[Sca-cooks] catching drippings

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach vicki shaw:
>Not sure I followed my own reasoning on the rose quote either, so I will
>drop that one.  I think in the far recesses of my mind there was some logic
>to the analogy.  Maybe what I meant was that meatloaf by any other name - or
>hot dogs, or pizza - would still be meatloaf [if it were prepared the same
>way] .   But, after reading your response I find that I agree with you.  A
>good sausage with the right spices could be quite delicious in a good
>quality bread roll with some condiments that would enhance the flavor rather
>than drown it.

And my point was similar, or perhaps an extension. What you've 
described is what a hot dog is supposed to be, and the fact that 
there are bad hot dogs doesn't really change that. I had the worst 
beouf bourguignon on an airplane, once... ;-).

>And same with meat loaf,  I think the name as it is does conjur up visions
>of cafeteria food.  What my grandmother put in the sabbath dish that was
>sent out to cook in the public oven was indeed a loaf made of meat, but the
>herbs and spices mixed in with the meat and the fact that it cooked in a
>bath of broth flavored by the other meats, the vegetables, the garlic ,etc.
>made it sabroso (flavorful) and moist and delicious.

See, this is a demonstration of cooking philosophy: when you make 
absolutely the best meatloaf you can make; when you've done 
everything that can reasonably be expected with the available 
materials the squeeze the last bit of flavor into that meatloaf, then 
that's nothing to be ashamed of. It's when you say, "It's only meat 
loaf, nobody expects it to be good," that you start to have problems. 
Same for hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, most pasta dishes.

>My tastebud jury is still out on pizza.  Have always been of two minds about
>it. I have eaten the most mundane and the gourmet varieties, but I think for
>me it is always a disappointment.  Like the smell of a bakery is the sum of
>its breads, but no one bread ever tastes as good as the smell.

You may have put your finger an an important point about pizza. It's 
not a gourmet dish. It's not haute cuisine, no matter how much rare 
maigret of duck and avocado you stick on it. What it _is_ is an 
artisanal (artesian?) dish that requires a fair amount of skill to 
produce, but it is still a street food intended to be eaten with the 
hands. How fancy can it afford to get? I never felt that a good 
bread, fresh from the oven and maybe sprinkled with salt and some EV 
olive oil, was a disappointment. With pizza, if you make a thin, 
crisp, light, chewy dough, top it with good tomatoes, good cheese, 
oil, etc., how can you possibly go wrong? The trouble is, few places 
that make and sell pizza nowadays are really doing that, and it's 
kind of hard to make it at home using traditional methods. (Some day 
I'll have to think about and write down my iron-skillet pizza recipe, 
which was conceived as a way to get decent pizza out of relatively 
ordinary ingredients like AP flour. Maybe not the best pizza in the 
world, but workable, and far better than any of the 
chain-restaurant/factories like Dominoes.)

Adamantius