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What kind of meat (or cheese) is it?

Started by scarface, October 11, 2015, 07:02 PM

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humbert

#190
Quote from: scarface on June 17, 2021, 01:02 PM
You're totally right, the highest temperature were located in Arles near Grau du roi. And yet 30° in Ile de France is a sweltering heat because there is no wind.

How is the availability of air conditioning in Paris and nearby vicinity? I ask not because I think France is "backwards", but because this kind of temperature doesn't happen frequently and most of the year it's not hot enough to need A/C. This is in sharp contrast to America. Here as you know, winters are cold but summers are VERY hot. A/C is everywhere, you'll die without it :). Just the other day a major city like Phoenix hit 47°C! Fortunately it's not that bad in San Antonio. We are at 33° to 35°, although I've seen the temp hit 44° in previous years.

scarface

Quote from: humbert on June 18, 2021, 05:26 AM
Quote from: scarface on June 17, 2021, 01:02 PM
You're totally right, the highest temperature were located in Arles near Grau du roi. And yet 30° in Ile de France is a sweltering heat because there is no wind.

How is the availability of air conditioning in Paris and nearby vicinity? I ask not because I think France is "backwards", but because this kind of temperature doesn't happen frequently and most of the year it's not hot enough to need A/C. This is in sharp contrast to America. Here as you know, winters are cold but summers are VERY hot. A/C is everywhere, you'll die without it :). Just the other day a major city like Phoenix hit 47°C! Fortunately it's not that bad in San Antonio. We are at 33° to 35°, although I've seen the temp hit 44° in previous years.
In most apartments there is no air conditioning in the Paris region. And yet the temperature can reach 40°: https://news.yahoo.com/temperatures-soar-well-above-normal-173634659.html
The only place where I've seen many apartments equipped with air conditioning is Grau du roi.
In my apartment, I have installed a little portable air conditioner, because when it's warm at night, I can't sleep.
A laughing seagull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N0kaDpbhIU
A video of Port Camargue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dvH-q81w2c

scarface

#192
Today, I'm going to present another recipe.

Lately, I presented the steamed mussels with white wine recipe and I've seen that humbert expressed a real interest.
This time, I'm going to present the recipe of the "bourguignon de canard", or duck stew, which is a classic French recipe.

Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add duck and sausage; cook 7 minutes or until browned. Remove the duck and sausage from pan. Add celery and next 3 ingredients (through garlic); sauté 7 minutes. Return duck mixture to pan. Add broth, beans, and tomatoes; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes.
Simmering cubed pieces of duck breast "low and slow" results in tender, tasty morsels. The process can't be rushed. It takes time to turn tough into tender. This recipe, which can also be prepared on the stovetop or over a campfire in a Dutch oven, works well with any lean game meats.

You can watch this video if you want to make this recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F640jhG67s

You can see a photo below of a "bourguignon de canard" (or potée de canard).



I guess that you can impress your friends with such a recipe.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTrXIlB1RbA&list=RDnKK5hvHcF0U

humbert

Quote from: scarface on June 18, 2021, 09:06 AM

In most apartments there is no air conditioning in the Paris region. And yet the temperature can reach 40°:
The only place where I've seen many apartments equipped with air conditioning is Grau du roi.
In my apartment, I have installed a little portable air conditioner, because when it's warm at night, I can't sleep.

I remember your portable A/C. You posted pictures of it a while ago. Let me ask -- how often would you say you have to actually use it? I'm asking because I'm under the impression that probably the reason for no A/C in Paris apartments is because it's used only sparingly. In other words, temps such as 40° and higher do occur, but they're unusual. I just saw on a weather site that tonight's temp is Paris is down to 17°. If it's that cool a fan will do just fine. By comparison, here in San Antonio we have to wait until at least mid-September to see temps 20° or less.

scarface

Quote from: humbert on June 20, 2021, 04:30 AM
I remember your portable A/C. You posted pictures of it a while ago. Let me ask -- how often would you say you have to actually use it? I'm asking because I'm under the impression that probably the reason for no A/C in Paris apartments is because it's used only sparingly. In other words, temps such as 40° and higher do occur, but they're unusual. I just saw on a weather site that tonight's temp is Paris is down to 17°. If it's that cool a fan will do just fine. By comparison, here in San Antonio we have to wait until at least mid-September to see temps 20° or less.
After a thunderstruck, a rapid cooling took place last week indeed.
Usually, the hottest month is August, but I used this A/C last week one evening to cool down the temperature. My bedroom is oriented towards the south and at 11pm the indoor temperature is higher, for example 28° outside and 30° inside when there is a heatwave (and there is no wind in the RP so it's useless to open a window). You're right to refer to cool fans. I've got one too. It's usually enough to create a feeling of freshness. What's more, it's less noisy, and with a consumption of only 45W (versus 2,1 KW for the A/C), you can use it when you are sleeping (and it repels mosquitoes).
I use this model: https://www.zounko.com/product/promo-3601029928701-ventilateur-avec-telecommande-elsay

Shadow.97

Quote from: humbert on June 20, 2021, 04:30 AM
Quote from: scarface on June 18, 2021, 09:06 AM

In most apartments there is no air conditioning in the Paris region. And yet the temperature can reach 40°:
The only place where I've seen many apartments equipped with air conditioning is Grau du roi.
In my apartment, I have installed a little portable air conditioner, because when it's warm at night, I can't sleep.

I remember your portable A/C. You posted pictures of it a while ago. Let me ask -- how often would you say you have to actually use it? I'm asking because I'm under the impression that probably the reason for no A/C in Paris apartments is because it's used only sparingly. In other words, temps such as 40° and higher do occur, but they're unusual. I just saw on a weather site that tonight's temp is Paris is down to 17°. If it's that cool a fan will do just fine. By comparison, here in San Antonio we have to wait until at least mid-September to see temps 20° or less.
My parents use the AC to get the temp down to 18c indoors every night in Sweden.

I would love to have an AC, and the hottest it's been today is 17c outside.

My parents have had AC for as long as I can remember, probably around 2006~2009. One at the stairs, and one in their bedroom. It's amazing to not sweat to death indoors.  ;D
Maybe we're just not acclimated for the mild heat.

humbert

QuoteI would love to have an AC, and the hottest it's been today is 17c outside.

How I envy you! I have to put up with 34° and 55% humidity. The heat index is a punishing 39°C

QuoteMy bedroom is oriented towards the south and at 11pm the indoor temperature is higher, for example 28° outside and 30° inside when there is a heatwave (and there is no wind in the RP so it's useless to open a window).

This is called internal heat gain. The A/C must not only remove heat that comes in from the outside but also heat produced by internal sources (cooking, lights, machinery, even humans). In buildings or other places that are busy, you can have outside temp of 5° and you still need A/C. I worked in the A/C and refrigeration business before I moved out here.

scarface

#197
Today, I’m going to talk about a book titled "The pig in ancient Egypt", written by Youri Volokhine
I hope that humbert and Maher will be interested in this summary.



"Without him, there is no bacon, and consequently, no cooking". With these words, Alexandre Dumas, relying on the authority of Grimod de la Reynière, spoke of the importance of pork meat in Western cuisine. A place of choice, acquired even though the pig would just happen to be "the king of filthy animals". Before painting a pleasant portrait of pork meat and revealing some of its amazing recipes, Dumas dwells on the history of the beast, which leads him to evoke the most distant antiquity, that of Egypt. The Egyptians regarded the pig as a filthy animal, if someone accidentally touched a pig, he had to purify himself in the Nile with his clothes on. On one day and under one circumstance, it was allowed to eat pigs, it was at the time of the full moon: the animal was then slain to Bacchus and Phoebe. Everyone knows that the Israelites regarded the flesh of the pig as filthy flesh, but everyone also knows that this prescription is more hygienic than religious. The country where pigs acquire the highest degree of delicacy is China according to Jesuit fathers. Therefore the Chinese make pork meat the basis of all feasts and their hams are of a higher quality than those of any country. These few lines from Dumas admirably condense a whole set of prejudices and ideas about pork meat which, if very much alive in popular culture in nineteenth-century France, nonetheless go back to Egypt, or more exactly here to an Egypt designed by the Greeks. Indeed, Dumas's anecdote about the pig "sacrificed to Bacchus and Phoebe" has its origin in a passage from Herodotus. And it immediately leads the author to ask the question of the prohibition of the consumption of pork meat by the "Israelites", a prohibition which is said to be based on the impurity of the animal. A prohibition which, since ancient times, has been designed as a direct path leading from the ancient Egyptians to the Judeans. To complete this little picture, Dumas turns abruptly towards China, on a cannibalistic horizon: this is where the ham would be the best, because the pigs would be fed on human flesh there. And fear will seize any gastronomic and literate reader, who can only have in mind the aphorism of Brillat-Savarin: "Tell me what you eat: I will tell you who you are".  A gastronome cannot ignore either that the pig is driven by its insatiable and omnivorous appetite to devour or to take an interest in all kinds of things ranging from the sublime (the truffle, which he has the art of flushing out) to the infamous (excrement), even appalling (corpses). A suspicious position, which can lead to a very poor appreciation of the animal: "of all quadrupeds" wrote Buffon, "the pig seems the most crude animal (...) all its habits are rude, all its tastes are foul . Despite everything, pig represents the meat "par excellence" in the traditional societies of rural Europe. From the dark, rubbish-eating animal to the gentle pink piglet, the specter of the pig is wide in Western thought. This makes it, undoubtedly, a particularly "good to think" animal, to use the famous expression of Claude Lévi-Strauss, and even "good to forbid".


More than two thousand years old prejudices: the pig at the crossroads of worlds.
Fortunately, the pig has found some remarkable historians. Michel Pastoureau devoted several studies to it and a delightful little book. Pastoureau perfectly highlighted the ambivalence of the animal in European symbolism: sometimes Saint Anthony's "good pig", sometimes, on the contrary, a satanic and repulsive animal; In addition, Pastoureau extended the reflection to the Middle Eastern antecedents of prejudices, even of "taboos". Claudine Fabre-Vassas, for her part, has delivered a remarkable study of animals in Western culture, of great richness and profound finesse of analysis. These works have inspired Volokhine and even nurtured Volokhine. They persuaded Volokhine that Christendom has inherited part of an ancient tradition and discourse on the pig. A heritage constantly rethought, within the learned framework of Christianity, on the one hand, but also within that of the many local traditions of European peasant cultures. The Greek tradition inaugurates in Western reflection a discourse more than two thousand years old on the nature of the pig, on its character, but also on the reasons which led certain peoples to hate it. In the ancient Greek world, pork meat was highly valued not only on men's tables, but also on that of the gods. The piglet is par excellence the small animal offered in sacrifice. At the same time, philosophers draw a contrasting portrait of it. Aristote makes it the animal which fattens the fastest, and characterizes it, after man (but with the dog), as the one most inclined to copulation. In the Roman world, if Varro appreciates the beast, Pliny, on the contrary, despises the pig, making it "the most stupid of animals" (animalium hoc maxime brutum) , which makes Michel Pastoureau say: "it is regrettable for the reputation of the pig that Pliny's natural history has, for centuries, been read more than Varro's treatise on agriculture". But, within the discourse on animals, a very particular topos intervenes, far exceeding in its implications the simple zoological gaze. It is the question of the ban on its meat, a ban which, as a generalized prescription, is unknown to the classical world, but which is revealed to Greek eyes in the gaze on the other, on the East. It is therefore not a zoological problem, but an anthropological question. And we are astonished, in the Greek world, at what presents itself as a formidable enigma: why do some people not eat the flesh of this animal, however delicious? Cristiano Grottanelli tackled this question, and clearly highlighted "four reasons" for hating pork meat, four reasons given in Greek and Roman literature in connection with bans on animals in Jewish and Egyptian traditions. This discourse therefore takes place in Greek reflection (or thought in Greek) on the conceptions specific to the Egyptians and the Jews. The prohibition of pork meat in the latter is an object of astonishment and questioning all the greater since the animal is, on the contrary, very popular in the Greco-Roman diet, and that it is a very common animal of sacrifice. In this discourse which forms a real system, as Grottanelli demonstrates, it is notable that Egypt plays an important role, and that it is frequently invoked in support of the argument. Here are these four topoi identified by Grottanelli:
- Earth and seed: the pig was the first animal to burrow in the ground; it is the inventor of plowing. For this reason, the Jews revere it and therefore refuse to eat it. To support this argument, the example of Egypt is cited, a country where pigs help farmers by burying seeds in fertile Nile soil.
- Leprosy and mange: pigs transmit skin diseases; The species itself suffers from it, and by contagion infects humans.
- Mud and excrement: the pig is an animal that grinds dirty matter, from which it derives its impurity.
- Eyes on the ground: the anatomical conformation of the pig does not allow it to look up to the sky; this makes the animal a "low-grade" being.
In concluding his article, Grottanelli makes "three important observations", which he draws from his review of Near Eastern documentation: pork meat was not prohibited in Mesopotamia; on the contrary, the animal was a much appreciated food source. "Apparently, pork meat was normally eaten in Pharaonic Egypt"; but, in the texts, the animal appears described in a manner reminiscent of the Mesopotamian texts (i.e., as a dirty animal).
Behind the Assyrian texts, there is a Mesopotamian tradition on the pig, dating back at least to the second millennium BC: the pig is a stupid and dirty animal.

Hence the following conclusion: "while the prohibition itself was an important aspect of the subjective identity of the Jews (but probably not of the Egyptians, at least until the Hellenistic period) a part of the tradition linked to the pig (...) goes back to very ancient traditions but which are not necessarily connected with a prohibition, and which ultimately serve to qualify the identity of the Egyptians, and especially of the Jews, defined by their polytheistic neighbors who speak and write in Greek or Latin". This speech therefore consists of a series of topoi on pork meat, which partly date back to Near Eastern cultural traditions, and which are used in questions relating to the identity of the Jews and the reason for their rejection of pork meat. Misgav Har-Peled recently defended a doctoral thesis at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) entitled "The Pig as Problem". Greeks, Romans and Jewish Pork meat Avoidance, dealing specifically with what would pose the "problem": the ban on the consumption of pork meat. The animal constitutes itself as a "paradox" for the Greeks (pig-pork paradox): a dirty animal, both physically and morally, but which produces "delicious flesh". The ban creates a difference between those who eat animals and those who do not. The constitution of this data as a problem would arise from a conflict between the philanthropic idea of sharing (commensality) and the notion of irreducible particularism (the dietary difference). The case of the Maccabee brothers - Judeans forced to eat the flesh of the animal by sacrificing a pig to defile the temple in Jerusalem - signals the emergence of the "problem", thought out and worked on by Hellenistic Judaism. The Greek questions around pork meat point towards themes that will not cease to be explored until today. We encounter in the Christian culture of medieval Europe, first, then later, a very particular discourse whose strangest aspect at first sight, and perfectly highlighted by Claudine Fabre-Vassas, is the slanderous association of pork meat with the Jews. After having remarkably identified and defined the economy of the animal in rurality, the author devoted the most original part of her work to the "ideological exploitation" of pork meat in European thought. However, the pig reveals itself as a real operator in a discourse on the demarcation between Christians and Jews, against a background of food practice. A question - which was already Greco-Roman - is bound to be implicitly asked, if not sometimes even verbalized: why don't the Jews eat pork? Christian thought provides a terrible answer to this: Jews do not eat pigs, because they do not eat their own children. Which is to say: the Jews themselves are pigs. In support of this wicked view of the motivation for the forbidden (an element that takes place in a more general hostile discourse), there is a whole set of versions widely exploited in the iconography of the Gospels of Childhood (from the thirteenth century), as well as in various European versions and variations, in which Jesus is said to have transformed into little pigs the children of a Pharisee who, in order to test his demiurgic talents and to make fun of him, had concealed his little family in their vat (or in an oven), then asking them to guess who was hidden there. From this story, and drawing from a whole background going back in part to Antiquity (the question of the motivation of the forbidden), a veritable tragic symphony will be formed in the medieval West and up to the modern era, around the Jews, the pig, the ritual crime, blood, anthropophagy,"red Easter" (of blood), discriminating physical signs (skin spots, freckles, "lepers", cysticercosis, etc.). The "Sow of the Jews" (Judensau), carved on several cathedrals, is probably the most striking illustration of this discourse. This terrifying symphony of hatred and hatred of the other is not without arousing echoes on the side of Antiquity. Another extension of the theme of transformation into pork, which Claudine Fabre-Vassas does not explore, leads to Arabic texts. Here too, in slanderous speech, the Jews become pigs as a result of their ungodliness. The idea of transforming the disbelievers (generally: Christians and Jews) into animals is expressed in the Qur'an ("Those whom God in his wrath cursed and transformed into apes and pigs"). However, subsequent exegesis will tend to consider that it is the Jews who are especially concerned here. We also find a similar story in Tabari (who even gives two different versions) : Jesus had sent down from heaven a table laden with food, to convince the unbelievers; those who sat down there and remained convinced that it was not a question of a miracle but of magic "fell asleep at night, and, the next day, when they got up, they were changed into swine and completely disfigured" . For Tabari: "God twice metamorphosed men from among the children of Israel: once on the occasion of the table which came down from heaven, where he had changed men into swine, and, before that, certain people of the subjects of David, living after Solomon who had sinned on the Sabbath day, transgressing the prescription of rest, and whom God changed into apes". This bestial metamorphosis is in the order of punishment; it signals, in Islamic thought, a terrible calamity. 

Prohibitions and hygiene: religious and sanitary rules.
It is for the sake of a history that shows itself to be sensitive to "surfaces of emergence", as understood by Michel Foucault, that Volokhine wishes to propose this study on the pig in ancient Egypt. A study which envisages not only to stop on what the archaeological and historical data reveal to us on the economic and ideological place of this animal within the framework of the Pharaonic culture, but also on a history in the long term, in the horizon of cultures in contact where discourse emerges linking the prohibitions around pork to ancient Egypt. The prohibitions: this is undoubtedly a fertile theme in the context of the history of religions and anthropology, following, in particular, the work of Mary Douglas, and, in another vein, a certain neo-functionalism which seems to still have the wind in its sails. With the study of the pig in Egypt, it will not only be a question of "table manners", of human and divine cuisine, but above all, as we will have already understood, of the vast, fundamental question of the "prohibitions" in the framework of Pharaonic culture, a notion carried by the concept expressed by the Egyptian word - which Egyptologists, using for the occasion of anthropological language, generally translate as "taboo"; namely a complex attitude, in a way defensive and protective, aimed at shielding the divinity from harmful influences. An attitude at the heart of an Egyptian discourse on the "pure and the impure", that is to say, also, on the "sacred", on the lawful and the illicit, in short, a whole set of notions strongly worked and constructed by the history of Western religions, and which it is a question of modifying very largely, by renouncing preconceived ideas, by the precise examination of the documentation, only able to reveal the effective Egyptian categories. To deal with an animal from the perspective of the anthropology of ancient polytheisms, different aspects and levels should be taken into account. It is about "thinking the animal", which implies thinking about a large number of configurations: its place in a given cultural and ideological system; the contribution of this animal to human nutrition; its cultural and religious symbolism; its function in myths; its role in rituals. In short, to approach the animal in the complexity of the links it forges with humans. Seen in this way, animals are excellent operators in gaining an understanding of human cultures. However, the case of the pig poses questions resistant to analysis by anthropologists as well as historians, theologians and philosophers. Indeed, two of the three great so-called monotheistic religions, Islam and Judaism, prohibit the consumption of one's flesh for religious reasons. And it is a particularly complicated subject of religious anthropology that that of the motivation for this prohibition. As it turns out, the seemingly simple question of why Jews and Muslims don't eat pork, there is no commonly accepted answer. On the one hand, the community of believers rejects illicit flesh because their book, Torah or Koran, prohibits it; which does not necessarily require more explanation. But the learned tradition associated with these religions did not fail to provide various answers, based primarily on a kind of medical materialism. This dietary position is clearly adopted by Maimonides in the 12th century, in his Guide to the Lost, which bases the Jewish prohibition on the fact that the flesh of the pig is bad, corruptible, indigestible, and that it comes from a dirty animal. Without going too far into this vast subject linked to the history of dietary rules and the multiple interpretations linked to them, it is useful, for the record, to quote here this passage from Maimonides: So I say that all the foods that the Fa has forbidden us to do is unhealthy food. In all that has been forbidden to us, there is only the pork and the fat which are not considered harmful, but this is not so, for the pork is (a food) wetter than it is. necessary and too exuberant. The main reason why the Law abominates him is that he is very unclean and feeds on unclean things. You know how careful the Law is to keep away the spectacle of filth, even in the open countryside, in a war camp, and all the more so in the interior of cities.
But if we ate the flesh of pigs, the streets and even the houses would be dirtier than the latrines, as we now see in the land of the Franks. You know this saying of our sages: "the muzzle of the pig looks like walking excrement". This vision, which explains the Jewish prohibition in particular by the repugnance in the face of a dirty animal, no doubt largely contributed to imposing a rational explanation for the rejection of pork in the Jewish religion. But Maimonides' "reasons" are obviously not necessarily the same as the primary motivations. The learned philosopher and theologian is also a doctor, let us not forget, and this aspect of his profile is not without importance here. Other information can be gleaned from the Talmudic literature. The impurity of the pork meat is underlined on several occasions; more specifically, the Babylonian Talmud relates it to the spread of disease. We still find the pig summoned for different reasons in Jewish accounts, often curious stories: thus the mouth of the mouse would have a "little seam" because Noah would have sewn it up again, after a cat had scratched it, with a tail hair of a pig. The same Noah is still linked to the story of the invention of the vine: he invents it with the grapes that Adam would have taken with him from paradise. In this endeavor, Satan assists him, kills a lamb, a lion, a pig and a monkey, and causes their blood to flow on the vine. Then, he convinces Noah of the astonishing qualities of the vineyard: lamb in normal times, so now Noah gets drunk; moderately, first, he grows strong like a lion; more, and he becomes like a pig; to excess, finally, obscene as a monkey. This sequence of Noah's "satanic" drunkenness therefore involves the pig in a series of degradation, of which the monkey is conceived as the final term, and the pig as the penultimate step. It also happens that Esau, known elsewhere as hairy and red-haired, is described as a pig, "the dirtiest animal", libidinous and rapist.

scarface

In this message, probably posted in the wrong topic, you have discovered an alternative to common smoked sausages: https://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=2283.msg36556#msg36556
The Corsican figatelli aroused humbert's curiosity and we soon began discussing the technical aspects, even if shadow.97 immediately showed reluctance.
Tonight, I'm going to prepare a couscous and I will show you a few photos. For Maher and panzer24, this North African dish certainly holds no secret, but we might need to convert Vasudev and humbert.

scarface

Tonight, I'm going to show you how to make a good couscous.

Couscous is a North African dish made from tiny steamed balls of semolina flour. Even though we cook it as a grain, couscous is actually a type of pasta. And it’s especially wonderful with stews.

To start, bring the water to a boil in a medium pot. Add a drizzle of olive oil, a pad of butter, and a little salt. Then add, the semolina.
In this picture you can see the balls of semolina flour in the plate.


Next, add the couscous.
Take the pan off the heat, cover, and let the couscous steam for 5 minutes.
When you lift the lid, the grains will appear flat in an even layer. Use a fork to fluff it up and break up the clumps for light and fluffy couscous.


The couscous itself, while tender and light, doesn’t have too much flavor, so it’s customary to serve it with seasonal vegetables and a rich meat broth. you can use lamb shanks for the broth because they contain a lot of flavor and gelatin, which produce a full-bodied broth.