"So in that way life had the regularity of a calendar, history and civilization were being made, and man, naked and unarmed, armed himself and dressed; built hovel and palace, a crude village and Thebes of a Thousand Gates; created science that scrutinizes and art that elevates; made himself orator, mechanic, philosopher, covered the face of the globe; descended into the bowels of the Earth; climbed up to the sphere of the clouds, collaborating in that way in the mysterious work with which he mitigated the necessities of life and the melancholy of abandonment."
Book: The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria
Recipes: The Brazilian Kitchen by Leticia Moreinos Shwartz
Arroz de Pato
(Duck Risotto)
2 portions of duck leg confit
3 tbsp olive oil
1 small, thin chorizo sausage
3 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of saffron threads
1/2 tsp paprika
1 plum tomato, peeled, seeded, and diced
Salt and pepper to taste
1/8 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
Warm the duck legs and fat in a skillet over low heat, separate the legs from the fat, shred the meat (optionally, save the fat "for other purposes).
Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a saute pan and add the chorizo, cook until lightly browned, about 2 minutes, then remove to a bowl. Heat the remaining oil in a large skillet, over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until slightly golden. Add saffron and paprika and cook for another minute. Stir in tomatoes and cook until soft, about 2 minutes. Add the rice and stir well to coat with oil. add the stock and bring to a boil. Season with salt and pepper.
Add the duck and chorizo and stir just once. Place the skillet in the oven and cook until the rice is al dente, about 8-10 minutes. Mix in olives and serve hot.
I really hate to boil any kind of meat, unless it's a true braising. Plus, I don't like olives. I altered this recipe quite a bit. The cookbook said that more traditional versions of this recipe are served as a risotto. Since I had a duck carcass in my freezer just waiting to become duck stock, I decided risotto would be best for me too. Kitchen helper Mindy did almost all the work for this recipe, apart from making the stock. It was her first cooking lesson. We sauteed the same amount of onions in a skillet, added the rice and let it cook in the oil for a minute. Then we tossed in a cup of wine and let that reduce completely.
From there we started adding mugfulls of duck stock laced with saffron (I seem to have melted my ladle) and stirring and stirring and stirring until the rice was al dente. At the last minute we added the duck meat I'd scavenged off the bones and the tomatoes. I omitted the chorizo as well, it's hard to find the good stuff around here and the packaged stuff tastes like hotdogs to me.
It was quite delicious. Mindy is an excellent student.
About the book:
Just as I had taken a brief hiatus from blogging, so has it been with my reading. The book seems to be something quite profound hiding in the narrative of a pompous, insane old man. It's a bit tiresome most of the time and then suddenly surprises you with a witty passage. The allusions continue and I still haven't looked any of them up.
Currently, he has just explained a delirium dream he had in which a sort of Mother Nature-Pandora figure (that allusion, I did understand) torments him about the short lives of humans and the hopes and destructions they bring upon themselves. She says, "Yes, worm, you’re alive. Don’t worry about losing those rags that are your pride, you’re still going to taste the bread of pain and the wine of misery for a few hours. You’re alive. Right now while you’re going crazy, you’re alive, and if your consciousness gets an instant of wisdom, you’ll say you want to live." This is a both a threat and a promise. A threat of death and a promise of a few hours more of precious life. All the while that she is talking to Bras Cubas, they are watching the pageant of history unfurl around them, "centuries that were still passing, swift and turbulent, the generations that were superimposed on generations, some sad like the Hebrews of the Captivity, others merry like Commodus’ profligates, and all of them punctual for the tomb." Mostly, he saw the sad state of man thinking he had climbed some height, only to be cast back by death, "Then man, whipped and rebellious, ran ahead of the fatality of things after a nebulous and dodging figure made of remnants, one remnant of the impalpable, another of the improbable, another of the invisible, all sewn together with a precarious stitch by the needle of imagination. And that figure—nothing less than the chimera of happiness—either runs away from him perpetually or lets itself be caught by the hem, and man would clutch it to his breast, and then she would laugh, mockingly, and disappear like an illusion."
This was all one of the more profound parts, but I have no idea what it has to do with the rest of the story.
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