Wilfrid

That post made me take another look at your home page, Holly, and you certainly set out the manifesto there, greasy shirt and all! I remain a sucker for silver service, leather-bound menus, fawning and flattery. And my bank balance proves it.

They did teach me how to make a decent curry*, though. *Sorry if that's too vague for the India board.

Jogged my memory that when I shared a kitchen with some workers from Pakistan, they would ask me to taste the curries they simmered all day during Ramadan. They didn't want to taste them, of course, until the sun was down. So I used to tell them if they were spicy enough, or too salty - as if I had any idea what their preference was! (Yes, I do taste when I cook, as much as possible - how else do you season?)

Of course, of course. It's the attempt to explain everything by reference to the latter only which founders against obvious examples like pork belly. Delicious, complex and dirt cheap. And I agree with you about extremes. Jean Georges, or pig's intestines in a South Bronx parking lot. No compromise.

Funny how people can get absolutely contradictory impressions from reading the same discussion. At the end of yesterday, I thought it was pretty clear that the expense of food items was determined primarily by scarcity of supply. See Steven Shaw's comments on how much prime steak can be derived from a cow in comparison to the less expensive cuts. I should have thought the same was obviously true of foie gras, caviar, and other luxury items. But someone else reads (I guess) the same posts, and concludes that suppliers can charge high prices for some items because they are prized by consumers for their smoothness, or possibly their chewiness. Aren't we just taking a big step backward here?

Well, whatever it was, it was a huge success. To be clear, I am talking about a big, fat purple-black sausage, similar size to a cotechino sold in the various Polish and Russian meat shops on the lower east side. How I picked up the apparently Yiddish name for, I'm not sure, especially since the filling appears to be a mixture of kasha (buckwheat groats) and pig's blood. In the past, I have treated them like boiling sausages, simmering in stock or water, but this time - noting Bushey's advice - I roasted it. In the absence of a fat turkey, I rubbed it with duck fat first. About an hour at 350, and it seemed very happy. Cut some thick slices, and just crisped them in a pan with a little more duck fat. A dab of mustard on the side. This was a much tastier, better seasoned product than I have bought before, so I checked the source: Kurocynzky Meat market - Ukrainian, apparently - First Avenue between 7th and St. Mark's. Can't remember the exact price, but it's a few dollars, and would comfortably feed four. And cucumber salad, the version with dill. Thanks Nina - I don't know why I don't make that more often. Scraps of emmenthal and tomme de Savoie to follow (cheese stock is low). All washed down with beer. Good dinner.

Thanks, Steve, that's clear now. I got stuck because it didn't occur to me that if you slaughter a certain number of cows, you might end up with a lot more of the cheaper cuts than the pricy cuts. Dunce. I was looking at Lobel's web-site while pondering, and they sell hamboiger at $12.98 a pound. It's a blend of sirloin, tenderloin and chuck. Unfortunately, they don't have the per pound price of those cuts on the web-site, but I guess the price of the hamburger is derived from those prices and the proportions of meat used. So, it's not cheap meat as such - it just happens to include a proportion of cheaper meat because, I suspect, you get better, juicier burgers that way. John Whiting - Of course, of course. One could cite Liebling on the detrimental effect of wealth on developing a palate. It's why I picked the pig belly example. I can't imagine any serious eater arguing that pork loin is a better, more interesting, more sophisticated cut - although, thanks to Steven Shaw's tutorial above, I now have an inkling why it's more expensive.

Yes, its appeal is obvious, isn't it? I bought it at one of those Polish meat markets on First or Second, where I thought I had also learnt the name - perhaps wrongly. I am somewhat partial to it, but didn't really want to accompany it with a heap of mashed potatoes, or stewed beans or lentils, as it seems to be about 80F out there.

Thanks. I happen to have some dill. What made me buy the kasha kishke in this temperature? Rhetorical question, don't worry. I have been known to make cassoulet in August. Steve, yes it's a kishke, which I thought was a kind of derma, stuffed with kasha. Should I call it something else? I am happy to be corrected.

Petitio principii. It beggeth the question. People are willing pay more for strip steak than for chuck. True. Is that because the strip steak is "better" than the chuck? Maybe, maybe not. That conclusion is not implied by your example. What are the economics here? Does strip steak fetch twice the price of ground beef because there's a bigger demand for it? Do expensive cuts of meat generally outsell cheap cuts? I haven't got my arguing hat on here, I am honestly trying to figure it out.

How would you make the cucumber salad? Please.

I know it's hardly the weather for it, but if you had a kasha kishke you were planning to simmer, what would be good accompaniments - sides, sauces, condiments?

Didn't we agree that it required more proficient technique to make a hamburger than grill a steak? I'm lost. And sure, ground meat loses some of the properties of steak, and gains different ones. Fine. Which do you prefer?

Yes, the steak/hamburger comparison turns out to be a red herring, because hamburger isn't cheaper than steak unless it's made of a cheaper cut of beef. So, why is chuck cheaper per pound than sirloin. I can think of several reasons. But if the answer is going to be "because it's better", you're back to the pig belly/pork loin dilemma. Does the pork loin have it over the belly for taste, texture, complexity, etc? That's not what my tastebuds tell me.

Hehehehe. If the price of one piece of sirloin was higher than another piece (in the same store), that is a probable indicator of the relative quality of the two pieces of meat. If that's it, we can all go home. If the price per pound of a piece of sirloin is higher than sirloin of the same quality ground up, it strikes me as a little odd, but maybe it reflects the expectations of the market. I don't see where it tells me that the steak is "better" in one piece than it is when it's ground up. (Let's be concrete, otherwise you'll think I'm arguing for the sake of it. I like to eat a steak some times - not very often, actually - and I like to eat a hamburger sometimes. I get good and bad steaks and good and bad hamburgers. I just genuinely have no instinct that one, as a foodstuff, is in some abstract sense "better" than the other.)

But that's steak/steak, which does make sense. I could have sworn you were also talking steak/hamburger. Or Tuscan beans/cassoulet, now I think of it.

Exactly right, Nina. Comes back to the Beethoven or Beatles point I once made on another thread light years ago. Beethoven is not better than the Beatles if you are looking for a catchy pop song. Steak is not better than a burger if you are looking for the particular set of sensory and flavor qualities associated with the latter. If you are looking for a well-aged piece of sirloin, with just the right amount of marbling, you can then have a rational conversation about whether sirloin A is better than sirloin B - according to the criteria you have set. Nothing much else going on, I suspect, than some people trying to correlate their own personal tastes with universal verities.

Right up to a point, but what should we infer from it? If hamburger was the same price as good steak, do you think people would stop buying it altogether? I doubt it, because many people prefer hamburger to steak (I have taken people to decent steakhouses and watched them order the chopped steak). This is like one of those SAT(?) tests you Americans like. Which conclusion(s) follow(s)?: 1. People would buy more steak than hamburger than they do now if the price differential were eliminated. 2. A lot of people would eat more steak than they presently do if it was more affordable. 3. People prefer steak to hamburger, at least some of the time. 4. Premium steak is higher quality than hamburger meat. 5. Steak is better than hamburgers. 6. People dislike hamburger meat in comparison to steak. I think three of the above are valid inferences, one is not and two remain debatable.

Next time I need to punish you, I'll force you to copy this whole thread onto a chalkboard. Hey, it's been a while since we had one of our little discipline sessions. Any time.

I am not arguing for relativism ("what's good is whatever you like") but for agreed criteria and rules of engagement. Otherwise we end up with "what's good is what I say is good and if you disagree you are stupid." For the person sitting in Iowa who can't get on a plane to Nice, that bottled fish soup may be better than Loulou's product. I struggle to imagine how anyone could acquire sufficient experience, historical knowledge, etc., to make one-dimensional relative judgements between world cuisines, any more than I would want to engage in a debate about whether a Vermeer Van Delft was "better" than a Monet or whether the Spring Sonata was "better" than the Musical Offering...not to mention some masterwork of Indian music, or Japanese. I do think it is very useful to have a conversation of the form "In evaluating a fish soup I look for the following characteristics: ..... and the soup at restaurant X had the following: .... " Very shrewd post, JD. I entirely agree with what you say about criteria, and in addition I remain sceptical that it's practical to develop criteria to apply to all cuisines across the globe, such that broad assertions that - for example - French food is better than Chinese food - could make any sense. And you are quite right. Claims of the form "This is better. I know it's better, and you should just accept that" are of course an extreme form of subjectivism, even if asserted in the form: "This is objectively better...(etc)." I hate the word "objectivity", but if we must talk in those terms, objectivity is rooted in shared, rational criteria.

All very interesting. I do plan to do some reading before pontificating.

Maybe I dreamt it. Don't make me read the thread again. If no-one said it, fine.

Nick -- When you have a chance, could you consider discussing what Giannone chicken is? Also, I'd appreciate learning about the rotisserie. They were discussed on this thread, including where to buy: Fresh tasting chicken.

I was amazed at the proprtions this thread had grown to overnight, but once I subtracted Tommy and Nina arguing about diamonds, it wasn't too bad. I distinctly recall that on another thread, which I couldn't begin to find, I conducted a reality-check that everyone agreed that market value (or cost) was not necessarily correlated with quality. No-one disputed that at the time, and I thought Steve Plotnicki explicitly agreed with the proposition. So a lot of the foregoing puzzles me. And I am really surprised to find that people I perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be free market conservatives think that price is set by something other than the market. As to preferences between foodstuffs - which I might characterize as the "Is steak better than hamburger debate?" - I think it's unreasonable to exclude the question of personal preferences. If I had to give up either pork fillet or pork belly for the rest of my life, I'm with Jon Tseng - I'll keep the belly, please. Doesn't mean I think the average price of the items should be adjusted - they reflect general demand. Nor do I think I am taking the position that pork belly is "better" than pork fillet. That seems daft - although, I can see how one pork fillet might be better than another. I'm just expressing a preference. If we could distinguish between market value, expert evaluation of quality (when comparing items it's appropriate to compare), and personal preferences, some light might begin to gleam on this subject. If you try to make those three things "the same", confusion will reign.

I'm not suggesting that science doesn't generate true(ish) statements about the world. I think it does. But how it does it is a bit mysterious and not at all consistent from discipline to discipline. Yes, that's what worries philosophers - not that it need worry scientists. Something as astonishingly successful as science really ought to be based in rationality. And it's annoying that we still can't demonstrate that it is.