Garlic Wisdom

Spent a good deal of the day assembling the Lamb-and-white-bean cassoulet from page 292 of Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France (p. 292-4*). It's a glorious dish and requires no special skill, but it does require lot of time and tedious hand labor. It occurs to me there is a fairly obvious economic story here. To do this kind of cooking, you will need someone in the kitchen with a fairly low opportunity cost on their time--a retiree (!) or, more traditionally, a granny in an economy where there just aren't that many skilled jobs to begin with. She can multitask by managing some child care--and the precise and delicate fingers of a nine-year-old girl are probably pretty handy for, e.g., stuffing those little slices of garlic into each individual collop of lamb. Now, if somebody would tell me where in Palookaville I can find a dish of pickled walnuts...

Afterthought: I guess I did enjoy one consolation that granny perhaps did not have--an Ipod with a download of the week's Economist. Now,that is double-tasking.
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*There's a newer edition. I link to my beloved and gravy-stained old favorite.

Live épaul d’agneau Blogging

It’s a lovely day here in Palookaville and we disport ourselves in unseasonably balmy breezes while we await the 112-degree temperatures that will surely arrive next month. Also en route to Chez Buce: weekend guests, so I undertake to whip up a batch of Paula Wolfert’s épaul d’agneau à la Catalane—Lamb with Garlic and White Beans (en pistache). As an achievement of Western culture, I’d say this dish ranks right up there with Le Nozze di Figaro and E-MC². This recipe is not nearly as difficult as physics or opera, but it does take time and attention: when Paula Wolfert says to do something, you do exactly what she says, and your whole life will be better. Also, I admit I am never nearly as fast as the cooks who create the recipes—when Wolfert says “one hour,” I get ready for “two” (and I must say, I don’t understand why Rachel Ray’s pants are not permanently on fire).

I’ve learned that I can’t work without something in my ear, so last night I downloaded an audio of Michael Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy (link), with high hopes of learning a little something about the Middle East. This morning I found I couldn’t find my favorite earphones, so I lugged the laptop out to the kitchen and, positioning it suitably far enough away from the counter, I fired up the BBC. So, what shall it be? News? No, I’d learned enough about Gordon Brown’s new cabinet last night, and I figured I’d learn more than I wanted to know about the nail-bombing without even trying. So I flipped over to the on-demand streaming and picked up a lovely James Naughtie series on the history of music (link). After I got sick of Naughtie, I tried to link over to a performance of Tom Stoppard’s Albert’s Bridge. Couldn’t find it (am I too early?) so I had to settle for a dramatization of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (link).

Meanwhle Mrs. Buce was puttering in the garden. She’s not particularly self-confident about pruning, so she recruited our neighbor Brian, who has spent a lot of his life managing farm property, to give her a hand (note to self, bake some bread for Val and Brian). Brian now and I can see she has her Ipod on: from the look on her face, I’ll bet she is basking in Juan Diego Flórez’ Barber of Seville (link).

And so it goes. There is nothing particularly novel here, so I will settle for two perhaps already well known to all of my readers.

• You can live anywhere. In a long and not terribly corrupt life, I’ve spent time in New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Washington, with predictable sidetrips elsewhere. I won’t say Palookaville is “better” (maybe Rome?). I will say it really doesn’t matter. With the whole galaxy an earbud away,it hardly matters. And price of real estate is lower.

• What a bunch of spoiled brats we are. That we is inclusive—not just us, though it certainly includes us.

Beans are bubbling, gotta run.

Fn.: The lamb cassoulet is in Wolfert’s The Cooking of South-West France 292-4 (1983) (link).