Post #337263 by KuKuAhu on Mon, Oct 8, 2007 4:12 PM

To fellow and extend your comment about raising cattle to have a steak, why bother when you can go to McDonald's? Otherwise you're wasting 40 years of meat experience. :) There is something to be said for doing things right.

Or I can just buy a great cut of beef and prepare it with practiced skill and care.

Forgive me for pulling my own quote off of one page back, but I felt I covered this analogy well enough.

I suppose I might have clarified that with "bartending history" so as not to have it assumed to mean "bartending experience" which probably has little bearing on the content of commercial brands of orgeat.

There's this one from a page ago too:

It pays to make the pure form from the ground up (pun intended) with almonds.. this gives you the palate and perspective of extremes, but to me it pays to seek the useful balance in between.

So I agree with you. I just think it wrong to prescribe the purisms as 100% truth when we are discussing 1940s American bartending.

If you are all out of milk on your french farm because you had to make it all into cheese to avoid spoilage (due to your lack of refrigeration), then by all means make orgeat as a purist.

If you just want to make better orgeat for your bar to make excellent mai tais.. well, this is a different matter altogether.

You may wish to use barley though. I not sure I have seen a 1940s Trader Vic recipe book that specifically describes this historical French brand as an almond based orgeat.

-grin-

Shall we all milk barley then?

Ahu

Fraternal Order of Moai

[ Edited by: KuKuAhu 2007-10-08 16:12 ]