became a significant event.
I mean, each burger I ate was over 8% of all the burgers I would have that year. Therefore, each one needed to come from a carefully vetted and researched establishment. And then there was the question about how much I would branch out from my old standby The Original Joe’s, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
As I mentioned, before I took on the new cruelty I was a burger fanatic living in the Bay Area. In-N-Out Burger had not yet made its march up the coast, and was really only available in Los Angeles.
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On the Rocks
The profussor is sad.
For the past few years, one of the best parts of Saturday mornings was picking up the Wall Street Journal, and flipping to the weekend section. If Mrs. Fussy got to the paper first, I would ask her, “So, what’s the cocktail of the week?”
Of course I am referring to Eric Felten’s weekly column, “How’s Your Drink.”
With my traveling and all, I am a bit behind on the news. But as I was reading his latest article from June 21st a story was unfolding before me that I did not like. Mr. Felten would be moving on to other projects for the paper, and my beloved column would cease its regular appearance.
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Are You Going to Eat That?
This is critical information.
There are two things that are insanely delicious, that you have likely had in your possession and possibly thrown in the trash.
Maybe most of you will know about the two things in this alert. But even if ONE person learns about these treats for the first time here, this post will have been worthwhile.
The first one involves poultry and the second one involves cheese.
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How Cheese Came Into My Life: The College Years
For those who did not tune in last Saturday, this is part two of an ongoing series about how I got so fussy and my ongoing love affair with cheese.
This story of my culinary dark ages will not send you to your cheesemonger in search of wonderful treats. Hopefully, however, it may start you thinking about unexpected things you can do with unexpected ingredients.
It’s time to check the snobbery at the door.
In college I was dirt poor. The things I ate for sustenance were legend. Potato salad sandwiches. Condiment “burgers.” Two-for-a-dollar WaWa chili cheese dogs. Frozen clams of questionable age chipped out of the block of ice that formed in the back of the freezer.
Even within this penury I had a desire for coaxing assertive tastes from cheese.
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