"Ever since he had been a child, he had wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man’s sins."
Book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Recipes: The Brazilian Kitchen by Leticia Moreinos Shwartz
Glinha Moreninha
(Chicken Braised with Caramelized Onions)
4 whole chicken legs, cut into legs and thighs (I just used thighs)
Salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions, finely sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 cup Madeira wine
3 cups chicken stock
2 ripe plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 tbsp fresh parsley
Wipe the chicken with a paper towel. Season with salt and pepper and brown in olive oil over medium high heat, about 4 minutes per side. If you were feeling "healthy" and trimmed the fat off your chicken, and this caused your chicken skin to separate from your chicken meat, and this caused your chicken meat to stick to the pan, learn your lesson about "healthy," remove your now skinless chicken to a bowl, deglaze the pan with just a little sweet white wine, strain through a sieve, and reserve.
If your fatty, crispy skinned, delicious chicken didn't stick, just remove it to a bowl, turn the heat to medium-low, and add the onions. Cook the onions until they caramelize, stirring frequently, about 25-30 minutes. The book says low heat, which will take much, much longer; cooking guru Jerilyn assures me that you can get it done in 25 minutes over medium low without burning them. If you see the edges start to burn, the book says you can add a teaspoon of water to the pan. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Deglaze with the Madeira and reduce almost completely. Add the stock and bring to a boil.
Return the chicken to the pan with any juices from the bowl. Braise over very low heat for 2 hours, with the pan partly covered (if the sauce is too thin, remove the cover). Add the tomatoes (I only had one, and it wasn't as ripe as it could have been - using 2 very ripe ones would have made the recipe a little less brown), season with salt and pepper, and garnish with parsley. Serve with rice.
Sigh. This recipe, though it smelled absolutely divine, turned into a near disaster. I forgot to turn the heat down. Many years ago, I learned the best braising trick ever; guaranteed to make even your beef come out tender, and it works like a charm every time. Boil with the lid on for 45 minutes and the lid off for an hour. I thought it would save me 15 minutes. I left it to boil with the lid on, forgot to reduce the heat, and blogged my last Russian blog. It scorched the chicken and onions on the bottom of the pan.
I nearly cried and threw it all away. Then I told myself to just taste it and see whether all the chicken had absorbed the scorched flavor. It hadn't. I cut off the blackened parts, scraped out the few unburnt onions, and started the sauce from scratch. Unfortunately, it was already 8:00 on a work night and I was out of onions. I added some scallions that were wilting in my fridge for flavor and gently simmered the sauce. I steamed my rice with mushroom bouillon in the water and broiled asparagus with butter, garlic, lemon, and almond slivers. I was fearful that this time I really would have to pay up on my offer to order a pizza in case dinner sucked.
The chicken, far from being dried out by its scorching, was falling off the bone almost as though I'd pulled it. It was delicious and if I'm not mistaken, the leftovers were scarfed down the very next afternoon. I know I enjoyed mine at work during lunch. Of course, I think it would have been far more authentic if I'd managed to remember 2 important rules of cooking, namely, don't put your heat too high, and don't get distracted.
About the book:
Paulo Coelho's novel reads like a fable. The character is "the boy." He is on his quest for his life's dream, his "Personal Legend." He meets many people who help him on his way because, he learns, the whole world conspires to assist anyone who is truly looking for their personal legend. He has already left the seminary school, where his parents wished he would become something grand; he has sold his sheep and left off his shepherding, where he had the freedom to wander Andalusia; he has abandoned his job as assistant to a seller of crystals, where he made enough money to buy double the sheep of his former flock and a license to import foreign wares; and now he has left behind his love in the desert, because she understands about Personal Legends and would be ashamed to think that she had ever held him back.
In the process, rather than learning of the world instead of learning of god, he learns to know god through the sacrifices of the world, "we are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.”
He also learns the lessons of life and death, "'I’m alive,' he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon. 'When I’m eating, that’s all I think about. If I’m on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other. Because I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.'" I like what he says about war and human nature. It makes a nice segue from War and Peace and parallel's Tolstoy's theories of determinism.
Somehow, because this book seems so much like a fable to me right now, I feel as though it is simple and straightforward and therefore my discussion of it seems simplistic to me. I have a feeling that it will only be when I've finished the book that I will have more thoughtful things to say about it. That should be tomorrow, as I'm already 90% through it. It's a very short novel.
I was also more than a little disappointed that not only is the novel not set in Brazil, it's not even set in Portugal.
As promised, here are 2 of the next Brazilian books that I'll be reading:
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria
Iracema by Jose de Alencar
Sheesh. On the Kindle, The Alchemist starts at 4% and ends at 93%. I somehow feel cheated out of 11%.
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