Joseph Dunphy's Cowboy Wannabe Site / Livejournal

Note Regarding Beef Durango

cerrillos — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:15:53 GMT

Warning - this post is a stream of consciousness flow. The writing leaves something to be desired.

Just about 90 seconds ago, more of less, I ran into a Mexican cooking site that I had never see before, while looking for a recipe for a dish I had seen, before, because I've made it - Beef Durango. The version on the site looks mildly interesting, though not really the sort of thing I'd make. I'd leave the flour out. It's not good for me, personally, and roux doesn't seem very Mexican, or very needed in Mexico. The characteristic richness that some of us love in Mexican food seems to owe a lot to the reduction that comes at the end of the preparation of a dish. Put in the roux, and yes, the sauce will bind sooner, but is that a good thing? Oh, here is another version, which claims to be adapted from a recipe from Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz, but I can just about guarantee that the lemon was not her touch, even without looking at the book of hers cited. As she has pointed out, lemons are rare in Mexico; limes which the seller insists on calling lemons, on the other hand, are plentiful, and I think we'd do well to honor the traditional madness in this - lime marries with chiles so much more nicely.

What I've noticed - and this seems strange to me - is that in every version I'm running into for this dish, the tomatillos are added to the sauce a few hours before the dish is done. I take it that this is how the Mexicans do these things, and perhaps they are right, but I'm going to try something else. I've found that some ingredients - tomatillos and cilantro come to mind - seem to lose their flavor to the air very quickly in my kitchen. Not that I mean to say that the Mexicans don't know how to cook their own food, but I wonder if this could be one of those dishes that has been transformed - for the worse - by the use of American cookware, and needs to have the damage repaired. I have seen dishes that have made use of long simmered, highly aromatic ingredients quite effectively, of course - tagines - but these aren't traditionally cooked in metal pots in pans. They are cooked in earthenware, which is often tightly sealed, holding the aroma in, keeping it from escaping during the low, slow cooking, during which the flavor of the aromatic ingredients has a chance to penetrate the meat. A flour water paste around the lid will work fine for this. The sealed dish is brought to the table, the seal is cracked with a gentle but determined tap, and all is well, even if the dish is a little soupy. In an arid climate, that soupiness might not be at all a bad thing - what in a wetter place might seem an unwanted dilution of the sauce, there replenishes that which the day and the dry air have stolen from one. As I was writing this, I had the thought that Durango had a semi-arid climate, itself, did it not? Was, perhaps, the original dish made in some well sealed bit of earthenware, which I see that the Mexicans seem (at least traditionally) to have been as fond of as North Africans, and that was traditionally made would have been another one of those soupy dishes? Indeed, one can find sources that suggest that this is the case, albeit not very authoritative ones; the first recipe cited is one of those sources here is another. So why the binding with roux, I wonder?

But at the moment, I'm in Chicago, not the Southwest - to which I will not be able to return for some time due to travel costs, alas - and climate changes everything. In the dry air, water feels like a sort of nourishment, with good reason. In the wetter, usually colder air of Chicago, in a sauce, it's just blandness. We reduce our sauces with good reason, and so we're back to the aromates dying on the stovetop. What to do about that is simple enough, really. The dish is prepared without the tomatillos, the sauce is reduced until its thickness is something better suited to our climate, and then reduced some more, and the tomatillos, pureed with a little of the sauce from the stew, are added to the stew just before it is done, so that they will be thoroughly heated, but not really cooked. This is why the sauce was slightly over-reduced, a moment ago - the tomatillo puree will thin a sauce that we then can not reduce, because we're determined not to cook the tomatillos. The tomatillos hold onto their flavor, and the sauce ends up as thick as we'd like, which would still be thinner than the usual gravy. While there is no denying that Chicago is cold, the wetness is a comparative thing - the place is as a rainforest, when compared to Phoenix, but the area around it is still just barely well watered enough to sustain the forests you see, which, before development, grew lower and more stunted as one headed inland, giving way to grassland somewhere in what is now the Western suburbs. By Northern European standards, it is still quite dry, once one gets any distance in from the lake, especially during summer, and that idea of a meal quenching one's thirst still has a little bit of an appeal left to it. We reduce, but we don't reduce all of the way, by some standards.

What I mean to do, as I play with this dish, which I'll respectfully rename a little, because it has been changed - there's a story which I'll retell in the not so distant future which I remember reading, in which various things go wrong, as they tend to in folktales. Some of those involved the cooking of beef jerky, which really isn't an astonishing culinary concept, but the thought occurred to me that this was something that I had never done, oddly enough, and probably should have tried, sooner. Ever since then, I've been in a mood to try that, and Caldillo de Duranguense seems like a promising choice of a dish to mutate in that way, through the use of an ingredient that one can often buy after the grocery stores are closed for the night. I guess one could call the result "Beef Durango a la British Petroleum" in honor of the store in which I got the jerky, once, while visiting relatives out in the suburbs? No browning, of course, just a fine shredding and addition to a red tomato and onion compote, cooked with garlic in a little oil, mixed with beef broth, ancho chiles (soaked in warm broth and pureed) and a little Mexican oregano, cooked down, and then thinned a little with the tomatillo puree, as I described. Most of the flavors will have a chance to penetrate, and as for the one that won't, as thin as those shreds will be, I wonder if I'll notice the difference.

As for whether this will work or be a disaster best forgotten, I'll see. Experiments tend to be the latter. Anyhow, yes, the writing was terrible, but the sun was shining, at last, for I'll have to ask you for your forgiveness in this, as I head out to shake off Chicago's own traditional brand of madness: cabin fever. More later.

PS. The emoticon gives the wrong idea. This is a good sort of rushed. I'm in a relatively good mood, as far as that matters. I wish Livejournal wouldn't use a set that makes us always look like we're about to kill somebody. Readers might get the wrong idea.

Non-Impediments to Faith

cerrillos — Sun, 12 May 2013 11:08:43 GMT

As one might guess would be the case with a Jew who was stuck going through life with the name "Dunphy", I am not a huge fan of what has all too often been Christianity's hyper-aggressive outreach program. "Believe as we believe, because otherwise the Creator will hate you no matter how virtuous a life you live, and have you tortured beyond human comprehension for all eternity, for the heinous crime of disagreeing with us" - and then they wonder why tornadoes keep leveling their churches. "Where was G-d?", one of them will cry, looking to the heavens, only to hear one of us answer that question, sooner or later. "Right there, telling you to stop using His name to bully people into submission, and by the way, that's our line and it's usually used in reference to something that one of you did, so please stop stealing it." Or, it could just be because a really strong wind storm found its way through the area, and the church just happened to be in the way, but why not let them wonder? It might do them some good.

But not all Christians act that way, and sometimes one sees signs of open mindedness and even acceptance in them, of the ways of others. The funny thing is, the more intolerant ones aren't usually the ones getting grief from the non-Christians around them. Usually, that gift of Hate is bestowed on those who least deserve it. Let's consider a remark one can see on the post First Native American to be canonized by Catholic Church on Indi Issues, which seems to be a Native American advocacy group. There is plenty to be dismayed by in the story, if the extremely unreliable and non-authoritative source being quoted is giving us accurate information. The source cited was Wikipedia, so this should be viewed with skepticism, but let's take a look at this passage, and check the cited written sources, later.

"Later in 1669, the Iroquois Feast of the Dead, held every ten years, was convened at Caughnawaga. Some Oneidas came, along with Onondagas led by their famous sachem Garakontié. Tekakwitha's parents, along with others who had died in the previous decade, were to be carefully exhumed, so that their souls could be released to wander to the spirit land to the west. [13]

Father Pierron, in a bold and provocative speech, attacked the beliefs and logic of the Feast of the Dead. The assembled Iroquois, upset over his remarks, ordered him to be silent. But Pierron continued, exhorting the Iroquois to give up their “superstitious” rites.

[13] ^ Daniel Sargent, Catherine Tekakwitha, Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1936, p. 167. Also, J.N.B. Hewitt, “The Iroquoian Concept of the Soul,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 8, Boston, 1895, p. 109."

Disrupting a religious ceremony in order to harass the faithful into abandoning their faith? Yes, stay classy, padre. If this is valid quote from a valid source, and the incident described did in fact take place, I wouldn't even begin to try to defend that. If somebody, in replying to the post, had limited himself to condemning actions such as this one, I would agree with every word she said, but she did not so confine herself. This is what she wrote, concerning the first "canonization" (elevation to sainthood) of a Native American (Kateri Tekakwitha).

"Well it leaves me feeling stark. The history of the Catholic church has been vile for any culture but it's own."

She is left "feeling stark" by the decision of the Catholic Church to grant the highest honor it can bestow to the departed, praising the virtue of a particular Native American and holding her life out to its own faithful as one worthy of emulation? One feels the urge to look up that word, to be absolutely sure that it means what one thinks it means, because surely she couldn't have meant to say anything that absurd, could she? Checking Merriam-Webster, we find

"1 a : rigid in or as if in death
b : rigidly conforming (as to a pattern or doctrine) : absolute

2 archaic: strong, robust

3: utter, sheer

4a: barren, desolate

b (1) : having few or no ornaments : bare (2) : harsh, blunt

5: sharply delineated

— stark·ly adverb

— stark·ness noun"

No, we did not misunderstand. She is left feeling desolate, in the wake of the news that the Roman Catholic church has chosen to honor one of the indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent. Not that she is alone in this sort of reaction, by any means - if she were, her comment wouldn't be worth commenting on. It would be another bit of white noise, to be ignored. What I find is that the Catholic Church has been particularly targeted for this sort of commentary in a way in which Protestant denominations never are, and while I might not have much of a personal stake in that, we should all take interest when false witness is given against our neighbors. That one priest mentioned - as inexcusable as his actions were, and as sad is the thought that they probably have been praised, even all of the way up to our supposedly more enlightened time - is not the entire Catholic church. As for the Catholic church being "vile for any culture but it's own", I would have two questions.

1. Which culture would the Catholic Church be claiming as "its own"? Bavaria, France, Poland, the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Ireland are all predominantly Catholic. Would one seriously argue that they're culturally identical - and if so, would one want to be standing in front of a Brazilian and an Argentine as one did so?

2. "Vile" compared to who? Even as a non-Christian, I have to ask which have been these more tolerant and accepting Protestant denominations. Surely, they must be there, if we are to explain why such commentary is so narrowly, specifically targeted at Catholics, so often, and never, say, at Methodists, Presbyterians, or ... and I think a few reader might have seen this one coming ... Lutherans. Does anybody care to remember the argument offered against the would-be translation of the Bible into one of the languages of the Sámi (nee Lapps)? I believe that the usual translation of what was said by one of the leaders of the Lutheran Church, at the time, was

"G-d doesn't speak that language."

Apparently, G-d was only heard expressing Himself in Swedish, in which I can only hope He was fluent. This was a slight modification in the first word in that quote, since I am observant, but the gist of it should be correct. This remarkable claim, that the all knowing creator of all that exists had acquired a mystifying inability to understand that which was said in a certain Uralic language, was not at all uncharacteristic of the relationship between the predominantly Protestant society in which the speaker lived, nor was his culture's habit of having its own culture come along as baggage when Christianity was spread at all unheard of, where Protestants were doing the spreading. The insane practices, seen in the South Seas out of English missionaries, of having stone churches indistinguishable from those seen in England built, and of insisting that the supposedly barbarous natives dress in a "civilized" (read: English) manner as if the tropical heat were not there, and as if none of the islands were prone to earthquakes, are familiar ones, not just remembered to this day but vehemently defended by more than a few. Strange as this might seem, their righteous indignation at the use of lightweight wooden structures in worship mysteriously vanishes when churches are erected in the nearly earthquake free and tornado prone Midwest, where they pose a danger to life and limb, not just to those in the church, but all of those around them, because in winds of a few hundred miles per hour building fragments become potent projectiles, but this is in the keeping with what much of missionary activity has really been all about - "in your face" cultural narrow-mindedness. The local tradition in much of the Midwest is, quite sensibly, one of solid construction; by building that in Illinois which properly should have been left back in Maine, one shows the proper contempt for the ~~traditionally minded~~ backward locals, who need to give up their quaintness and become more modern, whatever that happens to mean to somebody. Even their fellow Christians, then, have not been spared this notion of saving people from themselves, whenever anything that they might happen to be doing doesn't seem respectably dull enough to somebody else.

Such, normatively, seems to be the Protestant way, and has seemed to be the Protestant way since the early days when self-styled "reformers" would hold "bonfires of the vanities" in which religious folk art and late medieval handicrafts were set ablaze, the world thus being spared the ravages of beauty, as if G-d had not made the minds that conceived that beauty, the hands that the minds guided that created it, or the eyes that appreciated it. It has seemed, to be perfectly blunt, a worthy and dismally predictable creation of societies in which the civilization of the people was but skin deep, and the days of burning and pillaging not truly behind them, in their hearts. The urge to destroy just for the sake of destruction was given a respectable outlet and in the process, protected from ever really being examined. Where there had been open savagery, now there was passive aggression, which might seem like progress, but if it was, it was arguably progress in the wrong direction. A savage can be confronted about the things he does, and be left trying to explain why he intends to do the same in the future. The passive aggressive man will deny that he ever did it in the first place.

That image you see above is an interesting one, aside from the beauty of the pieces, in that it typifies a major difference between the attitude Catholic missionaries have brought, as they have encountered native cultures, as opposed to that of Protestant missionaries, who, if we are to be at all honest about such matters, have for centuries habitually seen indigenous cultures as things to simply be replaced in their entirety, by force if necessary, with those whose identities have been thus erased being expected to feel so grateful for their loss as to have no objection to being enslaved, in at least one case that should readily come to mind if one is American. While it is fashionable to pretend that Catholic missionaries have been exactly the same in this, the facts don't support this sensitively non-judgmental position. Note that in Scandinavia - future home of the missionaries who maintained that their Lord and savior has flunked his language classes - when the Catholic missionaries appeared, the house of worship that was to be found in the newly Christian territories wasn't the Roman basilica. It was the stavkirch, a wooden structure bearing no discernible resemblance to anything in any of the less recently converted countries, but suspected to resemble to old Norse temples more than a little. That which was in no way in any real conflict with the new religion was simply left alone. Was this acceptance of the native culture at all uncharacteristic of the Catholic Church? If so, one will be hard pressed to explain the diversity of architectural forms which was to be found throughout Catholic Europe, indeed the cultural diversity in general, or, for that matter, the very fact that the Basilica was a catholic form, for it surely was not a native one, for the earliest Christian ... read, Catholic ... missionaries, who were from the Near East, not from Rome. The basilica, before Christianity, was the form of the Roman places of commerce, given a nobler purpose after the conversion of the Empire.

The Catholics have a notion, seemingly incomprehensible to their Protestant competition of the "non-impediment to faith" - that of which the Church ought not be speaking, at all, because it is best left to the people to decide for themselves. This piece we see above is a good example of this rather enlightened idea. What you are seeing is a collection of altar pieces. Those, in most Catholic churches, are made of metal, and metal, with varying degrees of ornamentation, is what a visitor generally will see. But not here. Why? This photo was taken in the museum of a Catholic mission called "The White Dove of the Desert", located near Tucson, Arizona, which is located either in or near the reservation of the "Papago" (Tohono O'odham), well worth the visit. The native people had a well developed tradition of basketwork, something that a group of Protestant missionaries would most likely have tried to suppress, being pre-Christian (as yoiking was in Lappland) and thus "the Devil's work", supposedly, but the Catholic missionaries did no such thing. The native tradition found its way into the Catholic handicrafts you see in the image, above, and why not? Go into the church, and you'll find an absolutely beautiful painting, albeit one that seemed to me to be in urgent need of conservation, painted on Buffalo skin.

In short - yes, it's a little late for that - as any fair and unbiased observer can see from this and other cases, and just the simple fact of the great cultural diversity to be found and comfortably accepted within the Catholic lands, indeed within the Catholic communities in the United States, the Catholic church, if anything, should be seen as a champion of the cause of cultural tolerance, and real cultural diversity, in a way that should inspire even those to be found among the faithful in the mainline Protestant denominations to collectively hang their heads in shame. I trust any reasonably well educated American will know what "Nativism" was, and still is, as one can see by watching Lou Dobbs rant about ethnic holidays, and be met with approval for having done so. It was and is a Protestant tradition, continued by the grandchildren of the sort of people who would have told even the Catholics of today to "go back where they come from" (sic). One can see them doing much the same, to this day, in places where the supposedly "furrin" Catholics have been living for generations or even centuries, and to which the "natives" moved to a few months ago, being fresh off the bus from Tulsa. So, why is all of this grief being directed toward Catholics, their church and their faith, in the name of supposedly progressive ideals, and not one bit of it toward the Protestant denominations? On behalf of Native Americans, in this case, no less and quite remarkably?

Compare the treatment and fate of the natives in what became the predominantly Protestant United States, vs. that of the natives of what became the predominantly Catholic nation of Mexico. Without denying that real injustices have taken place south of the border, and should be remedied as all injustices should, let us be serious. In Mexico, the Indians went on to become the ethnic base of a new nation. In America, they were crowd into ~~concentration camps~~ ~~ghettos~~ tiny reservations, usually on marginal land that could not support their initial numbers, and then sent smallpox infested blankets for good measure. The progressive Protestant supporters of the natural rights of Man and the equality of us all, except for the occasional slave, engaged in genocide, and then went on to put on a great show of grotesquely misplaced indignation when genocide was called exactly what it was - and more than a few of them still do, even now. To find yourself at the bottom of society in your own native land is not a good thing, it is not right, but it is a tremendous improvement over the fate of those who ended up dead, and even over that of those who became a tiny remnant, suffered to live on in a few pockets of their own country. All men sin, but not all so deeply as this. How, then, is it that the mote is seen in the eye of the catholic, while the beam in the eye of the protestant altogether escapes notice, in such supposedly progressive commentary?

How about because on examination, the "Progressives", "Liberals", "Pagans" and "New Agers" doing much of the haranguing of Catholics today come from Protestant backgrounds, themselves, and are the children and grandchildren of those who would have harangued Catholics in the not at all distant past, when they weren't trying to have them lynched outright, in more than a few towns. In parts of the Midwest, the Ku Klux Klan was quite active and visible, right through the 1980s, and there really is no good reason to believe that it has done much more than go underground at the moment. Privilege, in the United States, tends to be Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon Protestant privilege, whether it is the privilege of the spoiled trustifarian who lives so comfortably at the expense of others, or of the redneck who can take sadistic joy in terrorizing those different from him with impunity, because the Law will look the other way. The churches of the conquerors in America, the churches of those who did most of the dispossessing of the rightful inhabitants of the land, were Protestant ones, by and large. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has been a source of solace to the downtrodden for generations, in this land where we're supposedly all equal, and not allowed to notice that we aren't. It is the church of those whose role in the history of this country hasn't been that of conqueror, but that of cheap, expendable labor that the social betters of the Catholics didn't, wouldn't or couldn't do, because it was dirty or dangerous, or because, in the case of the more skilled professions, it required long hours in the library, when there were ice cream socials to attend. It is the church of the long scorned and abused Latin and Southern European populations of the United States. When our progressives attack, in such a creatively revisionist manner, they get to attack those who they're families have looked down on for generations, and then commend themselves for all that they are doing to fight oppression, even as they practice it. Again.

I guess that the apple doesn't fall so far from the tree, does it?

As a non-Christian, why do I care, aside from that business about not bearing false witness against thy neighbor? Many reasons, I suppose, but not the least of them is this - as a Jew, in my entire life, I've never met a Catholic who treated my Jewishness as being a reason to show me less respect. When I've been harangued by those who would try to pester me into converting to his own beliefs, seeming to think that I would become a Christian just to get him to shut up, without fail this haranguing came from a Protestant. To this day, there has not been an exception to that - that's a line that even the supposedly intolerant Muslims have never been willing to cross in my presence. I know of no other religious group that acts this way in its outreach efforts, treating evangelization as if it were a military campaign, more concerned with expansionism than with righteousness, and then daring to invoke the holy name of G-d himself on behalf of such a sordid and egotistical business. I can accept the individual Protestant. If the community should sincerely choose to mend its ways, I can even accept Protestantism and usually, seeing that this has been the case lately, do. But a shameful history remains a shameful one, and when somebody tries to shift the shame for that history onto those who have not earned it, I am truly, deeply offended and disgusted by this.

The author of that remark claims an Irish sounding name, but as the saying goes, on the Internet, nobody knows that you are a dog; for all we know, in the real world, her real name could be Chelsey. But even if she is a self hating former Catholic, the reality of what others have done, both in front of me and as a matter of historical record remains, and my comments stand. Those who are truly offended by them are invited to seek the therapy they need. I will never apologize for telling the truth, even an unflattering one, and in this case, too many people have held their tongues for far too long. There is nothing intolerant about calling the intolerant on their intolerance, and aside from a relative handful of people in need of medication, we all know it.

Tonight's Monstrosity

cerrillos — Sat, 11 May 2013 23:41:52 GMT

Nothing southwestern about this, at all, I'm afraid. Chicken tenders from Jewel were on the menu, tonight. OK, they were the menu, tonight, because I was in a hurry to get out the door and decided to leave everything else for later, when I get back. I believe that there are the inside flaps from the chicken breasts, and I had a whole pound of them - 1.12 lbs, maybe. Makes you wonder what they do with the rest of the breast, doesn't it?

I very lightly browned them in olive oil, just barely coloring the surface, then sprinkling them heavily with coarsely ground black pepper and adding a sliced clove of garlic. I continued cooking, very briefly, until the garlic turned just a little translucent - softened, not browned - before adding three anchovies to the pan, stirring quickly as they dissolved into the pan, and then adding 1 1/2 teaspoons of curry powder, which I cooked just until the aroma of whatever that stuff was became unmistakable. Yes, commercial curry powder. Forgive me. I immediately added cheap dry white wine -a "chardonnay" to the pan to stop the frying before the curry had a chance to scorch, about 1/2 of a cup of it, enough to come maybe 1/4 of the way up those strips, and sprinkled this mess with maybe 1 tablespoon of what had been perfectly good dried basil. This, I simmered for a few minutes, adding a little - maybe a few tablespoons more of the same wine to the pan, seemingly just enough to keep the gravy from boiling dry, until the chicken was fork tender, adding two tablespoons or so of coarse Dijon mustard to the gravy (or sauce, if your prefer) in the pan, after removing the chicken tenders to a plate. More rapid stirring, with not really much reduction at all, and I ended up with maybe 1/2 a cup of stongly flavored sauce, which I poured over the chicken. I then apologized to my stomach, and threw this down my throat, before going to the computer to confess my culinary transgressions.

The sauce was just barely thick enough to coat the chicken, having been bound by the mustard, and doesn't seem like it would have benefited from further reduction.

Yes, they did it, again

cerrillos — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:21:23 GMT

Once again, I've had to relocate my vacation photo site. Making a virtue of the annoying necessity than some anonymous coward has made a reality, I've set up a few side pages at a few of the more stable providers, where I'll talk about the pages I have under construction. I've also created a mirror site, for reasons explained elsewhere. If I have to move my site, again, those following the blogs will immediately know where I've moved it to.

My G-rated site is about one subject: the American Southwest, its history, culture, geology, food ... and what you'll see on this journal will be works in progress, and discuss some of the livejournals I've liked, which discuss related subject matter. Posting might be infrequent, as this is a travel blog and, being poor, I can't travel very often, but automatic update notification will be available.

I hope you'll enjoy.