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.

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

Book 12 - Chapter 12 - Makarony Po Dalnevostochnomu and Tolstoy Has Started to Play With Time

"But the calm, luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made it hard, except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the difficult position of the Russian people."

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

Makarony Po Dalnevostochnomu

(Far Eastern Style Seafood Spaghetti)

2 tbsp butter
2 small onions, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 red bell pepper and 1 green bell pepper (the Pathmark didn't have green pepper, I used scallions)
1 cup white wine
3 1/2 oz of each of the following seafood items, pre-cooked:
Crab meat, shrimp, sea cucumber, squid rings
3 1/2 oz of each of the following fish, uncooked and cut into bite sized pieces:
Salmon and turbot
1 lb long pasta (I used Fusili Bucati) cooked Al Dente
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh parsley, finely chopped

I couldn't find sea cucumber anywhere.  I had just made a salmon dish the night before.  I cut this recipe down to just the crab, shrimp, and squid rings.  That said, melt your butter over medium high heat and saute the onions until they start to turn translucent.  Add the peppers and garlic (do not let your garlic turn brown - I often do and it adds a smokey flavor that's not the worst thing ever, but is better avoided).  Add your white wine and bring to a boil stirring constantly.  Reduce the heat to medium low; if you are using fish, place the pieces in the sauce and simmer for about 5 minutes, then add the seafood simply to heat it through.  Do not let this boil or leave it too long on the heat, your seafood will get overcooked and turn rubbery.  Serve the sauce over the pasta and garnish with parsley, if you remembered to buy some.  

A few words about squid; last night might have been the first time I have quailed in the face of an ingredient.  The 125th Pathmark carries squid!  It's whole squid with the head and tentacles still on.  I could have handled this but for the tiny fact that they sell it frozen in a giant brick.  I would have had to defrost the whole squid brick, separate the various tentacles from each other and would have been stuck with way more than 3 oz of squid heads.  I retreated to the crab and shrimp section and called my friend Deepak.  Kitchen helper Dee had a far more pleasant experience at the Union Square Whole Foods, where he was able to buy fresh, nicely packaged, cleaned squid bodies, tentacles removed.  They look a little like used condoms.  Thanks to the Minimalist Chef, Mark Bittman, I didn't overcook my squid (too much).

About the book:

One of the challenges of authors with complex plots is how to represent a lapse of time when you are switching between characters.  Kurt Vonnegut relied ironically on "meanwhile, back at the ranch," but most authors, including Tolstoy, generally state at the outset of a new chapter something to the effect of, "while Natasha was plotting to elope with Anatole, Andrew was faithfully writing her a love letter."  Except that after the burning of Moscow he stops doing this.  He jumps from subplot to subplot leaving us to think that we are simply continuing forward in our regularly scheduled timeline.

The effects of this are stunning when he has Vasili Kuragin perform a dramatic reading of the dedication of an icon to the defense of Moscow.  When I read this, I thought, but Moscow's already burning!  And it isn't until halfway through the chapter that you realize Tolstoy has jumped back in time to before the battle of Borodino.  Prince Vasili doesn't know that his son has nearly died.  The characters do not know that Kutuzov has abandoned Moscow or that most of Moscow has burned to the ground.  When the people of St Petersburg get the first misinformation that Kutuzov has won the battle, it comes on the emperor's birthday, "so now the courtiers' pleasure was based as much on the fact that the news had arrived on the Emperor's birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It was like a successfully arranged surprise."  But the reader knows the truth of the battle, and it is this dramatic irony that shapes the pathos which we feel for these proud, pathetic characters.

Book 12 - Chapter 1 - Lososina Tushonaya S Susom Iz Petrushki and Piere Saves Himself and a Little Girl

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

Lososina Tushonaya S Susom Iz Petrushki

(Steamed Salmon in a Parsley [and Butter] Sauce

To steam the fish:

2 Large Salmon Fillets (cut into small portions)
7 tbsp butter (yes, you are reading that correctly)
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup pickeled gherkin brine
1 bunch parsley, finely chopped
1 bay leaf

For the sauce:

1 shallot, finely chopped
7 tbsp dry white wine
3/4 cup fish stock (reserved from steaming the fish)
2/3 cup butter (yes, more and yet more butter), cut into tbsp pieces
Salt and pepper (but you really don't need much salt if you are using salted butter)
1 bunch parsley, finely chopped

To steam the salmon, melt the butter, add the wine, brine, parsley, and bay leaf.  Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover and steam fish for just about 3 minutes.  Set aside and keep warm.

For the sauce, saute the shallots in the wine until the liquid has evaporated.  Add the reserved fish stock and boil until it reduces to half its volume.  Add the butter a piece at a time stirring constantly.  This seems to be some kind of Russian style hollandaise sauce.  Add the parsley and heat through, adding the fish back to the pan to warm it.  Serve with blissfully plain boiled potatoes.

This is a good recipe.  It's indescribably rich (as though it could be otherwise with all that butter!).  However,  two of the people eating it hate sweet pickles (Jay and I).  Here're the changes I would make:  1.  Cut down the butter slightly when cooking the fish.  2.  Cut the brine to 1/8 cup, unless you LOVE sweet gherkins, then you might actually want to finely chop a few and throw them in.  3.  Use a steamer basket to keep the fish out of the stock and prevent its being overcooked.  4.  Strain the fish sauce through a sieve to remove the brown parsley.  5.  Cut down the butter even further for the sauce and maybe add a little more wine.

All in all, everyone enjoyed it, but Yoga was compulsory today in order to feel secure in the right functioning of all arteries.

About the book:

Some people only discover what they are capable of when they are acting in the service of others.  Pierre Bezhukov discovers this in the last chapters of Book 11.  He is driven to do something for Moscow but realizes he hasn't the right temperament to make a good assassin. Instead, he finds himself wandering through flaming Moscow nearly delirious.  He rescues a young girl from the fires and then prevents a French soldier from violating a beautiful young woman.  He is arrested for his actions and taken into solitary confinement but he has yet to reveal his identity.  This might be the event of his life that makes him change from a purposeless nobleman into a man.