On the Food & Beverage Buzz blog, I saw a post on cheese paper. Preserving cheese can be a tricky task, and it is one I have messed up more than once. But a person can now buy good cheese paper and with a little bit of wrapping instruction (below), cheese can last a lot longer. You can read the blog post for more information or go to the company website linked below. Dave the Wine Merchant tested the paper with various cheeses and found it worked very well at maintaining the quality of the cheese.

The paper is produced by a company called Formaticum out of Portland, Orgeon. It is not cheap at $9 for 15 sheets, but when you are preserving some of the most valuable food items in your fridge, I think it is well worth it. The paper consists of two layers: an inner one of porous plastic and an outer one of waxed paper. The materials allow the slow exchange of oxygen while also regulating humidity as this is what cheese needs to stay alive. Sealing it in plastic will suffocate it and ruin your cheese.

The best thing to do is look on the Formaticum website to see if there is a retailer near you, but you can also shop online with Formaticum directly or through Sur La Table. If you buy it through Amazon and 15 sheets will cost you $7.89. The New England Cheesmaking Supply Company also sells cheese paper, but it is not the same brand. I am sure it also works well.

Here is the video on how to wrap cheese. With the some cheese paper and a little instruction, you will look like a pro cheese monger.

How To Wrap Cheese from Formaticum on Vimeo.

Via Boing Boing comes this video on how to open a bottle of wine if you don’t have a corkscrew. Granted these French gentlemen clearly don’t need another bottle, but this tactic is useful if you don’t have an opener on hand.

One time while I was living in Kosovo, the owner of a small restaurant opened a bottle of my wine for me this way. Their corkscrew was broken, so the owner just wrapped a towel around the base of the bottle and proceeded to bang it against a brick wall until the cork came out. It worked, but I was a bit concerned as the bottle I brought was a very nice Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Seeing it for the first time was a bit of a shock, but I have never forgotten this trick. I am sure it isn’t great to agitate the wine so much and I still wouldn’t do this to a fine bottle of wine, but in a pinch it might be the only option.

You can also perform this against a tree trunk if you are out in nature or another hard surface, but wherever you do it, be careful to pad the bottom and strike it flush against the surface.

Via the Food Wishes blog comes this video on how to eat chicken wings. Usually people struggle with eating a chicken wing and it turns into a battle of human versus tiny chicken bones — with the chicken bones often winning. And in the end our fingers end up all messy, and we have probably looked a bit ridiculous too.

Maybe it is just me, but whenever I am eating a chicken wing, I feel as if people are watching me and probably passing judgement with appropriate Midwestern shock, uttering things like ‘gosh’ and ‘oh my’ as I try to eat that itty bitty wing.

Anyhow, no longer will that happen. This presentation by Chef John is delightfully simple, and it is one of those videos that makes you question why it has taken so long to do it the right way. It is similar to when I learned 15 years ago how to open a banana correctly. (Look it up on YouTube; you may be doing it incorrectly.)

Aside from this video, the Food Wishes blog is an extremely good food site. Chef John presents a lot of fine recipes, and the videos are very well done. Where most food blogs hover at the amateur level, this one takes food blogging to the next step. The content and instructions are professional, and this site definitely deserves some props for that.

As for recipes, I thought the seared scallops with orange and jalapeno dressing and cauliflower soup with blue cheese fritters looked great. Chef John also has a post on how to make your own fromage blanc, which I think I am going to try.

I don’t use microwave ovens a lot, but in a recent Saveur it was noted that on October 25th, it was the birthday of the introduction of the home mircrowave oven. The Tappan Stove Company using Raytheon military microwave technology introduced the first home unit in 1955. It retailed for $1,295. 

Ten years later, Raytheon acquired Amana and put out the popular Radarange. I still remember those old microwave TV commercials where a large steel ball on a chain would crash into the door of the Amana radarange thus proving its strength and durability. I’m not sure how that related to cooking food, but I still remember the commercial at least.

The model above is what I had as a child in the 70s, and you can buy it on eBay for $150. From what I remember these units weigh a ton, so expect to pay a lot in shipping too.

I you don’t use your microwave that often, Real Simple listed 14 ’surprising’ uses for a microwave. This includes disinfecting sponges, softening brown sugar, roasting garlic, and cooking vegetables. Following that line of thought, in the New York Times there is an article by Mark Bittman on how to better use your microwave oven. Basically, if you would steam a vegetable, you can use the microwave instead. It saves time, dishes, and some say it retains more vitamins.  

If you are looking at upgrading from your current model, Food & Wine in February 2009 listed some breakthroughs. Microwaves now have sensor cooking that automatically adjust cooking time, for instance the Panasonic Genius Prestige. There are also many microwaves that are both convection ovens and standard microwaves. And you can also get some that are in-built drawers if you don’t have enough counter space. Dacor, Viking, and Sharp all make versions. The Dacor and Viking options will be much more expensive, but the Sharp gets some pretty bad reviews for reliability.

As far as tips, Cook’s Illustrated says that using plastic wrap when cooking in a microwave can trap food-scorching steam and passed on a reader tip of using inverted glass bowls instead of plastic wrap. The magazine also gave the tip of using basket-style coffee filters to prevent splatters.

I know absinthe isn’t exactly kitchen related, but after reading an article in the most recent issue of Gourmet, and then watching a video on gourmet.com on how to prepare absinthe, I decided to finally relieve my ignorance in this area of the beverage world.

The video on gourmet.com is basic but informative, and instructs how to make an absinthe drip cocktail. Mixologist, Jim Meehan, shows how this is done, what equipment you need and gives other useful tips. Here are some interesting points from the video:

• Choose absinthe that has a natural green color and not that fake bright green hue, and look for bottles between 60-68 percent alcohol.
• Absinthe glasses are often designed to pour the proper amount of absinthe, so there will possibly be a rim or design difference in the lower portion of the glass to mark the proper level to pour.
• Pour the absinthe, place a lump of sugar on an absinthe spoon, and drip ice-cold water over the sugar. A drip cocktail should take about 3 – 10 minutes depending upon how fast you drip the water.

That video whet my appetite a bit, so I searched for more in-depth information and found a 30+ minute episode on Wine Library TV with a representative from the Wormwood Society and GaryVaynerchuk. They present a lot of information and have a tasting of three domestic brands. Just watching these two videos will get you half way to a functional knowledge on how to make the cocktail and simply know about this drink’s history.

If you are inspired at this point, the next step is buying some absinthe. The Wormwood Society has a pretty good article on buying absinthe, but because of the society’s desire to be neutral, they don’t really recommend any absinthe brands. Too bad. But the article will break down some additional myths and make it seem like you should at least pay attention to which brand you buy.

If you want to buy a bottle, however, a good place to start is on the Wormwood Society Review Directory. Just skip the pre-ban vintage ratings unless you have $2,000-7,000 to spend on a bottle of spirits, and simply sort the reviews for ‘traditional absinthe’ instead. This site is very user friendly. As a back-up resource, you can go to La Fée Verte’s buyers’ guide. This guide is more extensive than the Wormwood Society’s, but it is not as user friendly. The complete list, however, allows you to click on each brand to see reviews and ratings if you have already narrowed down your search.

Ok, so now you can make a drip cocktail, you may know some basic history and what not to do with absinthe, and you just may have bought a bottle. At this point, everyone at your party is going to be asking you about absinthe, and you will either take that final educational step or just start making cocktails until no one cares.

If you are the former, there are two heavy weight sites out there. One I have mentioned already is the Wormwood Society. This site is very well organized and though it has a lot of information, it is not too overwhelming in that you can focus on certain areas of interest. It has 15 pages of FAQs, complete instructions if you want to taste and review absinthe, a list of suppliers, 150+ cocktail recipes, a forum for nerd talk, and a lot more.

The second heavy weight site is Oxygénée. One writer properly said that oxygenee.com probably has the most information about absinthe on the planet. I personally believe that claim, BUT this site is very frustrating. There are numerous sister sites with redundant information, the website design does not flow well for finding what you want, and the layering of information and web structure drags you into anise-scented green vortex of absinthe detail. Go straight for the FAQs or the vintage absenthe section if you have a boat load of money to spend.

If you want the CliffsNote approach, I would recommend the website of Tempus Fugit Spirits, which is a company that imports absinthe from traditional areas of France and Switzerland. The FAQ section on Tempus Fugit is much shorter but has the most crucial information. You will get 80% of the information in a fraction of the time, and the narrative is written better. Here are some interesting facts from the website:

• Absinthe was first a cure-all medicine and that is one reason for its high alcohol content.
• During the French-Algerian War, the French prescribed absinthe as a disease preventative and to cleanse water. The returning soldiers to France helped popularize the drink.
• Absinthe gets it name from the French word for ‘wormwood’ which is ‘grande absinthe’.
• Wormwood grows best in the mountainous area between Switzerland and France, hence those areas were the historical production centers.
• The green color of absinthe comes from chlorophyll, though lower quality absinthe uses green dye. Again, choose a natural green and not a fake green absinthe.
• The bad reputation from absinthe came mainly from poor distillers that sold inferior and sometimes dangerous products and the negative media hype that focused on drug effects and even ‘absinthe murders’.
• The Temperance Movement also played a large part in getting the spirit banned, and the movement teamed up with wine producers to help ban it. Wine makers were suffering after the spread of the phylloxera louse destroyed much of Europe’s vineyards, so wine prices were high. Wine was losing market share, and absinthe was gaining in popularity and cheap.
• By 1912 it was banned in the US and in 1915 it was banned in France. It was never banned in the UK, Spain, and Portugal. Absinthe was only re-legalized in its home of Switzerland in 2005 and in the US in 2007.

The history of absinthe is a case study of misunderstanding at the wrong time in history. Phylloxera, wine politics, the scourge of WWI, and prohibition all created a climate for a popular drink to disappear for decades. And challenges still exits even after legalization. A lot of the distilling knowledge, techniques, and equipment have been lost, and the herbal raw materials are more scarce. Much of today’s absinthe does not resemble the drink of the past, and there is a reason the highest rated absinthe comes from pre-ban bottles.

The irony is that subsequent testing of old bottles of absinthe have proven that these spirits were chemically harmless in terms of secondary drug effects. It turns out, the reason people ‘lost their mind’ was that they drank too much and absinthe was really strong. Makes sense to me.

With that said, there are 50+ legally available brands of absinthe in the US, and the suspect chemical compound from wormwood called thujone has to be under 10 parts per million for it to be legal. And those old bottles tested, well, the level of thujone in them was was around 1 part per million.

Nowadays, absinthe is making a comeback as classic cocktails are back in style and it is again legal. The licorice scented aperitif spirit will be surprising to many. For years the drink was taboo, subject to misinformation, and illegal but when you first smell licorice you think of candy and your childhood and not images of psychedelic drugs or an illegal substance. But if you don’t like licorice, you won’t like absinthe. Find something else.

If you want to purchase absinthe domestically, DrinkUpNY has an excellent selection and they ship all over, and you can also find a few other brands if you have it shipped from the UK at absintheonline.com.You can buy absinthe barware at Amazon.

Helena Echlin from Chowhound has some good guidelines on when you should tip over 20% of your restaurant bill. You can read the whole article here, but if you are one of these people below and don’t tip 20%, then you should definitely read her article.

(1) Do you have eating restrictions that you regulary try to get restaurants to accommodate?

(2) Do you bring your toddler(s) to restaurants?

(3) Are you a ‘regular’ at a specific place and get special treatment?

(4) Do you like to hang out and linger at restaurants for a long time?

(5) Do you regularly get freebies? Drinks, deserts or waiving of corkage fees?

Anyhow, I think we have all been in these situations at some point, so it is probably worth it for everyone to read this article. And by the way, if you bring your toddler on a long-haul airline flight, it is a good idea to buy the passengers sitting right next to you a drink too, especially if your kids are less than well behaved.

This video of Hung Huynh, the season three winner of Top Chef, is interesting. It isn’t that great of an instructional, but it is always interesting to see chef’s with great knife skills. He also uses the Misono UX10 knife, and you can see this entire knife series at japanesechefsknife.com.

I tried searching for good instructional videos on knife skills and wasn’t too successful going through Amazon.com. There were some offerings, but they seemed to get mixed reviews. One source I did find was the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). They offer over 2 hours of instruction on knife skills on DVD. I haven’t seen the video myself, but the sample video appears to be well made. The cost is $99.95.

For free, there are some good videos at Rouxbe, an online cooking school associated with the Northwest Culinary Academy in Vancouver. Just click on the hyperlink above and then click on the tab for ‘tips and techniques’. 

Another good free source comes from eGullet contributer, Marsha Lynch, who has put together a tutorial (with pictures) on the eGullet forum. It provides useful information on basic knife skills and cuts.

Photo from FoodMayhem.com

Via the blog Lifehacker I ran into this post from FoodMayhem.com about a chef making steam-scrambled eggs using an espresso maker. Though I don’t think I would ever cook my eggs this way, the whole concept is intriguing, and I must say the eggs look pretty good.

If you want to try this at home or where you work, I would suggest reading the comments as there are several tips on how best to make eggs this way. There is even a video of Chef Jody Williams making the eggs, so that would also be helpful to watch.

Kudos to FoodMayhem.com for a great story.

Photo by Maura McEvoy, Courtesy Saveur Magazine

Saveur magazine had some good tips on how to make the perfect hamburger patty. I’ve sort of summarized it below.

(1) Try sealing a pat of butter in the middle to baste and flavor the meat.

(2) Over 8 ounces of meat will overwhelm the bun. Use an ice cream scoop for portions if you want a thin, old school skillet burger.

(3) Don’t over pack the meat. The meat can become mealy and too dense. Just curl your hands around the meat and work it in a rotating manner so sides become flat.

(4) Thick burgers puff in the middle while cooking, so make a depression in the middle of the patty beforehand.

I earlier posted about my experience with the Unicorn Pepper Mill, and though I liked it, I thought I would pass on a low-cost pepper grinder option. What I am using right now is cheap and a good pepper grinder option considering the cost. 

A year or so back I bought a Spice Islands Disposable Grinder filled with Indian Malabar Peppercorns, and I have been using this as my pepper grinder since. The good points about it are: (1) it is cheap (2) it has an adjustable grind in the cap and (3) it is very clean as the pepper grinder stands inverted and upright and has a cover. This last point was something I didn’t like about the Unicorn.

One downside is that it might be more susceptible to heat if left too close to the burners as it is — after all — supposed to be disposable. But to replace it only costs $6. And with that said, the plastic is actually quite rigid and firm and it feels solid for a disposable item.

Also, even though you can adjust the grind settings, it will take more times turning it than the Unicorn to get your pepper out. But then again, it is probably comparable to other grinders that also can’t keep up with the Unicorn.

All in all, I would recommend this for a low-cost pepper grinder option, and when the grinder runs out of pepper, I just pry off the top with a butter knife, refill the container and snap the cover back on. The size is pretty large at 6.5 ounces, so it holds as much pepper as other grinders — if not more.