Sticks and Stones

There's a reason (well, several, probably) why blog posts have been so scarce here lately.  It's mainly that most of what I'd post would be political rants, and heaven knows we don't need more of those.  But eventually it becomes hard to hold one's tongue.

There have been so many things I could have reacted to:  the various looney doings in the Arizona legislature, for one.   They operate as though Kafka were in charge--actually, even Kafka would find some of what they do too weird.  Then there are the various outrageous statements by politicians who hope you won't scrutinize what they say too carefully--because they don't hold up to any rational or logical examination.

What brings me out of hiding?  Rush Limbaugh, of course, because I think those of us who find what he has said about Sandra Fluke to be so offensive must speak out.  We can all complain bitterly about the loss of civility in our discourse, but if we don't condemn it--if we just watch it as a sort of fight to the death among gladiators--we're at least partly complicit.  Edmund Burke reminded us that evil triumphs when good people do nothing (though it's hard to pin down exactly how he said it--read this interesting compilation).

Rush Limbaugh and others are entitled to believe that contraception shouldn't be part of standard medical insurance coverage.  I passionately disagree with them, but I won't call them names.  In fact, I won't even call Rush Limbaugh names, tempting as it is.  And I won't condone calling anyone names.  (One response to the outcry about Limbaugh's remarks has been to dredge up some really foul things that some liberals have said about some conservatives.  Those aren't right, either, and they certainly don't make this right.  In fact, didn't we all learn as kids that "two wrongs don't make a right"?  I condemn all  hate speech--it is dangerous, vicious, and destructive.)

Apart from the downright mean-spiritedness of the remarks (which was bad enough) Limbaugh made a series of big rhetorical mistakes in his diatribes against Sandra Fluke.  First, he set up a paper tiger or a straw man:  he turned her advocacy for insurance coverage of contraception on its head, claiming that she sought taxpayer support for contraceptives.  Everything else he said flowed from this one great, gaping logical flaw.  He then misconstrued how birth control works (deliberately, I suspect, since it's hard to imagine anyone being that misinformed), suggesting that if she had less sex, she'd need less birth control.  Finally (well, probably not finally--I'm sure there are other sins we can enumerate), he engaged in what is called, ironically in this case, an ad hominem argument.  That's when you don't take on the argument itself, but you attack the person making the argument--an argument "against the man."  This, as Cicero pointed out centuries ago, is basically a distraction.  Yet it's the meat and potatoes of a lot of political discourse.

And that's what I want to condemn.  Disagree with me all you like.  Tell me why I'm wrong and you're right.  Find facts that support your position and demonstrate that mine is misinformed, naive, or just plain wrong.  But don't ignore my argument altogether and just start calling me names.

The sad truth is that ad hominem arguments work.  Mud-slinging works.  Negative campaigning works.  And it will keep working, no matter outraged we pretend to be, so long as we are willing to be swayed by it.

There are websites that check the accuracy of candidates' statements.  Maybe we need one that keeps track of how often they call their opponents names instead of engaging the argument.

So I hereby foreswear all name-calling.  And anyone who disagrees with me is just a stupid jerk.  :o)

(And speaking of Edmund Burke, he also said this:  "All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter."  Yup.  Something else we've lost track of.)

Today's cooking project

Some students are coming over for dinner tomorrow night, which means I get to cook outrageous amounts of food (I can give them the remains, so that we don't get fat eating them ourselves).

One of the things I'm making is this pie.  It is an extraordinary apple pie, with a filling unlike any other I've ever had:  the long, low-temperature baking turns the apples into something smooth and creamy more resembling apple butter than a pie filling.  It's heavenly!

One of the kids (I think it was Miriam, but if not, they'll set me straight) dubbed this "Apple Lasagna," because you are supposed to bake it in a 9 x 13" pan--the kind we usually use for lasagna.  Actually, we fairly quickly decided that it was an obscene amount of pie unless you were feeding a HUGE crowd--it usually went bad before we could eat all of it.  So I've done two things to this recipe.  I've cut the proportions for the filling in half, baking it in a deep-dish 10" pie plate, and I use my usual crust recipe instead of the all-vegetable shortening one called for here.  Also, to get the crust nice and flaky, I heat the oven to 425 degrees and turn it down to 250 when I put the pie in.

The main problem with this pie is that you have to smell it baking for 3 hours.  By then, you are ravenous for pie, but you can't eat it for at least 4 hours!  I hope there is some left when the students arrive tomorrow...

Leftovers never had it so good

OK, I admit it.  I'm nuts.

Leftovers made from Christmas turkey should, on the whole, be simple and straightforward.  And mine were--until I started fussing.  After all, Turkey ala King is nothing more than chunks of turkey in a cream sauce with maybe some peas and mushrooms in it.  You can rustle that up in about half an hour--at most.  Pour it over rice or buttered egg noodles, and you've got a really delightful supper.

So far, so good.  The crazy part is that I thought it would be fun to serve the Turkey ala King not over rice or noodles, but in puff paste shells--vol-au-vents--made from homemade pastry, not the store-bought kind.

So on Thursday, I assembled the dough using Julia Child's modern method in her book The Way to Cook.  That book, by the way, is brilliant and gorgeous.  If you're familiar with puff paste, you know that the traditional method of making it is to make a dough, make a large pat of butter, place it on the dough, and then begin rolling it out and folding it to form layers.  It's a tricky process:  if the big mass of butter is too cold, you can't roll it.  If it's too soft, it turns to mush.  There's a lot of stopping and sticking the thing back in the fridge to firm up, and the whole procedure takes several hours.

Julia Child's updated method has you combine all of the butter with the flour.  The proportions, by the way, are shocking:  you start with six-and-a-half sticks of butter (you read that right) and combine them with four cups of flour.

Once you get a rough dough, you start patting and rolling it.  You make a long rectangle and fold it like a business letter.  As you keep doing that--four times on the first go--it gets more and more like dough.  You chill it for 45 minutes and fold it twice more, and voila!  puff paste ready to bake with.  Wonderful.

I made the dough most of the way on Thursday and made the final two turns yesterday (Friday) evening.  I shaped the dough into vol-au-vents by tracing a cereal bowl on the dough to cut eight discs.  I then traced a mug on the inside of four of them, cut out the center, and put the resulting donut-shaped ring on top of the full discs.  A little magic with some egg wash and a knife and some poking with a fork and a skewer, and they were ready for the oven.  They looked like this:

I set the cookie sheets on a pizza stone in a hot oven for 25 minutes.  Then I scooped out the centers, saving the tops, and slipped them back in the oven for 5 minutes more.  Here was the result:


Not too bad, eh?  And it's huge fun to think of that plain-looking dough turning into those spectacular structures.  I then ladled some of the Turkey ala King into them, and they were ready to serve.  The finished product is at the top of this entry.  They tasted fabulous.

So once in a while it makes sense to fuss--even over something simple.  Now and then, it's worth the trouble.

Happy New Year and much joy in 2012.  I hope your year turns out like a good batch of puff pastry:  unassuming at first, only to blossom into something glorious.