I did little these two days, outside of feeling sorry for myself. Well, I went to the supermarket and found a neat package of three pork brains, that the following day turned into a delicious déjeuner. First you soak the brains in milk and salt overnight, “to extract the blood”. By lunch time you pat them dry, take off the dura mater membrane, and roll them in flour. At the same time you put butter on a pan, remembering Julia Child’s advice that “the trick to cooking with butter is to use a lot of butter”. Once the butter starts to brown you braise the brains. While they braise you cut a handful of shallots in small slices and add them to the pan, together with salt. Once the shallots are cooked add a splash of white wine to deglaze the pan, and allow the whole thing to cook for a few minutes until it reduces in half. The final touch consists of adding a couple of generous table spoons of crème fraiche and two dollops of butter (yes, more butter!), a mix of thyme, marjoram, and lavender (and whatever else you heart desires), and the juice of one lemon. Mix gently to create a creamy sauce and let it cook for another five minutes to let the flavors meld, and in the meantime cut open two croissants. Garnish a plate with juicy slices of tomato, and serve the cerveaux a la crème over the open croissants. C’est ci bon!
A couple of things I
had forgotten to mention were that (1) during my visit to La Micoque I
had collected several flint nodules, with the idea of trying to reproduce one
of the prehistoric artifacts I have seen (unbeknownst to many, in the early
1980’s I did some research on the distribution of archaeological obsidian in
Mesoamerica and learnt how knap crude blades), and (2) while bicycling along
the Atlantic coast I collected four coquilles Saint-Jacques or scallop
shells in English or concha de Vieira
in Spanish; in short, the shells that look like the symbol of the Shell Oil
Company. I collected them as symbols that Margarita, Chrissy, Raimond, and
myself are going to become Peregrinos del Camino de Santiago in less
than three days.
Add the two items
together, and I conceived the idea of knapping some small burins out of flint
(or silex in French), so I could make two small holes on each shell, to
pass a string to them so each of us can carry a concha over our chest,
which for over 1,000 years has been the symbol of the pilgrims that by the tens
of thousands follow the different routes of El Camino to arrive to
Santiago de Compostela and visit the resting place of Santiago, the Apostol. Of
course you can buy a shell raised and processed in China for a few euros at any
of the innumerable tourist shops, but in this way I hope that this symbol of
our pilgrimage will become something special for our small band. It sure took
some time because my burins would lose their sharpness rather quickly, so I had
to keep knapping new ones. Once I had the holes made, I realized I didn’t have
any suitable cordage and had to jump on my bike and go to the other end of town
to buy a suitable thin but strong line at Decathlon, which gave me a good
excuse to do some exercise and catch some sun.
I am sure I will have
lots of opportunities to talk about this, but in the Middle Ages devout
Catholics were encouraged to make three holy trips: The first one to Jerusalem,
as a palmario or bearer of palm fronds to visit the Holy Sepulcher, the
second one to Rome, as a romano to pray at the tomb of Saint Peter
Apostol, and the third one to Compostela, as a peregrino to pray at the
tomb of Santiago Apostol. Nobody knows where the other ten apostles rest, so
praying at their tombs was not feasible. There is a slight similarity with the
Muslim visit to Mecca, as a hajji.
And now I ponder, how
did Sanctus Iacobus in Latin became Santiago in Spanish? Google has a couple of
hypotheses handy. For example, it could come from Hebrew, where Iacobus could
have morphed into Ya'akov > Iago > Yago, and thus Sanctus Iacobus became
San Thiago in Portuguese and San Tiago in Spanish. Why did Spanish-speakers
merged San Tiago into Santiago remains an interesting question. I am sure there
are also plenty of paths through which Iacobus could have morphed into Jacques
in French, Jacob in German, and James in English.
And why is the city
where Santiago rests called Compostela? One story tells us that Santiago and
Mary came together to the Iberian Peninsula, and Mary was followed by a trail
of stars. As they stopped to rest, the peasants saw the stars settle around the
plain where Mary had sat, turning it into a Campus Stellae, or
Compostela.
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