Author: Kim du Toit

Too Much (Hot) Air

Food & Drink

Apparently, we’ve been drinking champagne All Wrong:

A wine expert has revealed why you shouldn’t drink Champagne out of a flute [glass, not musical instrument — K]. Master Sommelier Olivier Krug, from Krug Champagne, was a guest on the ‘Got Somme’ podcast hosted by Angus O’Loughlin and Carlos Santos, and suggested using ‘proper’ glassware — such as a pinot noir or chardonnay glass — to taste all the elements of the champagne.

Whatever.

I’ve never cared for champagne:  too gassy, mostly crap-tasting inferior wine, it’s a triumph of marketing over quality.

“Ah but Kim, you’ve just never tried the really good stuff!”

LOL.  I remember once going to a brand promotion party at some mansion in Newport RI and being given a glass (or two) of their “premium” plonk — from memory, it retailed for $420 a bottle, in the 1980s — and thinking that it tasted like inferior fizzy apple juice.  I’ve forgotten the brand;  Dom Perignon?  Moët et Chandon?  Taittinger?  Bollinger?  But it wasn’t Veuve Clicquot, which really does taste like inferior fizzy apple juice.

Frankly, I find that champagne / sparkling wine works best as a component of the brunch staple, Mimosa (or Buck’s Fizz, as the Brits call it), as long as the drink contains much more orange juice than champers.
[Side note:  don’t bother using freshly-squeezed OJ in a Mimosa:  ordinary pasteurized crap works just fine, in fact Tropicana may be even better fit for purpose than the pricier-than-gold squeezed.]
And if you’re going to mix champagne with anything, you may as well save your money and use Korbel or the like, rather than the aforementioned overpriced Frog Appellation Controlée* stuff.

Okay, I’m just a Bloody Peasant and you’ve bought into the whole Champagne thing:  here are a couple of places to get a “best of” list:  18 Best Sparkling Wines to Drink in 2023 and 12 Best Sparkling Wines From All Over the World.

All that said, one of my favorite apéritifs is called a Golden Dream:  peach-flavored schnapps and (any) sparkling wine 50-50%, with a tiny drizzle of brandy (poured gently over an inverted teaspoon so as to lie on the surface of the drink).  Be warned:  drink this lovely stuff in moderation, or extreme shit-facery will soon follow.  Cheers.

*For the non-cognoscenti, only sparkling wine produced in France’s Champagne area may be called “champagne”;  all others must be labeled as “sparkling wine”, regardless of quality.  It’s all part of the marketing.

JHC.

Reminder Of Earlier Predictions

Eco-Crap, Watermelons

Of course, this is about the Coming Ice Age Of 1970.

Then there’s this one, more trenchantly stated:

Five hundred years ago, no one was driving, flying, using plastic bags or gas stoves. Electric vehicles were not a thing yet. The only vehicle was a horse, possibly pulling a carriage. There was even less CO2 activity 5000 years ago or 5 million years ago. Yet the climate was changing back then. How does science explain that? Or are they making things up now?

I’ll take that last one for $400, Alex.

Fucking charlatans.

Unicorn Gun

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

I was browsing hither and yon on Teh Intarwebz, and happened upon these lovely creatures (sample below)

…when a random thought occurred to me:  does anyone make a pump shotgun with an exposed hammer anymore?

To be sure, there are some examples of the “coach gun” type with exposed hammer(s), e.g. the Rossi side-by-side:

…but I don’t think they make them anymore.  CZ does, of course:


…and very pretty the “Hammer Classic” is, too:

But at the moment I’m looking for a pump-action shotgun, not a side-by-side.  At the moment, anyway.  (When it comes time to get one of these, that CZ is a goner, even if it’s only available in 12ga.)

Here’s the thing.  I like exposed hammers on a shotgun.  I like to see when the gun is ready to go boom, and there’s no better indicator than a cocked hammer.  And in practiced hands, a manual cocking action isn’t that much slower than a semi-auto one, especially when you take the nannyish auto-safety feature into account.

But while the handgun world is replete with guns with hammers standing proud, shotguns seem to have “evolved” completely into the concealed hammer genre.

And they’re all sleek and stuff, but that’s not what I’m looking for.

And who the hell can afford to pay over three grand for an old 1897 Winchester trench gun anymore? (Norinco used to make knock-off copies of the Win 97, but they’re off the table because ugh Chinese government company.)

Incidentally, the top pic is of an affordable 1897, but it’s chambered for 16ga — not in itself a problem, unless you can’t afford / don’t want yet another caliber in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquer.

What I’m looking for, in other words, is a pump-action hammer-exposed shotgun.  In 20ga. [thud]

Anyone have any ideas?

Not The Optimal Choice

Advice, House & Home

Today, I want to address the topic of:

Knife Sets

First, the dirty little secret:  not one of the brands which offer their cutlery in “sets” / blocks are very good, in that a “set” of knives tries to do everything well, and only partially succeeds.  Price is not an indicator of quality because inevitably, one (or more) of the components is not fit for function.

I have one of these, purchased before I knew better.

My summary:

  • the bread knife is terrible — it hacks the bread because the serration points are too sharp — and now I use a budget bread knife bought at the supermarket instead.  (The included paring knife is New Wife’s favorite kitchen implement:  we have two.)
  • the carving knives are quite good, but lose their edge rather quickly when you’re cutting things like cooked meat (ahem), so now I grudgingly use an electric carving knife for that purpose, and use the block’s carving knives only for cutting and trimming raw meat and veg.
  • the scissors are total shit — they fell apart (literally) after about six months.  I replaced them with a Kitchen-Aid pair (note the price), and they’re coming up for their sixth year of (ab)use, without complaint.
  • the block’s steak knives are also crappy:  they tear the meat rather than cut it.

Takeaway:  the Son&Heir worked in the kitchen at both Chili’s and Pappadeaux, and took note of what the pro chefs used there.  So when he finally moved into his own place (after sharing with buddies for years), he bought one sinfully-expensive carving knife — I mean, chef-quality — and uses two cheap paring knives (both Zyliss, see above), one serrated, one flat-edge.  He claims that those three take care of about 99% of his kitchen cutting needs.  (“What about the  remaining 1%?”  Dunno, he didn’t tell me;  knowing him, probably his Al Mar folder.)

The only reason to have a knife block at all is so that the knives’ edges aren’t damageded by clanging against each other in the drawer.

Frankly, if I were starting again, I’d get one of those wall-mounted magnetic numbers, and use it to store my own sinfully-expensive carving knife, a couple-three Zyliss utility knives and the Kitchen-Aid scissors.

For steak knives, I’d go with Victorinox because, duh Victorinox (see also:  Schmidt-Rubin rifles #Swiss quality).

Speaking of steak knives, I once had a set of Laguiolet knives, (bought in Paris and modeled, it’s said, on the Pyrenean shepherd’s knife), and they’re awful.

The blades are excellent, but the handles are too thin and they turn in the hand rather disconcertingly.  I think I gave them to Goodwill or something.

Frankly, I’d rather get a set of steak knives separately (as opposed to included with the cutlery set) and just store them in the box they come in, like this one:

Finally, I have a small cleaver for when I lose patience and just need to hack something apart (e.g. pork knuckle), and I have this one, which has a touch-up sharpener built into the sheath:

Five years of serious (ab)use, and counting…

I don’t have a butcher knife and don’t know much about them, but the Bearded Butcher guys use Victorinox, so there ya go.

Feel free, of course, to add your thoughts on this topic in Comments.