MaxH

Actually that's still a complicated recipe compared to just cheeses and pasta (older and more traditional in some regions -- many Europeans love macaroni and cheese, in various forms, for instance). I'm being the devil's advocate, of course, because these different versions (with increasing additions: cream, Béchamel, eggs, etc.) have different textures that people like. Don't forget the hint of pepper sauce. Among others, James Beard pointed out that a little hot pepper sauce, below the level perceptible as hot in the final dish, is a standard commercial-kitchen technique to brighten up the cheese flavor. Yes, it surfaces every few postings, lately. It must be pretty good. (It's also a reminder of the wisdom of RFC1855's classic advice (sec. 3.1.3) to "Read all of a discussion in progress ... before posting replies." A burden that grows along with the thread ... but so does the value of the content!

A good challenge. Underline "creative." (I've learned a lot about cooking through trying things.) dougal's suggestion of blue brie plus goat. Or ordinary brie, or Camembert, plus goat. But also, blue cheeses per se add such character to M&C in general that if you look closely you'll see them included in some commercial M&C cheese powders even when not cited on the label. Front matter in the venerable US Gourmet Cook Book (Gourmet, Inc., 1950) identified three motives for substitutions in recipes, arguing that false economy resulted from fake ingredients, preference yields interesting variations, but expediency was the mother of invention: "Many a culinary masterpiece was invented because one bottle was empty and another full."

I believe HF is a blue goat cheese, anyway the artisanal firm making it is known for Chevres. One cool thing about cooking is you can improvise. Once (it may be earlier in this thread) after getting too much of (good) cheeses for a cheese platter -- Stilton, aged Gouda, farmhouse Cheddar, etc. -- I shredded the leftovers, let them come to room temperature so they wouldn't cool the pasta too much, and tossed them with just-cooked noodles. Nothing else, no milk or eggs etc. (maybe a dash of pepper sauce, the usual "secret ingredient" in cheese dishes) and it was delicious. Julia Child once said of improvisation, "Now you are really cooking!"

Some readers, anyway, may have gotten the points. Perceptual isn't the same as subjective; serious wine tasting is much more about objective things than some people suppose, as you can see; if a gadget actually works or not is something not every buyer wants to know; and if all wine consumers were actually interested in how wines taste, they might rely more on blind tasting, less on fashionable labels (even legitimate ones). Quod erat faciendum!

Yes, the Hardy Rodenstock [?sp] case -- got a lot of popular press in 2007. (The experience I mentioned was a few years earlier.) Sorry if I expressed it poorly. Both situations are sensory evaluations. (Blind tasting is a practical technique to check claims of things improving wine; professional winemakers do it all the time in fact, to check results of steps or experiments). Sensory evaluation certainly has subjective components. (For instance some people inherently can't smell TCA or "cork taint"). But it has important objective components. You and I can taste a blind sample of quinine and likely both will agree it's "bitter." I've seen people blind-taste and correctly identify the alcohol content to a tenth of a degree, or which forest the wood for the aging barrels came from. It's the same idea, further along. Such people could tell if a gadget does or does not improve wine.

absolutelyOf course restaurants are human enterprises, and diners are human, and "fate and chance happeneth to them all." But the above has been my experience too, in many places. (Except the apparent annoyance part. Maybe those other tables were not as focused on their dining, if they had time to dwell on yours.)

So far has wine buying moved away from content to label chasing, in fact, that I was able to find offered online, for tens of thousands of dollars, magnums (1.5 L bottles) of a legendary 1945 wine, bottled by the winery -- even though it's public information that few bottles of this wine were made at all, and no magnums. (One expert told me such offerings were routine, "and in a good month, you can find a jeroboam" -- an even larger bottle offered.)

I hope this doesn't put too fine a point on it -- and not to defend snake oil! -- but I don't know if that comment quite fits the situation. Perceptual isn't the same as subjective. Experienced and professional tasters detect many features of wine "blind" -- I see them do it all the time -- I'll admit I even do it. Though people differ in styles of wines they prefer, other measures have wide consensus (i.e., objectivity), just as most people agree what sweet, sour, bitter, etc. mean. (I know one winemaker whom people like to test. An unidentified glass is waved before his nose. "1998 Oregon Pinot," he says, correctly, as offhand as most people perceive the wine "red.") Experienced tasters could surely do blind testing of claims to produce "aging" effects or "expensive" tastes. Bigger issues in my experience are that (1) people often don't want to test product claims even if possible; (2) in wine, people don't always want something that "tastes expensive" -- otherwise they, and the critics they read, would rely more on blind (i.e., objective) evaluation, less on fashionable labels.

Wasn't that the absinthe-flavored dish in the news a few years ago, during a high-profile gathering in Switzerland, ban still in effect, questions raised about propriety? By many accounts, clandestine local absinthes were a tradition in parts of Switz., and being underground was part of the fun. (As with Prohibition in the US, which raised both liquor consumption and number of bars.) Around 2000 in the Bay Area, a Swiss journalist of mature years told me a personal experience of this, repeated in the first pph of my "Customer Review" of Conrad's Martini book at amazon.com Here. Several central-European food books yielded no such specialty soufflé, but Google produced hits including a recipe for Soufflé glacé à l'absinthe. In the three main English-language editions of the Larousse Gastronomique* there's also mention that the wider Artemisia genus is especially popular in Central Europe for food and drink flavorings, the herb génépi for herb teas and "a number of plant liqueurs" including the Swiss Génépi des Alpes. (LG, 2001 ed.) * Three more first-recourse references following the convention of "Wormwood" for A. absinthium.

And prologue to that ... 1997. Again, subject is perennial: an FAQ.

New device, maybe; old pitch, demonstrably. I'm old enough to remember news reports from China of accelerated wine aging using microwaves (1980s I think), various magnetic gadgets that reappear like (even correlate with?) moon phases,* and recently, centrifugal aerators (which did seem to have a testable effect, though I'm not sure related to aging). Ultrasonics is new to me.This touches a bigger topic: Consumer gadgets with hocus-pocus claims, often pseudoscientific, but that scientists also can reject too quickly -- because occasionally such gadgets work. I have some experience with this topic in other kinds of consumer technology. It got serious discussion by professional scientists who are wine-passionate, debating an FAQ entry on magnetic gadgets for a venerable online wine forum (the original). My argument: the core question is whether a gadget works as claimed. Not whether it fits this or that theory presumed relevant. Note that a gadget's sales face a very different test: whether consumers can be persuaded that it works. Excerpt of that FAQ discussion here. So I support (and so did the final FAQ entry) iainpb's conclusion, which goes deep:

A. pontica (a.k.a. petite, or Roman, wormwood, petite absinthe, "green ginger") appears in most established accounts of absinthe production, including Conrad's book, 20 years old; online absinthe tutorials 15 years old; Conrad cites its use in "most of the legitimate absinthes" (pre-ban). It's nothing new in the literatures related to absinthe, which I mentioned. Again I feel that's a good point,* though an occasional one. Except for the USDA, Harold McGee, Barnaby Conrad, medical, chemical, and pharmacy references, drinks manuals, etc. etc. etc. -- all of which I got it from. (If you really have seen no such sources, I humbly suggest more research.) Some claim that absinthe induces unusual states, but mind reading? I have to reveal that it didn't work here. (I cited "Grand[e]" because it's the literal word at issue). He who would not have people read things into his words might first take his own advice!*In another forum I mentioned "petit wormwood" used in one firm's documentation where A. absinthium would be usual instead; opportunities for cloudiness and confusion (origin of word "Pastis") exist even outside the glass.

... it would be a wonderful oppurtunity to inform readers what makes one dish succesful vs. one that is mediocre. / Sushi in this country is an egergious example. ... Its been really disappointing to eat at some of the sushi bars that foodies and food critics have praised, as I have to wonder afterwards how much those people even understand about sushi.Lots could be written (and has been) along those lines, for many cuisines, by critics of food trends -- good examples surface on this site periodically (though they aren't the latest heavily-marketed titles, with TV tie-in, that swamp most food-book discussion online). Lots could be written even about chopsticks -- e.g., I don't know if the new book mentions incongruity of chopsticks with plates (the reason I've seen many émigré Chinese reach for a fork by preference, when served Chinese food on a plate, while non-Chinese diners at the same table used chopsticks). Wagner's fast-food history (published last decade in Vienna) cited novelty value of sushi even in the 1930s.* Yes, that's the territory those food-trend critics go into. Ketchups, the latter-day US meaning of "French" salad dressing, "Thousand Island" salad dressing, Alfredo "sauce," Beaujolais nouveau, that sort of stuff. * Nicht erst die New Yorker Yuppies entdecken die Sushi-Bars is caption of photo showing Charlie Chaplin hanging out at one.

Last point is good, and well taken. (Also, thanks for the details on anise.) And as mentioned earlier, I know no problem with anyone choosing "Grand" language for private or editorial writing. The only reason for raising the issue was, and is, compelling to many people, and it's distinct from points in quotation above: The existing convention in standard modern Anglophone reference books, the kind readers will find in the library, is to call Artemisia absinthium (specifically) "wormwood." For instance the CRC medicinal-herbs handbook (written by USDA's chief on the subject), all editions I have of the standard international biochemical handbook, two authoritative pharmacology texts, three classic drinks reference books, Harold McGee's food-drink reference book, the American Heritage Dictionary, and Conrad's classic 1988 US absinthe book. Most of these, and many other examples, refer to absinthe liquors. (Occasional secondary names appear for the herb: "ajenjo," "absinthium.") "Grand[e]" wormwood surfaces, of course, in French and archaic writing, it's well to point that out. But in an absinthe tutorial, the general public might be better served by the language standard in other English-language literature that they'll see if they read in further depth. (Absinthe as a subject is confusing enough, without this added language filigree.) Years ago I read amazing chemical-formula books from around 1900 and earlier, using beautiful archaic chemical names: Orpiment, Realgar, aqua regia, corrosive sublimate -- even protoxide of hydrogen.* Very cool language, enjoyable in its own right. But much less useful to the modern reader, who will find few of these materials called by those names in modern writing. * I think one chemist I know was able to name all of these in modern terms -- without looking them up. And he has a strong interest in history.

I think the issue is time, more than space. I remember ginger ale as very common in the western US in the 1960s, and "rye and ginger" or whiskey and ginger as common bar or restaurant drinks. Rye and ginger seemed also popular in Canada. Ginger ale also was common as a soft drink. Canada Dry was a typical west-coast brand, also Schweppes. Ginger beer, more a British habit, was less familiar in the US (compared either to now, or to Canadian friends back then, who I think first introduced me to ginger beer in the 1960s*). What happened is not so much that ginger ale died out as that cocktails did. Older readers remember this very well -- traditional mixed drinks becoming unhip around the 1980s to early 1990s. Followed by their rediscovery by a new generation (some of whose writers are unaware that it was a re-discovery). * Point of possible interest: In traditional recipes I have -- in printed form, from pre-Internet days -- the main difference between ginger ale and ginger beer was not so much a stronger ginger component in the "beer," though that also appears, as the addition of capsicum (red pepper), giving ginger beer more bite.

I don't know if you addressed this in your writing, but the quotation illustrates a reference potentially confusing to a US-wide audience. Because (unlike soy sauce) "duck sauce" is regionally specific, within the US. It is a more localized tradition than many other "overseas" Chinese-cooking elements like the fortune cookie (the focus of Jennifer Lee's book on east-Asian restaurants published this year). Growing up in the SF region (where maybe half of all restaurants are Chinese, some of them very authentic and competitive with each other), I first encountered little pouches of "duck sauce" only in the eastern US -- never in previous decades eating around SF, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, etc. Little pouches of lightly colored syrup (whether or not actually related to plums) are far from universal in US Chinese restaurants, though they seem to be so familiar in some places that people grow fond of them, and miss them when dining elsewhere.

The term has become so mis- and over-used as to have become virtually meaningless except as a means of marketing products ...I don't know how many of you saw (or read about) the evolving de-facto usage of gourmet in late-20th-c. US . The main import from France of (naturally!) a hierarchy of eater-nouns spanning from goinfre (untranslatable into American English; UK English has rough parallel "greedyguts," rarely seen in US) through gourmand, gourmet, and gastronome. In 1950s and 60s US popular culture, "gourmet" could denote a connoisseur, and sometimes imply mystique or intimidation (maybe perceived rather than intended) -- movie characters played on that, or parodied it. "Gourmet" on a book title might be connected to an entertainment celebrity like Vincent Price (thin pimp-type mustache included). Julia Child helped demystify the real cooking concepts by bringing Escoffier to US kitchens via US TV sets (nationally, from 1963). Phony or marketing use of "gourmet" gathered force in the 1970s (as hokey expensive chain restaurants added "continental" to their names, installed microwave ovens, and expanded their freezers). In the US, real meaning was more or less gone from the word in the course of that decade. I haven't seen it used much by serious food enthusiasts or professionals for many years. If you're interested in this subject, the chief 1970s US food critique is essential reading: the Hesses' harsh, informative Taste of America. Much of it is about theory vs. practice of "gourmet." In one anecdote, a puzzled consumer noted that some foods were duplicated in a "gourmet" section of a supermarket, identical but priced higher. That, replied the Hesses, was as good a practical (1970s) definition of the word as they could find.

That, implicitly, touches a feature of absinthe that's seldom mentioned, but is the very reason it's useful for cooking: Absinthe is, literally, a spice extract. Similar in manufacture and composition to other, more familiar extracts sold for cooking. The $50-plus buy-in will discourage some cooks, yes; but 750ml will season a lot of shellfish (and after all, it has beverage uses too). Little 20 or 50ml bottles of quality Vanilla extract, lemon extract, peppermint, green herbs (rarer but available), etc., for cooking, commonly sell for a few dollars each, and probably outprice absinthes on price-per-volume. (When the makers get around to putting absinthe into those little single-drink bottles like many other spirits, they may do a surprising business for cooking use.)

FYI, I have a cross-section of cocktail recipe books spanning the last century -- absinthe spent most of that time on "back-burner" status in the US, before moving to the front burner recently. (Picked up these books along with many more titles on general food and wine.) You can see recipes calling for absinthe (even into the general alcohol Prohibition years), shifting later to "absinthe substitutes" which were many, though I haven't looked for any systematic recipe changes. With apology to any people who may look to this eG forum solely for liquid nourishment, I'll mention also the famous cooking recipes that used absinthe -- for shellfish especially. Mussels and prawns are still cooked with Pernod (and citrus zest etc.) in restaurants -- the flavor harmony can be exquisite. US cookbooks of mid-century or earlier allude to traditions of cooking crawfish etc. in absinthe. I expect a renaissance of these dishes -- if it hasn't begun already -- with attendant spreads in the Wednesday newspaper food sections (and the usual mentions of absinthe's lurid mystique, so obsolete, yet so indispensable as a marketing aid).

That excellent point, U.E., IMO touches on something deep. Watch different people discuss a restaurant (positively or negatively) and you actually see, sometimes, a clash of worldviews. Person X has internalized an impression of what the restaurant "is like," and Person Y has too, but Y's impression is different. X knows the restaurant as consistently good, say; Y tried it once and had a bad experience, and filed the place under "awful." X is annoyed when Y characterizes the eatery as awful. To X, reality itself (or X's taste, or perception) is under challenge. The exchange is emotional by nature, online or in person. (I witnessed them before there were really any public Internet food fora.*) The situation is hardly limited to restaurants. But it's one of the human factors behind the way clashing reports play out on these fora. *Extreme trivia buffs will recognize that this translates as before January 1982.

Spend more time on this and some other local fora, sygyzy -- it won't seem so unusual! (Bay Area in particular has had lively, well-subscribed, public Internet restaurant discussion fora continuously since mid-1980s -- I could show you threads spanning the interval -- such discussions are a tradition.) I read it as this thread surfaced (unintentionally, it's true) important issues lurking behind many restaurant discussions. (Sensitivity can be a re-active reading too -- just as "flame wars" famously arise not from a writer intending a slight, but a reader inferring one.) Or the way our self-consciousness is a reflex when we're put on the spot -- it delays our perception when the putting was reasonable and appropriate. (An issue in US public interactions today.) I might have that problem, if I were missing out on a meal experience to make notes, and a server tried to be helpful about it. Or, maybe it was inappropriate of the server. (Had to be there to know.) Hey, tupac, I'm not seeking objectivity (used it in different context above) so much as honesty, and humility. By commenting on what I actually know, and trying to distinguish observations from tastes. It's easy. Dined at X place at Y time, circumstances Z. Tried dishes A, B, C. Descriptions, reactions, information. Server insistently misidentified a sauce Hollandaise as a Béarnaise, and it had a milk base too -- tasted like the Knorr-Swiss instant mix. (That sort of thing.)As opposed to This place rocks, or it's living on past glories and no diner has the courage to admit it, or the desserts are all mediocre. (Omniscient narrative stance.) Or writing as if one visit, or a few, allowed definitive judgment -- predicting the typical experience for everyone. Or not thinking about these issues. (I'm currently in a parallel conversation with a friend, career book editor, including many food books. She contrasts expert evocative food writing -- a rare art -- vs simple description, which is what I'm pursuing here -- vs omniscient statements without backup, which she labels extremely irritating, but credits mostly to writing in a habitual casual style that peole just haven't thought much about.)

Say it ain't so!It ain't! Specifically, I for one have dined at various restaurants 50-plus times but never imagined it qualified me to declare (omnisciently, as it were) what a restaurant is "like" or whether it "is great" or used to be. I can (if diligent) describe experiences, keeping to what I actually know; you might pick up a sense of my tastes too, and how those colored my perceptions, if I posted often. Please understand: my observation isn't limited to Manresa or this thread. It's about the way many restaurant comments go beyond the helpful humble specifics any one diner can faithfully report (even assuming that's their objective). People who know a restaurant very well learn about the commentator rather than the restaurant, when they read what posted comments say, and what they omit. Thus Manresa has been both celebrated and disdained since 2002 by various perspectives and tastes that are not always obvious in postings. Its history is more complex than I'd know from just the summary comment above. I've witnessed diners in many fine restaurants display strange notions, picky tastes, or chips on their shoulders, and I can only guess how useful their posted comments, if any, are to a diner who didn't witness the situation. Thus for example I can't infer too much from the complaint above about taking notes. "Taking notes" per se seems to me a diner's indisputable right. But, and it's no reflection on the poster, I can't claim to truly understand the incident objectively, short of seeing a video. (For instance I've seen people make a big production out of trying to record dishes at meals without a menu, and wished I could print and give them one myself.) With luck, people will continue reporting their experiences at restaurants, sometimes displaying the nonfiction-writer's ethic that the more specifics and fewer personal judgments appear, the more useful the result will be to other diners with perspectives of their own.

Maybe not so curiously. Most attacks of precipitation diseases (especially kidney stones, but also gout) among people I know began at a time of dehydration. Including while traveling by air (disruption of usual habits, not maintaining usual liquid intake, breathing dry air extended periods in flight) or after sustained vigorous activity with inadequate hydration. Dehydration as trigger also appears in some medical writing I've seen about these diseases (again, expecially stones).

This "Perverse, ungrateful, maleficent malady,"* your body's last-ditch recourse for stashing excess nitrogen, prompted interesting and technically informed threads a few years ago on another forum, popular with wine-interested physicians and at least one widely-respected biochemistry professor, here and here. I'll add that I checked later a detail surfacing, but unanswered, there. Acc. to the standard general medical text on the subject, allopurinol (as a medication) actually does not clash harmfully with xanthines (caffeine and its relatives), so that factor at least doesn't preclude patients from using coffee, tea, cocoa, yerba maté, etc. etc. if taking that medication. (This being no substitute for individual professional advice, obviously.) * Title of Roueché's very popular essay on the disease and its history, mentioned in the linked threads.

Once again, Tupac's advice is thoughtful and experienced. Just in case it's not obvious, here's a related tip. (This really applies to any restaurant where you want to see what the kitchen is capable of, and it is part of a general principle.*) If at all possible, go there on an uncrowded night. Avoid Friday or Saturday (when everyone eats out in the region if they only eat out one night a week). Call and discuss bookings with a live person, who will be happy to advise you about the less-crowded times. Especially for the "grand tasting" option -- where the kitchen goes all-out and sends out more courses, experimental courses, items in short supply, etc. -- they've been up to literally dozens of courses, up to four to six hours long in my several experiences, and some people have reported them here I think -- for a comparatively modest increment over the regular "tasting menu" price. It's a labor of love by the kitchen, and for all I know they lose money at it. This option is aimed at gastronomes, not picky eaters (and of course needs to be done for the whole table together). Discuss this option with a live person when making reservations because (as of my last information) the kitchen can't do too many GTs in one night, and it's very helpful for them to have a commitment in advance which they'll reciprocate, and (not to belabor this, but) it's really not something to ask for on a night when the place is booked up solid. FWIW -- Max * Popularly articulated in US by Jim Quinn a generation ago, in a series of articles culminating in the book But Never Eat Out on a Saturday Night.