Fat Guy
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I know you're not a fan of Gastronomica, but at least it has potential, even if it hasn't quite lived up to it. For instance, it often has some good historical pieces.
That Gastronomica is the only publication of its kind makes it the proverbial exception that proves the rule. But is Gastronomica even a commercial publication? I assumed it was a not-for-profit, part of a university press project of some sort. I doubt it pays very well either. Nor -- with a few noteworthy exceptions -- are the best people writing for Gastronomica. Most of them are unknowns in the world of food writing, and for good reason.
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You can treat shellfish stock pretty much as you'd treat meat stock. It won't be quite as long-lived and durable as meat stock, but it's not nearly as delicate as fish stock. It can handle quite a bit of abuse, reduction, freezing, whatever.
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Bean, I think it's worth pointing out that the article appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, a journal dedicated to journalism about journalism. And, presumably, the intended audience is journalists and people who care strongly about journalism-related issues. That being said, I do agree that the article raises more questions than it answers -- though I don't see anything wrong with that.
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more people (probably including me) should spend a bit more time editing before they punch send.
With this I totally agree, especially as it applies to the New York Times.
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Mayhaw, I think there are a few distinctions that need to be drawn. The first is between two debates: old media v. new media, and old journalism v. new journalism. They are not the same, though they may be somewhat related. The second distinction is between food journalism and news journalism.
On the old media v. new media aspect of the argument, I think as you say there are pros and cons. However, I think you understate the pros. I for one am extremely happy that the new media have broken the old media's stranglehold on information. If that means a latter day Woodward & Bernstein can't have their exclusive, too bad. Exclusives are a bad thing. They allow those with agendas to control what you can know. Gone are the days when the big newspapers and TV networks could collude amongst themselves to conceal presidential indiscretions or corporate misdeeds. New media filled a vacuum -- a vacuum created by old media's chronic failure to provide the whole truth or any diversity of opinion.
Maybe there is an extent to which "The Web has turned anyone who can type and hit send into a writer." But isn't it the case that anybody who could type could always be a writer, for as long as there have been typewriters, and before that for as long as there has been paper, papyrus, and stone? It's not a question of who can be a writer. It's a question of who will read. If a tree falls, and all that. So yes, the Internet allows anybody to write about food, or about foreign affairs. But a writer still has to rise above the pack in order to attract more than his mother as a reader. The difference is that in new media writers are chosen by readers, whereas in old media writers are chosen by editors who decide what's best for readers. I'd like to see William Grimes compete in the online marketplace of ideas -- do you think he'd be a major food writer without the fiat of the New York Times? There are advantages to each approach, but the big advantage comes from having a choice between many examples of each.
In terms of old journalism v. new journalism (or, rather, lack of journalism), I don't think new media can be blamed for the decline of journalism. You can blame the New York Times, the networks, and the glossy magazines -- the most traditional of old media -- for that, and it started long before New Media became a serious force in the late 1990s. I also don't think it has so much to do with the immediacy of television. You can have real journalism on television. But the journalistic content of television has declined and dumbed itself down just as it has in print.
Most importantly, if you look at food journalism specifically, the Internet has been the best and most important improvement since Craig Claiborne created food journalism in the first place. Anybody who has spent an hour reading eGullet can tell you that: print and television totally lack the depth and interactivity that we can provide here. And to the extent new media are great at leveling hierarchies, we do more of that on eGullet than almost anywhere else because we put the Tony Bourdains and the Molly O'Neills in direct contact with their readers and, if they're smart, they accept the two-way exchange and it informs them and their writing (not to mention their readers benefit greatly from the interaction, and non-readers get converted into readers as a result of the dialog). And look at the eGullet Culinary Institute. What have the old media ever done to serve the community in such an ambitious manner? Nothing. While they're busy dumbing down we're trying to elevate -- plus, don't even get me started on the idiocy of traditional food television programming. And that's just here on eGullet. Look at a site like Chowhound as well: a different orientation, but also superior to old media in its "cheap ethnic eats" niche. If you wanted to have Teochew cuisine in Flushing, you'd have to be insane to consult a guidebook or a newspaper rather than Chowhound and other Web sources. Gone are the days when Chowhound and Web sources were supplements to newspaper and magazine and guidebook reviews. Now, the print sources are the supplements. What about recipes? I can't imagine recipe books having much of a future given the superiority of the online medium for searching, sorting, and conveyance of that kind of information. Look at the various writing awards and the submissions in the Internet categories; they are every bit as good journalistically as those in the traditional print categories -- some would suggest that the awards organizations are afraid to let the Internet submissions compete in the print categories because then they'd have to face up to the likelihood of Internet writing beating out the submissions from Food & Wine, Saveur, Gourmet, and Bon Appetit.
To quote Molly O'Neill (from the above-mentioned Business Week story):
There was a sliver in time in which small, highly imaginative, and highly creative startups could do things in the media that larger, more established media companies just couldn't do.Food is something basic and held in common by everybody who eats. And because I get tons of mail every week, I felt for a number of years that what readers want most is interaction. The subject lends itself to that, and conventional media can't provide it.
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the impetus for One Big Table is the community. In addition, the greatest thing that technology allows is the use of databases. And in terms of food writing, that is a gigantic step forward. We have thousands and thousands of cookbooks and hundreds of thousands of wonderful pieces about food that are published every single year. What we don't have is a place where all that information can rest and be built upon.So every time you go to write a story about parsley, you go back and reinvent parsley. And the idea behind the way we are built -- which is an editorial interface laying over some very sophisticated databases -- was to allow for the accumulation of, and progression of, knowledge.
I respectfully suggest that the "sliver in time" O'Neill refers to is actually the foreseeable future. Funding problems may have prevented it from happening on onebigtable.com, but it's happening elsewhere, including right here.
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Fat Guy, how much is the bounty on her head? Have your agent put you in touch with Schocken Books. Last I knew she married the head of it. If this works, I get to ask her the first question. Sorry.
I don't want just a Q&A with Molly O'Neill. I'm thinking bigger than that. I want her as a regular addicted contributing eGullet member because we have way too much to discuss for just a Q&A. I'll see what I can do to obtain an e-mail address through publishing and PR channels.
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The other major issue that strikes me as lacking from this article -- and it's not surprising given that the piece is somewhat autobiographical and O'Neill has long operated at the most rarefied levels of the profession -- is the devaluation of editorial content across the entire field of journalism. O'Neill sees food writers as, perhaps, well situated to make a step forward in importance. But where are the outlets? What publications are willing to pay for high-quality, thoughtful, journalistically oriented food writing? Budgets are being slashed everywhere. Content is an afterthought in more and more magazines. Syndication and duplication are reducing the number of effective outlets even as the number of periodicals increases. The freelance business is gasping for air. So how can the vision be realized, unless it is realized by independently wealthy volunteers? Or online.
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Terminology:
Foodmart International is the name of a group of stores that includes the now-defunct Jersey City store, the one in Tonnelle Plaza in North Bergen, and the one in Spring Valley. The information on the company's site is not up to date, but here it is: http://foodmartinternational.com/ And this is the site for Tonnelle Plaza: http://www.hartzmountain.com/retail/pages/...nnellepage.html
International Food Warehouse is not related, though the concept is similar. It is an arm of National Wholesale Liquidators, and shares space with that operation at least at the Lodi store which is the one I've been to. Here's the site: http://www.nationalwholesaleliquidators.co...food_test_1.htm
What you'll find at all these stores is a diverse selection of international foodstuffs and related merchandise, and in some subcategories you'll find impressive depth. But if you want, for example, Korean stuff, you'll do a whole lot better at Hanahreum. And I don't think these stores are what they once were. When Foodmart International opened in Jersey City it had breadth, depth, and quality. In the end it had only breadth. And the newer stores have never recaptured the greatness of the old place.
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I don't know the story of Ms. O'Neill's break with The Times; I only know that I've dearly missed her.
I don't know the full story, and I'm not sure who does other than Ms. O'Neill herself. It's definitely something we could clear up if we could reach out to her and get some comments from her here. I'll tell you what I do know, though. As I mentioned in the thread on the state of food writing at the Times Magazine, a few years ago, when so many people were making grand sweeping statements about the inevitable and impending death of print and the rise of new media, Ms. O'Neill got involved in what was to be the most ambitious food Web site in the history of the universe. It was a bold and ambitious plan and also a heart-wrenching failure. You can read the whole onebigtable.com story here. It's hard to convey just how seriously people took this venture at the time. This was back in the era of the amazing Microsoft "Mungo Park" venture, it was during the ascendancy of Salon.com, and it was before people became jaded and condescending about the Internet. I remember sitting down with Tom Colicchio and talking in hushed tones (at that time the onebigtable project was in its allegedly top-secret development phase and only insiders and those to whom they had leaked information knew much about it) about how onebigtable.com could become the biggest thing in the history of food journalism. And of course I think the death of print still is inevitable. What was foolish was the belief the the timetable could be so short, as well as the naive belief that print could be replaced simply with an online facsimile of print journalism.
Anyway . . . as I understand it there was some sort of connection between the whole onebigtable.com episode and Ms. O'Neill's decoupling from the Times magazine. I hope someone else has more complete information on this, but what I kept hearing was that she went to an every-other-week schedule at the Times magazine in order to accommodate her work on onebigtable.com and that she just didn't have her heart in it anymore. Eventually, she was either replaced or resigned or a combination of the two. That's all I know.
I do think it is noteworthy, given O'Neill's personal history as well as the fact that she surely must know how important the Internet now is to the dissemination of food information, that mention of Internet is completely absent from her article. Unless I missed it.
Edit: Just re-read for Internet mentions and double-checked looking for the words "online" "web" "new media" and "internet." Nothing.
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Does anybody know how to contact Ms. O'Neill? I'd love to get her over here nor only for a standing ovation, but also for some real discussion of the issues raised in her piece. It's going to take me a couple of days to digest everything in this opus, but I wanted to point to a couple of previous discussions on eGullet that mesh well with the issues raised here. In particular, Jonathan Day's "The Choices of a Food Writer," resonates with relevant themes, as does the follow-up discussion (including comments from John Thorne).
One thing I found somewhat ironic is that, after reading and marveling at all the interesting points made in the article, the farthest issue from my mind was the red-herring of "food porn," which is the chosen title and advertised theme. That theme seems almost entirely irrelevant to the thesis. I wonder if it was, early on, the mission, but perhaps the piece grew into something unexpected?
What I think makes the article so powerful is not just O'Neill's knowledge, and not just her honesty, but the fact that, from a psychological standpoint, these are clearly the words of a battle-hardened and battle-scarred veteran who has taken a step back in order to perform the kind of detached and frank analysis that few insiders ever attempt (especially not in public). I can't help but think that the One Big Table fiasco and O'Neill's fall from grace at the Times have turned out to be, in the end, great gifts to the larger dialog about food journalism's past, present, and future.
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What keeps a double Michelin star-winning chef in his kitchen for 16 years straight? Andy Lynes Keeps the Faith with David Everitt Matthias . . .
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Be sure to check The Daily Gullet home page daily for new articles (most every weekday), hot topics, site announcements, and more.
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Be sure to check The Daily Gullet home page daily for new articles (most every weekday), hot topics, site announcements, and more.
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Not to say I agree with everything she says, but if this article doesn't win a Beard Award they should shut down the whole Beard operation. Very interesting observations, and you can't get deeper inside the profession than this.
"But even as the profession came to be seen as a sexy life-style arbiter, food writers had, by the early 1980s, begun to respond to public taste rather than lead it. In part, this was because food became news during the decade and covering news is, by its nature, reactive."
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DEMI-GLACE
- 1/2 c brown sauce (espagnole)
- 1/2 c brown stock
1. Combine sauce and stock and simmer until reduced by half.
2. Strain through chinois lined with cheesecloth
Keywords: Sauce, eGCI
( RG621 )
- 1/2 c brown sauce (espagnole)
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Sauce Allemande
- 2 c Basic Veloute Sauce
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/4 c heavy cream
- Juice from 1/2 lemon (to taste)
- Salt (to taste)
- White Pepper (to taste
1. In a heat-resistant bowl, whisk egg yolk and 1/4 cream. This is known as a "liason"
2. Bring your veloute back to a simmer temperature (not boiling).
3. Temper your egg mixture by slowing beating in 1/2 cup of hot sauce
This is an important technique AND step. If the liason were poured straight into the hot sauce, the egg/cream mixture would begin to cook and curdle. By pouring a small amount of hot stock into the liason, the temperature of the liason is beginning to be brought up to the temperature of the sauce on the stove.
4. Stir this mixture back into the sauce pan.
5. Stir slowly and bring both up to simmer (do not boil).
6. Add lemon juice, salt, and white pepper.
Keywords: Sauce, eGCI
( RG619 )
- 2 c Basic Veloute Sauce
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MAKING A ROUX
(Note: this is a proportional measurement. Some sauce recipes will call for two ounces of butter and two ounces of flour, which creates the roux. This recipe is to create a supply of roux which you can keep for later use. You can use one pound of butter and one pound of flour or less or more, just so that they are the same amounts.) I am using the 1/2 pound measurement
- 1/2 lb unsalted butter (I recommend Plugra)
- 1/2 lb flour
The method for preparing a roux is to melt the fat in a pan over moderate heat and add the flour and stir until smooth and cook until the "floury" taste is gone.
Cook, stirring constantly to achieve the desired color. White roux should be barely colored, or chalky. This is the roux that is used for milk and cream-based sauces. Moderate (or medium) heat is important. Heating the pan up quickly to melt the fat will result in evaporation and you will lose your proportionsIn the beginning, the roux will look clumpy, somewhat like very pasty oatmeal.
A pale, or blonde roux should be straw-colored and is used in veloutes and white sauces
A brown or black roux will be deep in color, have a nutty aroma, and is used in brown sauces. One caveat: A browned-flour roux has one-third the thickening power of other roux and is often used more to enhance color and flavor than to thicken the sauce.
Keywords: Sauce, eGCI
( RG617 )
- 1/2 lb unsalted butter (I recommend Plugra)
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horse chestnuts
Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
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Anonymity can be a shield or a sword. I sympathize with those who use it as a shield. For example, we have a lot of restaurant employees participating on eGullet and many of them feel (correctly, I think) that their bosses will retaliate against them for being honest here. So they participate anonymously. Then again, the site's administrators typically know who they are, which provides a certain measure of protection because there is still private accountability, just not public accountability.
But those who use anonymity as a sword are simply cowards. And if a Web site (or any other outlet) harbors such people, and takes no steps to rein them in, then the Web site is complicit in that cowardice.
Of course there are different types of anonymity. For example you take a user like "tommy" on eGullet. The guy has posted here more than 12,700 times as of now. So yeah, you don't know tommy's last name. You don't even know if his name is really tommy. But he is heavily invested in the persona of tommy and that in and of itself is a form of accountability and non-anonymity, provided the technology department at eGullet does its job and prevents tommy from using aliases. (Not that tommy would ever degrade himself that way; I'm just giving an example of what some extremely pitiable souls do with their spare time.)
At the same time, non-anonymity is no guarantee of good conduct. If a person is totally un-self-conscious and doesn't give a crap what people think of him or her, then there's no real difference between that person being anonymous or not. Non-anonymity is only one component of accountability, which is in turn only one component of legitimacy.
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Although it depends on the strength of the broiler (residential infrared broilers aren't as powerful as the ones used in restaurants, and yours probably isn't as powerful as one on a residential Viking) and the distance of the rack from the element (which follows some kind of steep curve), in general you can expect any broiler that bothers to call itself an infrared broiler to be pretty powerful relative to a standard old-style broiler. But "nearly destroy anything when the rack is positioned in the top one or two slots that are usually used when broiling"? Not likely. It's more like what you'd expect from a charcoal grill, except with the heat coming from the top. But I do think it makes sense to learn the properties of your particular broiler by experimenting on lesser products at first. Hamburgers are good test cases because their cost is so low and they taste good even if you screw them up, and also you'll want to experiment with melting cheese so that it browns without burning.
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NIGHT CAUGHT PARROT FISH AND DAY BOAT SCALLOPS
Mucilage, reproductive fluids
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I had to tell them everything, including income and penis size. I lied about both, though.
inflated one figure, deflated the other, I presume?
It's not really possible to deflate my income.
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That's pretty good. I got 75%. But they didn't tell me which ones I got right and wrong.
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Buttering those buns isn't a New York thing. And when I first had burgers and franks outside of New York I remember being shocked and repulsed by that (as well as by mustard on burgers). But over time I've come to agree that butter makes these items better. How could it not? It makes everything better.
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"4 Idaho potatoes"
By this you mean those big-ass brown Idaho russet baking potatoes?
Is there any other kind of potato that works as well or better?
Molly O'Neill's new article "Food Porn"
in Food Media & Arts
Posted
So have your elected representatives, Bux. Do you think representative democracy is achieving the goal of expert representation (the goal relevant to this analogy)? Are our representatives in Washington the free-thinking Renaissance men envisioned in the Federalist Papers? Of course not. Representative democracy doesn't provide expert government. It provides mediocre government. But it has other benefits that can't be overlooked. The most important thing representative government avoids is the tyranny of the majority and the hasty tendencies of direct democracy.
But in the media context, there is no fear of the tyranny of the majority, because in the end the only thing the media can produce is speech. There's room for infinite speech representing all positions. That's not the case with laws. You can't have a law that prohibits the death penalty and a law that requires the death penalty -- they can't coexist in the same jurisdiction at the same time. But editorials for and against the death penalty can exist side-by-side on the same page of a newspaper.
Nor does making a judgment regarding the quality of someone's writing require any particular expertise. Any educated, intelligent reader can do it and can also judge the reputation of a publication or individual writer over time. Faceless, relatively anonymous and shielded editors, certainly, are not necessary for the filtering function. This function can just as well be performed by independent monitoring services that assemble the best of what's out there. Conversely, the job of most editors is emphatically not to go out and find the best writers. It is to generate and shepherd content that is uniform in style and that conforms to the narrow editorial mission of a given section within a given publication.
Getting back to the idea of indirect or representative action, in addition to all the theoretical arguments about representative democracy from Mill, Madison, and Toqueville (Jefferson, as I recall, favored as direct a democracy as possible), there was always an elephant in the living room: in the pre-industrial world, true direct democracy was simply impossible to achieve on any scale greater than that of a small city (and then only if you limited the franchise to the aristocratic property-owning men of the city). But today, the infrastructure for direct democracy exists. It still may not be a good idea, but it's possible. Likewise, the reason the media had to be controlled by an executive corporate hierarchy was always, at bottom, all about the cost of paper. With that variable eliminated from the equation, things look a whole lot different. Which gets back to one of O'Neill's points, which is that most media (and I'd add especially traditional high-budget media) are beholden to advertisers -- lots and lots of advertisers.