Ben Zanin @gnomon@kitch.win

@skelly@redroo.ml hey would you mind if I followed you?

@philvuchetich I've tried a few different brands of falernum syrup here in Toronto: the tastiest one I know of for this particular drink is the BG Reynolds stuff - https://bgreynolds.com/collections/frontpage/products/falernum - which I get at the BYOB Cocktail Emporium, though it's orderable online. The other ones I tried were also decently tasty but they tended to emphasize the lime or almond flavours rather than the allspice notes. This citrus/nut emphasis is quite pleasant on its own but not really necessary when I'm mixing a drink that adds a good portion of lime juice on its own!

I haven't tried making my own falernum yet but I think I'll give it a try sometime this summer. I don't personally know anyone who has done this yet, but I've had great success making my own syrups in general so I'm optimistic about the outcome.

As for brands of rum, basically anything with some funk to it should do the trick - this is one of those cocktails where you want a nice bold flavour to stand up to the lime and the spice from the syrup. In this particular drink in the photo I happened to use an Appleton Estate Signature, but really there are any number of good options out there. We're spoiled for choice!

Standard Captain's Blood!

• 2 oz Jamaican rum
• 1 oz lime juice
• 0.75 oz falernum syrup
• 2-3 generous dashes of Angostura bitters

Shake hard for 30 seconds to chill, dilute, and generate ice chips; gate pour (don't strain) into a chilled coupe rimmed with lime juice; garnish with three dots of Angostura bitters (an eyedropper helps) and a wedge, wheel, or twist of lime.

Household favourite, this one.

It's Tuesday, so by now you definitely know the drill: salmon with lemon & dill, fingerling potats, cherry tomatoes with feta & basil, baked asparagus with lemon, garlic, and Parmesan.

I overdid the fish just ever so slightly, but everything else was great.

Man, I haven't cooked rice in just altogether too long. It's hard to work it into my meals and still hit the protein, calorie, and macronutrient targets my trainer and I have worked out.

But I really want to make mushroom bonito rice, and grilled and stuffed onigiri, and I've never made a proper Persian tahdig...

The yield was pretty generous! This ought to be a good week and a half to two weeks of meal additions.

This is by a good length my tastiest batch. I'm keen to try this with black beans next!

Then it'll be time to make good on my intent and commitment to follow @federicomena 's good advice to use a pressure cooker, and after that I'm going to experiment with Goya sazon (both the stuff from the packet and my own blend of it!)

Fried down the onions and jalapeños in some olive oil, then once they were nicely dark golden I tipped in the garlic and brought it to just a slightly lighter brown before adding the spices.

After they had a chance to bloom for 30-60 seconds or so I added the beans plus a ladle or so of the cooking water and mashed it down. Then I cooked it slowly, stirring constantly, for about 90 minutes; adding a ladle of bean cooking water and a glug of lime juice until it was all mixed in. Then I folded in the feta and the cilantro, cut the heat, and let their flavours blend in as it all cooled and thickened up to the final target consistent.

I adjusted the recipe this round in a couple of small ways:

• increased the jalapeño count to a full six
• dropped the salt by about 20%, and replaced half the table salt with MSG
• added a teaspoon of Mexican oregano (I still can't find epazote in this city, argh!)
• used about 75-100g of feta this time - no oaxaca cheese around
• accidentally cooked the beans for a full 36 hours (that wasn't on purpose, I just discovered far too late that the cilantro we had in the fridge had gone off and then had to wait another day for the shops to open). This didn't harm them! Probably a waste of energy though, I don't think it improved anything either.
• left out the shallots and added a bit more garlic to compensate. (Again, just ran short of them.)

@guysoft we tend to have a blanco, a reposado, and an añejo tequila on hand for different purposes. Usually we tend towards Tromba because it's pretty good and pretty affordable here, but at the moment we're using el Jimador. It's OK!

In case you were curious about the visual difference between a classic margarita that is gate poured versus one that's double strained, here you go!

This is a simple 2:1:1 ratio of tequila, Cointreau, and freshly squeezed lime juice, shaken hard for ~30 seconds and poured into a chilled coupe half rimmed with salt. Some recipes call for 2:1:0.5:0.5 ratio of tequila, lime juice, Cointreau, and simple syrup; for me that usually depends on what any particular batch of limes are bringing to the party. (In this case they were a little disappointingly lacking in tartness, unfortunately! Not exactly something that extra sweetener could help though.)