Book 8 Chapter 8 - Roast Loin of Pork with Apple Stuffing, Cucumber Salad, Apricot Treat, and War Is Just Chance and Revisionist History

Book:  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes:  Cooking Around the World: Russian and Polish by Lesley Chamberlain and Catherine Atkinson


Music: Nechjotnyj Voin 2 - A collection of Russian Rock Music (Various Artists)

 Cucumber Salad

2 cucumbers scored with a fork to make them pretty and sliced thinly
1 cup sour cream
White wine vinegar (to taste)
Salt and pepper to taste
Chopped fresh dill to taste
(there really were measurements that came with these ingredients but I couldn't even taste the vinegar when I put in the minimal 2 tbsps - I just kept sprinkling it in until it tasted good to me)



Mix all ingredients in a bowl and chill for at least an hour

Roast Loin of Pork with Apple Stuffing

4 lb boned Pork Loin
1 1/4 cup Dry Cider 
2/3 cup Sour Cream
1 1/2 tsp Sea Salt


For the Stuffing:
2 tbsp Butter
1 onion chopped finely
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
2 apples cored, peeled, and chopped finely
1/2 cup raisins (I used the Sun Maid mixed bag)
Finely grated rind of one orange
Pinch of ground cloves

The recipe is adapted from a roast suckling pig which is, according to the authors, a big hit at all the best Russian parties.  The recipe very clearly calls for the rind to be still on the pork loin.  Good luck trying to find that combination without a specialty butcher.  I opted for a pork shoulder with the bone still in it.  I first had to hack the bone out of the center of the meat, leaving a nice hole to fill with stuffing.  Of course, if you can find a loin cut with the rind, you should just cut a neat, not ragged, pocket into the center in order to fit the stuffing in.  Saute the onions in the butter, add the other ingredients (it will be a little dry at first but will cook in very nicely).  Stuff the meat, tie it off with kitchen twine, but if, after tearing apart your kitchen and living room, you still can't find your kitchen twine, I'm sure it's acceptable to use embroidery floss instead (I used the white color, just to be on the safe side of any dyes). It says to score the rind with a very sharp knife, but I guess my sharpest knives were not up to the task so it went unscored. Mix the hard cider and the sour cream or you could just use a Yuengling if that's handy and the hard cider is not. I think straight hard cider would have been tastier (Special thanks to Jay for carrying over the hard pear cider before getting my message about no longer needing it! It's yummy all by itself, I promise.).  Put the pork rind-side down into the liquid mix and bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 30 minutes.  Flip it over and baste with the juices and cook for an hour, basting again at the half hour mark.  Then turn the oven temperature down to 350 and cook another 1 1/2 hours or until the juices run clear and the crackling is crisp and crackly.Wrap the pork in aluminum foil and let it rest for 20 minutes before carving.

Apricot Treat

1 cup dried apricots
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup almonds
1/3 cup chopped candied orange peel and 3 tbsp of water - (OR the juice from the orange that you pulled the rind off earlier when you made your pork stuffing - if you can't find candied orange peel in Harlem)
Whipping cream, to serve
Cinnamon to sprinkle on the whipping cream


Drop it all into a food processor, blend it up till forms a nice sticky paste and then roll it into a log.  Slice it up and lay it out on the plate all pretty with it's whipped cream and decorative cinnamon.  

Dinner was delicious, the pork was very tender, the leftover beer/sour cream mixture cooked down into a tasty gravy, the stuffing was raisin/applicious, and the cucumber was an excellent accompaniment.  Folks were eating seconds and begging for more.  The begging part is an exaggeration, but there were second helpings.

  Dessert was a nice, not too sweet "treat."

We also finished the last of the chocolate vodka so I will be considering revised recipes in the near future.

About the Book:  War is depressing.  We know this.  But I've never read a book that so clearly captured the arbitrary nature of war so well as this one. I think, beyond the marriage mania and lasting romantic figures, it is the descriptions of the war that make this novel so gripping.  There are so many careless mistakes recorded and happy accidents and tragic oversights.  And everyone is so much more concerned with how they will come out looking that they have no care for what is right, what is logical, or what is necessary.

There are miscommunications that happen at every turn and while they are looking for one major, he is getting the word that he should meet the generals elsewhere.  Cowardice prevents people from sounding the retreat and a whole left flank is left to die not knowing that they should have withdrawn hours ago.  A cannon company is left with no covering troops through cowardice and desertion and the French are afraid to attack it because they think no fool would leave their cannon uncovered; Napoleon's general assumes that if they go near it they will be overwhelmed by reserves.  Those cannons give the Russians their first partial victory over the French, but the leader of that crew is blamed and almost taken down in rank for "losing 2 cannons." Only a chance comment from another office saves his rank.
 
Based on this retreat/victory they want to take the offensive to Napoleon.  They decry an old soldier for not wanting to attack Napoleon because he refuses to take Napoleon for granted.  When it becomes clear that they are going to lose, the architect of the plan keeps his own regiment out of the battle.  He doesn't fight.  The opposing General leads his troops in faithfully (regardless of the fact that he and all his aides know it is a death march) and he is wounded almost to death.  He is blamed, along with the Austrians, and the young man who stays out of it is decorated for having the foresight to keep his troops together and alive. This is the battle of Austerlitz.

It is amazing to me that a war can take place at all.  Forget about the fear of the men or the grenades and grapeshot and cannon fire.  It's amazing to me that the armies can even get that many men to the right battlefield in the first place or keep them going on short rations and no shoes.

About the music:  My first encounter with Russian Rock. Some of it's good and alternative sounding.  Some of it's terrible and thrashy.  Some of it's electronica and not too bad.

Chapter 1 - Quick Sour Cream Chicken, Cauliflower Fried in Butter, Roasted Potatoes and Dill, and Napolean is Just Another Robespierre

Book:  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes:  Potatoes Roasted in Olive Oil, Dill, and Sea Salt
Cauliflower Fried in Butter
Quick Sour Cream Chicken

Music:  Tchaikovsky -Serenade in Strings

Potatoes Roasted in Olive Oil, Dill, and Sea Salt 

(The potatoes I just threw together.  I read some kind of Russian Recipe for Potatoes and Dill, but couldn't find anything too authentic on the internet that didn't involve soup or mushrooms. )

Ingredients:  
1 Bag Baby Red Potatoes
Olive Oil for Coating
Sea Salt for Sprinkling
Dill

Heat oven to broil.  Set a timer for 15 minutes.  This is most crucial.  Otherwise, you may forget about them or a student's parent might call and engage you in a frantic search for her son and you will end up with mostly burned potatoes which otherwise would have been perfectly crispy and delicious. The salvaged remains (from the bottom and edges) will prove this to you in a most disheartening way as you throw away the blackened bits.

Cauliflower Fried in Butter

Ingredients:  
One Head of Cauliflower (trimmed and separated into florets)
2 Tbsp Flour
Salt and Pepper to Taste
2 Tablespoons butter 


Steam the cauliflower until just tender.  Coat with flour seasoned with salt and pepper and pan fry in hot melted butter until brown and crispy on all sides. 

Before engaging in this, retreat from the frustration anything in your life might be causing, such as lost keys, check books, or students.  By no means should you go on a rant about said missing item when it is suddenly discovered to have been hanging out with his wayward friends, lying to his mother, and cutting your class.  Any of these actions may lead you to leave the cauliflower in the flour too long so that it gets caked rather than just coated and to subsequently, and in anger, throw it all into the pan before the butter is hot enough.  The result?  Soggy cauliflower that you have a sense would have been much tastier had you calmly dusted it with flour and salt, added a few tablespoons of olive oil to your butter, heated the pan properly, and browned it more quickly. 

"Quick" Chicken

Ingredients:  

1 ea average chicken (I just used 5 chicken thighs)
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup sour cream
2 ea eggs
salt
pepper

Fry the chicken in butter.  I took a cue from Julie and Julia and dried my meat to make it brown better.  Darned if that wasn't about the only thing that was easy to make happen.  Cover the pan and stew the chicken for 15 minutes. Open it and leave on very low heat. Beat eggs and stir in sour cream. Pour the sauce into the pan on low heat, stirring regularly, until the sauce thickens. 

Here's my take on this recipe:  It was like coating chicken in very moist, creamy scrambled eggs.  Scrambled because I might have still been ranting about a student instead of stirring, and eggy simply because the 2 eggs to 1 half cup of sour cream was just too much egg.  I suggest reducing to one egg and, if you like sour cream, increasing to 1 cup.  I would also get boneless, skinless chicken, since the nice crispy skin I had achieved was sort of boiled out of it by the sauce. 

NB:  When attempting to recover a failed chocolate vodka, you can try chilling it, and that will take some of the edge off the burn and the chocolate will not precipitate out.  You can also try adding ice to it and serving it with some cream, which takes the other edge.  However, in the end, the dulled blade still remains and you should buy better vodka.

All said and done, the meal did not taste bad, even the soggy cauliflower was suggestive of better days gone slightly to fat.  It was not so good as to put me off my desire to paper cut a certain teenager with his report card, but I did enjoy some for lunch leftovers today.

(My food photography may need some work - but look at that scrambled egg sauce...)

About the book - I have only read chapter 1.  The Russians in this chapter seem to see Napoleon as no better than another Robespierre profiteering on the chaos of France. They speak about the "hydra of revolution" which implies that he is simply one head of many, and all bent on destruction. His power; however, is perhaps the greater as he has set himself up above the people whereas at least Robespierre had remained party to the tribunals who eventually engineered his demise. The impression Tolstoy leaves us with from this speech is that there was no delineation between the revolution and Napoleon's upstart wars.

As for the 2 characters you meet in chapter 1, Anna is charmingly and pretentiously called "Annette" and litters her conversation with 3 generations of genteel French phrases.  What a cruel ironic blow it must have been to those raised to think of Paris as the center of culture, worthy of emulation, having to see their beloved mentors reduced to the rotten red (to borrow a phrase from Dickens) of the guillotine.  And Prince Vasili, "who like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed" should prove to be quite the standard, villainous, social grasper.   I think I'm going to enjoy reading this book. 


About the music:  Tchaikovsky, procured by Jay (thank you!), was playing all through the dinner cooking.  I don't know how to write about classical music, but it was lovely.

A last note about this project - one person, Eric, has already offered to forward me a recipe.  Thank you!  I would love to see them.  Scouring the internet is tiresome and not always authentic - I am going to make a bookstore trip soon for a Russian Cookbook, but in the meantime, if you know any foolproof (student-crisis proof?) recipes, please pass them on.

W&P: Chapter 1 - Recipe 1 - Chocolate Vodka

Book:  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Music:  The Counting Crows - This Desert Life
Recipe:  Chocolate Vodka

Chocolate Vodka

Ingredients:

1 Bottle Vodka

2 Bars Dark Chocolate - Shaved (I dumped my bars into a food processor - worked like a charm)

Heat a pan of water almost to boiling.  Place the vodka bottle in the water and add shaved chocolate until the vodka cannot absorb any more.

Easy?  Here's some good advice if you want to avoid my mistakes:

First - Don't buy cheap vodka.  Smirnoff burns.  I know what you're thinking, why waste expensive vodka by putting some shit in it?  Answer:  this is a sipping drink.   Nobody sips Smirnoff.  Well, nobody should.

Second - Use a funnel, but don't put it into the bottle while the bottle is heating.  This will heat your funnel, make your chocolate melt and clump,  and clog up the whole works.  Toothpicks are useless in solving this dilemma.

Third - Don't leave your food processor cup closer than 7 inches (any closer is reasonably safe for the cup, but not for the chocolate) to the warm pan.

Fourth - Don't attempt to make this drink when you have just had a one-sided argument with the voice mail left by your health insurance company, when the groceries for your Sci-Fi movie night have not been delivered on time, or when your guests are arriving, you have nothing to feed them, and you're up to your elbows in clumpy, half-melted chocolate trying to force it down the neck of a Smirnoff bottle with your bare hands.

My kitchen looked a bit like the dwelling place of monkeys with poo flung on the walls.  

Hindsight is 20/20 - Next time - I will pour the vodka into a double boiler (or rig one with a glass bowl - I don't have a real double boiler), upend the food processor bowl simply and efficiently over the vodka, stir it, cool it, then use the funnel to get the vodka back into the bottle. 

The sci-fi night crowd politely sipped ("I'm going to have to shoot this," said Jay [whose proposed pseudonym "Biscuit" I had to overrule]) their chocolate vodka, grimaced on the sly, and this (completely unconfirmed) advice was passed along to me, which I will now share with you:

On using Smirnoff in an emergency - running it twice through a Britta filter (so "they" say) will remove the offensive afterburn.

So much for the recipe; on to the book... I haven't started it yet.  I will be reading the first lines of it before bed tonight.  Preliminary thoughts?  It's long.  My students would say, "that looks thick, Miss!"

So much for the book;  now on to the music.  I have been promised, when I make my first real recipe, that there will be Russian music to accompany it.  I believe Tchaikovsky was mentioned.  For now, don't you just love the Counting Crows?

Riding on the Successful Shoulders of Giants

Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants (Latin: nanos gigantium humeris insidentes) is a Western metaphor meaning "One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past"; a contemporary interpretation. However, the metaphor was first recorded in the twelfth century and attributed to Bernard of Chartres. It was famously uttered by seventeenth-century scientist Isaac Newton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants


I am copying another person's ideas - sort of. I am going to keep a blog (probably not every day) about reading literature and cooking. I am probably going to talk a lot about my friends and their crazy lives. I will definitely give out pseudonyms. I will include recipes and give credit to the places I find them. I will talk about characters and story lines and symbols and metaphors. I will talk about drinks and the dinner parties where there should be music, food, and entertaining discussion about literature and culture. I might ruin a few endings for anyone who hasn't read the book under discussion.

About me: I love to cook. Not for money, but for my friends. To me, the best part about cooking is when I am in the kitchen and I can hear my friends in my apartment eating appetizers, drinking, and talking about who-cares-what. I also like to read. I read all the time, and I read just about anything I can get my hands on. This lead me to purchase a Kindle 2, which in turn lead me to the second part of the inspiration for this blog. You see, lots of Kindle books are free. War and Peace is free. War and Peace is a book that I have never read, but have always intended to read. Seeing that it was free, I downloaded it onto my Kindle 2 about 2 months ago. I read a lot of other, shorter novels and one memoir since then. That memoir was Julie and Julia.

That's when I got this idea, as a joke, to read War and Peace, and teach myself how to cook Russian food. Friends were actually encouraging about the idea, even more so when I started telling everyone that the first recipe I found was for Chocolate Vodka.

Ashley: Can you make that this weekend?

Then I thought, why limit myself to just one cuisine and one novel (albeit a very long one). Why not read some Murakami and learn to make sushi? So, this is where I have landed myself.

If I were to write a disclaimer to Julie Powell for stealing her ideas, it might look something like this:

Dear Julie Powell,

Thanks.

Love,
k