The Cookbook of Confusion, The Cookbook of Schmeckens
Recipe for Confusion
1 Cathedral
1 Organ
1 Musician
4 Composers, in chronological order
350 German tourists
The main cathedral in Bamberg runs a Saturday concert series of organists from around Europe. Each week, they ship in a new organist from the Czech Republic, France, or Germany and put them to work cranking out the big, big sound of the großen Orgel. This week's offering was Birgitte Fruth, a church musician from Passau, who has been playing various organs around Germany since the early 1990s. Her concert was an interesting chronological tour of the last four centuries in popular church music, featuring Melchior Frank, Johann Sebastian Bach, César Frank, and the late Jean Langlais.
I was somewhat skeptical after the last organ concert I attended two weeks ago, in which I was forced to sit directly beneath the organ. This left me with the impression (which I presume to be false) that the organist was rather sloppy. The basso thundered too often, the treble trembled beneath it, and all that was left were the middle octaves, which do not carry much of the weight in organ music. The complex interplay of tumbling, high arpeggios and rumbling, earth-shaking, bouncy bass chords was lost.
In order to avoid a similarly disturbing organ trip (which I blame for my subsequent and sudden decision to leave town for a few days), I arrived early today and held down a seat directly across from the organ pipes. The organ itself is situated about two-thirds of the way up the main wall of the cathedral, almost exactly halfway along the length of the central aisle. Although I cannot comment on the acoustics of this decision, it seems that the location of the organ was at least as much a function of "Gee, where the hell are we going to put this thing?" engineering as anything else.
However, Fruth's playing was lively, light, and suprisingly jovial. Frank's Allemande und Galliarda was a poppy Renaissance throwback, complete with wonderful trilling chords and those characteristic, pseudo-Byzantine arpeggios. Bach's "Von Gott will ich nicht lassen" was a genuine toe-tapper, while his Praeludium und Fuge in C-Dur managed to range far and wide over the octaval possibilities of and organ. (What else would you expect from the guy who wrote Tocatta and Fuge?)
The real treat, however, was Frank's Prélude, Fuge et Variation in h-moll, an initially brooding piece that builds to a wonderful, bright conclusion. The Prelude was bright and crisp, but Fruth brought out some wonderfully shadowy tones, which carried her straight into the Fuge. Dragging some of those brooding, lingering low chords into the Variations, Fruth effectively bridged an otherwise radical shift in tone. I was delighted that she kept the volume of those chords low; where the bass had crashed a few weeks earlier, it now gently murmered discontent.
In the end, Fruth threw everything out the window and completely befuddled the crowd with 20th Century composer Jean Langlais's Incantation pour un jour Saint. The subtitle on the program mutters something about a "Meditation über das 'Lumen Christi' und gregorianische Themen der Osternacht," but "Gregorian" seems to be far from the composer's intention. In a concert of mostly cheerful, energetic pieces, Incantation was a violent, iconoclastic mangling of chords. It sounded as if someone had let Revueltas rewrite a John Williams piece, filling it with clashing, inharmonious rumblings which break away to desperately high peaks of trilling, flutey notes that are continually overrun by the disharmonious bass octaves. The final chord, which lasted a full ninety seconds and contained just the barest hint of a salvation in the form of barely audible trills in the upper registers (1), left the audience appreciably stunned. The caucaphony over, the crowd sat in stunned silence for several seconds, wondering whether there was something more uplifting, energetic, and positive to come. It was only Furth's appearence above the keyboard that brought together the hands of the assembled.
The applause was polite. For her part, Furth seemed pleased at the confusion.
Recipe for Chicken
Chicken Breasts smothered in mushrooms, onions, and bleu cheese, served with zucchini and rice (pilaf or risotto)
I made this up yesterday while out shopping.
Cook the chicken breasts with olive oil and chopped garlic. (Always chop the garlic! Do not get lazy and press it -- your taste buds will thank you, afterwards.) Use a medium heat, which helps keep the garlic from burning until the chicken is done.
While chicken is cooking through, chop onion(s), mushrooms, and zucchini. Separate the zucchini, as they have Marxist tendencies and will try to overthrow you and establish a Vegetable Brotherhood hegemony over your kitchen.
When the chicken has cooked all the way through, but is still tender, transfer it to a baking dish (which you might want to have greased). Generously dole out the bleu cheese over the chicken breasts. Get the oven fired up to about 150ºC (let's call it 325ºF).
Boil some water for the rice.
In the chicken pan, which should still have some browned chicken bits, garlic, and olive oil (if you have to, add a little more oil, but not too much!) toss the onions and mushrooms together. Do not leave them in for more than a couple of minutes; if you let them cook too long, they'll get all mushy in the oven. Once they have a bit of oil on them and the onion has just started to pale, transfer the whole mess (including garlic) to the baking dish, over the chicken, which should be politely wearing the bleu cheese.
Put the dish in the over for the next 15-25 minutes. Keep an eye on it!
By now, the rice should be going along nicely.
In the chicken pan, add a little more olive oil and sauté the zucchini, which by now probably has fairly low morale and is ready for consumption. Season to taste -- a little black pepper and salt goes a long way.
In the oven, you should be able to see the mushrooms and onions baking and the cheese melting. Real bleu cheese gets gooey at room temperature, so do not expect to see that nice, thick cordon bleu which you get at cheap restaurants. (They, and I will not name names, usually use a swiss and/or a cheddar or emmanthaler cheese to get that thick cheese-hat on your chicken.) Instead, real bleu cheese will get runny and start to simmer in the bottom of the baking dish.
When the chicken juices, olive oil, cheese, and vegetable drippings are mingling in a friendly fashion, take the chicken out of the oven. Now you can do one of two things:
1) Serve it up. Delicious!
OR
2) Take the chicken and vegetables out of the dish, put the rice into the drippings, and maybe mix in some parmeseano or feta cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until you have a firm, yet pliable, risotto.
Serve the chicken, mushroom, and onion mixture over/alongside the rice/risotto and zucchini.
Additional suggestions:
Variation: Add some (not a lot!) of slightly watered-down cream of mushroom soup to the baking pan while cooking the chicken. (Careful -- this might overpower the vegetables.)
Seasoning: Flavor the chicken during initial whitening with dill and coriander, or maybe ginger and mustard for a more raucus flavor; alternatively, toss some rosemary and some quartered Yukon gold potatoes in with the chicken while baking.
Wine: I always prefer red, but any very dry wine would be acceptable.
(1) In fact, I am still wondering whether I heard those notes at all. I may have imagined them as a way of forcing a positive resolution on this otherwise overwhelmingly gloomy piece.
1 Cathedral
1 Organ
1 Musician
4 Composers, in chronological order
350 German tourists
The main cathedral in Bamberg runs a Saturday concert series of organists from around Europe. Each week, they ship in a new organist from the Czech Republic, France, or Germany and put them to work cranking out the big, big sound of the großen Orgel. This week's offering was Birgitte Fruth, a church musician from Passau, who has been playing various organs around Germany since the early 1990s. Her concert was an interesting chronological tour of the last four centuries in popular church music, featuring Melchior Frank, Johann Sebastian Bach, César Frank, and the late Jean Langlais.
I was somewhat skeptical after the last organ concert I attended two weeks ago, in which I was forced to sit directly beneath the organ. This left me with the impression (which I presume to be false) that the organist was rather sloppy. The basso thundered too often, the treble trembled beneath it, and all that was left were the middle octaves, which do not carry much of the weight in organ music. The complex interplay of tumbling, high arpeggios and rumbling, earth-shaking, bouncy bass chords was lost.
In order to avoid a similarly disturbing organ trip (which I blame for my subsequent and sudden decision to leave town for a few days), I arrived early today and held down a seat directly across from the organ pipes. The organ itself is situated about two-thirds of the way up the main wall of the cathedral, almost exactly halfway along the length of the central aisle. Although I cannot comment on the acoustics of this decision, it seems that the location of the organ was at least as much a function of "Gee, where the hell are we going to put this thing?" engineering as anything else.
However, Fruth's playing was lively, light, and suprisingly jovial. Frank's Allemande und Galliarda was a poppy Renaissance throwback, complete with wonderful trilling chords and those characteristic, pseudo-Byzantine arpeggios. Bach's "Von Gott will ich nicht lassen" was a genuine toe-tapper, while his Praeludium und Fuge in C-Dur managed to range far and wide over the octaval possibilities of and organ. (What else would you expect from the guy who wrote Tocatta and Fuge?)
The real treat, however, was Frank's Prélude, Fuge et Variation in h-moll, an initially brooding piece that builds to a wonderful, bright conclusion. The Prelude was bright and crisp, but Fruth brought out some wonderfully shadowy tones, which carried her straight into the Fuge. Dragging some of those brooding, lingering low chords into the Variations, Fruth effectively bridged an otherwise radical shift in tone. I was delighted that she kept the volume of those chords low; where the bass had crashed a few weeks earlier, it now gently murmered discontent.
In the end, Fruth threw everything out the window and completely befuddled the crowd with 20th Century composer Jean Langlais's Incantation pour un jour Saint. The subtitle on the program mutters something about a "Meditation über das 'Lumen Christi' und gregorianische Themen der Osternacht," but "Gregorian" seems to be far from the composer's intention. In a concert of mostly cheerful, energetic pieces, Incantation was a violent, iconoclastic mangling of chords. It sounded as if someone had let Revueltas rewrite a John Williams piece, filling it with clashing, inharmonious rumblings which break away to desperately high peaks of trilling, flutey notes that are continually overrun by the disharmonious bass octaves. The final chord, which lasted a full ninety seconds and contained just the barest hint of a salvation in the form of barely audible trills in the upper registers (1), left the audience appreciably stunned. The caucaphony over, the crowd sat in stunned silence for several seconds, wondering whether there was something more uplifting, energetic, and positive to come. It was only Furth's appearence above the keyboard that brought together the hands of the assembled.
The applause was polite. For her part, Furth seemed pleased at the confusion.
Recipe for Chicken
Chicken Breasts smothered in mushrooms, onions, and bleu cheese, served with zucchini and rice (pilaf or risotto)
I made this up yesterday while out shopping.
Cook the chicken breasts with olive oil and chopped garlic. (Always chop the garlic! Do not get lazy and press it -- your taste buds will thank you, afterwards.) Use a medium heat, which helps keep the garlic from burning until the chicken is done.
While chicken is cooking through, chop onion(s), mushrooms, and zucchini. Separate the zucchini, as they have Marxist tendencies and will try to overthrow you and establish a Vegetable Brotherhood hegemony over your kitchen.
When the chicken has cooked all the way through, but is still tender, transfer it to a baking dish (which you might want to have greased). Generously dole out the bleu cheese over the chicken breasts. Get the oven fired up to about 150ºC (let's call it 325ºF).
Boil some water for the rice.
In the chicken pan, which should still have some browned chicken bits, garlic, and olive oil (if you have to, add a little more oil, but not too much!) toss the onions and mushrooms together. Do not leave them in for more than a couple of minutes; if you let them cook too long, they'll get all mushy in the oven. Once they have a bit of oil on them and the onion has just started to pale, transfer the whole mess (including garlic) to the baking dish, over the chicken, which should be politely wearing the bleu cheese.
Put the dish in the over for the next 15-25 minutes. Keep an eye on it!
By now, the rice should be going along nicely.
In the chicken pan, add a little more olive oil and sauté the zucchini, which by now probably has fairly low morale and is ready for consumption. Season to taste -- a little black pepper and salt goes a long way.
In the oven, you should be able to see the mushrooms and onions baking and the cheese melting. Real bleu cheese gets gooey at room temperature, so do not expect to see that nice, thick cordon bleu which you get at cheap restaurants. (They, and I will not name names, usually use a swiss and/or a cheddar or emmanthaler cheese to get that thick cheese-hat on your chicken.) Instead, real bleu cheese will get runny and start to simmer in the bottom of the baking dish.
When the chicken juices, olive oil, cheese, and vegetable drippings are mingling in a friendly fashion, take the chicken out of the oven. Now you can do one of two things:
1) Serve it up. Delicious!
OR
2) Take the chicken and vegetables out of the dish, put the rice into the drippings, and maybe mix in some parmeseano or feta cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until you have a firm, yet pliable, risotto.
Serve the chicken, mushroom, and onion mixture over/alongside the rice/risotto and zucchini.
Additional suggestions:
Variation: Add some (not a lot!) of slightly watered-down cream of mushroom soup to the baking pan while cooking the chicken. (Careful -- this might overpower the vegetables.)
Seasoning: Flavor the chicken during initial whitening with dill and coriander, or maybe ginger and mustard for a more raucus flavor; alternatively, toss some rosemary and some quartered Yukon gold potatoes in with the chicken while baking.
Wine: I always prefer red, but any very dry wine would be acceptable.
(1) In fact, I am still wondering whether I heard those notes at all. I may have imagined them as a way of forcing a positive resolution on this otherwise overwhelmingly gloomy piece.
<< Home