Monthly Archives: January 2014

Color in a Dreary World

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As any one who knows me has noticed, I am fond of color.Dr Bear in Colour

Outside of the Bistro this week, the temperatures have been in the single digits. Under cloudy skies, it is a gray, dull, and dismal world. My response to this is to wear bright colors–a robin’s egg blue shirt, some days even purple and gold, tomorrow, my bright red tie with gold dragons. Color is how we strike back at the grayness.

A long time ago, I went through a period when I had a huge amount of black in my wardrobe. Like so many sophomoric college students, I wore black, because it reflected my cool nihilism. My favorite article of clothing was a huge Navy Lt. Commander’s great-coat we had acquired for a play that had an SS officer in it. It was huge, double-breasted, navy wool serge, hand tailored, and intimidating (occasionally, it also served as a blanket or a tent).
I named in Bazarov after Turgenev’s nihilist character in Fathers & Sons, one of my favorite Russian novels.

Then, I went through a series of experiences that showed 21-as-far-as-I-know-the-only-painting-of-me....jpgme more darkness, pain, and meaninglessness than my nihilistic poser mind could have ever imagined.

On the other side, I wore color–bright, loud primary colors.
I decorated Bazarov with Mardi-Gras beads and a pocket watch on the shoulder epaulets and wore a royal blue wide brimmed fedora.

The world is a gray, dark, cold, and dreary place, both symbolically and literally; it needs all the color it can get.
Why not wear purple? Why not red? Why not yellow pants and a green t-shirt? Why not a bright red bow tie and a blue fedora?
Why not splash your yard and garden with bright lilies or red primroses or purple violets? Why not plant maples that will be an explosive orange or a burning red?
Why not add bright carrots and purple cabbage, or rich, royal beets and sweet potatoes or even splashes of saffron or sriracha?

It will color your world, and brighten your day.
I know that it will brighten mine just thinking of you.
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Waltzing (3 Beets)

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One of the things my mom taught me about food was to plan the plate so that there were a variety of colors. This is visually interesting, but also works nutritionally: Carbs tend to be white or tan, whereas healthy, fresh vegetables come in an amazing array of beet salad 1colors. Tans, browns, and greens are fairly easy–even yellows–but brighter oranges, reds, purples, are more rare.
This is a basic broiled beet recipe that can be served 3 ways. As my friend the beet expert points out, raw beets have most nutritional benefit, but these are a good dish. Also, you can just broil beets with a little olive oil and salt, and eat them like that.

First possibility: Broiled Beets

Ingredients:

  • 4 beets
  • 3 sweet potatoes
  • !/3 red cabbage
  • 1/2 red onion
  • olive oil
  • soy sauce or salt
  • red wine
  • other spices as desired
  • 3 cloves garlic

Step 1, Prepare ye the way: Scrub the skins of the beets & the sweets potatoes, and slice them about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch (you could peel them, but lots of nutrients are in the skin; texture, too).slice the cabbage and onion.

Step 2, Shake it up, Baby:Toss the vegetables together, with some olive oil and a bit of soy sauce & red wine. Oil a large iron skillet and put in the vegetables.

Step 3. Turn on the heat: Broil on high, taking out and tossing every 6 minutes, until the edges of the sweet potatoes and beet start to caramelize (“brown” if you aren’t familiar with kitchen lingo, “caramelise” if you prefer English, if you are a real geek, “Maillardize”–however the browning of the onions is pyrolysis because it is non-enzymatic).

Step 4, Watch out! It can burn: Repeat this 4 or 5 (or more) times, beet salad 2until the roots are cooked, but still firm, browned, but not burnt. When you are almost there, add the garlic., and put it back in (warmed garlic is aromatic, burnt garlic is nasty).

Step 5, to table: Serve as a delicious, nutritious and colorful side dish, either in the hot skillet (oh, the drama) or in a dish (oh, I can pass it).

Second possibility: Broiled Beet Salad

beet salad 3Only Step, Salad: Add a bit of vinegar, perhaps some more spices like rosemary to the broiled beets, perhaps some sliced carrots, allow it to cool, and serve it as a salad, or pack it (warm) in a big Mason Jar, and then let it cool and take it on a picnic.

Third possibility: Broiled Beet Soup

If you do this, I recommend undercooking the vegetables.

Step 1, Out of the skillet, into the soup pan: Transfer the vegetables into a soup pot, deglaze with wine, and add vegetable broth.

Step 2, A few extra things: Add a can of drained and rinsed kidney beans for texture and protein, cover and let simmer.Beets & Bialys jan 21 (2)

Step 3, Serve: Spice as desired, and serve with either Bialys or dark bread, and the option of sour cream. Another option is to mix the soup before serving with sour cream or crème fraise, which makes it a garish pepto-bismol pink.

Good Night, Pete Seeger 1919-2014

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Until I had an infant daughter who didn’t mind it if I sang, I wasn’t aware of just how many folk songs I knew. As I sang them, I became aware of how the songs of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and their friends had influenced what I believed and what I valued. Leonard Cohan once talked about how growing up a Marxist made him believe that music would bring the revolution; Pete Seeger believed that his music came from America, grew out of America, and would help show America its best self.
Although I consider Pete’s songs to be some of America’s greatest cultural contributions, he was much more proud of his ability to get people singing, and singing together.
One could have worse legacies.
Pete Seeger PS: My daughter, my parents, & I still sing, Mr. Seeger; anybody can.

 

Alea Iacta Est

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Thanks to Wode Toad for his help with the classical Wode_on_sidewalk_after_closehistory & the Latin. This is one of those times when his work in the classical department at St Andrews comes in handy.

He seems to be restless and pre-occupied, though, of late, and talks of travelling).

In the winter of 49 BC, the Roman General Gaius Julius Caesar had decisions to make. He was camped on the edge of the icy Alps, looking south, across the river.
He had established a strong political base in Rome, then had become governor of the vercingetorix-jules-cesarvarious Roman provinces bordering the tribes in Gaul. The Gauls were the various Celtic Tribes who lived in what is now France, as well as parts of Switzerland and Germany (the Gauls in Galatia–in the Balkans–had been subdued by the Romans earlier). He countered a move by one tribe–the Helvetii–and through a series of quick and effective military maneuvers established control over all of Gaul (Omnia Gallia). The crown of this military campaign was the surrender of the Chieftain Vercingetorix on October 3rd in 51 BC.
Caesar, aware of the importance of media, wrote dispatches back to Rome detailing his campaign and his soldiers’ achievements. The work is in a simple andjules-cesar clear Latin prose, yet reads well–Gaius Julius Caesar is a vivid Storyteller, and his History of the Gallic Wars was popular at the time and made him a popular hero (It is still read; Wode remembers scrumping his uncle’s copy as a tad and following the military campaigns). As an encore, Caesar invaded Britain.
However, back in the senate–the body that ruled the Roman Republic–Caesar’s political power had begun to erode. Although Caesar had power (and troops) on the frontier in Gaul, Rome was controlled by supporters of his main rival–Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus).
Julius Caesar was commanded by the Roman Senate to vacate his post and return to Rome.

The rule was that general could only lead troops–or even carry his own weapons–outside of the boundaries of the state of Rome itself, the northern boundary of which was the Rubicon river. To come armed beyond this point was an act of treason against the Republic of Rome, and a capital offense.
However, approaching Rome unarmed and alone left Caesar at the mercy of his accusers.
As the Roman historian Plutarch puts it:
“Caesar vaticanWhen he came to the river Rubicon, which parts Gaul within the Alps from the rest of Italy, his thoughts began to work, now he was just entering upon the danger, and he wavered much in his mind, when he considered the greatness of the enterprise into which he was throwing himself. He checked his course, and ordered a halt, while he revolved with himself, and often changed his opinion one way and the other, without speaking a word. This was when his purposes fluctuated most; presently he also discussed the matter with his friends who were about him, (of which number Asinius Pollio was one,) computing how many calamities his passing that river would bring upon mankind, and what a relation of it would be transmitted to posterity.”

So there he is.
At the edge of a river, just out of the Alps, in the ice of January, he is hesitating. 400 horsemen and 5000 legionnaires are waiting for his choice, all of Rome is waiting for his choice. A life of forced retirement is facing him if he goes on unarmed, and either death and humiliation or survival rises before him if he takes his army across the river.
He waits, wavering, hesitating, shivering, trying to decide.

Suddenly, he makes up his mind.
He stands up.
He looks south, across the river, and says:
“alea iacta est“–“the die is cast.”
He leads his troops across the river, into Rome, and into history.

Decisions are unavoidable.
Usually, the choices are all a mixed bag, but to not make them is the worst of all.
Julius Caesar was victorious, but his victory would lead to his death 2 years later (and the end of the Republic). To decide is to cast the dice irrevocably, to take a step into the icy waters of the Rubicon.
To live heroically is to accept the responsibility, to embrace the possibility of defeat, but to march on.
Life is uncertain

Destiny Cake (I don’t really have a better name)

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Ingredients:
for the cake:

  •  2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup powdered chocolate
  • 1  tsp.  baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • dash cayenne pepper
  • dash ground cinnamon
  • 1 cup red wine
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 cup dark molasses (not black strap)
  • 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup softened butter
  • 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

for the cherry butter-cream frosting:

  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • dash vanilla
  • 12 Tbsp softened butter
  • 1 cup dried cherries
  • 2 Tbsp unsweetened cherry juice
  • 1 Tbsp Kirsch (cherry brandy)

for the chocolate ganache glaze:

  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
  • 1 Tbsp butter
  • slivered almonds to taste

Destiny_Cake_3Part the First: the Cake

Step 1, Prepare ye the way: Pre-heat the oven to 350, grease & flour the pan or pans, line with parchment covered with almond slices if you like; I think this makes one Bundt cake, two smaller cakes and two or three loaves–smaller is actually better, since it can take forever to cook in the middle..  Also assemble all the ingredients on the counter.

Step 2, sifting the dry ingredients: In a large bowl, sift the flour, chocolate, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and pepper. Set aside.

Step 3, mixing the wet ingredients: in a medium saucepan (leave room; there will be foam), heat the wine–not boiling, but hot. Take it off the burner, and carefully (!) add the baking soda (this is like the elementary school volcano experiment, but also like my soft pretzel/laugen recipe), whisking it smooth. After the foaming subsides, whisk in and dissolve molasses, the brown and white sugars, and the butter, and then, as it cools,  the eggs.

Step 4, combining:  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, maybe about a third at a time, mixing thoroughly. You don’t want pockets of dry, floury ingredients.

Step 5, putting it in the pan/pans: Add half the mixture to the prepared pan/pans, sprinkle this with half of the chocolate chips, then pour in the rest of the mixture and sprinkle with (you guessed this, didn’t you) the rest of the chips. They should sink into the batter.

Step 6, pop it in the oven for baby & me: bake the pans at 350 for 35 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of pans you chose, or until you can stick a toothpick in it and pull it out without it being covered with batter. Take it out, let it sit for a minute or so, then take it from the pan onto a wire rack to cool all the way.

Part the Second: the center frosting

Step 7, cherry-ho! in a mixer, combine the cherry ingredients and cop and puree until as smooth as possible, let this sit–the cherries should absorb the mixture so it isn’t too wet.

Step 8, sugar and egg whites: In a big bowl over a pot of boiling water (yes, sort of like a double boiler, but not as hot), whisk the egg whites and the sugar together until the sugar is no longer grainy, and the egg whites begin to whiten.

Step 9, mix and whip: add the mixture to a mixing bowl, and whip it until peaks begin to form and the mixture almost doubles., add the vanilla, and slowly add the butter, then the cherry mixture. Beat to frosting.

Step 10, stuffing: slice the cake or cakes into several layers, how many depends on how ambitious you are and how the cake holds up. I suggest 3. Frost the bottom slice with the cherry-butter-cream frosting, cover with the next & continue. Finally, top with the top, and shape the sides until smooth.

Part the Third: the ganache

Step 12, so rich and decadent: place the chips in a bowl, and heat the cream in a pan. Have the butter handy.

Step 13, more whipping: when the cream begins to boil, turn off the heat and pour it over the chocolate. As the chocolate melts, whisk it smooth. Add the butter and whisk.

Step 14, glazed and confused: pour the chocolate over the cakes, spreading with a spatula as needed. Do this quickly, since the chocolate will thicken pretty quickly. After it is all covered and smooth, you may cover with the almond slices, or just dust the edges with the almond slices. I left the top blank, and then decorated it with marzipan shapes and cyphers (ALEA IACTA EST).
Destiny_Cake_1
Step 15 share: Surprise a friend or mystify a co-worker. Serve for afternoon coffee with someone you love, deliver to a college student, enjoy life. Like life, this is rich; it is bitter & dark, but also intense and sweet (like some hearts…

A Recommendation

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Asheville-Fringe-and-Arts-Festival-2014Hey, folks!
Just a quick recommendation: Starting Thursday, the city of Asheville, North Carolina will have its Fringe Arts Festival–lots of intense and alternative live art, including a play by a really cool playwright who is also a friend of the Bistro’s: Deborah Harbin. Stuff will be all over Asheville (the poster above is a link), and the play is part of a double-header at the Odditorium on Thursday and Saturday nights at 9:00pm.
Fat_Reserves1

Descartes and the beginning of Modern thought

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Descartes, René 1596-1650It is one of the marks of a great teacher that he or she equips us to move beyond his or her lessons, even if that means that in the rear-view mirror the teacher’s ideas may seem wrong, misguided, or even foolish. I do not particularly like his philosophy, but I have to acknowledge that René Descartes is that kind of thinker–he changed the landscape of our minds.

Let me start with a story:
Imagine the time period around 1619, 1620 or so. A lot of Europe is still medieval–Kings, Knights, Serfs–even the Holy Roman Empire (as either Voltaire or my Mom quipped: “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”). Some parts of Europe are moving beyond that–Empires are grabbing land across the Atlantic, The Renaissance has happened in Italy (and beyond!). Nikolai Kopernik (Copernicus) has already published–posthumously–and Galileo has galleopublished, but then recanted and denied it all in order to avoid becoming posthumous.

Most importantly, Luther attempted to convince the Church to return to its faith, and–inadvertently–started a religious revolution, the Protestant Reformation. With that, with his “Here I stand,” he also challenged the authority of traditions.
This was also the beginning of a long series of religious wars and persecutions and would flow across Europe for the next 100 or more years.

Descartes remained a faithful Catholic, at least nominally, and, as far as we know, sincerely as well. As a young man needing to make his way in the world, looking for adventure, having a good education and a great aptitude towards mathematics–both theoretical and applied–Descartes became a military engineer. Much of his career Battle of White Mountainhere is vague, but he was attached to armies which saw a lot of the most brutal fighting in Europe.
Most notably, his division was at the Battle of White Mountain in Bohemia, where 4,000 Protestants were killed or wounded.

What we have is a bright, sensitive young man, raised as a good, and slightly idealistic, Christian boy, a well-mannered Frenchman, suddenly slogging across Europe in all kinds of weather, watching a war unfold  that started for noble, clear moral reasons, but, as is inevitable, degenerated into the messy brutal thing which war is. He saw men die–of bullets, of artillery, of swords and pikes, of infection and disease. He would have seen villages destroyed, crops burnt or stolen, women raped, children starving.
He came back to the cleaned up salons of Paris, where bright people had effervescent conversations about vital matters, and threw skepticism and doctrine about like toys. He set to writing, looking for the clarity of math and the sciences in a very uncertain world, and trying to salvage certainty.

None of that appears in his writings.

What does appear is a few nights in November of 1619, when Descartes was stuck in a house in Neuburg an der Donau, Germany, sitting by the big stove, thinking and writing. He invented Analytic Geometry, but he also devised a method of logic by which to Georges_de_La_Tour_010ascertain truth. He understood that some of what he knew was either false or unreliable, which made all he knew suspect, and he resolved to test all of his certainties, finding they were all doubtable except one, his own existence. Since he was doubting, there had to be a he who doubted, so he must exist (“I think, therefore I am”). From there he slowly proves his way back to the world, and to God.

All of Cartesianism is fairly involved, but what makes him the “Father of Modern Philosophy,” and one of the first modern thinkers are several things, two of which I’d like to discuss: All truth is subject to proof, rather than simply being accepted from tradition and authority, and the mind and the body are fundamentally different.

To me, it is important to remember that this Copernican shift from tradition and ancient authority to proof and individual conviction was undertaken to defend Descartes’ faith. This shift in philosophy is not an attack upon the Church; it is an attempt to return to certainty after the Church’s failure. Although Medieval Christendom produced some great thinkers, it was hobbled by a corrupt power structure which failed on many levels–one of them the spiritual; the Reformation was a reaction to that failure. The religious wars of the Reformation weakened the “Blessed Assurance” further, so that Humanists like Descartes, Montesquieu, Hobbes or Locke were obliged to look elsewhere.

But finally, Descartes’ contention that the self which thinks, and which can be certain, and which can know, is fundamentally different from the frame that sustains it. Whether Mountain Time 5 shadowor not we believe this, this remains a fundamental way in which our thinking is cast–that my mind and my self are radically different from these 170 pounds of bone, nerve, muscle and sinew, organs–both my own and borrowed–which I seem to inhabit. We think of our body as something (thing? how can the doctor say thing?) we are in, not something we are. It is a wet machine useful for sustaining the mind and for the mind to use, but the mind is other.

This is unacceptable.
The scars on my skin, flesh, bone and nerve are as much me as memories and dreams. The joy of touch and taste is joy for me–regardless of whether I call it skin or sensation or heart or mind. I am my body, but my body is so much more than a complex machine, just as the universe is so much more than the brass model Galileo built.
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Creativity

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As a child, I lived in a great big gray apartment building.
Ulmenweg 4It wasn’t one of those terribly drab Warsaw-Pact Blocks, or one of the horrifying projects in North America, but it was a 1972 apartment building–16 floors, 6 apartment a floor, and the outside mostly slate concrete and river pebble accents.
Inside, the walls were a chalky white paint with a matte finish.
The floors were mostly industrial gray linoleum tile, except for the parquet floor in the living room and the white tile in the bathroom.

My mother found it oppressive.
The unbroken gray floors and brilliant white walls glared at us all cold and sterile. Die erde dreht sichWall after wall, down the hall, the same chalky white.
My mother complained about it–not a lot, but we were in no doubt how she felt about it.
In the living room and bedrooms, she covered the floors with throw-rugs, and hung pictures and posters, but down the hall, the chalky cold white walls resisted any warm color and stubbornly refused to make the place a home.

With some mothers, there would have just been a lot of complaining; my mother bought 4 cans of paint: brown, green, red, and a little black.
As I watched on in disbelief, she walked up to the front hallway, and painted the brown trunk, green leaves, and red apples of an apple tree–outlining and shading a bit with the black.
I stared.
Mom's Apple TreeShe would have hung hooks in the branches for our coats, but the concrete under the white paint proved too hard to drill.

This whole thing

blew       my        mind.

It had never occurred to me that a grown-up would solve a problem by just going out and doing something crazy like this. Splashing paint on the wall! It amazed me–facing a problem down and responding by drawing a mural!
Kids my age were pretty whiney, and unimaginative, and pretty much accepted the world as it was, but here was an adult, facing something that drove her nuts head on, and attacking it with craziness and creativity.

This sort of thing is actually pretty typical of my mom.
She faces a problem, complains about it a little (sometimes a lot), then she tries to come up with a solution that is creative and constructive. Although she is occasionally let down, my mom believes that most problems can be solved with prayer, kindness, hard work, and creativity.

That may be naïve, but I still find it amazing.
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Sweet Potato Pasta

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Sweet Potato Pasta with Beet Hummus a light Tahini drizzleI was feeling creative this week and made a sweet potato & Moroccan spice  pasta with beet humus and a tahini drizzle. The colors are amazing, and the flavors are too.
I promised my source that I wouldn’t publish the beet hummus recipe at this time, since it is part of a research project on beets’ nutritional benefits, but I will try to at a later date.

Ingredients
  • 2 cups flour
  •  pinch salt
  • 3 eggs (at room temperature)
  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • ½ cup baked sweet potato
  • ½ tsp Moroccan spices (Ras el hanout or رأس الحانوت )
Step 1, Sifting: Measure out the dry ingredients (flour & salt) into a sifter. Sift (I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming). You can do this the traditional way, onto a clean Sweet Potato Pasta3surface, or the easy way, into a large bowl.
Step 2, blending: in a food processor or blender, add your sweet potato and spices and chop it to a fine paste. Add the eggs and oil and blend. Put this mixture in the well in the flour.
Sweet Potato Pasta4Step 3, People, people who knead pasta: When mixture becomes too thick to mix with a fork, begin kneading with your hands or your bread hook. Knead dough for 8 to 12 minutes, adding flour as it will take it—the final bit by hand even if you are using a machine. The dough will be harder than bread dough, and smooth and flexible.

Step 4, let it sit: Wrap dough tightly in plastic and allow it to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Step 5, Roll on: Roll out the dough with a pasta machine or a rollingSweet Potato Pasta5 pin to your desired thickness. For the ravioli, I rolled it to about a millimeter. For long Pasta, I prefer it pretty thin. Cut into your favorite style of noodle.

Step 6, cooking: Bring water to a boil in a large pot and add salt. Cook the pasta until al dente, 1 to 8 minutes depending on thickness. Drain, treat, and eat.