How to Make Roast Chicken with Tomatoes and Olives (Poulet Provencal)

Poulet Aux Herbes de Provence.  A very simple recipe, one we make often.

But first, a short note about Provencal cooking, from Richard Olney's Provence: the Beautiful Cookbook


     While Provencal cooking enraptures poet and traveler alike, it does not put on airs.  Indeed, from the Alps to the Mediterranean it is often dubbed the "poor man's cuisine."  This is exactly what gives it strength and imagination.  Other regions of France possess more obvious wealth and traditions, and to the eyes of the world are seen as the culinary power brokers and custodians of the science of taste.  They will keep you at the table for hours.  Here, impetuous winds (the mistral off the water and the tramontana from the north), a burning sun, dry earth and the brisk, choppy sea have dictated other, more immediate rituals and knowledge.

     Provence, before it became a pacific territory to be conquered only by the tourist, experienced much unhappiness and many invasions in the course of its history.  It learned from such excursions to nourish its men and women to live long and to live on little.

**********************************************************************************

Recipe, from Gourmet magazine, March 2008.

yield: Makes 4 servings

active time: 25 min

total time: 1 1/2 hr 

Featuring olive oil and the combined herbs and produce of the south of France, this one-dish country dinner will transport you to a café table in Aix in a heartbeat.

ingredients

• 1 pound tomatoes (3 to 4 medium), cut into wedges
• 1 large onion, cut into wedges, leaving root ends intact
• 1/2 cup drained brine-cured black olives, pitted if desired
• 4 large garlic cloves, sliced, plus 1 teaspoon minced
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 2 teaspoons herbes de Provence, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 whole chicken (about 3 1/2 pounds)

Equipment:

• Equipment: kitchen string
• Accompaniment: crusty bread
• Garnish: chopped flat-leaf parsley

preparation

Preheat convection oven to 400°F for regular oven to 425°F with rack in middle. 

Toss together tomatoes, onion, olives, sliced garlic, 2 tablespoons oil, 1 teaspoon herbes de Provence, fennel seeds, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a 13- by 9-inch or other 3-quart shallow baking dish. Push vegetables to sides of dish to make room for chicken. 

Stir together minced garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, remaining teaspoon herbes de Provence, and remaining tablespoon olive oil. 

Remove excess fat from chicken and pat dry, then rub inside and out with seasoning mixture. Tie legs together with string, then put chicken in baking dish. 

Roast until an instant-read thermometer inserted into thickest part of a thigh (do not touch bone) registers 170°F, about 1 hour in convection oven; 1 to 1 1/4 hours in regular oven. 

Let chicken stand 10 minutes before carving. Serve with vegetables and pan juices.

**********************************************************************************


Notes:
- I never use canned olives.
- You can use commercially-prepared herbes de provence (Cost Plus World Market has them), but according to Richard Olney, these usually contain too many herbs, including rosemary, lavender and sage.  For Olney, a good mixture is composed of thyme, oregano, savory and marjoram, in descending proportions.

Here's a picture of a roast we recently made.

What's a great film about time, love, memory, perception, and architecture?

Not to mention the fabulous use of Chanel dresses worn by Delphine Seyrig?

From the Criterion Collection introduction:

Last Year at Marienbad

L'année dernière à Marienbad - Alain Resnais (1961)

Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais' epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais' investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.

Watch the trailer here.

What are the essential French phrases to know?

 

These are "essential" if you want to find romance in France.
From Caroline O'Connell's book Every Woman's Guide to Romance in Paris.

French / English

Tres poetique.  Very poetic.
Tres romantique.  Very romantic.
C'est long sans toi.  The time passes slowly without you.
J'ai envie de te caresser.  I have the desire to caress you.
Je me jette a vos pieds.  I throw myself at your feet.
Je ne peux vivre sans toi.  I can't live without you.
Je t'adore.  I adore you.
Je t'aime.  I love you.
Je te bois des yeux.  I drink you with my eyes.
Je t'embrasse partout.  I kiss you all over.
Je reve de toi.  I dream of you.
Mon amour.  My love.
Mon cheri.  My dear.
Nous sommes faits pour nous entendre.  We are made to be together.
Tu es beau.  You are handsome.
Tu es belle.  You are beautiful.
Tu es rayonnante.  You are radiant.
Tu me fais craquer.  You shatter my heart.
Tu me manques.  I miss you.

How to Make Buko Pie, by Mona Simpson, from her novel My Hollywood

From her website:

She worked ten years on My Hollywood. “It’s the book that took me too long because it meant so much to me,” she says.

Claire, a composer and a new mother, comes to L.A. so her husband can follow his dream of writing TV comedy. Suddenly, the marriage changes. Paul works long hours, leaving Claire with a baby, William, whom she adores but has no idea how to care for. Enter Lola—a 52-year-old mother of five, who comes to America to find work to pay for her own children’s higher education back in the Philippines. Lola stabilizes Claire’s rocky household, and soon other parents try to lure her away. What she sacrifices to stay with Claire and William remains her own closely guarded secret. In a novel, at turns satirical and heartbreaking, where mothers’ modern ideas are given practical overhauls by nannies, we meet Lola’s vast network of fellow caregivers, each with her own story to tell. We see the upstairs competition for the best nanny and the downstairs competition for the best deal, and are forced to ask whether it’s possible to buy love for our children and what that transaction costs. We see the endangerment of a modern marriage despite the best of intentions. This tender, witty, and resonant novel provides the profound pleasures readers have come to expect from Mona Simpson, here writing at the height of her powers.

For an excerpt, reviews, an outtake, and video of Mona Simpson reading from the novel, please click here. 

Here's the buko pie recipe:

***********************************************************************************

For the wedding of Lucy and Tony ---

Buko Pie

SANGKAP

                                                         3 cups flour

                                                         2 1/2 tbsp. sugar

                                                         3/4 tsp. salt

                                                         3/4 cup vegetable shortening

                                                         3 egg yolks

                                                         1/2 cup ice water

                                                         Filling:

                                                         2 cups young coconut, shredded

                                                         1/2 cup young coconut juice

                                                         1/2 cup condensed milk

                                                         2/3 cup 1% milk

                                                         4 tbsp. sugar

                                                         1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

                                                         1/2 cup cornstarch

                                                         1/2 cup cold milk

PAGLUTO

To make the pastry, combine flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.  Cut in shortening with a pastry blender until mixture is crumbly.  Combine egg yolks and ice water and blend into flour mixture until it turns into dough.  Add a little more water if dough is still crumbly.  Refrigerate for 30 minutes.  With a  rolling pin, roll dough thinly, about 1/4 inch thick, on a lightly floured board.  Bake the piecrust, set aside, and cool.  Combine pie filling ingredients except cornstarch in a deep saucepan.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly.  When boiling gently, add cornstarch, stirring fast, until combined mixture has thickened.  Pour mixture evenly into prepared piecrust.  Let cool, then refrigerate until firm.

For Lettie, this was the recipe for wealth at home.

***********************************************************************************

Notes:  Mona didn't state the baking temperature and baking time for the piecrust.  The piecrust recipe is enough for a 9 inch deep dish pie pan.  15 minutes or so in a 375 degree Fahrenheit oven should be enough to bake it.  Also, instead of just adding the cornstarch on its own as the last step for the filling, mix it with some of the cold milk before pouring into the saucepan.  Pictures of the pie I made last night below:

 

Akhnaten and Nefertiti love duet from the opera Akhnaten by Philip Glass

From the Philip Glass opera Akhnaten.

Glass: Akhnaten

Act II, Scene 2

An orchestral transition prepares the scene, which is devoted entirely to a duet between Akhnaten and Nefertiti.

With the introduction of the solo trombone, the Scribe begins reciting a poem.  The first time we hear the poem it is as if addressed to a god.

With the entrance of the strings, the poem is heard again, this time spoken as an exchange between two lovers.  During the second reading, Akhnaten and Nefertiti appear.  There follows the duet between the two, now alone together.  The vocal text is the same poem sung in Egyptian.

At the end of the duet the music returns to the orchestra alone.  There is a brief pause, then Akhnaten and Nefertiti resume singing while behind them is seen the funeral cortege in a later stage of its journey, this time ascending on wings of large birds to the heavnely land of Ra.

Text:  Recited by the Scribe and sung in Egyptian by Akhnaten and Nefertiti (love poem found in a royal mummy of the Amarna period, from Journal of Egyptian Archeology, tranlsted by Sir Alan Gardiner)

I breathe the sweet breath  (Sesenet neftu nedjem)
Which comes forth from thy mouth.  (Per em rek)
I behold thy beauty every day.  (Peteri nefruk em menet)
It is my desire  (Ta-i nehet sedj emi)
That I may be rejuvenated  (Kheruk nedjem en mehit)
With life through love  (Renpu ha-i em ankh)
Of thee.  (en mertuk)

Give me thy hands, holding thy spirit,  (Di-ek eni awik kher ka-ek)
that I may receive it and may live by it.  (Shesepi su ankhi yemef)
Call thou upon my name unto eternity,  (I ashek reni er heh)
And it shall never fail.  (Ben hehif em rek)

Condemned to Joy: The Western cult of happiness is a mirthless enterprise.

Pascal Bruckner is a French writer and philosopher.  His most recent book is Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy

The full essay appeared in City Journal.

Excerpt:

Now that it has become the horizon of our democracies, a matter of ceaseless work and effort, happiness is surrounded by anxiety. We feel compelled to be saved constantly from what we are, poisoning our own existence with all kinds of impossible commandments. Our hedonism is not wholesome but haunted by failure. However well behaved we are, our bodies continue to betray us. Age leaves its mark, illness finds us one way or another, and pleasures have their way with us, following a rhythm that has nothing to do with our vigilance or our resolution.

What is needed is a renewed humility. We are not the masters of the sources of happiness; they ever elude the appointments we make with them, springing up when we least expect them and fleeing when we would hold them close. The excessive ambition to expunge all that is weak or broken in body or mind, to control moods and states of soul, sadness, chagrin, moments of emptiness—all this runs up against our finitude, against the inertia of the human species, which we cannot manipulate like some raw material. We have the power to avoid or to heal certain evils, yes, but we cannot order happiness as if it were a meal in a restaurant.

James Altucher - 10 Unusual Things I Didn’t Know About Steve Jobs

Here's number two:

2)      His father’s name is Abdulfattah Jandali. If you had to ask me what Steve Job’s father’s name was I never in one zillion years would’ve guessed that and that Steve Jobs biologically was half Syrian Muslim. For some reason I thought he was Jewish. Maybe its because I wanted to be him so I projected my own background onto him. His parents were two graduate students who I guess weren’t sure if they were ready for a kid so put him up for adoption and then a few years later had another kid (see above). So I didn’t know he was adopted. The one requirement his biological parents had was that he be adopted by two college educated people. But the couple that adopted him lied at first and turned out not to be college educated (the mom was not a high school graduate) so the deal almost fell through until they promised to send Steve to college. A promise they couldn’t keep (see below). So despite many layers of lies and promises broken, it all worked out in the end. People can save a lot of hassle by not having such high expectations and overly ambitious worries in the first place.

Click here for the rest of the article by James Altucher.