Posts tagged “food”

Zach Gage tweeted:

i wish all internet comments were like the comments on nyt recipe pages

Turns out a big part of why they’re so nice has to do with nomenclature:

This might be because Cooking’s comments aren’t comments at all—they’re notes, a distinction Times food editor Sam Sifton emphasizes several times over the course of our conversation. “We made the conscious decision not to call them comments,” Sifton tells me. “The call to action was to leave a note on the recipe that helps make it better. That’s very different from ‘Leave a comment on a recipe.’ And the comment might be ‘I hate you.’ ‘You’re an asshole.’ ‘This is bad.’ And that’s helpful to no one. I see that on other recipes, and I’m glad that we don’t have those comments, because we don’t have comments. We have notes.”

While it’s delightful to think that that could be enough, human moderation is also involved:

On the internet, moderation is something of a dying art, often outsourced, automated, or even discontinued altogether by resource-strained news outlets. At Cooking, however, every single note is approved or rejected by an actual human being.

Geoffrey James:

Neuroscience continues to uncover new ways that coffee and (to a lesser extent) tea and chocolate, tend to make brains healthier and more resilient.

When studies prove my habits are good, I believe them.

Sarah Jampel:

Every additional ingredient should bring a contrast in flavor or texture: If the salad is primarily crunchy, add something soft. If it skews sweet, add something salty or bitter. If it’s on the rich side, use acid to nudge it back to equilibrium. And if what you’re about to throw in achieves none of that? Save it for something else.

Tom Scocca, for Slate:

There is no other word for it. Onions do not caramelize in five or 10 minutes. They never have, they never will—yet recipe writers have never stopped pretending that they will.

Good to know.

Revisiting this incredible piece. The man was unique.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.