Book: The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria
Recipes: The Brazilian Kitchen by Leticia Moreinos Shwartz
Moqueca de Galinha e Banana-da-Terra
(Chicken and Plantain in Coconut Stew)
6 chicken thighs
4 tbsp oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 scallions, sliced on the diagonal
1 green bell pepper, sliced
1 red bell pepper
1/2 cup white wine
4 cloves garlic, pressed
1 small piece of ginger, finely grated
3 cups chicken stock
1 can coconut milk
3 tbsp tomato paste
2 bay leaves
1 lb ripe plantains (look for yellow and black skins)
3 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and sliced
4 tbsp cilantro, chopped
Wipe the chicken pieces with a paper towel to remove all moisture. Heat oil in a casserole pan and brown chicken 3 pieces at a time, about 3 minutes on each side. Remove chicken to a bowl and cover with foil. Add the onions and peppers, stirring often until soft, about 4 minutes. Add the white wine and reduce by half, deglazing the pan. Add garlic and ginger and cook for another minute, stirring constantly. Add stock, coconut milk, tomato paste, and bay leaf and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to lowest setting. Return the chicken to the pan along with any juices that have collected in the bowl. Cover the pan and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove lid and continue to simmer another hour; the chicken should be extremely tender. Meanwhile, trim the ends off the plantains and peel away the skin. Chop the fruit into 1 inch chunks. Add the fruit and scallions to the stew, cover and simmer for an additional 15-20 minutes, or until the plantains become soft but not mushy. Garnish with cilantro. Serve over steamed rice.
I'm not yet an expert at selecting ripe plantains, or I undercooked them, because mine were a bit chewy. A lot of these stews are starting to taste the same to me though; apparently, Brazil has many different ways to braise chicken. I will try to cook some more recipes that deviate from this.
About the book:
Basically, our hero Bras has gone and had his first young man's love affair. As the object of his adoration, he has chosen Marcela, an older woman with an eye for what she can get out of a young man with money. He runs up many debts and for once actually elicits genuine anger from his indulgent father. Bras is seduced by her wantonness saying, "I saw her get out of a sedan chair, graceful and eye-catching, a slim, swaying body, elegant—something I’d never found in chaste women."
He is forced to leave her for a university degree overseas. Returning for his mother's funeral, he retreats into the country where he meets the love child of his mother's neighbor and friend. He starts a romantic intrigue with her after promising his father that he will marry another woman, the Virgilia he speaks of during his madness. He is baffled by her Eugenia's beauty though, as it seems to come with a price or a curse, "The worst of it was that she was lame. Such lucid eyes, such a fresh mouth, such ladylike composure—and lame! That contrast could lead one to believe that nature is sometimes a great mocker. Why pretty if lame? Why lame if pretty?" He also judges her for her origins; "Eugênia’s first kiss came on a Sunday——the first, which no other male had taken from her, and it wasn’t stolen or snatched, but innocently offered, the way an honest debtor pays a debt. Poor Eugênia! If you only knew what ideas were drifting out of my mind on that occasion ! You, quivering with excitement, your arms on my shoulders, contemplating your welcome spouse in me, and I, my eyes on 1814, on the shrubbery, on Vilaça, and suspecting that you couldn’t lie to your blood, to your origins." His intentions are never pure, but it's not entirely clear whether he courted her only, or seduced her in the process. He certainly took many of her kisses.
He runs away from her, back to the city, duty, his father, and his prospective bride, with whom he truly falls in love. And fate, or metaphysics, or rotten luck brings him back to a Marcela, now scarred by small pox, transformed from a sort of courtesan into a working woman, but still with an eye for money. He is repulsed by her. He carries his repulsion back to Virgilia, superimposes Marcela's scars onto Virgilia's face. Virgilia seems to sense something of this and retreats from him. He loses her and his deputyship to a more ambitious man. These are his reflections on it: "Put a ball into motion, for example. It rolls, touches another ball, transmits the impulse, and there you have the second ball rolling like the first. Let us suppose that the first ball is called ... Marcela—and it’s only a supposition. The second Brás Cubas—the third Virgília. Put the case that Marcela, receiving a flick from the past, rolls until she touches Brás Cubas—who, reacting to the impelling force, begins to roll, too, until he runs up against Virgília, who had nothing to do with the first ball. And there you have now, by the simple transmission of a force, two social extremes come into contact and something is established that we can call ... the solidarity of human aversion. How is it that Aristotle left that chapter out?"
In my mind, he is getting only what he deserves.
