Chris Amirault

For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon of brand ambassadors, click here for a recent NYT article: And, alleges the Atlantic article, steal other people's ideas to pawn as their own. Or, more accurately, as a brand's.

Fascinating piece in the Atlantic today by Chantal Martineau on cocktails, intellectual property, and related issues, prominently featuring Eben Freeman. An excerpt: Less protection, as eGullet Society members know, because the ingredients and ratios of ingredients cannot be copyrighted. We've been through this before in our discussion about culinary plagiarism started with this "Sincerest Form" Daily Gullet piece. But the world of cocktails is a bit different, particularly, Freeman asserts, given the preponderance of the "brand ambassadors" that big producers hire to push product: Though I find the brand ambassador trend somewhat unnerving as well, I also worry about reducing the amiable tradition of bartenders sharing their recipes with each other into the goose that lays Diageo's golden eggs. Society members have shared hundreds, if not thousands, of cocktail recipes in eG Forums, members that include Don Lee, Dave Wondrich, Audrey Saunders, Paul Clarke, Toby Maloney, Phil Ward, and many, many more. What a shame if that tradition -- which is many decades older than the eGullet Society -- were to be eradicated.

Hard yolks? So wrong, so very, very wrong....

Fine on my Droid and on Firefox/Windows XP. Will check my Firefox on my Mac tonight.

I reported here on the FoodSaver 2830, which I use all the time for SV, stock, many other uses. I may be wrong, but it looks an awful lot like the 2240 listed here on Amazon for ~$100. A few quibbles -- when you're doing several seals (more than a dozen, say) at once it can overheat and need to cool a bit -- but I love it. Next for me would be a chamber sealer, but that's lottery-winning stuff....

I think paulraphael nailed it. I don't intend calling the original dish a "fiction" to be denigrating; I think you capture the recursive, open-ended part really nicely. Churchill said, "History is written by the victors"; one might say that authenticity is written by victors as well, but the battle continues to unfold.

That looks great, Andy -- and thanks for the tale! Great round of drinks, folks. I'm closing this topic up and will submit the entries to Lindsey. Cheers!

I just wanted to report that this method of rendering lard -- --works like a charm. Be sure to blend that fat up well: I didn't get too worried about the few chunks that didn't get whipped to pork mayonnaise in the blender, but 12 hours later those bits hadn't rendered much at all.

Interesting example. I'm sure that there have been plenty of Vietnamese refugees in the US and elsewhere who have used ersatz pho ingredients because they can't source the real thing, and I'd certainly find it difficult to tell those folks that their soup is inauthentic. Of course, if Cheesecake Factory tries to sell that as pho, it's another matter.

I'd amend this slightly to point out that while it usually refers to a non-existent "original," there are in fact a few cases when we do have an original, and we still can't agree on what is "authentic"! For example, the Caesar salad, which is widely agreed to have been created by Caesar Cardini (though there is even some dispute over this, primarily on the internet). Exactly -- and bold mine, to reiterate my point above. I think that dishes created for restaurants in the 19th and 20th centuries are a lot easier to tag as authentic, because there's usually some documentation that indicates the provenance of and criteria for this "authentic dish." Of course, this documentation is also known as "marketing." Et tu, Caesar. Much harder to authenticate, whatever that means, a dish that came to exist in home kitchens. Speaking of which, I need to call my PR guy about this authentic scampi a la parmigiano reggiano dish I'm working on....

One of the many problems with the concept of authenticity is that it refers to a fiction: "the original dish." As pointed out by several people above this post, often the items that are the battlegrounds for authenticity debates outside of their home country (spaghetti carbonara, ma po tofu, etc. etc.) are are also battlegrounds for authenticity debates inside their home country. Cassoulet is a good example, with several variations involving meat, bread crumbs, number of times you break the crust... on and on. Given that there's no One True Thing to cast a shadow on the cave, Nick's reference to prototypes makes a lot of sense to me, and it fits nicely with the work on "authenticity" and food that Ian Duncan has done. He uses "authenticity effects" instead of "authenticity" because it allows you to more clearly codify the weighted criteria people use to assign relative authenticity value. So, in the carbonara example, eggs would be a heavily weighted positive criterion, whereas grapefruit would be a heavily weighted negative criterion. Guanciale... pancetta... bacon... that's where you start getting into real trouble. The food industry has beaten us to this game, of course, figuring out what ingredients, adjectives, and methods convey authenticity and which don't. They also know that those effects are variable, depending on demographics, geography, and other contexts. For example, there's a new "Asian" restaurant being advertised in the suburbs here, and the billboards have a photograph of a maki roll on one side with a Benihana-style chef on the other, holding a cleaver and screaming. My sense is that this campaign would not convey anything authentic in Little Tokyo LA (or on eG Forums), but someone around here certainly thinks it'll work for Cranston. One of the points that Ian made to me (while we were eating some "authentic" Rhode Island 'cue at United BBQ ) is that the folks to whom ethnographers turn to provide firm assertions of authenticity are often maddeningly accommodating of innovation. This is particularly true among people preparing dishes of a particular cuisine outside of the home of that cuisine, ex-pats, immigrants, refugees, and so on. Circumstances have forced them to make accommodations they would not have made back home, but in the grand scheme of things, this for that in a dish is a small matter indeed.

Just got this from Amazon:

Going for some sort of Improved Bobby Burns Something-or-Other: 2 oz Bruichladdich Yellow Submarine 3/4 oz Amer Picon dash Jerry Thomas Decanter bitters dash Grand Marnier dash Marteau absinthe Just rotten.

Matt Kayahara (mkayahara) has been fiddling around with it. I'm sure he'll weigh in.

Been using it a lot today -- for beets, in particular! -- so I'm eager to check it out tomorrow.

Not Chinese, but I agree with mbhank about Yin-Fei Lo's books in general. Haven't been too impressed with the things I've made. On the other hand, I really think Grace Young's books are terrific.

Only as part of the trinity, with celery and onion, in Cajun food. Otherwise, I can't stand 'em.

Holy crap. That's huge. So, as the photo indicates, you only fill about 1/3 of the way up.

The good folks at Cornell helped out. Andy Bernard would be proud:

I made the drink in those proportions, and while it's very tasty it seemed out of balance; the molasses dominated in particular. I found this version referenced in an article by Grimes in the Times: 4 large mint leaves 1/2 ounce simple syrup 1 1/2 ounces Junipero, or other gin 1/2 ounce lime juice 1/4 ounce pomegranate syrup Gonna give it a try next time. Just did, with a few more mint leaves than indicated. Excellent.

That is because they contained lard, yes?

Thanks Dana. What volume are they?

How big are they? I can't find sizes anywhere on the website.

Thanks Andy -- the descriptions are very useful. I have a precious bottle of Marteau I want to use, and I'm still a bit more confused than I'd like to be before trying this out. Should I start with, say, 1 1/2 oz in each glass? And how long should it take to get those distinct layers to disappear with a nice, slow (one drop per second?) drip? I realize, btw, that I'm turning a romantic process into accounting.

How 'bout that. I think that the Bonzoni adds an orange twist, according to Patrick Gavin Duffy and the Rogue/Beta cocktail folks.