mags

Funnty that you should mention this. I just spotted it the other day at Wegman's and was a bit surprised to see it - had assumed that it was no longer made. It was in cans only and on a bottom shelf with no real visibility but apparently there's still a market for it here - there were only two six packs left on the shelf. Did you check the sixpacks for dust? I think they had been sitting there since 1984.

Not to go completely off topic: but I LOVE the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series! Precious Ramotswe is traditional in many ways, including her penchant for fried mealy bugs.

The protagonist in Alexander McCall-Smith's "#1 Ladies Detective Agency" series of novels refers to herself as "traditionally built." Works for me.

But if you feel like schlepping down to the Village, you can still go to Gus's original restaurant, Gus's Place, on Waverly Place. To my mind, it's just about the ideal neighborhood joint, which is to say the (small) bar scene is friendly and welcoming, the food is tasty and straightforward, and it's alltogether a swell place to hang out.

This was a terrific blog. And the Horseshoe looks like the absolute apotheosis of Delicious, Greasy, Really Bad-for-You food. Edinburgh isn't a college town? College students need to know about the Horseshoe.

What about non-herbal flavored syrups? I'm thinking of something like raspberry syrup or almond syrup, for orzata. Any ideas how to make those? This is probably a very stupid question, but I honestly have no idea how to go about it.

Is that the one about the girl who drove around looking for good pie? The ONE RECIPE I wanted -- for the white bean pie -- was the one she didn't bother to include. MOST irritating.

Well, there's already a "What's your favorite thing at a NYC restaurant" thread, and this has been opened up to NY state, so I will admit to a sort of passionate awe for the life-sized statue of Dwight Gooden -- made entirely out of butter -- that I once saw at the New York State fair.

Well, as I said, the Low Carb Creations pizza I had was pretty darn spiffy. Also, Rochelle, you might want to try making that flatbread recipe I sent you and using it as a pizza base. I haven't tried it, but I've heard it works well.

Just wanted to add that I really like the option of eating at the bar. First, it lets me experience a number of restaurants where reservations in the dining room can be a real pain to come by. And second, if I don't have someone who wants to share the meal with me, I can usually choose to either read or chat, which makes it more comfortable than a dinner alone in the dining room might be.

I haven't tried the Keto dough, but I'm not generally a fan of their products (though their ice cream, which is about to roll out nationally, is pretty damn good). However, at an LC conference in January I had some LC pizza from a company called Low Carb Creations, and that was extraordinary. I've heard good things about the CarbSense/Mini Carb pizza dough mix. I have to say, though, that I have found homemade baked LC products to be significantly better than the packaged stuff, with the added advantage that one knows what's in them. Okok, one exception: CarbRite makes a "chocolate sandwich cookie" that is such a dead-ringer for Oreos I won't keep them in the house. But that aside, I have yet to find a LC packaged product that I couldn't improve on in my own kitchen.

LOL! Now that's interesting. When I was a kid, authentic NY Chinese meals opened with egg rolls (dipped in a mixture of hot mustard and "duck sauce") and closed with bright green pistachio ice cream -- an exotic flavor not available anywhere except in Chinese restaurants.

It sounds like you're setting up a straw man. Did anyone actually say that authenticity is objectively measurable? Sure. I refer you to the following quote, from a post of docsconz': "An Italian cook from Italy , cooking Mama's (or Papa's) recipes using the same ingredients from Italy that Mama would have used in a setting evocative of the original locale using native plates, glasses, decor, etc. is pretty if not totally "authentic". " Those are all objective factors, with the possible exception of the setting's being "evocative." And for me, none of them have much to do with either authenticity or the creation of a sense of authenticity.

I agree with this entirely. And the statement suggests that "authenticity," therefore, is in the eye of the beholder (since one beholder's expectations are going to differ from another's), and that "authenticity," as a quality subject to objective measurement, is pretty much a canard. Why a canard? Why not a chicken?

Oh thank GOD, Fat Guy said it for me!

Thinking about this. Brain hurts.

What I love is fruit with my cheese -- a crisp apple or pear. If that's a verboten combination on the diet, I have a bizarre thought: Jicama. 100 grams has only about 4 grams of carbohydrate (after subtracting fiber), and it has both the crunch and some of the juicy sweetness of an apple. It might be found under the name yam bean. Unfortunately, I don't have a glycemic count on it. Good luck with it all! You seem to be doing terrifically well.

The point I've been trying to make is that merely because something RESEMBLES something else does not make it the same, or even part of a continuum of "sameness." As for your response to Fat Guy, authenticity does not demand that a thing/person/review/meal/whatever not be derivative. On a purely scientific level, everything in the world is made up of bits and pieces of stuff that's come before. What is unique to each thing/person/review/meal/whatever is the precise combination; even microscopic changes to the mix are what make the difference between you and your twin brother. I suspect that part of the problem we're having here lies in an unspoken assumption that "authentic" is the antithesis of "dumbed down," to the extent that authenticity has a value judgment attached to it -- which I think is a mistake.

Hire a really pretty girl with some bodacious ta-tas and curves that would stop traffic. Put her in a carefully styled blonde wig and a white halter-top dress with a skirt that flies up when the subway passes beneath her feet (which are shod in 50s-style black pumps). Pluck her eyebrows, do up her face in vintage Max Factor colors, and ask her to giggle. Will she look like Marilyn Monroe? Maybe so, if the designer and the makeup artist (and the casting director) have done their jobs well. In fact, she could look almost exactly like Marilyn. If you're insane and have a zillion dollars -- and the young woman is nuts -- you could have a whole bunch of plastic surgery performed; she could be made to look like a virtual carbon copy. Will she have any relationship to the authentic Marilyn? Nope. She won't have been born Norma Jean Baker, she won't have had any of the same experiences, and -- even given the most skilled plastic surgeon in the world -- there will still be details (the exact vocal timbre, the precise ratio of calf to thigh, the evident combo of self-confidence and self-doubt that comes from having been a walking sexual fantasy from the age of 12) that cannot be replicated. Furthermore, the experience of walking down the street with this goddess on one's arm will not have any relationship to the experience of, say, taking an afternoon stroll with the Real McCoy. For one thing, it's not 1955, and the environment is very different. The cars on the street look different, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and you're probably not wearing a hat. Furthermore, your young lady's figure, while it may seem delectable to you, is no longer fashionable, and she will not attract the same -- or the same level of -- admiring glances that Ms. Monroe took as her daily due. My much-belabored point here is that both a person and a meal are made up of much more than that which is immediately evident to the senses. The context in which one encounters the person or experience go a long way toward defining the experience. ("Context" here is a very messy term that I'm using to mean everything from history to expectations to the world outside this specific experience -- who's in the White House? Are women with Marilyn's measurements regularly on the covers of beauty magazines?) You can't go home again, you can't wade in the same river twice, you can't eat an "authentic" Italian meal in Iowa City, and you can't walk down the street with the 26-year-old Marilyn Monroe. You can do things that LOOK a lot like those experiences, and these things may even give you the same satisfactions you'd derive (or would have derived) from the authentic experience. But they won't BE the authentic experience, and that's fine; they will be authentic different experiences. Years ago I worked with a very smart and very peculiar director named Nikos Psacharopoulos. I scribbled down a quote of his, to the effect that "Accuracy is not always the most effective tool for conveying reality." A restaurant may use American-grown tomatoes and still give you the same delirious pleasure that you experienced when lunching in Palermo (or that you imagine yourself experiencing). Alternatively, a restaurant may use the most scrupulously sourced recipes and ingredients and place settings and lighting and God knows what, but nevertheless provide a lunch that is worlds away from your image of the true Italian mid-day meal. "Authenticity," in my book, is a quality unique to every person, thing, experience; it can't be divided. And the illusion of authenticity is rooted not so much in the accuracy of the details (the source of the tomatoes, the precise shade of "Marilyn's" lipstick) as in a whole bunch of indefinables, including my lazy fallback, "context." It seems to me that what you're talking about is whether a restaurant provides a good illusion of authenticity. I don't think that's something I care much about, but if it has value for you, that's fine.

I don't mean to be a total Batali-whore, but I'm a big fan of dinners at the bar at both Otto and Babbo. Both tend toward very convivial bar-scenes and a fair amount of noise (Otto in particular can get LOUD) -- I tend to prefer to go way late, when things have calmed down a bit. While I like (but don't love) the pizzas at Otto, I really like making a meal out of their appetizers; a bowl of the swordfish-with-caramelized onion or a plate of the gorgeous testa, with some bread, maybe some broccoli rabe on the side, and a quartino of wine is some good eating. I don't find either place good for reading, though -- they're too noisy, and the bar scenes are just too friendly; I've never eaten at either place (and I've eaten at both bars several times) without getting involved in at least one interesting conversation.

I snagged the following off the net, in reference to steak tartare. Did you know you were killingly chic? "In my opinion, this is much tastier than the tête de veau that has been all the rage these last few months in the Parisian bistros."

Bux, you may well be right that I, at least, have been splitting some serious linguistic hairs, though the notion that "authentic" equals "the opposite of dumbed-down" still bothers me. I guess I'm troubled by the idea of "authenticity" itself being dumbed down, that a simulacrum comes to be regarded as not just better or worse than the model on which it's based, but as the same thing. Pan, you've talked about how your scale for "good food" in a New York Malaysian restaurant is essentially identical to your scale for "similar to Malaysian food in Malaysia." That suggests that all the food you ate in Malaysia has been good, and that's terrific (and let me know next time you're going there, so I can force you to let me tag along). I've spent a bunch of time in China, and while I've had some great food there, I've also had some really awful food. A Chinese restaurant in Manhattan that recreated the oil-soaked fermented fish and gluey dumplings I remember at one factory canteen in Wuhan might provide a dandy copy of Chinese Chinese food, but it would still be a lousy restaurant. I'm afraid I don't think that an Italian meal in New York -- even one prepared according to Italian recipes and made entirely of imported Italian ingredients -- would in any way be analagous to eating the same meal in Italy. I don't think it's "close" to eating in Italy, I don't think it's "sort of like vacationing in Italy." It might be fantastic, might well be better than any food available anywhere in Italy, but it wouldn't be the same, or even part of a continuum. So given that an "authentic" copy is an oxymoron (which is what I'm arguing), the concept of "authenticity" looks to me an awful lot like a stick we choose to beat ourselves with, a way of pumping our own dissatisfaction. Sure, the meal might have been great, but it wasn't "authentic" because the chef didn't use San Marzano tomatoes. The true, authentic experience, therefore, is always to be found somewhere else, on somebody else's plate. As a concept, I don't think it contributes a lot to the enduring happiness of humankind.

Ingrid, you are a permanent source of joy.

I forgive you.

FWIW, Wendy, Balducci's used to sell peaches like that -- spongecake filled with pastry cream, I think, and decorated to look like fresh peaches -- that they sourced from Veniero's, a majorly old-school Italian bakery in the East Village. So they must have SOME genuine Italian provenence.