Re-Publishing Recipes: SOPA? Fair Use? Copyright Infringement?

You can always ask your librarian for help when you have a question about copyright issues 

(like the use of this picture I took of a library's poster using Batman's image?)

Readers sometimes lament that they can't find certain recipes on this blog. When I blog about someone else's recipe, I do not reprint the recipe. Instead, I refer to the original cookbook and encourage readers to purchase it. I know it would be easier for everyone if I retyped the recipe without permission, but this would be unfair to the original author.

Writers, at the very least, should be fair to other writers. And fairness is a two-way street that includes respecting copyright laws and fair use laws. 

In light of the recent SOPA discussions, writers need to be particularly aware of their rights. With this recipe example in mind, if I’m not creating something new (doing more than simply tweaking a recipe), then I don’t have the right to re-publish someone else’s work. Under current fair use laws, I have the right to comment upon and republish small sections of the recipe.

Writers can analyze or respond to something in the public sphere and/or create something new. SOPA works against what fair use currently allows, rather than supporting writers and other creators by protecting them.

In general, recipes (creations drafted, tested, retested and then clearly written out, edited, revised and eventually published) are only yours to reprint fully if you are the author or if you have permission from the author and/or publishing company. Like with photographs, poems or other creations, it isn't enough to simply give the creator's name and/or include the copyright symbol (if you didn't actually ask permission to use the work, it is even worse to pretend that you did.)

Especially as writers and creative people, we need to help protect each other's rights to our original work and the right to earn a living from that work. For more on Fair Use in creative writing, read the Poetry Foundation and American University’s “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry”. While focusing on poetry, it applies quite well to all genres of creative writing. You can also go directly to the U.S. copyright office’s explanation of Fair Use.

If you are using materials for educational purposes, check with your school’s policies or read through New York University’s clear Handbook for use of Copyrighted Materials.

I'm currently teaching a food writing workshop online at Fairleigh Dickinson University and this is one of the issues that we discuss in class. We read Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob. If you are interested in doing food writing and tackling these issues yourself, I recommend that you refer to her book or blog for more.

What other resources would you recommend? 

YouTube Cooking

As an online writing teacher, I am tech-savvy. As a chef, however, I’m pretty low-tech: I adore printed cookbooks and print out the occasional online recipe. I scroll through the Epicurious and AllRecipes IPhone apps for ideas, but return to my cookbooks for specifics.

Of course, there is so much more available to home chefs. I’ve started exploring the possibilities with My Life Scoop’s article 10 Tasty YouTube Channels for Cooks. Click through for some great ideas.

Here’s how it starts:

After a long day at the office, you may think the last thing you want to do is chop, steam, and stir, when that microwave dinner is two minutes in the making. But cooking can be therapeutic. And whether you're a certified foodie or a comfort food connoisseur, the web is a bountiful resource of recipes and cooking how-tos.


One spot that shouldn't be overlooked in this department is YouTube. Printed recipes are fine, but there's just something about watching food being prepared that can be uniquely instructional and inspiring. You don't need a four-man camera crew and a dream kitchen to host a cooking show on YouTube. The network has been built by real people making real food, and many have garnered a large online following. We've highlighted some of the best below.

Thanks to reader Amy for sharing this link. Other great links to recommend? Email me: ChloeMiller(at)gmail(dot)com.

Paella

Paella, a dish I’ve always ordered out, is now a dish I know anyone can make at home.

My mom and I prepared it together for her birthday. We followed the recipe in the Spanish cookbook 1080 Recipes, which you can find in my Amazon store. You can also find the amazing Le Creuset, which I relied on for this dish and use regularly.

Paella isn’t the easiest recipe to make because of the numerous steps. While I don’t mind cooking alone, this is at least a two-person job. A worrier, I was convinced that we were going to overcook something, from the squid to the chicken to the sausage. Nothing like that happened.

While we followed the recipe, we altered it a little for everyone’s dietary preferences and what was available: no shrimp, no monkfish, no peppers and chicken stock instead of fish stock. Phew!

It is possible to “own” any recipe and mold it to fit your tastes. I encourage you to read different versions of the same dish and notice what is always included and what changes before making your final decision. This cookbook has a number of types of paella, from fresh fish to chicken (which includes fish) to sausage to even canned fish.

Happy birthday, Mom! Cent’anni!

Simple Cherry Tomato Marinara Sauce

To follow up on yesterday’s post on making calzone, here is a simple cherry tomato marinara that you can quickly prepare and serve with your calzone. It is a great light sauce for the spring or summer that's great on pasta, too!


Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

1 pint sweet cherry tomatoes, sliced

salt and pepper to taste

optional: 3 large basil leaves, sliced



Directions:

Slowly sauté the diced onion in the olive oil until they are translucent. Keep the heat low to medium to avoid burning. Add the sliced cherry tomatoes and lightly boil until soft. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you have some fresh basil on hand, mix it into the sauce at the last moment so the basil retains its flavor. You could also add dried basil or oregano.

This makes about 1.5 cups of sauce. It can be made a day or two ahead.

Crispy Waffles with Salted Caramel Coulis

Homemade caramel has always evaded me (think hardened sugar on the bottom of what was once a perfectly fine pot.) This recipe for a salted caramel coulis from Bon Appétit was surprisingly easy. With the addition of heavy whipping cream and butter, the caramel didn’t harden the way other recipes have.

The salt taste wasn’t very prominent. I might add more the next time to help add to the contrasting flavors.

Pallotte Cacio e Uovo by Guest Blogger Rebecca Galante

Thank you to Rebecca Galante from Vasto, Italy, in the Abruzzo region, for today’s Italian recipe. Rebecca offers guided tours and visits to the Abruzzo region to tourists interested in the culinary and cultural history. Famous for its chefs and coastline, Abruzzo is beautiful and less crowded than Tuscany or other well-traveled areas in Italy. I hope you’ll visit her website to learn more about what she offers.

Cheese and egg balls cooked in tomato and capsicum (chili) sauce

“Pallotte cacio e uovo” is the original name of a genuine and tasty recipe typical of Abruzzo, an Italian middle south region located on the Adriatic coast. Because this is a typical dish, is possible to find many version of it. Mine is referred to my town called Vasto. Cacio e Uovo represents a good main course and usually three balls each are enough considering that you can’t start eating Cacio e Uovo without a couple of fresh bread’s slices on the table.

Ingredients (serves four)

Cheese and egg balls

4 eggs

Pecorino/Parmigiano cheese ca. 150 gr

Bread Crumbs on request

Crumb (the inside of the bread) on request

Ricotta cheese 100 gr

Sauce:

500 gr fresh tomatoes cut into small pieces

1 sliced capsicum (chili)

1 onion

Olive oil: 2 spoon for each person
Take a large base medium to high pan (a clay pan is the best choice) and add the olive oil, the onion and the capsicum. Once the onion starts to yellow, please add your tomato. Over a medium to low fire, let it cooked slowly. Once the tomato will be cooked, add one and a half glass of water and wait until water boils.

In the meanwhile, put the eggs, the pecorino cheese (starting with 100 gr), the bread crumbs, the crumb and the ricotta into a terrine. You need to mix all these ingredients together with a fork until they will be compact and ready to make balls. It will take a little bit, so don’t give up. You should add bread crumbs, crumbs and the rest of the cheese as it is required. In this way they will be more and more dry and sticky and they will be ready to make balls.

We left the tomato with the water. Soon it will start boiling. This is the moment to put on it our egg and cheese balls. Before to make mistakes please make one ball (medium size) and put it on the sauce. Only now you will see if the ball is compact enough: wait 5 min. Is the ball still one piece? Or it is melted? In the first case you know that you can go on, please finish all of them and put them in the pan with the tomato. Cover it and let them cook 20 minutes. After this term please turn them in the other side and let them finish cook another 20 min. Remember Medium Low fire

If the ball will melt means that you need to add in the terrine more breadcrumbs and crumb or cheese!! And go on like before.

Viareggio Carnevale & Cenci Fritti by Guest Blogger Aurelio Barattini

Thank you to Italian chef Aurelio Barattini for today’s post and recipe on tomorrow's holiday: Carnevale!

Be sure to read his mouth-watering blog. Aurelio Barattini's restaurant, L'Antica Locanda di Sesto is in Lucca in Northern Tuscany in Italy.

***

The Viareggio Carnival was established in 1873 when some of the local "signori" decided to organize a Sunday a little different from the rest, by inventing a procession of decorated floats which travelled up and down the main street of the city. On that occasion a masked protest was also organized by a number of citizens, as they were forced to pay too many taxes and as a result the chief tax collector was certainly made fun of!!

The parade was liked alot not only by the patrons but also by the citizens and the idea of making floats that interpreted humour and disatisfaction of the people came about in that year. Since then Viareggio has become the home of the Italian Carnival, with its masked parades characterized by allegorical floats in papermache. These floats are true works of art to which the local float makers dedicate an entire year of workmanship. There is not one politician, entertainer, or intellectual that has not been a target (protagonist) of one of these floats which almost comes to life during the parade by the moving arms, opening and closing mouths and rolling eyes. On every float young people and children find a place from which to throw confetti and shooting stars to the crowd. During the entire period masked balls and parties in the various "rioni" (quarters, districts) are organized as well as numerous sports and cultural events i.e. "Torneo Internazionale giovanile di calcio.

The official Viareggio Carnival mask is the "Burlamacco", a clown which wears clothes taken from other Italian masks: checkered overalls, taken from the Harlequin's costume, a white ponpon stolen from Pierrot's big puffy blouse, a white gorget - "Captain Scary" style, a red headband and a black mantle. The name Burlamacco derives from Buffalmacco a Florentine painter and a character in the "Decamerone". However, it is also said to be linked to the Lucchese surname Burlamacchi.

The Recipe
The best-known Carnival pastries are Cenci (the word means rags), whose many aliases include Frappe, Chiacchere (gossips) and Nastrini (ribbons), while Ada Boni, who borrows Pellegrino Artusi’s recipe, uses the more poetic "Lover’s Knots." They are very pretty when carefully made, so she is probably right.

This recipe has been passed by to me from Nonna Lorena,a lady from Florence that loves to cook all the traditional tuscan recipes,and she's really amazing at it !

Ingredients:
250gr. of Flour

1 Egg

20gr. of Butter

40gr. of Sugar

half a glass of rhum or cognac

Instructions:
Mix the egg with the sugar,then while you keep stirring add the soft butter and the liqueur,finally add the flour and knead well then roll out the dough high about 2 mm.

Cut it into little rectangles (about 4cm x 8cm) then fry and in the end sprinkle with icing sugar.

Snow Day Treats: Baking Powder Biscuits and Hot Chocolate

Being snowed in yesterday, I decided to try two comfort-food recipes: Baking Powder Biscuits and Hot Chocolate.

The biscuits were a breakfast surprise for my husband. The recipe, from Epicurious, had a few options: crusty, buttermilk, cheese or drop. I chose drop biscuits and I’m pretty sure that I cheated by not kneading them, but they still came out quite well. I simply mixed them in the bowl and then formed balls in my hand before putting them on the greased cookie sheets. I used less sugar and a little more salt than the recipe required.

The hot chocolate, from the wonderful food blog Leite’s Culinaria, reminded me of hot chocolates I would order in Florence, Italy. There was the option for thin or thick hot chocolate and we opted for the thin. I admit that I opted out of the salt addition, but my husband didn’t shy away from it. We also used fat-free milk instead of whole milk since that’s what was in the fridge. With a melted chocolate bar and Kosher marshmallows (they are always corn syrup-free!) whisked into a drink, we had a luxurious afternoon snack by the fire while the snow continued to fall.

With all of this delicious food to give me extra energy, I had a very productive snow day yesterday. I hope you’ll take a moment to scroll through the new tabs at the top of the page.

What’s your favorite weekend recipe?

You know the one: It takes a little longer than weeknight dinners, it smells like your childhood and it gives your family and friends a reason to linger at the dinner table.

In the comments section below, I look forward to reading your favorite recipes, links to recipes or descriptions of your favorite meals to prepare on a leisurely weekend night.

Francesca Calloni’s Sausage Pasta Sauce

Thank you to Francesca Calloni for this wonderful pasta sauce recipe from Emilia Romagna. Her mother learned to prepare it while she was living there as a young woman. According to Francesca, it is a part of the Italian “poor man’s cooking” that has become quite fashionable. It is filling and delicious, but not necessarily fancy. You’ll see how easy it is to cook! Francesca adds, “it's usually a winter meal or a summer meal with siesta included ;)”

Sausage Pasta Sauce

1 small onion

2 crushed, dried chili peppers (Francesca’s addition; not a part of the original recipe)

Extra virgin olive oil or good quality olive oil

500 grams of fresh Italian sausage (Francesca includes this link to show what the pork sausage should look like.)

1 can (4 oz or 425 ml) of crushed tomato (Francesca usually puts it in a blender first, but you can put it also just as it is)

pinch of salt

1/2 glass of white wine



To prepare the sausage, remove the casing and chop the meat.

Finely chop a small onion and sauté it in extra virgin olive oil (4-5 teaspoons should be enough). It should become quite golden. Be careful not to burn it.

Add the sausage and stir constantly. When it's almost cooked, add the wine and let the alcohol steam off.

Add the crushed tomato and 1/2 cup of water. Francesca usually rinses the tomato can with a bit more water and adds that to the pot. Let everything cook on a light heat for at least an hour. Don’t let the sauce boil.

It should be ready when you start to see the oil and grease separate from the tomato. At this point, the sauce should be fairly reduced. Francesca recommends to loosely cover the saucepan with a lid or your stove will quickly became a CSI scene because the tomato sauce will splatter. Be sure to allow some of the steam out or it will never properly reduce.

Optional: Add some heavy cream to the sauce at the end.

Serve with tagliatelle cooked al dente (egg pasta) with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Thanks again, Francesca!