It rained last night, so the town was shiny and fresh when I went for a long walk. For the rest of the day I threw myself into my writing work and did fairly good progress. Having skipped breakfast I can now start thinking about a late lunch. I need to keep busy.
Today I will cook for you my cervelle de veau (calf’s brain). First, early in the morning I took it out of its package and admired it. Dr. Warner, my Veterinary Anatomy instructor, would have been proud of me. I recognized the cerebellum and the brain stem, and when I dissected the left and right lobes could peer into the corpus callosum. I cut each lobe in half along the central sulcus, and very delicately peeled the dura mater and the main blood vessels. Then I placed the clean pieces in cold water with some salt and a dash of vinegar, and let it rest in the refrigerator for about four hours.
Brains are an exceptionally delicate meat, and if you don’t watch out you can easily break them. So I put some water to simmer, with a leaf of bay laurel and a teaspoon of herbs de Provance, and just before it broke into a boil I added the brains and let them plump for about 5 minutes in the hot water. After they cooled down the really delicate part of the operation was about to start. The meat is very soft and creamy, so to give it a good texture you add salt and pepper and then roll the pieces in flour, ready to be added to a hot skillet with olive oil and butter. You cook them in the hot oil and butter until the flour starts to crust, then you turn them with care and wait for the other side to get crunchy. The idea is that when you eat them you will have a crunchy crust and a creamy interior. To add to the crunch, in a separate skillet you melt butter over a lively fire, and once it starts to brown you add a generous amount of capers, the juice of a lemon, and bread croutons.
For serving, I like the idea of serving the crusty medallions over two split croissants and bathing them with the buttered capers and croutons. Delicious!
Since I arrived in the Périgord I have been looking for a performance of Cyrano de Bergerac but have been constantly foiled by seeing the placard of a performance that happened a couple of days ago or, like what happened in La Rochelle, being at the right place at the right tome just to find out that the tickets were sold out. Finally, by absolute serendipity, I found a recorded performance by La Comedie-Francaise in YouTube. It is a very long play (5 acts), so today Monday I interspersed my work with seeing one act at a time. It is such a beautiful play, but I am afraid my French is not good enough to follow the fine points of the dialogue, or follow Cyrano’s witty dialogues about what a clever man could have said about his nose, a duel in rhyme, or his trip to the moon. I did read the play in Spanish when I was young (yes, many years go), and in fact re-read it many times, and the translation in verse was impeccable, so I know what is being said. I just cannot follow the flow and music of the original ☹
In retrospect, I believe I was fascinated by the fact that Cyrano was smart but unattractive, which played well with my own adolescent insecurities. One of my favorite retorts was “I might not be handsome today, but you will be stupid all your life”. Then again, in the lines of Rostand, J'ignorais la douceur féminine at some key turning points of my life, so maybe that is why I felt such a strong affinity for Cyrano. To follow up, here is a gift for you, from the pen of Francisco Quevedo (1580 – 1645):
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