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The nice thing about cinammon compared to conventional oral medications for type II diabetes is that it tastes good. Other than that, there really is no advantage to taking it over regular medication. Just because something is "natural" doesn't mean it is necessarily better. In this case I see very little potential harm and possibly some benefit to adding more cinammon to my diet, although I think it unlikely to greatly affect my need for oral antihyperglycemics.

This blog remains way cool. Thanks, again.

Fascinating article. I can't wait to get there.

Bummer! Best wishes for your future endeavors. I have very fond memories of last year's eGullet pig roast.

I was just rooting around Lobel's website and came across their heritage meats program featuring the pork of Flying Pigs Farm. Pretty cool. While pricey, buying it from Lobel's has them doing the butchering and preparation.

This has to be one of the most rapidly expanding topics ever. It is difficult to catch up let alone keep up. Indian food to me must be classified as BA (Before Amma) and AA (After Amma). BA was notable for samosas, pakoras, biryanis, papadums, naan's, tandoor, vindaloo, tikka, lassi, dal, etc. AA is another world in which I lack fluency, but very much look forward to exploring further.

Interesting review. Particularly interesting was the presence of Thomas Keller and the absence of Jonathon Benno. I imagine Chef Keller was covering for Chef Benno, who probably had a rare night off.

The key to a good plain tomato sauce is good tomatoes. This time of year the best bet is definately good quality canned tomatos. San Marzanos are excellent. The sauce described by Behemoth and attributed to Marcella Hazan is a basic marinara sauce, which would work fine on your sandwich. For variations you could sweat some onions with the garlic initially, mash up some anchovy in the evoo if you like or put in some red pepper flakes for a little heat. Another key is to make sure that the sauce is adequately salted. The sauce should be sweet enough from the tomatoes and onions (if used). If you really wanted to get fancy you could make a meat sauce. First garlic, parsley and onion soffrito, brown the meat (good Italian sausage, braciole and pork), add the tomatoes (puree is fine for this) and perhaps a little water and let simmer over low heat for as long as you can (at least a few hours), stirring occassionally. Good meat is key.

What a beautiful table! I still can't get my head around the concept of eating raw chicken. What do they do to minimize food-borne risk? I know that a lot of the risk comes with the industrialization of poultry farming, nevertheless...

Lucy, do you know the rationale for no fats with pasta? It doesn't make sense intuitively or from a glycemic index perspective. You used whole wheat flour which is good and lentils high in protein, but I would think the overall glycemic index of this dish with the tomato sauce would still be fairly high.

I think their pie is probably more like a traditional Sfincione that one would find in Sicily than a typical NY-Sicilian style pizza. My experience with sfincione in Sicily is that the sauce is predominant and on top of any cheese that might be on the bread. In addition the crust tends to be a little thinner and less bready than NY-Sicilian style pizze.

According to the New York Times Le Cirque 2000 will be closing its doors at the end of 2004. Sirio Maccioni is planning his next moves He blames his need to move on new managemant at The Palace Hotel, changes in the NYC restaurant landscape and the huge union expense he has.

Cooperstown is a cool town with possibly the best beer in the US - Omagong!

These phjotos really bring back some long forgotten memories. Wow! That place hasn't changes much over the years. If I wasn't having such a good weekend up here in northern NY, I would really , really be yearning to be back in NYC between this and the BBQ!

What were you doing in n.E. or Cooperstown?

Unfortunately, I will have missed your work at Trio, but I'm looking forward to making it out to Chicago to dine at Alinea. Best wishes.

Now my brain hurts!

Old Chatham is indeed excellent as is Coach Farms. I'm starting to see anumber of smaller operations showing up at local farmer's markets, although I hope to see even more.

Had enough of this one recently, have we? But how authentic is it? Seriously, an excellent article, Steven. Sounds like Tabla was the place to be - a very exciting event. Also nice to hear that the Saran/Hemant duo has specific new plans in the works. They more than Tabla opened my eyes to "New Indian" cuisine at Amma. The time I ate at Tabla I was disappointed. Looking forward to hearing more about it.

I believe we are finally coming to some form of agreement. The mere form of slavish photographic replication is not sufficient for authenticity. That I believe, is agreed. That is Las Vegas and Epcot. They are not authentic, no matter how much they may (or not) look like their model as with the Marilyn Monroe analogy of Mags. Authenticity comes from what is behind the facade - the substance. In my mind it is the continuum or the tradition from which a restaurant emanates. New York City is high on authenticity within its restaurants (like it or value it or not) because it takes and uses the traditions of cuisine, including the very New York tradition of taking and blending other traditions including the tradition of individual creativity. Thus, one can find all sorts of authentic restaurants in New York, even if they do not slavishly try to duplicate a snapshot of another place or time. They difference is that artifice is rarely used to achieve the illusion of an effect.

I can relate.

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. Mags, I think part of the problem in this discussion is the lack of a clear agreement on what it is that we are considering "authentic". You talk about context and isolating a specific, unique entity. To me it is tradition that is authentic or not and tradition is in fact a continuum or several that remain true to its roots. No, something does not have to be an exact replica to be authentic and in fact may be less authentic if it is, as per your Marilyn Monroe analogy. Tradition is constantly evolving even in its original location. I believe this is really why authenticity is important to so many people. It is not sameness per se, but a sense and understanding of what makes a cuisine, culture or place tick. It is not confined to a geographic location or specific time. I also believe that this is why authenticity is valued in NYC and why it is an illusion in places like Las Vegas or Epcot, which are built on idealized renditions and not truly a part of or respectful of the cultures from which they are taken.

While you may be correct that some and maybe even many people who are interested in or followers of the Slow Food Movement may be members of "The Authenticity Police". it does not necessarily follow that that is what the organization is about. Having been to a Slow Food Congress, that has not been my experience at all. My point about authenticity is that while it should not be the be-all and end-all of whether or not a restaurant is good, it does have value as a concept (to some more than others) and is therefore not a bad thing when taken as such.

Given the inclusion of "Slow Food" in your "Collective Board", I think your linkage of it in this context illustrates a major misconception of what the Slow Food Movement is all about. It is not about "authenticity" or "reactionary preservationism". It is about maintaining biodiversity and diversity of food preparation. There is certainly an element of preservationism involved, in that preserving culinary traditions is important, although in no way does it discourage creating new traditions so long as they are traditions committed to quality and diversity. Slow Food is against the homogenization of the world's food. It is about enjoying life and making sure that the generations that follow can enjoy it as well. I believe language has a lot of nuance and rarely are things so clear cut as perhaps we'd like them to be. I tend to believe more in shades of gray than black and white.

Mags, you certainly are splitting some serious hairs. I agree, authenticityis subservient to whether a restaurant is good or not good in what they produce regardless of how "authentic" it aspires to be. Sure it can never be exactly the same thing as the original model, but I don't understand your reluctance to allow for an experience to approach a model, albeit on an asymptotic line. Sure, there are many models to which a restaurant aspiring to be "authentic" can choose, some good, some not so good. 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". It is another question entirely as to whether the food or the experience are good, better or worse than something less authentic, but for someone who for whatever reason wishes to experience that, it has some value.