JAZ

In these kinds of cases I think the best approach is to give as much information as possible, with the most general information first, then regional/country variations. So I would go with your second example for the porterhouse. As we get more articles with this kind of thing, we can see if that works well, or if there's a better option.

In general, we'd prefer American English terms and spelling in article titles (so, "Eggplant" rather than "Aubergine") with redirect pages for the alternate terms/spellings. Not to disparage regional/ethnic variations, but just for the sake of consistency.

I took a pizza class from Peter Reinhart years ago, when his pizza book American Pie came out. He said then that he was working with the company on their frozen pizzas, so I imagine they're very good.

I apologize for not being clear in my previous post. I didn't intend to deprecate those who have a real gluten sensitivity or Celiac disease. My point, which I guess I didn't make very well, was that when something like gluten sensitivity comes into the public eye, it's inevitable that lots of people will read a little bit about it and leap to conclusions that aren't warranted. My experience has been with a co-worker who swore that eating gluten caused arthritis in her shoulder; my ex-boyfriend's mother, whose dentist told her that her gum disease was a result of eating gluten; and an acquaintance whose brother was convinced that his Asperger's Syndrome was caused by gluten. It seems to me that such a wide variety of problems are probably not caused by gluten sensitivity.

It seems to me that gluten is the new MSG. The main difference is that there is a small percentage of the population with Celiac disease who really can't tolerate gluten, whereas MSG "sensitivity" has been shown to be imaginary. But aside from those who actually suffer from Celiac disease, there's a pretty large group that claim some kind of gluten "sensitivity" which, to my knowledge, is mostly self-diagnosed and anecdotal. People have always been willing to jump on the latest health food fad, and it's no surprise that marketing takes advantage of that gullibility. Let's just hope that gluten doesn't get the treatment that sodium is now getting.

Here's something interesting -- on the bag of frozen french fries I bought recently, a "serving" is defined as "3 oz. (85 g) -- about 17 pieces." Seventeen fries seemed like a pretty generous serving size given the calorie count, so I measured out three ounces. It turns out that three ounces is more like nine fries. I suppose if one picked out all the smallest fries, one could come closer to 17 in three ounces, but that's almost 50 percent off. Who comes up with those equivalencies?

Mitch, when you turn the flame off under a pot on a gas range, what makes you think the burner cools down immediately? Isn't there a hot burner grate under your pot that still radiates and conducts heat? The only burners I've used that actually stop the cooking process when turned off are induction.

That's certainly a part of what we're looking for, but it doesn't cover everything that's appropriate for the WikiGullet Project. For instance, it says nothing about entries on restaurants, books, authors and chefs, all of which we're interested in getting. However, it's a good suggestion to give more detailed information on our home page -- balancing brevity and detail is always a challenge, but we'll give it a try.

From Dave Lieberman: Five things TV chefs get wrong. He includes adding oil to pasta water and cutting baked goods when they've just come out of the oven. Ironically, he himself gets it wrong when talking about salting meat: Dude, learn the difference between a marinade and a brine.

Three thoughts about Subway: First, I think of all the fast food chains I've tried, they're the least consistent, especially in terms of freshness of ingredients and cleanliness of the store. In my limited experience, some of them do smell funny -- in some cases it's just the bread, which to me smells like sweet muffins with an undertone of rosemary. But in other cases, I think it's the vegetables starting to go bad. Second, it's nice that they have all the vegetable options, but (see above) they need to be more scrupulous about making sure those ingredients are fresh. Third, it's curious to me how they persuade so many people that their sandwiches are "healthy." Ever since the advent of the Jared commercials they've been touting their healthful status, but how truthful is that, really? Their sandwiches are undoubtedly lower in fat than burgers, especially since they always give their nutritional information for sandwiches without cheese or mayonnaise, but they're often higher in sodium and much higher in carbohydrates. So who decides what "healthy" is?

When I first moved to Atlanta, I ate a Chik-Fil-A (inside) a few times and was very favorably impressed, for all the reasons mentioned above. Good quality food served fresh, and good service. There aren't any near me, so I don't go very often, but the last few times I have, it's been through the drive through, and the quality has really suffered. A couple of times, the food was okay but not great, but the last time I went, the food had obviously been sitting around for a long time. I was very disappointed -- to the point where I doubt I'll go back. It wasn't a problem with a particular store -- the mediocre/bad experiences were at three different locations. Maybe they just don't do drive-through well, but if that's the case, why have it as an option?

Good questions, Max. Thanks for bringing them up. 1) Certainly there will be crossover between Wikipedia and the WikiGullet project, but we envision WikiGullet as completely focused on the culinary aspects of its subjects. For our intended audience, Wikipedia is good at general information about ingredients, and terribly weak in providing information on how to actually cook with them. Due to Wikipedia's broad focus, someone who is looking for culinary detail often has to wade through paragraph after paragraph of less pertinent information before getting to what he or she is actually interested in. That's an area where we expect our project to excel -- on the instructional side. 2) The nature of a collaborative project like ours (or Wikipedia) makes it vulnerable to misinformation, but we see two factors that we hope will minimize the problem. First is the existence of eG Forums, which is the perfect place for advancing theories and getting feedback on all kinds of culinary topics. Our members are never shy about arguing facts and working toward the most accurate answers possible. We trust that the "back and forth" that occurs in our discussion forums will result in more factual entries in the WikiGullet project -- both because we expect that our members will discuss questions and issues before posting articles in WikiGullet, and because our sharp membership will be constantly checking articles for accuracy. Second is our stance on original research, which requires that such research be subjected to informal peer review before posting in the WikiGullet Project. I tried to be brief here, but I hope I addressed your concerns. If not, please feel free to discuss them further.

I think of "serving size" as "unit of measurement" rather than "the amount I eat" and in that sense it's helpful. Most charts give both volumes and weights for their "serving sizes" so I weigh out what I'm going to eat and figure out nutritional values that way. One thing that is convenient about serving sizes is that they tend to be alike across types of foods -- that is, most chips/crackers/nuts will use one ounce as a serving. So regardless of whether one ounce is really a "serving" for me, at least I can easily compare, say, Triscuits with Wheat Thins or Fritos.

Holy crap! That happened to me too. Somehow I feel much better now.

For the stems, I use a technique out of Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini by Elizabeth Schneider. She recommends cooking chopped beet stems as a condiment (it works great for chard stems as well if you have those). Simmer a cup of water with a tablespoon each of sugar and olive oil, 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar, garlic, dried chiles, salt, coriander and fennel seeds. Add the chopped stems and simmer until tender. Reduce the liquid if necessary and cool. Serve chilled or at room temperature. You lose a little of the color, but the acid helps to retain it.

I'm drinking decent but not stellar all-malt Scotch instead of great single malts.

Robert Sietsema's response to the original article: Yes, foodies are ridiculous. But then so is BR Myers! Sietsema goes on to make some very good points: that all kinds of people with all kinds of culinary practices fall under the label" foodie, including vegans ("the Church of Food is an edifice with many doors and no locks"); and that pretty much any enthusiasm can be taken to extremes, not just food. A much better read than the original, in my opinion.

You should certainly feel free to use content from Wikipedia, as long as you cite the the relevant article(s) as your source. We've found, in practice, that often Wikipedia articles contain quite a bit of information that is not culinary in nature, and so they can be of limited value. For instance, given that our project has a culinary focus, the WikiGullet article on crayfish rightly ignores large sections of information that can be found in the Wikipedia article, such as raising crayfish as pets, the fossil record of crayfish and the etymology of the name.

Another point about "foodie": I find diminutive versions of words that end in "ie" -- "foodie," "veggie," "breakkie," "sammie" -- infantile. I bite my tongue over "veggie" and the like, but "foodie" offends me on more than an aesthetic level because it refers to a group of people, and dismisses them as infantile. That is, to me it implies that people who are interested in food are childish and trivial. I wonder how Myers (who, although he doesn't say so in the article, appears to be vegan) would take to being called a "veegie"?

We're pleased to announce the WikiGullet Project, a collaborative culinary encyclopedia sponsored by the Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. Please feel free to ask any questions or make comments about the project on this topic. To read the full announcement, click here. To visit the WikiGullet project, click here.

I thought I'd like that, but found it really strange. The cream didn't stir in as I expected; instead, it was like little pieces of butter in yogurt. Maybe I got a bad batch.

Are you talking about flavored sweetened yogurt, or plain, or both? I buy plain, whole milk yogurt, mostly to use in recipes, although I also mix it with fruit for breakfast. For cooking, I don't always want the thicker texture of Greek-style yogurt, so I buy regular Dannon. It's got a good level of acidity, is relatively inexpensive, and performs well in recipes.

I have had a cheesesteak in Philly (wiz with), in fact I have done the Geno's v Pat's one evening. Yeah, that's right one from each. I am in the Pat camp. I have also had from other places around town. I have to tell you, you can get a decent Philly outside of PA. It is rare, but it happens. I think it is MUCH harder getting a Chicago beef out side of Chicago, and it is INFINITELY harder to get a great roast beef po-boy out side of New Orleans. The hard part about the po-boy is the bread. I have NEVER found real po-boy bread outside if New Orleans. The Leidenheimer baking company makes the best. It is light and airy with a perfectly crispy crust. In fact, it took them a while to get back up and running post Katrina and the po-boys around town were not the same. I'm willing to concede that I haven't had the best (or most authentic, or whatever) Philly cheese steak, but it seems to me that syoung is onto something. If there's an ingredient in a sandwich that's impossible to find outside the original locale, then I'll concede that you have to be in that place to get an excellent version of that sandwich. So, I agree about the po'boys. Is there something in cheese steaks that put them in that category? (Incidentally, I'm excluding pastrami and corned beef, meatballs and burgers from this discussion. I think the base filling has to be unaltered roast beef to qualify.)

This morning, NPR's "Wait-Wait" blog featured the iconic Italian beef sandwich from Chicago. It got me thinking about different styles of beef sandwiches -- ones I've tried and ones I've only heard of -- and which style is the best. I've had an Italian beef from one of the big names in Chicago. It was pretty good. I've also had what I'm told is a relatively authentic version of a Philly cheese steak, although it was not from Philadelphia. It was also pretty good. The diner style of an open-faced roast beef sandwich with gravy should probably be considered, as well. I've heard of beef on weck, but I have no idea what exactly that is. My choice for best beef sandwich is the French Dip. It's minimalist and lets you concentrate on the beef. Unlike the diner style, it can be eaten without a fork and knife. Am I missing any iconic beef sandwich variations? Should I seek out beef on weck? Can someone tell me what that is?

Me too. (Scroll down for a recipe.)