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4.25.2010

Chapter V - Bobo de Camarao and Looking Up Allusions

"God save you, dear reader, from an idée fixe, better a speck, a mote in the eye. Look at Cavour: It was the idée fixe of Italian unity that killed him. It’s true that Bismarck didn’t die, but we should be warned that nature is terribly fickle and history eternally meretricious."

Book:  The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria
Recipes:  The Brazilian Kitchen by Leticia Moreinos Shwartz

Bobo de Camarao
(Shrimp Stew with Coconut and Yucca Sauce)

1 small yucca (about 11 oz)
3 tbsp Dendê oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/3 each green, red, and yellow (or orange) bell pepper, chopped
2 scallions, chopped white and green portions
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 cup white wine
2 cups shrimp stock (or chicken stock)
1 cup coconut milk
2 tbsp tomato paste

For the Shrimp

1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined 
Salt and pepper
2 tbsp butter
pinch of ground nutmeg

Garnish

3 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro





Yucca is a completely new experience for me.  I love it.  Cut the ends off, peel it, slice it lengthwise and use a paring knife to remove the woody core (you will not even be able to find this until you have sliced it in half).  Cut it into cubes and bring to a boil in salted water.  Cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until tender.  Mash or mix with a handblender.  It is much pastier than potatoes, and a bit harder to mash, but the flavor and smoother texture are well worth the extra effort.  Kitchen helper Hannah is now officially a yucca peeling Ninja master (complete with sound effects). 





While the yucca is boiling, saute onions, celery, and peppers in a stock pot until they are translucent, about 5 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook an additional 1-2  minutes.  Add the wine.  We used 1 cup because I didn't want my garlic to brown and kitchen helper Jerilyn was so intrigued by the cookbook, she kept losing my page.  Reduce wine by half.  Add stock (where on earth do you find shrimp stock without making it yourself?) and coconut milk.  Bring to a boil.  Add the tomato paste (I forgot that ingredient), then start adding the yucca about a tablespoon at a time until the soup is at your desired consistency.  The recipe says 1/2 cup but we added all the yucca we'd cooked.  Leave the soup to simmer over low heat while you make the shrimp.


Melt the butter over medium high heat.  Salt and pepper the shrimp and cook until they are just no longer translucent.  Or you could buy frozen, pre-cooked shrimp and skip this step.  That's what we did and it worked out fine.  


Add the shrimp to the soup to heat them through, being careful not to let it boil or over-cook the shrimp.  Stir in the tomatoes, cilantro, and nutmeg (another ingredient we accidentally omitted) and serve with some kind of bread for dipping. 






We could have used a fancy Brazilian bread, but I just threw some par-baked dinner rolls into the oven and served with those.  We had a spinach and tomato salad with lime and olive oil for appetizer and we had more of the Batida de Banana with our meal and as a sort of impromptu dessert.  Jerilyn enjoyed them but her first taste confirmed:  A cup of rum, is a lot of rum!  It was a wonderful meal.  We rushed through the eating a bit as we were running late to hear our friends play at Arlene's Grocery.  But we all agreed, this is a keeper recipe. 





About the book:


The narrator, perhaps because he is dead, has a whimsical approach to his own narrations.  They are full of interruptions and backtracking, or forward-tracking, as he is telling the story in reverse (starting with his death, rather than his birth).  And his prose is absolutely peppered with allusions that I have never heard before.  I need to look them all up before I can properly blog about them.  Which I will do soon. 

4.22.2010

Chapter I - Brazilian Garden Salad, Batida de Banana, and One Dead Man Tells His Tale

"You who knew him, gentlemen, can say with me that nature appears to be weeping over the irreparable loss of one of the finest characters humanity has been honored with. This somber air, these drops from heaven, those dark clouds that cover the blue like funeral crepe, all of it is the cruel and terrible grief that gnaws at nature and at my deepest insides; all that is sublime praise for our illustrious deceased."

Book:  The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria 
Recipes: The Brazilian Table by Roberts and Roberts
              Batida de Banana

Brazilian Garden Salad

For the vinaigrette

1 tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp nutmeg
2 tbsp lime juice
5 tsp orange flower blossom (optional)
Reserved orange juice
1 tsp orange zest
6 tbsp olive oil

For the salad

1 cup peeled and julienned chayote
4 cups lettuce
2 cups watercress
1 cup peeled, sectioned orange, reserve the juice for vinaigrette
1 (14 oz) can of hearts of palm, drained and sliced 

Whisk all the vinaigrette ingredients and toss with the salad ingredients.  


We couldn't find Chayote.  We couldn't find orange blossoms.  My Cuban roommate used to use hearts of palm in her salads, but she got hers from a jar.  I liked hers better than the canned ones that I used yesterday.  Also, we were feeling like a light meal so just had salad, but we imagined this would be very good with shrimp or a lightly grilled fish or chicken (that structure that I used there, "or... or... " that's called polysyndeton.  I just learned that today and I have to teach it to my AP students tomorrow).

Batida de Banana

2 bananas, sliced (make sure they are ripe and sweet)
1 cup of ice cubes
1 cup Cachaça
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
Cinnnamon and banana slices for garnish, if you want to be fancy


Dump all the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Sprinkle with cinnamon and prop a toothpick of banana slices over your glass if you want to impress the locals (I was impressed.).


Kitchen helper Jay was in charge of making this.  Any time a drink is mixed for you rather than by you, it's even more delightful.  And this drink was super-yummy to begin with.  The local liquor store sells Cachaça but they were fresh out of it.  No idea when they will get more, but I should stop by all the time and check (subliminal message:  ...and buy ever more of our other products while you wait).  We used Myers's Dark Rum and a hand blender (not quite as smooth as a blender, but it got the job done). This is a recommended drink for times when you have to get a bunch of kids to pass a really difficult test.

About the book:

I haven't really started it yet.  Just read the first page.  I like this line though, "I am not exactly a writer who is dead, but a dead man who is a writer, for whom the grave is a second cradle."  Apparently, he isn't posthumously publishing his memoirs, he is posthumously writing them.  Intriguing idea.  I am looking forward to reading more.

4.21.2010

Epilogue - Bacalhau a Gomes Sa, Asparagus com Molho de Echallote e Salsinha and Predictably, Your Treasure is Never Where You Think It Will Be

"People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.”

Book:  The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Recipes:  The Brazilian Kitchen by Leticia Moreinos Shwartz

Bacalhau a Gomes Sa 
(Cod with Fingerling Potatoes and Onions)

3/4 pounds of fingerling potatoes, sliced into rounds and boiled until just tender
5 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions, thinly sliced
Salt and pepper to taste
3 large hard-boiled eggs, sliced into rounds
1/4 cup Kalamata olives, cut in half
1 lb fresh cod (I used 3 fillets)
3 tbsp fresh chives, chopped


Heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a large skillet over medium low heat, add the onions, stirring frequently until they are tender, sweet, and translucent (you are not caramelizing these so watch them carefully), about 10 to 15 minutes.  





Preheat the oven to 350 and oil a baking dish.  Layer your onions, potatoes, and eggs in the bottom of the dish.  Place your cod fillets on top and sprinkle your olives over everything.  I don't care for olives, so substituted capers instead.  Drizzle the remaining olive oil over the whole dish and season with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven until it is just cooked, about 12-15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and serve with chives sprinkled on top. 

Apart from substituting capers for olives, there is one other change that I would make to this recipe:  I would cover the whole baking dish in aluminum foil.  The fish was delicious, and the mix of flavors was really intriguing, but the underside of the fish, which had the moisture from the onions, eggs, and potatoes, was far tastier than the top of the fish, which only got a light sprinkling of olive oil and came out a little dry.

Asparagus com Molho de Echallote e Salsinha


1 lb asparagus
3 tbsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 slice of bacon, finely chopped
2 small shallots, finely chopped
1 cup chicken stock
2 tbsp butter, cold, cut into pieces
Pepper to taste
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1/4 cup grated Parmesan


Add the salt and baking soda to a pot of water and bring to a boil.  Add the asparagus and cook until just tender.  Immediately transfer the asparagus to a cold water bath to stop the cooking.  Remove from the cold water and dry on paper towels.


Cook the bacon in a large frying pan over medium high heat until it is crispy, about 2 minutes.  Lower the heat and add the shallots, stirring frequently and being careful not to brown them, about 2 minutes.  Add the stock and reduce by half, about 5 minutes.

Lift the pan a few inches above the heat and shake it back and forth while adding the butter, a piece at a time.  The butter will melt and the shaking with help it become incorporated into the sauce.  Return the asparagus to the pan and reheat it, being careful not to cook it any further.  Add the parsley and Parmesan and serve immediately.  

 
Thank you kitchen helper Julie for being a recipe stickler!  I would have thrown all the ingredients together in a baking dish under the broiler.  I would also have used at least 3 slices of bacon (how can you eat just 1?).  And I would never have "shaken the pan a few inches above the heat" until Julie said, "let's just do what the recipe calls for..."  So we did.  And it was delicious.  Under the broiler, the flavors never would have merged together so well, and adding extra bacon would have made the recipe so salty as to be almost inedible.  As it was, it was a perfect complement to our cod dish and a lesson learned about being lazy.

About the book:

It's a fable.  A fairly simplistic, easy to understand fable.  Don't give up on your dreams.  Your treasure is out there if you are willing to test yourself to get it. Oh, and surprise, it's never where, or what you thought it would be, so don't overlook it out of carelessness or demean it because it's not what you thought you wanted.

The Alchemist is a sweet book.  It's a quick read and it's somewhat repetitive.  There are a great many lessons about the language of the world and alchemy being about something greater than turning lead into gold.  You will never succeed if that is all you are hoping alchemy will teach you.  It's about taking base things and making them better.  That's everyone's Personal Legend, ultimately; to be better, which ought to be obvious, because nobody willfully says, "I want to make my life worse."  Sadly there are those who do make their lives worse, seemingly willfully, but of course, they don't see it that way.

My questions about the book revolve around this:  If the Arab from the desert has the same dream, in reverse, as the boy has, doesn't that mean he should have found his treasure where the boy was digging by the Pyramids?  I guess he didn't follow his dream so the sands of the desert didn't conspire to help him.

My other question is more historical and theoretical.  The treasure that the boy finds is "the spoils of a conquest that the country had long ago forgotten, and that some conquistador had failed to tell his children about."  Does that mean it was some conquistador's failed Personal Legend?  Was it a successful Personal Legend for him but a failed one for some Brazilian Ameridian or Arawak tribal leader?  Shouldn't that Conquistador's ancestor have recovered that treasure as part of his Personal Legend?  Or better, the ancestors of the conquered tribesmen?  Perhaps there weren't any left.

There were Spanish conquistadors in Brazil, I looked it up.  Is that slim connection to Brazil all that's intended in this book; that a young man can profit off of the slaughter of indigenous peoples because it was written by "the hand that writes everything?"  Is that really the way Personal Legends are supposed to work?  Is that Coelho's idea of "making everything better through love?" 

Maybe if he'd found his flock of sheep there, I would have been more content.  I certainly didn't expect it to be real treasure because the boy had learned that he did not need gold and jewels to be rich, successful, or happy.   I'm not very satisfied with the ending of the book.

4.20.2010

Part 2 - Glinha Moreninha and Paulo Coelho's Short Novel or Long Fable

"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



4.18.2010

Russian Literature and Russian Food - Highlights and Insights

"If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is the time, in the second case it is the origin)."

In wrapping up my discussion of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, I think this is an appropriate quotation to leave with.  There are mysteries in this world for which the proposed explanations make no sense.  Tolstoy tried to evaluate the actions of mankind during war and he seemed to relish the actions of mankind during peace.  He had little faith that the later state would prevail, which also makes very little sense, but fearfully true all the same.  The truth is that we have no idea where we came from or why we do the things we do.  I'm not entirely sure we'd be able to have a moment's happiness if we did know.

As for the food that I sampled, many of the recipes I would definitely make again.  The Chicken Kiev, the stuffed apples or stuffed cabbage, the Koulibiac were all delicious; I enjoyed the lamb plov and the lamb with homemade noodles immensely.  I also would make the pierogies again, if I could round up enough helpers to abate the tedium.  The fried potato dumplings were delicious and would prompt me to fill me house again with fried oil smells.  I also enjoyed the vodka, chocolate or otherwise, and will never again be tempted to skimp and buy the cheap stuff.  Caviar is a wonderful treat to lift a gloomy mood or just to feel glamorous of a Wednesday night.  In fact, there are few recipes to which I could say I would not make again apart from that cabbage soup or the "Quick" Chicken.  

All in all, I would recommend Russian food to anyone.  I'm glad I started this project and glad that people followed me and encouraged me along.  I hope you will keep up the reading and encouragement as I embark on my next adventure with Brazilian food.  It may be hard for me to find Manioc flour and Dende oil, but I should at least be able to find some good Brazilian wines!

One note about Brazilian authors, I have started this morning with Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and this is my first reaction:  I hope all Brazilian books aren't so short!  I'm almost halfway through it already.  It's a charming story about life's dreams and the hopes that most of us seem to abandon far to easily.  I am enjoying it immensely, but I'm afraid I'll be finished with it before I can cook more than 2 recipes.  Please suggest lengthy, weighty novels by Brazilian authors, if you know any, and I invite you once more to read along with me and add your comments about literature as well as food.  I will make a thorough search of Brazilian authors and post a complete list of my choices, in case you want to read ahead.  

Many thanks again for the support and thoughtfulness and look for my first Brazilian food post as early as tomorrow night! 




4.17.2010

Last Chapter of War and Peace - Caviar and Deviled Eggs and Tolstoy gets Metaphysical - For Almost 20 Chapters

"The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, but their relation is always one of inverse proportion. A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a defenseless man—seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that the soldier was in the ranks, and so on."

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter


Caviar


Hard Boiled Eggs
Mayonaise
Blini
Unsalted, Tablewater crackers
Whipped Cream Cheese
(other accompaniaments could include sour cream, butter, mashed capers, sliced raw onion, pasta with creme fraiche and lemon zest, lemon slices, etc.)
Champagne
Vodka




This is not a real recipe, per se, more a collection of foodstuffs.  I suppose the cream cheese wasn't particularly Russian, but we'd eaten so much sour cream by this point, I was afraid of a general hunger strike if I brought any more out.  Generally, I make my deviled eggs with mustard and salt and pepper, or other tasty additions, but I didn't want to overpower the flavor of my caviar, which is already plenty salty enough.  I didn't make fresh blini, just defrosted the leftovers from the mushroom meal.  I also am  too embarrassed to state what brand of caviar I used.  I wasn't up for a trip out to Brooklyn, in fact I managed this whole project without visiting Brighton Beach at all, which I suppose is sort of a shame, but instead thought that the Food Emporium would have some.  They did.  It was dyed with food coloring to be unnatural shades of red or black and it wasn't very good, but it was caviar and I was too tired to quest after better.
  
 


Thankfully, neither Jay or Ben had ever had it.  We enjoyed it.  The eggs in particular were tasty with a dollop off caviar on top.  The blini gave an extra flavor, different from the crackers, and the cream cheese was delicious.  Champagne and Vodka pair wonderfully.  




About the book:

Tolstoy repeatedly revisited the idea that a single man could never inspire people to move from east to west.  That had the people not wanted to move from east to west, Napoleon would have been locked up for a lunatic.  He reiterates, at great, great length, that despite this fact, modern historians still want to attribute the movement from east to west to the power wielded by great men, "modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked. If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question—in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible—is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books."

He never states precisely what that power, or force is.  He speaks, again at great length, about man's freedom.  He says that Napoleon, far from wanting for himself to tour Moscow as her conqueror, had less freedom than anyone.  He says that once we know more fully the cause of an action, the more we come to recognize the absence of freedom in executing that action.  He claims that men give power to great men out of lack of freedom, but he doesn't ever say why they come to do this. He also claims that great men, of themselves, have no power and he cites some very terrible leaders to back it up.  But there are two things he never addresses:  Centuries of indoctrination and hunger.  

In pre-historic times, a tribal leader was elected because of his prowess in battle.  He literally had to be strong enough and have enough power to protect his people from other tribes.  After many years of indoctrinating this belief, we get the dynasties and blood lines and the wealth and mystique that surrounded kings.  That is a hard idea to shake off.  What made the early Americans able to shake it off was that we had a fairly high standard of living already and our king was an ocean away.  The reason why they killed poor Louis is because they were starving and he was living, well, he was living like a king right in the midst of them. The people were told by a few men with ideas that it was ok to kill their king, so they did.

The idea that leaders don’t have personal power may be true in fact but it certainly isn’t true in the minds of a leader’s subjects, who, for centuries, have been buying into the image, pomp, and circumstance accorded the royals.  People very well may have followed Napoleon to Moscow simply because he declared himself emperor and said, let’s go to Moscow. 

As to why they moved at all, one has to look to economics more than philosophy, personal power, or mysterious “forces.”  If the people are starving, they will follow anyone who tells them it will bring them more bread.  If they are eating well, and want to be eating better they will follow a Jefferson who tells them they deserve to eat better.  I suppose, in that vein, the people of France would have followed Napoleon to conquer America had he proposed it as easily as they might have followed a barker selling them cheaper cuts of meat in the stall down the block.  

There is a lot of merit to what Tolstoy is saying about lack of freedom, but he never applies that to propaganda.  Napoleon was a master of propaganda.  He told a battered, self-consuming France that if they followed him, he would make them rich.  So they followed him.  If they had not been starving and riled up to fight by new ideas, they never would have revolted in the first place.  It wouldn't have been worth the risk to their dinner tables.  We could retort that there have been innumerable times in history when the people were starving and did not kill their king, but it was only because there was nobody to tell them it would come out to their benefit somehow.  Why stir up trouble if you're not going to get more food out of it?

As for all this talk about lack of freedom, it stems from the fact that through various inspirations, Nick Bolkonski, Jr. lands himself in the midst of the Decemberist revolts, according to Tolstoy, because he had no freedom to do otherwise.  But it was the ideas, the propaganda of Pierre, which lead him to do this.  

I guess my point is that Tolstoy never looks at hunger as potentially being the "force" he is looking for.  He says that the people were poised to move from east to west and then back west to east again.  But I say, they would have gone in whatever direction they thought they could get the best meal for their pains. 



This wraps up my discussion of War and Peace.   I am rather sad to see the end of it. 

4.11.2010

Book 14 - Chapter 13 - Gvriti Kirdznita Da Makvlit and Tolstoy Contemplates Guerrila Warfare

"Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor, having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy's army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against another is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or decrease in the strength of the nation—even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an army—a hundredth part of a nation—should oblige that whole nation to submit."
Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter

Gvriti Kirdznita Da Makvlit
(Wild Pigeon with Grape and Blackberry Sauce)


For the pigeons:

4 wild pigeons, oven ready (No, I didn't use pigeons.  The little warblers outside my window, though plump, were too fast for me to catch.  Just kidding.  I used a duckling instead.)
Salt
4 Tbsp melted butter
Bread crumbs


For the sauce: 

1 lb unripe green grapes (mine were somewhere between bitter and sweet)
1 lb blackberries
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bunch each of dill and cilantro, finely chopped
(I added a lot of salt here, but omitted the salt from the duck)


I roasted my duck at 375 until it reached 160 degrees (at first thinking it was supposed to be 180, it sat in there a bit too long and could have been more moist!) without the breadcrumbs, with just butter on the outside, some garlic cloves stuffed inside, and some chicken broth and onions in the bottom of the pan.  


The sauce calls for everything to be run through a juicer and then served cold, but I thought it best to heat the grapes and berries in a pan and mash them up hot, then use the sieve (reserve some fruit for garnish).  It was interesting, at first, all I could taste was garlic, then when I added the cilantro and dill, all I could taste was cilantro. I ran it through a sieve to take out all the skin and seeds, reheated it to reduce and thicken it, and by the time we served dinner, it had really blended into a delicious whole, but I can imagine that it might have been even tastier if I had made it up the night before and let it all sit together happily marinating over night. I sliced up my duck, poured the sauce over it, (which unfortunately, looks a little like blood in the photos) and served it with rice boiled in chicken broth and steamed broccoli.  




The recipe was delicious.  Here are some thoughts about the expense of it, though:

Blackberries are pretty expensive, and as I was buying 3 pint-sized containers of them, I thought, maybe I should just get 2...  Then I thought, fuck it! this is the food of the Czars!  You can't skimp on this!

This was the first duck I've ever cooked.  There's not a whole lot of meat on there.  Barely enough for the 5 people who ate it.  Thankfully we'd all had a lot of appetizers before.  Everyone says that duck is extremely fatty and it's 100% true.  I did get my skin to crisp up, thanks to the good advice of kitchen helpers Jay and Jerilyn who reminded to put the butter on at the last minute.  But there's a lot of fat and not a lot of meat.  I think this recipe would have been just as tasty had I made it with a nice economically brined chicken.

About the book:

Kutuzov, knowing the French were going to fail, tried his utmost to restrain his troops from engaging in senseless battles.  He knew that on the retreat, the French would turn and fight more fiercely, and Russian soldiers would die needlessly.  He also knew that the Russian people would do the fighting for him.

Napoleon retreated along the same road on which he'd advanced.  And this road had been laid waste by the battles, but also by the Russian peasants who burned their crops to keep the French from getting them. It was only a matter of time before the French would surrender, according to the rules of war.  But the Russians were not fighting according to the rules of war.  The army was, and it was still looking for glory and plunder.  But the Russian people had started to fight of their own accord, and in their own manner.  Tolstoy makes a comparison to fencing when the winning rapier is raised and the victor is surprised to find that his opponent has thrown down his sword and beaten him over the head with a club.


Tolstoy has this to say about Guerrilla Warfare,  "such a war does not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict. Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes that rule."  In this, he is referring to "small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds of the French."  These are the fighters who do not submit to the idea that because a small portion of the country, in the uniforms of the army, have lost a battle, they should start speaking French.  The people fight back, and they do it in a mercenary, ungoverned, vengeful kind of way.  And they win.

And this is why Kutuzov knew that the loss of Petya Rostov's life in a "skirmish" over some wagons, was a waste of a good life, the French were ready to surrender anyway.  


It is for this reason that America lost during the Vietnam War, when the Vietnamese lost a battle, they did not lose their country.  When the Russians lost at Borodino, they did not lose their spirit. 

Book 14 - Chapter 12 - Khndzorov Tolma, Nigvziani Badrijani, and a Few Insights on Happiness and Suffering

"While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth—that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom."

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter


Khndzorov Tolma
(Apples stuffed with Ground Beef)


8 medium apples
3-4 tbsp butter
2 onions finely chopped
1/4 cups ground beef
1 bunch each parsley and cilantro
Sweet paprika, salt, and pepper to taste
2 cups boiled rice (I used cooked pearled barley)
2 very ripe tomatoes
1 cup vegetable broth

Carefully cut the tops off the apples, and using a spoon, core them, and scrape out some of the apple flesh to make room for the stuffing.  Reserve the apple flesh.


  

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium high heat.  Saute the onions until they start to become translucent.  Add the ground beef, herbs and spices and cook through, adding the reserved apple at the end.  Mix with the rice or barley.  Use the mixture to fill the apples and replace the apple tops.




Puree the tomatoes in a food processor and run through a sieve to remove seeds.  Arrange the apples in a saucepan with their tops on and pour the tomato puree and broth over them.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes or until the apples become tender but do not fall apart. 



Nigvziani Badrijani

1 large eggplant
Salt
Oil for frying (I actually roasted mine in the oven)
11/2 cups of finely chopped walnuts
2-3 cloves of garlic
Khmeli Suneli (spice mixture of saffron, fenugreek, and corriander - I didn't have anything even approximately close to this mixture)
2-3 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp finely chopped cilantro




Cut the eggplant lengthwise into thin slices.  salt each slice and cover it for an hour to draw out the moisture.  Drain and press the remaining liquid from the eggplant (I made this recipe after work and skipped this step).  Fry teh eggplant in hot oil on both sides, remove from the pan and leave to cool (or you could just roast it in the oven).  Dump the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and run it until you have a thick paste.  I didn't have most of the spices for this, so I used a lot of extra cilantro, which made my paste a rather pleasant green color; in the cookbook, the saffron made it a rather pleasant yellow color.  Spread the paste on the eggplant slices and fold them in half so the skin is on the outside.  Let them sit at room temperature for about an hour to let the flavors blend (I skipped this part too, but the leftovers did taste better than the ones I ate right away.)





I was a little hesitant about apples and tomato broth, but in fact it was delicious.  After the uncooked garlic yogurt experience, I was also a bit hesitant of the eggplant, so for the second batch, I put the spread on first, then roasted it.  It didn't make a very appreciable difference except that the pleasing green color turned brown.  These were both good recipes, it was a lot of work to core the apples so carefully, which is why there are only 4 of them in the photo.  The rest of the filling is in my fridge waiting to be steamed into the rest of the apples, which are in my fruit bowl.

About the book:

Pierre has finally been rescued!  By our lost friend Denisov!  But while a prisoner of the French he has learned some powerful insights about his own choices in life; he thinks, "that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet that were covered with sores—his footgear having long since fallen to pieces."  He has even learned to cope with his sore feet, much in the same way that young Rostov has learned to cope with his fear of death during a battle, Pierre simply thinks about other things.  


Rostov's younger brother, Petya, did not learn his older brother's discipline in war.  He did not listen to Denisov before engaging in a mercenary, pointles battle against the French troops, not to defeat them, but to take supplies from them which they were wholly ready to surrender.  He rushed into a token resistence and was shot through the head.  This episode, of course, will be used to highlight my next post where I will take up Kutuzov and his experience of the "glory" of war.  Look for that blog post later this afternoon.


4.04.2010

Book 12 - Chapter 15 - Treska Zapechonnaya v Moloke and Pierre Examines His Metaphysical Soul

"And farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling stars in its faraway depths. 'And all that is me, all that is within me, and it is all I!' thought Pierre. 'And they caught all that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!' He smiled, and went and lay down to sleep beside his companions."

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter 


Treska Zapechonnaya v Moloke
(Cod in Cream Sauce)

To poach the fish:

1 1/4 cups hot milk
2 tbsp butter
2 onions, sliced
1 3/4 lb cod fillet, cut into small portions
Salt and pepper to taste

For the sauce:

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/4 cups milk, reserved from poaching the fish
1 egg yolk
Salt to taste

Heat the milk to almost boiling, add the butter to the pan.  Add the fish and onions and poach for 20 minutes.  Remove fish and onions (if you like your onions more thoroughly cooked, you can separate them from the fish and saute them a bit in the sauce butter) and reserve milk mixture.

When the fish is almost ready, melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat, add the flour to make a roux.  Add the milk mixture and stir over the heat until it is thickens.  Add the sugar and the egg yolk, stirring constantly.  Return the fish to the sauce to heat it through.  Serve with steamed green beans and garlic roasted potatoes.


This was a delicious recipe, quick and simple, and I didn't even have a student crisis that caused me to burn my potatoes.  I omitted the sugar because I don't like things too sweet and I maybe added a little less salt because my mom is visiting, and she doesn't like a lot of salt in her food (I used the shaker to add extra to my plate while I was eating it).  I think this was the real recipe for that "Quick" Chicken that I made back in January that was so eggy.  

About the book:

After living in the POW camp for 4 months, Pierre has lost all his weight and all his fear of the French.  They are treated rather well, in fact, and he personally is given great distinction because he speaks French so well.  It is only on the orders to march, that he encounters again that compulsion he has learned to recognize, "'There it is!... It again!...' said Pierre to himself, and an involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men—that force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to wait and endure."

He is not afraid.  He thinks about his soul and what the French tried to do to him by locking him up in a "shed boarded up with planks."  He smiles at this because he has realized his place in the world, his soul's connection to everything around him.  And he has realized that he cannot be contained by loosely hammered, half-scorched planks scavenged from the wreckage of Moscow.

I was thinking about this and about myself and the people that we know and the ways in which we behave toward each other.  Sometimes we are the "forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance."  Sometimes we are the planks used to hold other souls back.  We don't see it this way at all, but all the same, society always operates in this way.  We think sometimes we are doing what's best, when in fact we are locking ourselves up with the planks.

4.02.2010

Book 12 - Chapter 14 - Vatrushki and Even Patriots Have to Eat

"In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious action bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his efforts are fruitless."

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter

Vatrushki
(Curd Cheese Danish)

For the pastry: 

Russian Yeast Dough (the same that was used for the piroshki)

For the filling: 
2 1/4 cups of soft curd cheese (you can make this by squeezing cottage cheese through a cheese cloth)
9 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp buckwheat flour
Vanilla extract (to taste - I used a capful)
1 pinch salt
Raisins (optional - you can mix them into the cheese, I just pressed them into the tops of some of my Vatrushki)
Butter for spreading on before eating (optional)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and use an electric mixer until it gets to a creamy consistency and the cheese curds become very small.

Putting it all together: 

Roll your dough out to a log and slice it into 20 equal sized portions.  Roll each portion into a ball.  


Press indentations into the dough balls and fill with the cheese mixture.  


Bake at 420 degrees for about 20 minutes, but watch them carefully, the recipe only said to bake until they were golden brown and I nearly overcooked mine (the bottoms only just escaped burning and I would have been much happier had they been a little softer).  Also, some of the filling escaped from the dough.


I really think I'm not meant to work with yeast.  Well, at least not after 5 PM.  I always end up putting it off until too late, leaving it in the fridge overnight, and then it gets a slightly bitter taste to it.  It's not bad, it just wasn't the best option for a sweet danish.  Here are some variations I would make to the recipe for next time:  I would follow the piroshki advice and glaze the dough with beaten egg before baking, that gives it a nice shine and makes it perfectly clear when it turns "golden brown."  The cookbook also stated that you could fill your vatruski with fruit or jam.  I made some that were half jam-half cheese, some that were all jam, some that had raisins, and some that just had the cheese mixture.  I had a half cherry jam-half cheese vatrushka with my coffee this morning, and given the bitter dough and even the slight overbaking, it was pretty good.   


About the book:

Tolstoy makes very bold statements about the results of blind patriotism, "Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they did for the common good turned out to be useless and foolish—like Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded, and so on."  Tolstoy is not trying to say that the feelings which prompt these acts of self-sacrifice are stupid, or useless; rather, that the actions themselves are not well thought out, not regulated, and that nobody follows up on them.  Pierre does a marvelous, generous thing by arming a whole regiment from his own money, but he never looks after that regiment, or even appears to think of it again.  He is not motivated by self-interest; if he had truly wanted to make his generosity redound back on his name, then he would have made sure that his regiment distinguished itself.  He would not leave the men to their own devices.  Tolstoy also says, "most of the people at that time paid no attention to the general progress of events but were guided only by their private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at that period were most useful."  In other words, even patriots have to eat.  If every man who loved Russia at this time had left his fields and sacrificed his family, the whole country would have starved.  It is important to remember that even in war, that which motivates man the most is his own survival; if he lets go of that, his actions risk becoming erratic and inconsequential.   

4.01.2010

Book 12 - Chapter 12 - Giyma Khingal and the Disgust of the French Soldiers

"From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders committed by men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which made everything appear alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything had collapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish."

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter

 Giyma Khingal
(Ground Lamb over Homemade Noodles)

For the noodles:

2 eggs
2 2/3 cups wheat flour
Salt
3/4 cup water
 
Knead all ingredients together to form an elastic dough.  Let it rest for 30 minutes.  Separate the dough into 4 portions and roll into balls.  Roll the dough balls out to 1/16 in. thick.  Cut the rolled dough into rough diamond shapes.  Spread the diamonds out and allow them to dry for 30 minutes.  When you are ready, boil a large pot of salted water and add the pasta to it.  Cook for about 8-12 minutes or until the pasta is al dente.



For the Saffron-Onion Sauce

0.5 g Saffron
7 tbsp lukewarm water
3 onions, finely chopped
2 tbsp butter

Soak the saffron in the water for 3 hours.  Heat the butter in a medium-high skillet and saute the onions until tender.  Add the saffron infusion and heat through

For the lamb:

1 1/4 lb ground lamb
2 onions, chopped
2 tbsp butter

Melt the butter over medium-high heat.  Add the onions and cook until tender.  Add the ground lamb, browning the meat.  Drain off any residual fat.



For the garlic yogurt sauce:

2 garlic cloves, finely minced
1 cup natural yogurt
Salt to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and let stand - the longer it stands, the more garlic flavor you get.  You may want to warm the mixture before serving it.

Putting it all together:

Layer the pasta on the plate, spoon the garlic yogurt over the pasta and top with the lamb.  Spoon the Saffron-Onion Sauce around the edges of the plate or drizzle over the whole dish.  
The book says that any sort of variations can be made to this recipe, using vegetables or other meats (I'm picturing sauteed mushrooms) but that Khingal noodles are always served with garlic yogurt. Sorry, Jay!
 
 
Finding some ingredients is a little harder than others and as I was sitting on the train rolling through the 14th St station, I thought to myself, should I stop here to shop at Whole Foods?  And then I thought, nah... And then I couldn't find saffron anywhere in El Barrio or Harlem. We served ours without the saffron onion sauce and I think we really missed out.

But, it turns out that making your own pasta is quite simple.  From the Galushki mistakes, I learned to start with a dough that was a little more moist and rolling and cutting it was pretty much a snap.  Of course, some of my diamonds were slightly thicker than others and there was a prodigious range of sizes and angles, but in the end, it tasted all the same.

A note about garlic yogurt sauce.  Kitchen helper Jay (who despite throbbing hunger pangs, declined my repeated offers to steam him up some Mrs. T's or just order a pizza, too the time to cook the lamb) hates it.  I thought it was good, but could see his point that the raw garlic is a bit much.  Every internet variation makes their garlic yogurt the same way:  with raw garlic.  If you don't enjoy that strong flavor, a suggested variation is to heat the garlic in a tiny bit of oil first, not enough to brown it, but just enough to take the edge off of it.  Another option might be to try elephant garlic as it has a slightly milder flavor.

We also added steamed spinach to the side, but I thought that would have looked lovely chopped finely, steamed, and mixed right into the lamb.

About the book:

Pierre is a prisoner of war.  He has just witnessed the execution, in pairs, of 4 people, he is the 6th in the next pair.  His partner (#5) is a young boy.  All are accused of arson in Moscow.  They take #5, spare Pierre and the others, and execute him and Pierre cannot look away.  He is disgusted by humanity, and he is not alone;  "'that will teach them to start fires,' said one of the Frenchmen. Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier who was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was not able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he made a hopeless movement with his arm and went away."  Nobody relishes the deaths of prisoners of war and it's clear that the French resent having to carry out this order.  They are repulsed by it, even.  I imagine they hope to make it such a gruesome spectacle in order to "discourage" more arson, looting, and violence.  

This is just another in a long list of examples that Tolstoy pulls out to show us how unnatural are the things men must in a war.  It is frightening because it is so inhuman and yet, they are still able to do it.