balmagowry

True. (:giggle:) But now I'm starting to get it. I have to admit I used to think that Fat Guy maybe went a little overboard on the evangelizing side of his mission - the various exhortations to get the word out, educate the public, get eG recognized in all sorts of venues, and so on - and that the celebrations of eGullet sightings-and-citings were maybe a little over-the-top, a trifle unseemly. But no. Now I see. You are entirely right in saying that it's a young medium and that a lot of people who use eG posts as a resource haven't gotten the message, haven't figured out that it's a source to be cited like any other. All the more reason to be proactive about informing them! I don't imagine that that omission (or most such omissions) was the result of malice - but as long as it remains possible for such omissions to occur as a result of ignorance, I guess we still have our work cut out for us.

Is this some kind of curse? I shattered a crystal vase during my blog! Yes! Me and my Microwave Meltdown! Not the same as shattering glass and/or crystal, of course, but there were rubber-charcoal fragments all over the joint from the carbonized mug, so it still counts. Yes, I love those dumb jokes too - buccaneer is an old favorite. And then there was the guy who always said to me, "I'll meet you at Chinese Dentist." Took a couple of run-throughs before I burned it into my brain that this meant Tooth-Hurtee. (Sorry.... )

Many thanks, Keifel. Yes, I do have that cookbook, though an earlier and less glossy edition - from the 60s, I think. But I had no idea the Siegerts (there is still a Siegert running the company, if memory serves...?) made rum, let alone that it was their promary product. Makes a lot of sense, now I think about it. Even though they dominate the Bitters market I can see where they'd need some other cash cow to support it. And I bet their rum is good. I wonder where/whether one can get it in these parts. I've never seen it - but then I've never known to look. Will now!

Oh, how lovely! And Mongo is right - both decidedly qualify, in their unwitting way, as poetic. I used to have quite a repertoire of similar ones, but for some reason they've gone clean out of my head. Or maybe that's... me. BTW mongo - halibut is one of those things that I have trouble eating any other way than plain, poached (though accompanied by spinach and hollandaise, to be sure). I keep thinking I'm going to try this or that adventurous preparation... but when I get right down to it I just can't bring myself to do it. YMMV, of course, everyone's may, but this for me is one of the things I simply can't mess with.... (Hmmmm. Idea for a thread.)

Why, for the fun of it, of course. If you don't approve of the idea, there's no need to join in. But please don't scold the rest of us for being easily-amused by word-play. We're entitled to be a little silly if we want.

A very good question, and one that will require some rumination. By way of illustration, though, I do think, as I said above, that the mango salsa falls more under the heading of fad, and that the sandwich is a decided classic. I personally am inclined to place the schnitzel in that category too, though I suppose not everyone would agree. I'm having a harder time placing the culinary cliche. I can see overlap between fad and cliche and can understand how one would become the other by being done to death, so yes, the mango salsa might well qualify under both. Hmmmm. It's all grey areas, isn't it. For instance - I don't think one can argue against the sandwich itself being a classic, but there are certain sandwiches which start out fads and eventually become cliches - the monte-cristo, for instance. Whereas I can't imagine the po'-boy or the grilled-cheese or the BLT ever going out of fashion or becoming a bore. Where would you place Jell-o? Both classic and cliche, I'd say; with certain variations on the theme falling into the Void of Fad. Tuna casserole: cliche, I think. Especially if topped with soggy potato-chip or corn-flake crumbs. Foams: fad. Roast beef and yorkshire pud: classic. Hey, I don't actually know. But I do know that when you cited the sandwich, something in me rose up in protest against the idea of calling it a cliche. Maybe just because the category is too broad and too infinitely expandable - it'd be like calling chicken a cliche. This may be one of those situations where studying the question is more important than finding the answer.... Oh, and BTW, all of the above assumes that the question is being raised purely in the gastronomic context, yes?

Yes! I have! Well, almost. We recovered just in time. But based on that almost-experience I think I am justified in saying that in order to determine just how much noise it would make it is important to consider [1] the nature of the surface on which it is being dropped; [2] the height from which it is being dropped; [3] whether or not it is dead before being dropped. I am sure you can see how important these factors might be, jointly or severally. In the case above, for instance, had we not recovered our grip, I'm willing to bet that the event would have made remarkably little noise - the pig being dead and the sand soft. OTOH, the sand was damn hot, so had the pig been alive... well, hang on a sec, though, of course I'm forgetting that if we had shoved that piece of rebar through it while it was alive it would of course have been making one hell of a racket long before being dropped. Silly me. Yes, many possibilities to contemplate. A most poetic and fruitful image indeed. I thank you for it.

Yes, but it isn't exactly a fair comparison, because in that last instance you're talking, not about different compositions, but about different performances of the same composition (and you don't want to get me started on that subject! ). I shall remove myself from temptation and bring the subject back with a firm hand to the issue: I don't think you can call either the sandwich or the schnitzel a cliche, not inherently - though of course there is a case to be made for preparations and presentations that make them seem that way. Nope, I think fundamentally those are classics. They may vary somewhat in content or saucing, but in themselves they are timeless. I can't imagine either of them ever becoming passe. Whereas the mango salsa that started this thread is... damn, I'm not sure whether even that is so much a cliche as a fad... but a classic it ain't.

Keifel! Welcome - thank you for joining in the fray! Come on in, the water's fine.... I won't keep harping forever on the bitters note, I promise - but I'm curious to know whether you got your use of bitters from books or lore or both; also whether you ever use any other types of bitters; I do realize that Angostura is a local specialty of sorts. The thing that fascinates me is that somehow all the hundreds and hundreds of medicinal bitters that dominated the 19th century vanished and left Angostura standing alone in their place (unless you count the digestif and aperitif types, which are really in another class entirely). There are other aromatics, but Angostura is unique. Sorry, I'm being like a dog with a bone. I'll stop now.

OK, now you got me worried. Pan, too. Where exactly do you draw the line between Cliche and Classic?

I'm pretty sure I have that one - I'm pretty sure I have all of them - but what interests me is finding out that anyone in real life actually uses Angostura as part of his regular repertoire. Very cool! EDIT to splain further: this whole interest grew out of the discussion on Bitters with Dr. Cocktail; I've been making orange bitters for 10 years or so, but until he told me I didn't know that the very first orange bitters I ever encountered, Virginia Dare, were intended for culinary use only. That made me prick up my ears, and then he started tantalizing me with pictures of Angostura cooking pamphlets, whereupon I couldn't rest until I'd acquired 'em all. And started contemplating whether there might not be a broader book or article somewhere in this, the history of bitters and possible culinary uses thereof. So it's one thing to read Angostura's propaganda on the subject, but quite another to encounter someone who actually normally does this, if you see what I mean.

(Sorry to carry the OT-ness another step - I rationalize that it isn't entirely OT, in a sense, because it does speak to how we read and grasp other people's work.) You said a mouthful. My experience was parallel except that in my case it was high school that was so exciting and mind-expanding, such a tough act to follow. (Have since learned from several of my high school classmates that they were similarly disappointed in college for the same reason.) College was perhaps as good as anything could be under the circumstances, but... intellectually just not as stimulating. Didn't stand a chance. As for deconstruction - not for nothing did my mother and I invent the Culinary Deconstruction of Literature when we went on the lecture circuit. Mind you, it was a useful discipline - but in hindsight it also made for a marvelous spoof. That last line of yours above may be one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time. I can't help hoping that one of these days you will change "still writing" to "writing again." Back to - or at least closer to - the topic at hand... I wonder about that whole question of projecting oneself into what one reads. It is of course something we all do, to one degree or another, and I'm still trying to understand the connection between that and deconstruction, if such there be. I think you may have hit on a key point. How much of criticism (not necessarily in the official journalistic sense - I'm thinking more of the kind of critical discussion going on here) and deconstruction originally flow from the same impulse? I don't know the answer to this, I'm just posing the question as it arises in my mind - it seems to me that anything one reads that doesn't inspire an immediate sense of kinship, familiarity, shared experience, may instead generate a nagging sense of dissatisfaction, a need to find a way to compartmentalize, to translate what one has read into terms that fit into one's sphere of comprehension. I'm floundering here, feeling my way, because the thought is that new to me - I know I'm not expressing this clearly because I'm not grasping it clearly yet. But I know I've sometimes had that sort of reaction to something I've read, and it does strike me as somewhat akin to the one that prompts the deconstruction exercise. Got to break it down into terms that can be explained and communicated, or continue to be haunted by it. Can be a pretty powerful urge. (Then again, that may be the whole reason for distrusting deconstruction. If by demystifying too much one also exorcises, then no wonder one also runs the risk of destroying charm and feeling as well. Sometimes it's better to be haunted - sometimes that's the whole point! I never think of "Romeo and Juliet" - to take an extreme example - without being frustrated and infuriated. And I think that's good; it would be dangerous, intellectually dishonest, to defuse that.) This is definitely not aimed at anyone or anything in particular - at least, I hasten to say I'm still talking through my hat as regards any remarks about the book in question, because I still have not read it. Which on the one hand gives me no right to participate in the discussion, but on the other gives me an opportunity to think a little bit objectively about the nature of the discussion, precisely because I don't yet have an opinion of my own about the subject. Which is probably impossibly pompous of me, in which case I'd better apologize and shut up.

You're lucky to be married to someone who shares your tastes in doneness of meat. The porterhouse for two sounds ideal, but The Boy and I are Mr. & Mrs. Sprat - I like mine mooing and he likes his (:delicate shudder:) well-done. Don't suppose they could easily accommodate that....

Aha! Angostura Bitters! I have been studying up lately on culinary uses of same; have acquired all those marvelous pamphlets they published in the 30s, etc. Would love to hear more about this from the horse's mouth, as it were.... Kitchen cabinet sounds a little like kitchen sink, only more dignified.

Hmmmm - I've only been to the Luger's in Great Neck, and up until now I thought that meant I was missing something. Now I'm not so sure. Apparently all I was missing was the rushed, brusque service and the inability to cook a steak to the requested temperature - my experience at the GN Luger's has been pleasant and leisurely, the steak marvelous.

My mother and I used to make something we called "Sunday Meat" out of the really really short ones, the under 1" ones. Marinated them in a mixture of vinaigrette and red wine, and then tossed them on the grill or under the broiler. For some reason my father never cared for this dish, so he got a hamburger, but Ma and I made serious pigs of ourselves. All those satisfying chewy nubbins....

I can't speak for BKB, of course, but one reason I'm curious about it is that it's of great historical interest; time was, most baking - or at any rate most country-house home baking - was done with yeast derived from in-house brewing. (Have to confess that this is one of the cop-outs in some of my own otherwise-fairly-accurate historical work: because of deadline constraints I've had to use modern commercial yeast in some cake recipes. Not that I'm quite ready to go in for home-brewing, but I imagine in hindsight I could have found a home-brewer to work with. Next time.... :sigh:) EDIT to add: first place I would look, I think, is Elizabeth David's bread book. I'm pretty sure she covers this in depth.

What Tana said. And these elements: technique, rhythm, generosity of spirit. What I look for in a food writer - or an anything writer - is a deep joy and overwhelming passion for the subject, coupled with both the ability to communicate same and the intense desire to share it. I love this so much that I need, not only to show you what I feel but to make you feel it too and experience the joy yourself. Same thing in another discipline: read Elizabeth Zimmermann on Opinionated Knitting, a perfect parallel. It's also part of what made Julia such a success on TV: not just that she was human and approachable and intelligent and funny, but that she positively glowed with the need to share the joy and the passion - and she succeeded in doing it.

Sigh. Remember pressed caviar? Beg to differ. The Silent Butler would be useful for crumbs, now you mention it, but it couldn't do any sweeping. Back where I come from a Silent Butler is a clamshell-opening affair used for the emptying of ashtrays: in one hand you hold the SB by its handle and use leverage on the knob to flip open the top with your thumb; with the other you dump the ashtray's contents into it. Quaint, now - but we still have a couple of them lying around, and I think I'll start using them for crumbs if I ever go back to giving elegant dinner parties.

Thank you for reminding me! The cocker spaniel we had when I was a kid had the endearing habit, in summer, of going swimming and then rolling in the fine white sand as soon as he came out of the water. At these moments he was, of course, "the breaded veal cutlet."

Grad school! I'm impressed that you withstood it that long. That is precisely the reason I dropped out of college in my junior year. Every once in a while come those pivotal moments when you get to decide whether to have your own experiences or to let others do all of your digesting for you. I don't think they could have ruined my pleasure in literature; but I could have ruined my academic career by tuning out their attempts. It seemed the better part of valor to get the hell out of dodge. Hmmmm - now you've set me thinking about this. It has to be something, not just about the critical attitude and the rabid dissection, but about the manner of teaching. Otherwise it would be a starkly clear-cut choice between rejecting other people's views and knowledge and embracing them fully and unthinkingly. The fates defend us against both the arrogance of the former and the ovine mindlessness of the latter! The great teachers I have known (and I've been very lucky in that regard, which may be why my tolerance for pedantic fools is so low) have always engcouraged independent thought and discovery; have known how to impart traditional ideas without suffocating new ones. Oops. </unplanned rant> And now I guess I'd better go read the Hesser book for myself....

Show-off!

Well... Patrick O'Brian is kind of an all-or-nothing thing. You can love the books or hate them, or you can be utterly indifferent to them, but I've never known anyone to have a lukewarm response. For those who come to him through the food, rather than vice versa, the advantage (if such it be) is that L&SD is pretty heavily larded with passages from the novels, probably enough to give you a flavor of his writing, based on which you can judge whether or not you want to invest in the whole dish. And I use that word "invest" advisedly; it isn't merely a matter of buying 20 books, but one of committing a great deal of time and energy to living in their world. Curiously enough, I stubbornly resisted this last for quite a while when everyone I knew was pressing me to read PO'B; having just come out of a full Trollope-re-read cycle I was wary of another black hole for my time and my mental faculties! Little did I know how right I was about that - which is not in any way to say I regret it for a second. There is in the O'Brian cult-- er, world, I mean... a whole series of arguments and counter-arguments over whether or not it is better to begin the series at #1. Oy, such an argument! But this is the one venue in which I feel entirely justified, as well as self-serving, in saying: begin with the cookbook. And then you can decide what to read next.

I think that that may be part of PBS - Post-Blog Synrome.

Neither are we, and we're still working on my last bottle of Arf! Vinegar from Bad Dog Truck Farm, which I must have infused at least 10 years ago, possibly longer. There don't seem to be any issues as regards preservation; I'm no SSB, but I get the impression that the vinegar itself acts as a very good preservative. Hmmmmm - this sets me to wondering about the relationship between vinegar and alcohol. I mean, red wine contains alcohol, and what happens when that wine gets converted into vinegar? And what about cider vinegar? We know that cider can ferment and produce alcohol - but does it also go through that stage on the way to becoming vinegar? (Haven't yet made cider vinegar, though I'm saving up mother from bottles of organic ACV expressly for that purpose.) I mean - you've had fruit preserved in brandy. You've seen fruits preserved in vinegar. Damn you, eGullet! These questions didn't always keep me awake at night! Oh. Wait. Yes, they did. The only difference is that back then I didn't ever hope to get them answered. Never mind. I withdraw the damn.