[Sca-cooks] catching drippings

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach vicki shaw:
>oh I do not disagree with you, milord, but then would we still be calling
>them meatloaf, hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza?

I don't know. It depends on whether you consider the name contingent 
on quality level, rather than on the conceptual identity of the dish. 
Or if you are equivocating quality and concept: "Meat loaf sucks eggs 
because it is often made poorly, therefore, any high-quality mixture 
of raw meat, various binders and seasonings, not overworked by the 
hands and cooked until just exactly done, and not dried to a piece of 
plywood, would still suck eggs because it is meatloaf, and if the 
quality was high it would no longer be meatloaf." (Ask Olwen about 
pizza sometime. While I respect her right to her opinion, she fails 
to distinguish between fact and opinion, and between quality and the 
appreciation thereof.)   Meat loaf is meat loaf not because some 
people make it with TVP and it frequently turns up in school 
cafeterias, hospital menus, and TV dinners, but because it's a loaf 
made out of meat. If people took more care with preparation, it would 
not cease to be meat loaf. The main exception to this'd be hot dogs, 
because so few people make anything like their own, or even go to the 
trouble and expense of buying real ones, which are as good on a bun 
with their subtle spicings of coriander, garlic, and paprika 
(seasonings vary, but you get the idea) as the sausages of Vienna, 
Toulouse, and Frankfurt are with braised goose and weinkraut, or 
baked en brioche. It's just that hot dogs, over time, have earned 
(sometimes, but not always, with some justification) a degree of 
contempt. I think they were often still of fairly high quality when 
they somehow became relegated to second-class (or lower) food. Once 
that happened, there was no longer too much point in paying close 
attention to their manufacture, or in keeping to too high a quality 
standard, when it no sense, economically.

>   a rose by any other name is
>still a rose.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. We seem to be discussing 
perceptions of elegance in foods. Do you feel that names are an issue?

Adamantius

>  > Satisfied? No. Can all those things be exquisite and subtle?
>>  Certainly they can. Under the right circumstances, maybe more so than
>>  judhabs. Unfortunately, we don't tend to want them to be, so they're
>>  usually not. You might read Mark Bittman's stuff sometime, as an
>>  example of simple but exquisite cookery and the care that can go into
>>  it. Also John Thorne...
>>
>  > Adamantius