It struck me that while there are many seemingly comprehensive lists of titles for the canon of Great Books in the western tradition, I have yet to see a satisfactory one for music. There are plenty of listicles (and albums) of supposed greatest works, but the criteria used to create such lists are often disappointing to say the least.
For example, this one has only two composers (J S Bach and Vivaldi) before the classical era, and a disproportionate emphasis on twentieth century works–not to mention that both those “old” composers are still post-baroque harmonic revolution. One radio station compiled 400 greatest works of the past 400 years, but we know that the canon of western music extends long beyond this arbitrary cut-off. Their list’s inclusion of Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium as well as one work by Hildegard von Bingen gives one hope, until realizing they also include the 90s pseudo-classical hit “Time to Say Goodbye.”
Surely the world can do better than this! And surely we can make a list more reflective of the past 1,000 years of music at least. Both music and the Great Books have traditions long, long before the enlightenment–let the lists reflect that!
What works would you add to canon of western music?
Josquin Desprez, one of the Renaissance’s greatest composers
This recipe is from the Wall Street Journal (May 31st, 2018) and chef Katianna Hong. The lemon and thyme combination takes center stage as the chicken and croutons are bathed in a marinade made by blending copious amounts of lemon juice and fresh thyme along with shallots. It’s quick, too, as long as you don’t have to send your husband scrambling to the store for missing ingredients, as I did! Apologies in advance for the lack of good photos! I didn’t plan ahead to blog this one, but decided to go ahead and post it after several people asked for the recipe! 🙂
A little toasted at the edges, mais delicieux!
I would make two edits/clarifications to the recipe next time I make it: 1. Make sure the croutons are not under the chicken, as this will make them soggy. The ones nestled around the chicken were perfect. I reflected this change below. 2. Consider making the marinade paste thinner with either more olive oil, or perhaps a splash of a nice dry white wine. The original recipe implies that it is supposed to be very liquid, so perhaps there was simply a transcription error in the WSJ? It was certainly delicious, but the finished product could have an even better texture if the marinade were thinner. You don’t want too much liquid as you want the croutons to dry out while roasting, but a little more certainly won’t hurt. I’d aim for adding another 1/4-1/2 cup of liquid in the marinade.
Lemon Thyme Chicken and Bread Roast
Total time: 45 minutes
Serves: 4
6 Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (I’d be more inclined to go boneless)
Salt
1 1/2 lemons, zested and juiced (zest before juicing to save yourself frustration!) PLUS 1/2 lemon cut into thin rounds
1/4 cup olive oil (or more–see notes above recipe)
3 whole shallots, roughly chopped
Leaves from 20 sprigs of thyme, plus 8 sprigs for garnish while baking. (but who’s counting?)
3 Tbs butter
6 cups crusty bread, diced
1/4 cup chicken stock
6 garlic cloves, skin on (yes, that means no awkward garlic peeling attempts)
Preheat oven to 450 degrees and generously season chicken with salt.
Blend lemon zest, juice, olive oil, shallots, and thyme leaves until smooth.
Toss chicken in the blended marinade, and let sit 15 minutes to 24 hours. (obviously refrigerate if leaving more than 15 or so minutes)
Just before going into the oven. The original recipe called for 6 thighs, but I found it was barely enough marinade for 4!
Arrange chicken in buttered cast iron skillet or baking dish, and nestle bread around chicken. Pour chicken stock over bread, and top off with remaining marinade. Make sure chicken is well-soaked. Tuck the whole garlic, lemon rounds, and thyme sprigs hither and thither around the chicken.
Roast about 25 minutes (I think mine took longer?), until bread is crisped and chicken is nicely browned and internal temp is 165 degrees. WSJ recommends loosening bread with spatula and then serving straight from pan.
Open a bottle of French rosé, toss a light green salad with a swish of olive oil, dash of vinegar, and teaspoon of mustard, and Bon appétit!
*When we study the Great Books, we aren’t studying certain ideas so that we might be able to regurgitate them and map out a nice history of philosophy. We’re studying the Great Books so that we might imitate the authors of this great conversation. (Or, in some cases, so that we might avoid their flaws.) Reading the great books is not an apprenticeship in cool ideas, it is a apprenticeship of mimetic virtue, under history’s greatest men and women.
Saint Augustine in His Study, by Botticelli. We should want to be like Augustine, not just understand his ideas.
Of course there is much overlap, and mastery of certain concepts is not a negligible goal. But if mere mastery of concepts is our priority, rather than what I’ve heard Andrew Kern refer to as an education in virtue, then our education makes us no better than very intelligent computers.
*Thoughts inspired by Dr. Christopher Schlect’s lecture, “Assessing Teachers, Assessing Ourselves,” from the 2018 ACCS Conference: Repairing the Ruins.
Commonplaces from C. S. Lewis’ Discarded Image, a seminal work for understanding a long-lost way of thought.
“Whatever else a modern feels when he looks out at the night sky, he certainly feels that he is looking out–like one looking out from the saloon entrance on to the dark Atlantic or from the lighted porch upon dark and lonely moors. But if you accepted the Medieval Model you would feel like one looking in. The Earth is ‘outside the city wall.’ When the sun is up he dazzles us and we cannot see inside. Darkness, our own darkness, draws the veil and we catch a glimpse of the high pomps within; the vast, lighted concavity filled with music and life.”(118-119)
“The human imagination has seldom had before it an object so sublimely ordered as the medieval cosmos. If it has an aesthetic fault, it is, perhaps, for those of us who have known romanticism, a shade too ordered…Is there nowhere any vagueness?” (121)
This recipe is borrowed directly from the fabulous Smitten Kitchen. If you aren’t a regular reader of Deb’s blog, you should be! Her recipes, both original and adapted from others, are inventive and thoughtfully-tested. She has just the right combination of laissez-faire about non-essentials, with a dose of perfectionism about making sure a recipe will actually turn out.
I love how simple this recipe is–one whole lemon (peel and all), whole eggs, sugar, and butter are the 4 main ingredients. Nothing to juice or zest! My only significant edit was a splash of Grand Marnier liqueur to the lemon filling. After all, what isn’t glorified by the touch of Grand Marnier?
1 lemon
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 stick (8 Tbs) unsalted butter, cut into large pieces
4 large eggs
2 Tbs cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt (I used about half that since I used salted butter)
Splash of Grand Marnier to taste
9 inch pie or tart shell, parbaked.
Preheat oven to 350. Make sure you didn’t forget to parbake the pie shell like I did once. Place pie shell on baking tray lined with foil in case of spills.
Remove ends of lemon, cut lemon into thin rounds and remove any seeds. *If* the peel looks thicker than 1/4 inch, peel half the lemon. Otherwise, use with whole peel. Toss lemon rounds, sugar, and butter into food processor and blend until smooth. Unless you really want substantial lemon rind chunks in your teeth, blend until very smooth.
Add eggs, cornstarch, salt, and Grand Marnier. Blend till smooth.
Pour filling into pie shell and bake for 35-40 minutes in the center of the oven.
You may need to cover the tart with foil during some of the baking to prevent excessive browning. This was the only part of the recipe I’m still working out the details on, but watch it, cover if browning too fast for your liking, and jiggle to check if it’s set. When it no longer does a shimmy-shake in the center, it’s done! Warning: this tart is addictive.
Elise Crapuchettes’ work could hardly come at a more apropos time. Even within the evangelical church, this year has seen a new wave of Christian feminism, symptomatic of the continued unease which women feel in their vocations. Is the answer to go assert perceived rights in church leadership as a means of validating our womanhood? Or can we find validation outside of specifically spiritual vocations?
Christian and non-Christian women alike are bombarded with the message that “real,” fulfilling work happens outside the home. Feminists tell us that leaving the workforce to have children and raise them is a waste of our potential. Popes and Feminists: How the Reformation Frees Women from Feminism is a breath of fresh air, bringing answers to these questions from a historical, thoughtful, and biblical perspective.
Elise Crapuchettes begins her tale by telling us her own story, and how she became convinced that she ought to go into “full-time Christian work,” in spite of her desire to primarily be a wife and mother. Fast forward past law school, divinity school, marriage, and 5 kids, and she began to realize that there was in fact more to vocation than full-time ministry.
Elise Crapuchettes, author and momma to five.
Elise began researching the role of women in the Reformation, and how they set the example for what it means to be a godly Christian woman fully living out her vocation. Elise draws fascinating parallels between the medieval church’s view of vocation, and modern feminism’s view of vocation in the context of motherhood. The pre-Reformation church had a tendency to place a premium on sacred vocations—you could become a nun, or you could do the less holy thing and become a mere wife and mother (and often end up in a purely pragmatic marriage for political alliances’ sake). (The same view applied to men, but that’s a topic for another book.)
The women of the Reformation (and the men around them) turned this worldview upside down. Many women even left the convents they were cloistered in and married, to the horror of the Roman church and their families. But many found true freedom in Christ in their new callings. They began to realize that the work they did in serving their homes, being helpmeets to their husbands, raising children, and exercising their many and diverse God-given talents was just as much holy work as the “ora et labora” (“work and prayer”) with which they filled their convent days with. As Martin Luther and other reformers taught, all work is holy work to God.
Elise brings us along on a fascinating whirlwind tour of the lives of no less than seventeen women who all served the God in various ways through the work God had called them to. Some are names you may have heard, like Katie Luther or Jeanne d’albert, but many are little-known heroes, like Olympia Morata or Louise de Coligny. Some left a legacy through being a helpmeet to their husbands, some were authors, some held political power. But regardless of earthly position or honor, all served God and knew that they could best serve him on His terms, not the terms of the culture around them. Elise thoughtfully highlights the multi-faceted nature of these women’s vocations—Katherine (Von Bora) Luther, for example, held down more jobs than many a career woman could imagine, as she ran a house, a farm, a brewery, raised children, fed boarders, and more.
Jeanne d’Albret, one of the many inspiring women whose story is told in Popes and Feminists.
The book wraps up with a brief discussion of what these stories and this Reformational legacy mean for us as twenty-first century women. The women of the Reformation stood against the tide of their culture, and found marriage and motherhood to be worthy, God-glorifying vocations. Likewise, Elise inspires us to live more fully, more sacrificially, more courageously, and more biblically for Christ, whether in tending toddlers, feeding a crowd, or, like Jeanne d’Albret, commanding an army.
We live in a confused culture. Popes and Feminists brings clarity and truth, cutting through the lies of feminism and bringing to light the stories from our sisters in Christ of another century, whose shoulders we can stand on as we find our place in this century.
What ho! After a quiet spring filled with lots of new things–like figuring out how to tend a fussy newborn while stirring a pot on the burner, how to stay sane during 2 am feedings, and wondering how anything so tiny can have so much personality–I’m back, +1 and plus a recipe. Mundum, please meet Francis Henry Athanasius Abraham. He’s all smiles 90% of the time, and only fussy for the important things in life, like demanding more milk, pretty please and thank you. In fact, one could quite accurately say that he does indeed cry over spilt milk.
But excited as I am to introduce Francis, the reason I finally got back to Ye Olde Blog is that I made financiers. No, not the investor kind. The kind with browned butter and crispy edges, a tender interior and subtle almond flavor. The Best Kind. I was quite surprised to find out that they’re quite easy to make, and am curious to try variations now. (Hazelnut financiers, anybody?) I used David Lebovitz’s recipe from My Paris Kitchen, and highly recommend it. I also recommend getting your babies to take longer naps than mine did when I thought I had a free window of nap time to make this recipe. But I digress.
Alright, here’s the recipe. Financiers are usually made in small rectangular molds, but I used madeleine molds because I don’t yet have the kitchen arsenal of a Michelin restaurant. Any similarly sized mold should work fine–just watch and adjust the cooking time. Madeleine molds took a couple minutes less than Lebovitz called for.
3/4 Cup almond meal or almond flour
1 Cup powdered sugar
6 Tbs all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
8 Tbs unsalted butter, cubed
3 large egg whites (1/2 cup total)
Whisk dry ingredients together.
Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat, and stir frequently until the butter turns a rich golden brown, akin to maple syrup, and accumulates little dark bits in the bottom. It will melt, foam and probably sputter before it changes color. Look for a heavenly smell, like salted caramel, as it finishes. (More foam may accrue while it browns.) Take off heat and let cool.
The batter should have a smidge of gloss
Meanwhile, stir egg whites into dry ingredients. Once butter has cooled (think warm not hot), stir in to batter and thoroughly combine. Cover and refrigerate for 1-24 hours.
Preheat oven to 400 F. Oil or butter molds, and fill with mounded tablespoons of batter. Firmly tap the tray on the counter to reduce air bubbles. Bake 12-15 minutes until they begin very lightly browning at edges and center springs back to touch. Cool a few minutes in the pan, then transfer to cooling rack. Store up to 5 days in an airtight container.
“The ginger is the thing wherein I’ll catch the essence of the zing…” So might Hamlet have said were he making this recipe. But it’s true–the thing that turns this from a perfectly average crumble to a really great crumble is the zing of the crystallized ginger (well, and the citrus, I think). My sister-in-law made it sans crystallizedginger and with less butter, and found it mediocre. Use abundant butter, and make sure you have all requisite spices too.
I was a skeptic until I tried it, but the freshly-grated nutmeg really is superior to the stale stuff that sits in your spice jar for several years! Now I get excited whenever a recipe calls for nutmeg–even though it’s not one of my favorite flavors on its own. Unlike with front-and-center spices like cinnamon or vanilla or ginger, you don’t usually want your tasters to say “oh, this has a nutmeg flavor!” Think of nutmeg like makeup foundation. If it’s the first thing you notice on a woman’s face, her makeup has failed her. It should be there, discretely enhancing and blending with the more panache-ey elements like blush or lipstick. Or, to switch metaphors, while cinnamon and vanilla are like the showey violin and cello in a string trio, nutmeg has the humility of the viola–making the music hang together while everyone says “mmm vanilla bean!”
This recipe is adapted from pages 221-2 of the Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites cookbook, which you really should be buying everyone on your gift list in hopes that they’ll love it so much they’ll gift you a copy too next birthday. Because this is the kind of cookbook the world needs more of: cleverly innovative, diverse, and utterly approachable. Deb Perelman calls this recipe “Wintry Apple Bake with Double Ginger Crumble.” I like to call it “Apple-Ginger Panache Crumble.” If a crumble could speak with panache and take a dramatic bow after introducing you to its flavors, this one would. And it’s at its best day 2. So if you make it for guests, be sure to make extra.
Filling:
3 large, firm, tart apples (I used winesap)
Zest and juice of half a lemon
1/4 tsp cinnamon
5-7 gratings of fresh nutmeg
A pinch of ground cloves
1 Tbs Grand Marnier (feel free to improvise with other liqueurs, but I love the bright citrus against the mellow apples)
Contents of half a vanilla bean (or 1.5 tsp vanilla extract)
3 Tbs granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
Topping:
2/3 cup butter
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup almond meal
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 Tbs (or more) minced crystallized ginger
Preheat oven to 375
Peel, core, and slice apples into 3/4-1 inch wedges. Arrange in 2.5 quart stoneware baking dish. (The original recipe uses a 9×13 inch baking dish, which would probably work just fine too, though the apples and topping will be a little less densely-packed.)
In a small bowl, combine remaining filling ingredients and mix well. Pour over apple slices and toss to coat.
Melt butter in large bowl or saucepan and stir in sugars. Stir in remaining topping ingredients. Clumps should form quickly, but if not, just add a smidge more flour until they do.
Sprinkle clumps over apples, and voila! pop it into the oven. Cook until apples are fairly tender to the poke and topping is lightly browned, about 30-40 minutes. Serve warm with softly whipped cream.
(Perelman’s recipe says 40-45 minutes, and maybe my oven or the adjustments in dishes made a bigger difference than anticipated, but mine was done much closer to the 30-40 minute mark, and that was even with turning the temp down when it starting browning faster than I wanted it to.)
Once again, I utterly failed at snagging photos of this recipe, so you’ll have to make do with a hasty partial shot of the assembled dinner including the cabbage in question. To be honest, this is one of my more approximate from-memory recipes as I didn’t realize how delicious and worth-saving it would be till after I had thrown it together with the odd jumble of ingredients I had on hand!
I served it with simple boiled potatoes, bison wieners and a Greek lamb sausage that happened to be on sale at Whole Foods. While none of the ingredients were exactly traditional and the cabbage isn’t technically pickled like choucroute/sauerkraut, it made a delicious hearty dinner reminiscent of the Alsatian Choucroute Garnie I grew up loving in France! Don’t forget the butter and mustard on the table when you serve it!
1 shallot, diced (you could replace both the pickled onion and the shallot with a diced medium onion of any type)
1 apple, diced (I used honeycrisp)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup honey
Salt and pepper
Cook bacon in dutch oven on medium high heat until bacon is cooked and fat rendered, then add cabbage, red onion, shallot, apple, vinegar, and honey. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook covered on high heat for about 10 minutes. Turn heat down to low and cook for an hour, until all ingredients are tender and flavorfully melded. Serve with boiled small potatoes and sausage (preferably something German). Make sure to provide butter, salt, and a robust dijon mustard on the table!
Ok, so originally this was a recipe for a classic American baked potato soup. But the recipe, in an attempt to be healthy, used a head of cauliflower and two potatoes. As I was making it I realized this would probably turn out a similar soup to the classic French Cème du Barry soup my dad used to make, so I did a little scouting via the Google and my dad’s recipes and in the end the soup morphed into some Franco-American hybrid creation. Quite a tasty hybrid, too!
Crème de la Bastille, or just Potato Cauliflower Soup
Crème du Barry is supposedly named after the Duchesse du Barry, one of Louis XV’s mistresses.
The Duchesse du Barry, famous for extravagant gowns and jewels.
Given its resemblance to the aristocratically-named Crème du Barry, but with the added rustic element of potatoes, it only seemed fair to give the name a 1789 proletariat twist. This is the soup that results when elegant Madame la Duchesse du Barry meets the peasantry and says “let them eat soup!” (Incidentally, after writing that I found out she was herself in fact a victim of the vile Mme. Guillotine!)
If you want a more American name, you could call it Baked Potato and Cauliflower Soup. But where’s the pizazz in that?
This recipe is adapted from “Too-Good-to-Be-True Baked Potato Soup,” in Gina Homolka’s The Skinny Taste Cookbook.
Crème de la Bastille:
2 Russet potatoes
1 Head Cauliflower, cut into florets
1-2 Shallots, diced
2 Tbs Butter
2 Cups Chicken Broth
1 1/2 Cups Milk
1/2 Plain Greek Yogurt (or sour cream)
1/2 Cup Whipping Cream
4 Tbs Chives, chopped
1/2 Tsp Grated Nutmeg (Freshly-grated is glorious if you have some whole nuts!)
Abundant grated cheese to garnish. I used a mixture of classic sharp cheddar and Swiss Gruyere.
6 slices of well-cooked bacon, chopped, for garnish
Poke each potato all over with a fork and microwave them for 5 minutes. Turn them over, and microwave for an additional 3-5 minutes. Let cool, then peel and chop the potatoes. (The original recipe also suggests baking the potatoes for an hour at 400 F, and had I had the time, I would have done it that way. But rest assured, the microwave-bake will work just fine for a soup. Just don’t tell your microwave-conspiracy-theory friends. I also left some skin on when I peeled the potatoes. Texture and vitamins and all that.)
Fill large pot with about 1 inch water and bring to boil. Place cauliflower in steamer basket, and steam until tender, 5-8 minutes. (Using a small steam basket and pot, mine took probably less than 15 but more than 5 for sure. I know, watching the clock isn’t my forte.) Remove cauliflower and drain. Set aside.
Return pot to stove and heat butter till foaming. Add diced shallots, cover, and sweat (think like a lower-temp sautée where you don’t want to caramelize the shallots) in butter over medium-low heat until tender.
Add cauliflower to pot along with potatoes, broth, and milk. Bring to boil. Use immersion blender (careful not to splash as it will still be very hot!) to blend until smooth. Add yogurt and whipping cream, as well as chives, salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste, reserving some chives for garnish. Stir well and bring to simmer for about 10 minutes.
Adjust seasonings one last time. Dole out and garnish each bowl with cheese, bacon, and chives. Bon appetit!
What ho! After a quiet spring filled with lots of new things–like figuring out how to tend a fussy newborn while stirring a pot on the burner, how to stay sane during 2 am feedings, and wondering how anything so tiny can have so much personality–I’m back, +1 and plus a recipe. Mundum, please meet Francis Henry Athanasius Abraham. He’s all smiles 90% of the time, and only fussy for the important things in life, like demanding more milk, pretty please and thank you. In fact, one could quite accurately say that he does indeed cry over spilt milk.
