The Rag Blog

Richard’s Rich Tortilla Soup (2 January 2001)

This soup was not what I expected – I have had many versions of tortilla soup, but this one takes the prize! I believe the squash is the secret.

I have a funny story to go with this recipe. A long-time Texan friend (known him for more than 35 years), who contributed several things to this book and whose Mom of Mexican background did all the childhood cooking, asked me for a recipe for tortilla soup.

I had already come up with this one, so I sent it to him. He lives in Austin now, so easily would have found all the chiles and other ingredients. The night he was making the soup, he phoned in a bit of a panic. He asked me why his soup was “glow-in-the-dark” green.

To make a long story short, he had used fresh green poblano chiles instead of the correct dried New Mexico and dried ancho chiles. He’s made me give thought to how I write recipes, but so many other people have praised the effort and the dishes they have prepared using the first book that I think I should not be too concerned.

Sorry for emphasizing the dried thing below. Vic tells me, “You must write with clarity.” This recipe completely takes away Vic’s breath. By the way, anchos and pullas do not exist other than dried. It’s kinda like the matter of Inuit words for snow, all 40-something of them. Whatever ….

The recipe also appears in KCTS Cooks Favorite Recipes.

3 or 4 dried ancho (or NM) chiles, stems and seeds removed
2 dried pulla chile, stem and seeds removed

Bring about a cup of water to almost boiling, then pour it over the chiles that have been placed into a small bowl. Soak the chiles until the squash is baked.

1 small yellow-meated, Winter squash, halved, cleaned of seeds and strings, and lightly coated with olive oil (butternut, acorn or delicata squash are all great)

Bake the squash at 350° F. for about 45 or 50 minutes, until tender. Scrape the meat from the squash into a food processor or blender. Also add the chiles and about 1/2 cup of the chile soaking liquid. Process until a smooth liquid.

2 small Spanish onions, diced
3 Italian garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
8 Roma tomatoes, chopped (or a 14-ounce can diced tomato)
1 tablespoon epazote (optional, but important)
2 tablespoons cumin
1 teaspoon fresh-ground pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups low-fat chicken stock (or vegetable stock)

In a 4-quart pot, heat the oil, then add the onions and garlic. When transparent, add the remaining ingredients, stirring well. Also add the squash and chile purée. Simmer slowly until the tomatoes are broken down, about 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

I also sautéed some button mushrooms, as follows:

12 large button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter in a little frying pan, then add the mushrooms and salt and pepper. Don’t touch the mushrooms, until they are a bit dry and caramelizing. Add them to the soup about 10 or 15 minutes before you expect to eat, stirring them into the broth.

In the meanwhile, prepare the following condiments:

6 yellow corn tortillas, sliced into 1/4-inch wide strips
1/4 cup vegetable or peanut oil
Salt to taste

Heat the oil to almost smoking in a large frying pan. Fry the tortilla strips in batches until crispy, turning as required. Drain on paper towels, salting to taste.

1/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, coarsely grated
1 avocado, sliced into bite-sized pieces
1 lime, sliced into 8 wedges

You can grate the cheese a little time ahead of when your soup is done, but wait until the last minute for the avocado and lime.

In two large bowls, place a few tortilla strips, then ladle hot soup over them. Garnish with cheese and avocado and serve a lime wedge or two on the side.

The soup freezes very well, but prepare the condiments (i.e., avocado, cheese, lime, and tortilla strips) fresh each time.

* FF = Foodie Friday

I am an environmentalist. I am a tree-hugger. I wish all the cars would stop and only trains, buses, and other such mass-transportation vehicles would work. And I love all creatures (although I have a hell of a hard time with what humans do some of the time). Here is a tiny creature that spent a lot of time in the camellia bush outside the front door in Shelton when I lived there. He kindly sat still for a few moments to let me take this. The photo was taken in March 2004. Oh, he is a rufous hummingbird, one of the more aggressive of the clan, although it’s a hard term to reconcile with the notion (and physical presence) of hummingbirds. They are particularly protective of nesting sites and afraid of nothing that moves …

RIchard Jehn

Alan titled his post, “Druids and Animists, oh! my!” I don’t know which is more appropriate – they both work. rdj

Gavan,

I almost never look at the web site because I have no idea about i.d.s and codes and such but I intuited your message.

Most of the Vietnamese were animists with a spot of ancestor worship, kinda Shinto but they wouldn’t use that term. A Vietnamese Catholic priest who was completely honest explained Vietnamese religious demographics to me. I was a Catholic chaplain’s assistant at the time. We were in a bombed out church with nothing much to do and shared an interest in comparative theology. I met a Vietnamese soldier who loved Dylan Thomas but that is another story.

I use the word “meaningless” in an exact sense. Words refer to something in order to have meaning. There is Lewis Carroll. The word “god” has no content, no attributes, no predicates , no nothing. Most mystics will agree but some keep on insisting that there is some other plane of existence they have a line on. Well, dial it for me so I can listen in. Maybe if I give them a few bucks they will call in my request. We humans like to anthropomorphize. We can attribute motives to inanimate objects or the weather. We have always wanted to be the center of something or the end product of the unfolding of something, anything to make us feel special, cosmically loved. Vague category words like “love” and “beauty” are hard to define, by definition, but one can pen down what one is referring to in particular. There is/are someone(s) one loves and there is/are something(s) that is/are thought to be beautiful and they have these attributes but if one says they love God then we are back to nothing again. Falling in love with love is falling for make believe et cetera. There has to be some there there. Go Gertrude.

Huge numbers of people can believe total bullshit. We see that all the time. Pass me a People magazine and a Diet Coke. Sociological meaning is another animal. Karl Rove can manipulate the nothings we believe are important. Strong emotional belief has a lot of sociological meaning. Let us all salute the flag, amen.

I like Zen/Chan Buddhism for the same reason I like existential phenomenology. They talk about our perception of reality in a way that helps scrape off all the nonsense. Unfortunately there are many wishy-washy people calling themselves Buddhists who reek of god nostalgia. Theism is like heroin or nicotine or Teddy Bear or nationalism.

Positivism and linguistic analysis aren’t all of philosophy but they are helpful. If someone wants to assert the existence of something then where is it. If it is, by definition, unknowable then how do they know about it? Got some old stone tablets or gold plates with cuneiform on them? And then, God or no God what difference does it make if it doesn’t make any difference? Shall we pray for rain? A straight flush? A cure for cancer? A parking space? Intuition of the correct path?

I believe in the essential goodness of human consciousness. Might as well since that is all we have, while the light lasts.

I believe in justification by works, not faith (identification of oneself with a magic totem). Many are those that cry Gaea, Gaea but do not do the will of the Mother/ Father/ General Good.

Alan, the a-Druid, a-Pagan and a-theist, altarless boy

Alan and Gavan,

I think you both underestimate what can be accomplished by the manipulation of the meaningless, although I agree with you both on the bottom line of “factual” meaninglessness.

It’s kind of like “There is no such thing as race.” A true statement in the scientific sense, but in the social sense we ignore race at our peril.

Steve “Pagan” Russell

Emile Durkheim, the “Father of Sociology” and an influential 19th century analyst of things social, argued that human behavior is constrained by three kinds of reality: physical reality (you can’t fly because we don’t have wings), psychological reality (we are limited in our ability to understand), and social reality (Durkheim’s example: he had to speak French not because he was incapable of speaking some other language physically or mentally, but because he lived in a French-speaking society). Social realities are just as “real” as the other two when it comes to affecting people’s behavior. Concepts like “race” may not be empirically valid, but they sure are socially valid. “Socially-constructed realities” are still real, even if they are just social constructs.

Incidentally, Durkheim also argued that in order to change a “social fact,” you had to change its causes, e.g., if you want to lower the crime rate, locking up criminals won’t do it, you have to attack the base causes of crime.

My two cents.

Nick Hopkins (a great fan of pagans)

Well, I agree with both Alan and Steve.

My point was simply that religion, although not at all the main cause of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is not irrelevant in (and thus not meaningless to) any explanation or understanding of political events there. Although in the final analysis religion is meaningless for all the reasons Alan articulates, it nevertheless and unfortunately motivates the actions of a great many people. Political leaders in Northern Ireland (and elsewhere) know this and exploit it to mobilize mass political constituencies cheaply (without having to expend material resources).

So, the political leaders in Northern Ireland across communities, are motivated by an interest in security. But they find it convenient (and cheap) to mobilize mass constituents by “distributing solidary incentives” or, in this case, by glorifying their group and demonizing their opponent’s group along confessional lines.

Although distributing solidary incentives is cheap, leaders discover when they want to settle with their opponents that — even if they attain their actual goal (security in this case) — they cannot settle without risking loss of their incumbency or loss of their lives to hardliner assassins within their own constituency. If you don’t believe me, ask Anwar Sadat or Yitzhak Rabin.

The Good Friday agreement delivers the security every party wants, and nominally solves the Irish problem. However, its implementation is delayed (hopefully not prevented) because of difficulties in retracting solidary incentives in both the nationalist and unionist communities. Retraction of these incentives is particularly difficult in this case, as political leaders been distributing them for half a millennium or so.

I contend that the solidary incentive retraction problem is a prime obstacle to peace and not just in Northern Ireland. If anyone has any ideas about how to foster their retraction, I’d like to hear them.

Gavan, the devout agnostic, Duffy

When writing about solidary incentives, I stand on many shoulders. One set belongs to John Turner, who writes about stereotyping and social categorization. He was standing on the shoulders of Henri Tajfel, who conducted the famous “minimal groups” experiments (which showed the people’s evaluative judgments of others are affected by their group affiliations, even when those affiliations have no real meaning). Tajfel in turn was standing on the shoulders of Emile Durkheim and his work on socially constructed realities in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.

It’s in just this sense that religion is not meaningless, even if Alan and I choose to construct it that way.

Gavan Duffy

Steve Russell and Gavan Duffy wrote:
“As to Ireland, you think it’s political (and it is) and I think it’s religious (and it is) and Mar says it’s the same think but I don’t think so. I think the politics of it could be worked out but the religious part of it is the tougher problem. Religion is relevant, of course, but the main issue in Ireland is and always has been security.”

Walking around in neighborhoods in north Ireland I kept seeing white shields with a red hand* in the middle, attached to lamp posts, sort of like the ones on crosswalk lights but always on “stop”. I spotted a fellow who had a red hand tattooed on his upper arm and asked what the hand symbolized. He was happy to explain that the British Crown had given Northern Ireland to some Scots [without consulting the relevant history books I’ll assume they were the sellout Scots, like the Campbells]. The first Scot to touch the shore would have his pick of the best land. One enterprising Scot cut off his left hand and at the right moment threw it on to the shore so he would get the first pick of the acreage. The fellow with the tattoo was a member of the Red Hand Commandos. Their self appointed task, with help from the Crown, was to keep Irish nationalists out of their neighborhoods, among other activities. Having taken the Indigenous People’s land they have to keep up a constant guard.

In north Ireland the “police stations” were fortresses for British troops. I saw plenty of British helicopters flying about. The situation was not as oppressive as the West Bank but the similarities were easy to see. It was tense. I’m sure a casual tourist who only wanted to drink, shop and go from castle to castle might not notice.

In Vietnam the French colonialists were Catholic. Enterprising Vietnamese would become Catholics so they could rise in the French colonial bureaucracy. They became French Loyalists. Get it? In Ireland the colonizing power is Protestant so the Loyalists are Protestant.

Religion, in itself, is meaningless.

Alan , the druid pagan, Pogue

Alan, the druid pagan, Pogue wrote: “Religion, in itself, is meaningless.”

I think you overstate the case, but I would agree that any religious issues obscure the real ones.

Gavan, the animist, Duffy

* Note: For more information about the ‘red hand,’ click here or here.

With election season just around the corner, we’re starting to think about it a little more. I hope some of the candidates are more savvy than this … rdj

* TT = (car)Toon Tuesday.

In one of your previous exchanges with me, you stated, “If you are no longer American, . . . ” Let’s clear that up. I’m about as Heinz 57 variety American as you can get without being, such as yourself, among the Indigenous. Both sides of my family have been in the US for longer than I have genealogical information. Great grandfathers fought on both sides of the Civil War. I was born and raised in as purely a white bread Americana-Republican classic environment imaginable, Dallas’ Highland Park. My father made his living as a capitalist, a close facsimile of George Babbitt. Having traveled a bit, I also recognize that my mannerisms are indelibly American as well. I’m a veteran of the US Army. I have an American child and soon will have an American grandchild. I carry a US passport because I have no choice and still vote in local elections in Travis County.

On the other hand, in many ways I’m already long gone. America’s continuously odious behavior throughout the world during my entire life has utterly poisoned whatever patriotism, or even loyalty, I may have ever had. I am instead repulsed and it seems to keep getting worse. I don’t need to recite to you again, of all people, the litany of horrors that the US has visited upon the world just in our lifetimes – not to mention the Amerindian Holocaust. The US government risked your life in an unjust war. I can’t imagine why you would have forgiven them. Now they are about to send your son to another one. This has gone on so long and so consistently that I have come to believe that “America” is beyond redemption. More specifically, the idea of reforming the US government in any fundamental way is a chimera outside the context of catastrophe. Furthermore, a primary and essential condition for the survival of the human species is the defeat of American imperialism and the dominion of its capitalist rulers and their mercenary values.

In your eloquent article “are WE fascists?,” you state “This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And, as such, all voices count.” Without quibbling about the degree of nano-influence any given activity has upon the cosmos, I respectfully and profoundly disagree. *

Democracy is a relative matter. In the US it still exists to some degree on a local level. However, on the federal level, it is utterly corrupted by allowing corporate money to buy political power. What you have left is primarily theater. The correct democratic roles are performed, conforming to established traditions, but the politicians are actually the employees of the capitalist ruling class, playing a role and mouthing words written for them by those to whom they have dedicated their lives and who reimburse them most handsomely for their services. This corruption of politics by money is the most fundamentally important characteristic of the American political life and cannot be changed under the prevailing conditions.

Political democracy cannot exist on paper as an abstraction within a social vacuum. For it to have any tangible meaning, it has to be accompanied by complementary social arrangements, especially in the economic sphere. A high degree of political democracy is impossible without a correspondingly high degree of economic democracy. With economic democracy in the US at the lowest level in the industrialized world and declining as the abyss between the capitalist class and the rest of us widens, US democracy is inherently compromised. Economic democracy without political democracy (Soviet Union, Cuba) is likewise debased in its value for the citizens involved. But the extreme paucity of US economic democracy dictates the dominion of the economic ruling elite. The structure of political democracy is a façade. We have an economic oligopoly masquerading as a democracy.

A perfect illustration of how this illusion of democracy manifests is healthcare, where hefty majorities of US citizens consistently favor a universal government run healthcare system, but it is seldom if ever discussed in Congress and uniformly considered to be politically untenable by all “authorities”. An aberration occurred in the California legislature last week, which at least talked about it. But that’s California, not Texas or Indiana.

Whereas true democracy is to be cherished, it is not everything. However imperfect the German system under the Weimar Republic may have been, Hitler was elected. So was George Bush. (Whether Bush’s elections were stolen is another issue and to argue that they were would reinforce my position that US democracy is terminally corrupted.) Existing voters in the South in the 1960s would have upheld segregation. White settlers would typically have voted to kill all the Indigenous people in the neighborhood. In the US today, you have a largely brainwashed, complacent and ignorant population whose politically dominant classes are essentially dedicated to little beyond protecting their own privileges. This particular version of “the people” are quite capable of electing fascism and supporting policies that rain havoc on the rest of the world. In fact, that has already happened and threatens to get worse with the bombardment of Iran. And most Americans will only oppose wars they are losing.

David Hamilton

* Note: David is referring to a post that Steve Russell made of Keith Olbermann’s 30 August Bloggermann entry titled “Feeling morally, intellectually confused?,” available for your reading pleasure here. This is Olbermann’s critique of Don Rumsfeld’s speech to the 88th Annual American Legion Convention in Salt Lake City (you can read the latter here if you are interested).

Get out the hankies, Mabel. I don’t know that we really want popcorn for this one … rdj

*MM = Monday Movie

Terry is one of our own, someone who worked on the Rag in its time. And now he gets to work for the Rag, again, by singing for us. Clever and talented, please give him a hand. rdj

******
I enjoy the writing a lot, average maybe one or two new tunes a year, but as for performing, I pretty much aspire to adequacy. Once in a while the tunes are political, but generally not. The two tunes you’re posting are in a kind of an island/low-latitude bag that visits me often, but it can vary — I wrote one recently that turned out to be a “traditional” pub-type drinking song. Go figure.

I got interested in writing songs when Bob Dylan came along and Shakespeared the medium. I was blown away (me and everybody else’s singer/songwriter brother). Lyrics that mattered — what a concept! As a bonus, he was making the world safe for, um, less-than-golden voices. As I got more into the medium and started coming up with tunes that actually worked, I really appreciated how they had a “real life” the moment you finished them — no messing around with publication and so forth, you just sing them and they’re everything they need to be, right then and there. Early on, of course, the main task was how not to sound like a bad Dylan imitation. I eventually found a voice that was more or less my own, but it was always a defining issue: doing Lyrics That Matter while trying to avoid sounding like Mr. D.

Over the years, I was alternately inpired by the vast new possibilities he’d shown, aggravated that I wasn’t him, and knock-down gobsmacked by his latest killer line. He still does it, dammit. We can talk about it now: Rodney Crowell’s song “Beautiful Despair” has that line in it “…hearing Dylan when you’re drunk at 3 a.m. / Knowing that the chances are / No matter what, you’ll never write like him / Oh brother.” I think the sentiment is made somehow complete by the tag “oh brother.”

The Folk Music Scare (as Tracy Nelson referred to it) was fairly short-lived, though. When it subsided, there was rock and roll, which had a lot of possibilities of its own. I was in and out of rock bands for years, really liked the way the rock combo worked, particularly the structural aspect of the bass and drums. It was okay now to have Lyrics That Aren’t Completely Idiotic, but the focus, ulitmately, was getting bodies to move on the dance floor. I always liked Mick Jagger’s comment about lyrics: “They don’t really have to mean anything — they just have to sound good.” That had its own peculiar sort of liberation to it. And there is nothing quite like that sensation when all four or five of you are hitting the groove and all that lovely loud music takes off and takes you with it.

My own process for coming up with new tunes isn’t real well-defined, even now — I can coax them to come visit, but it still seems to be pretty much on their terms. There’s the usual question Do you do the lyrics first, or the melody. For me, the answer is “Both.” Usually, it’ll start with some line that pops up; it’s catchy or evocative in some way, and the sound of the words will have its own suggestion of a rhythm. Fleshing out a rhythm with notes has always been pretty straightforward for me, and I just try to listen for what the rest of the melody is, and then put more lyrics to it. Even though I don’t read music, I know music theory pretty well, and that’s always a big help when it comes to extending or elaborating a musical idea.

Music has gotten a lot more diversified now, fragmented, even. Genres within genres. There’s a lot of crap, of course — you’ve probably caught yourself saying “These kids, the music they listen to, it’s just a bunch of noise.” And a particularly sweet irony I once heard from some forgotten stand-up comic, who said “Bob Dylan — he invented rap music, you know.” Well, if you think about it… When I did, I was dismayed.

But there’s also genuinely interesting stuff now and then. The most recent stuff I’ve listened to in the “genuinely interesting” column are Green Day and Norah Jones and Jack Johnson. And Texas music is strong and sassy as ever. My current fave there is Albert and Gage. To listen to Chris Gage play guitar and piano, I think, is to be in the presence of greatness. Things have opened up a lot with digital technology and online delivery, and I think those changes are great. The effect has been to shift the emphasis away from the record companies and let us hear a lot of stuff we just wouldn’t get to otherwise. Heck, nowadays anybody can make a CD at home — I’m here to tell ya!

Terry Dyke
*****
Here are two of his tunes:

“Because of the status of my own people, I am in no position to follow you. We have no foreign policy but that of the US I cannot imagine a situation where that would change.”

Nation states are for little people who don’t understand. The economic elites are Global Capitalists who care not a bit for the small minded patriotism with which they control the masses. “My own people,” how charming. Or “how quaint” as Mr. Gonzales would say.

“No foreign policy but that..” of Island North America.

Slavery and Native American genocide were, and still are, North American policy. The subjugation of Vietnam (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, et cetera) and Apartheid were/are American foreign policy. The kidnapping of Aristide is American foreign policy. The murder of two million Iraqis is American foreign policy. The overthrow of Castro didn’t work out. Hugo Chavez is in the sights of American foreign policy. You probably don’t want to identify with those parts but you want to think there is a something called America which stands apart from the actual doings of American foreign policy. I agree there is but it is beyond nationalism. You have been getting your paycheck from The Man for too long. Let both sides of your brain talk to each other. What is good for Native Americans is good for everyone. Take a giant step outside your present mind. There is a North American bureaucracy that extends to wherever its troops can hold ground but other than that North America is a fiction. Whatever is good about “America” is the good inherent in humanity, that extends to everyone on the planet. Likewise, whatever is bad about “America” exists everywhere insofar as humans can fool themselves. There are people in what we call America but there are no American people.

I learned in Vietnam that American foreign policy is to murder, rape, burn and crush those who do not step in line with American/European Capital interests. Nothing has changed. I neither idealize nor demonize any group, or political fiction we call countries. I do know the economic/structural modes of self-appointed elites.

I do believe human nature is good. If it were not aimed at the good then there would be no need for propaganda. There would be no such thing as even the thought of morality. There would not be human consciousness. But people can compartmentalize their minds to such a degree that they are incapable of seeing that they are doing what they accuse others of doing. We humans are famous for this hypocritical activity. But, oddly, this still proves the inherent goodness of human nature. Few are those (individuals or whole nation-states) who can flatly state, “I saw what I wanted and killed the person(s) who wouldn’t give it up just as anyone/group would. If a stronger person/country kills me for what I have then that is natural. I make no appeal to God, or destiny (being the leading agent of historical betterment or whatever), or any inherent worth other than the ability to conquer.” Most people or nation-states claim those that were killed had it coming for some reason. God gave it to them so any resistance is anti-God. They rationalize, moralize, their greed. “We made a good offer,” “we were provoked,” it was somehow better for the victims that they were victimized/colonized. We brought them the True Religion and Big Macs, the ungrateful Islamo-Facists, Indian Savages, Little Yellow People in Pajamas, drunken pagan Irish. The Nazis probably believed their own bullshit just as the Zionists do now, and the NeoCons, and the waffling Republocrats. People just like you and me are being murdered for some other people’s profit but that MUST be obscured, human nature being as it is. The Israeli government does it to the Palestinians et cetera. The North American government does it to everyone. The British (Petroleum) government tags along in Iraq and can only barely continue to bash Ireland. (I was there also. The conflict in Ireland is not about religion. It is about British imperialism. I was unpleasantly surprised by Steve’s glib and callous remark about the political struggles in Ireland. Maybe Bud can make some “drunken Catholic Irishmen” commercials instead of “drunken Indian” commercials?)

I was in Baghdad when Clinton missiled it. I saw the pregnant women hit by shrapnel, the dead of all ages. I wish there was a hell so Bill could burn in it forever. Hillary as well, and many more. Clinton missiled the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that packaged antibiotics for all of Africa at 25% of the American/European price. May the heat be turned up. Dead Iraqis can’t tell the difference between Clinton and Bush, 1 or 11.

Alan Pogue

Pogue is the Gaelic word for kiss. “Pogue ma hon” is Gaelic for “kiss my ass.”

We found this tucked in a box of junk up in the attic. Shouldn’t have been there, so now it’s here. The Rag

And now for something entirely different. This is the sort of thing Charlie would eat, I s’pose. We’ll leave it at that … rdj

Ragodin au Choux Rouge
(Nutria with caramelized red cabbage and honey mustard sauce)

2 hind saddle of nutria (available at Calvin’s Bocage Supermarket)
1/3 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped carrots
Bouquet garni:
– 1 branch french thyme,
– 1/2 bunch of parsley,
2 fresh bay leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil,
2 teaspoons flour
4 teaspoons Dijon mustard and 1/2 cup honey
1 cup red wine
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed fresh rosemary
2 cups hot water
Season to taste

Caramelized choux rouge: 1 thinly sliced red cabbage, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vegetable oil, season to taste.

Saute red cabbage with oil, sugar and seasoning until sugar is caramelized (4 to 5 minutes).

Place oil, chopped vegetables and bouquet garni in a large saute pan. Rub each hind saddle with mustard, honey and rosemary. Place hind saddle into large saute pan with the vegetable and saute on medium high heat, until golden brown, sprinkle flour and stir well until flour disappears, deglaze with red wine, stir well then add hot water, simmer on low heat for 1 – 2 hours. Remove hind saddle, strain juice into a sauce pot, bring to a low boil, skim the fat off of surface, add cream, reduce for 5 minutes and correct seasoning. Remove meat from bones and plate, top with sauce, garnish with caramelized red cabbage.

Recipe by:
Chef Philippe Parola
The Louisiana Culinary & Hotellerie Institute International

Submitted by Charlie Loving

Appendix: Thought it best to wait until after the recipe to show you what the little critters look like. Appealing in one of those, “Only a mother …” ways.

Although we’re planning another weekly feature called “Monday Movies,” I couldn’t resist posting this video tonight. Make the popcorn, Zeke. I like the concept of these videos. Richard Jehn