The Gastrocast

An interesting, but impractical idea–recipe copyrights.  I struggle with this notion, both because I use lots of other peoples recipes to develop my own, and even just to use because they’re good, but also as a cookbook author.  While it is a great notion to protect your work, I just don’t think it is practical. Somewhere I’ve read about the disconnect big name chefs have with writing cookbooks and the dining experience in their restaurant–is a meal at the restaurant, cooked by professionals, going to be impacted when a frequent patron take the book home and cobbles their way through a favorite? Or does it give them a fuller sense of all which goes into preparing a high-end meal? How does it impact the experience, and what happens if some lesser chef takes a signature dish and uses it at their place but doesn’t get it right–will Gordon Ramsey’s Vichyssoise cease to be signature and special and return to plain old cold, potato and leek soup?

To me, a recipe is a blueprint. It outlines what the dish should be like. There are many ways to get to the same end, and certainly the same ingredients can be applied to numerous, different dishes. While it is unfair to wholesale steal someone elses intellectual property and turn it into your own, even if you give them credit. The world of cooking is different. Recipes are built on ideas and techniques which are common ground. The ingredients, too, are common but can be varied slightly for nuance. The only real copyright-able part of a recipe then is the individual’s flair and wording in the text of the recipe. Hard to control.

There are really no new dishes under the sun. Certainly new techniques are applied to old standards, but if you dig deep enough into history much of what is hot and trendy now has been tried in some form at some time. If recipes were copyrighted 85% of restaurants, at least, would have to go out of business. It would be chaos. I think a much better model should be a Creative Commons Attribution license–which is more or less what I have released my cookbook and recipes and podcast with.

One other way to view a recipe and dish is that they are more like performance art–it is the act of creation which brings the magic. Sure, anyone can gate Central Park in Orange draperies, but Christo brings the eyes of the world to Manhattan. You and I can both use the same ingredients to make a Turkey Pannini for our computer repair dudes, but attitude, timing, quality, and passion determine the final outcome no matter how exact the recipe is we are following. This is something no copyright can control or contain and what truly distiguishes great chefs and their work from the rest of us–no matter how many of their cookbooks we buy.

Inspired by a Boing Boing Article

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Track the proliferation across the web of the Scoble’s word: brrreeeport

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Ah I’m so glad Mo’time is back on line and everything appears to be working so much smoother.
I am also happy to report my lowly eMac has had its surgery and now with a new heart/brain appears to be working better than before. This return to original speed will greatly help reduce post-production show time and help keep the quality a bit tighter.

The repair technician who showed up in Kitchen Studio was friendly and efficient. He had, apparently, been out to the island before to repair computers–he does all sorts. He told me my problems weren’t unusual and that Dell computers were also having massive problems with blown capacitors. Let’s hope it won’t happen again, with this new motherboard.

He was a bit taken aback when I offered him lunch. He politely rufused but tucked in heartliy when I set a turkey pannini in front of him. He lit up at the Blood Oranges in White Chocolate Sauce for afters. He was very pleasant, but on the whole didn’t seem to know what podcasting was about–or didn’t let on. He fell in love with my dog and mostly wanted to ask questions about the breed.

My dear (long suffering) wife said perhaps the computer should break more often if it would get me to clean the office as thoroughly. I even got rid of the cardboard I stuck to the window with tape to keep the sun from glaring on the screen  and replaced it with blinds. This will let even more light into kitchen studio. WIth computer worries out of the way, the polytunnel finished for now, and my chicken yard well on its way, I’m off to line up a tasting panel for next week’s Corned Beef Taste Off.

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