Petit poulet
Kathleen's at Mass, and I've just slid into the oven a nice little chicken stuffed, not in the chest cavity but between the skin and the breast, with persillade. My version of persillade involves taking two or three surplus cooked breakfast sausages, a handful of parsley leaves, and a couple of cloves of garlic, and whirring them into a grainy blend. Kathleen and I don't eat the breast meat, so it doesn't matter if the persillade turns out to be too loud. We eat the dark meat, and throw the white into salads... Megwoo at IHeartBacon noted the other day that the current issue of Saveur has a big spread on bacon, and indeed it does. But I would never follow the prescribed recipe for fried bacon - which is, after all, the way most people cook it. Over medium heat for five to fifteen minutes? No way. I melt bacon, over very low heat for as long as two hours. I use an AllClad nonstick griddle. The bacon, so very evenly cooked, turns almost the color of mahogany. I slip the bacon into a warm oven while I make pancakes or French toast. (French toast is a great way of using up homemade bread before its lack of preservatives starts to show.). Weekends only, you understand... But enough about food. I discovered a fantastic piece of music yesterday, one that I didn't even know existed, Jacques Ibert's Ouverture de Fête (1940). I know nothing about Ibert (1890-1962) beyond Escales, a Ravelian trilogy of tone poems on Mediterranean themes that was much recorded in the old days. This overture could not be more unlike. In a blind hearing, I'd take it to be the work of an English composer sensitive to Austrian influences, particularly the Austrian influence of the wretchedly undervalued Franz Schmidt (who did make the mistake of writing a hymn to the Anschluss - but to make up for, he died the following year). The performance took place in Paris in 1974, under the baton of Jean Martinon, who must have scoured the town for bold and brassy trumpeters. In a magnificent passage that (trust me) suggests Bruckner tweaked by Gershwin, the brass choir lets go with a disciplined abandon the likes of which I've never heard, either in concert or on disc. Sorry to rattle on so about obscure music, but - let me put it another way: Ibert's Ouverture de Fête will bring Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage immediately to mind. And wait till you hear who commissioned it!.... We were to have had the roast chicken, by the way, last night, but I'd forgotten about tickets for a program of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Dvorak by the Guarneri Quartet at Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. Quite the sellout: there were about a hundred listeners on the stage itself. More about that anon.
