L'episode de la Madeleine

Duh!!!!!!!!!

The bell went off in my simplistic brain and the connections and patterns revealed themselves.  I just love when this happens in the therapeutic environment.  It is deeply satisfying.

For years I talked and thought of my father as handicapped as an adult because his mother died when he was four.  There was no mommy, no person to teach him how to be in the world, how to be a friend, how to express yourself, nor how to have relationships that can transcend small and large problems.  This continues to plague him even now when the emotional book-ends of birth, marriage and death come calling between June 17-July 4-July 8th every year.

It was only when I was talking about the man-child and how mother's day and his birthday (birth and birth) causes much shpilkes (Yiddish for "nervous energy") that I saw the connection.

The recent celebration into teenagerville came 5 days after Mother's Day.  The celebration of his birth is bittersweet as a major element was missing, mythologized, absent.  Can you celebrate a birthday if you don't know how you came to be? 

My man-child was conflicted because while he was thrilled to celebrate with his family, his first 30 months of life is as good as a piece of fiction.

His moment de la madeleine is crafted from desire, hope, similarity, continuity, and other cues he encounters in everyday life that he hopes are recollections. We have created them for him, and in turn he has added episodes and experiences into the filing cabinet of his memories.

Were this embellishments the "involuntary memory" described by Proust in his moment de la madeleine?  Involuntary memory is a conception of human memory in which cues encountered in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort.

Proust contrasts involuntary memory with voluntary memory. The latter designates memories retrieved by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places. According to Proust's narrator in the text, he laments that such memories are inevitably partial, and do not bear the "essence" of the past.  So in the creation of early memories provided to the man-child, by wanting to fill in the holes and gaps, have we created a falsehood of knowing or being?

Whether patterns and themes come into life through chance, divine intervention, or coincidence--does it matter how they arrive?  The butter in the Madeleine will remove the bitterness that may exist when those memories are less than sweet.

So for those who are walking the streets of Paris, seeking inspiration from a pastry - please find your way to Blé Sucré for the most amazing Madeleines in the city.



Blé Sucré
Square Trousseau
7, rue Antoine Vollon (12th)
Tél: 01 43 40 77 73
Métro: Ledru-Rollin


For 24 Madeleines:
300 g of sugar
6 whole eggs
110 g of cold milk
375 g of flour
15 g of baking powder
410 g of hot melted butter
metal madeleine mold/tray

Orange Citrus Glaze:
200 g of sugar
57 g of freshly squeezed orange juice

Click here for conversion calculator.

One Step at a Time:
In a deep bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk, then slowly add the rest of the ingredients making sure to whisk in-between each new addition:

Sugar...

Whisk and "don't be afraid to put your body weight into it."

Flour, baking powder and whisk...

Hot butter and whisk...

Cold milk and ...

Whisk until smooth.

Butter the madeleine mold(s) only lightly, too much butter in the crevice grooves will keep the dough batter from seeping into the crevices to give the back of the madeleine that wonderful scallop shape.
Cover both and refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, should there be too much butter in the mold crevices, simply wet a paper towel with warm water and gently wipe out the excess butter from the grooves.

Generously flour the entire mold, and then slam it sideways onto a counter surface to remove excess.

Place the batter into a pastry bag/pipe and fill each place, starting in the middle to fill the mold yet not completely to the edges - ending with a quick flip of the wrist to completely cut the flow of batter before starting the next one.


Place the molds on a baking sheet and then into a 230° hot oven for six minutes, before taking the tray out to reinsert it backwards to ensure even baking for an additional six minutes.


As soon as they are done, take them out and immediately slam the mold sideways to remove the madeleines...

and place them individually on a cooling rack.

Use a mixer to blend the orange juice and sugar.

Once the madeleines are at room temperature, dip the top of the madeleine surface into the orange glaze mixture ...


and set aside each on a rack sitting on a baking sheet to catch the drips.

Place the rack and baking sheet of glazed madeleines into the oven for about 45 seconds to 1 minute, watching for the glaze “bubbling” on the edges - indicating they are ready to remove and cool.



A golden box of gorgeous light madeleines - fluffy and moist on the inside, firm and kissed by a touch of orange sweetness on the outside.



Recipe courtesy of Blé Sucré.

Motherless and Child

Yesterday we celebrated and honored the "mothers" in our lives.  Around these parts, it is a bittersweet day as it is tied to grief, loss, and abandonment.

My son, whom we adopted at 2-1/2 years old, has both a mother (me) and is motherless (birth mother).  I can't help but think that for all the love and adoration he gave me today, there is not a moment of imagining the woman who gave him life and who he left 11 months later.

Mothering this boy is complicated.  Alongside revering the mother who gives him his daily does of love, but he also lives with the loss of the mythic mother whose body he shared.  The warm and fuzzy bonds of mother-child intimacy never established and always the elephant in the room.

However, he is not the only one who lives with loss.  I had a mother - she is gone.  I carried a child - she is gone too.  Both have embodied me and me with them.

All the women in my family have a short shelf life.  Men have been left motherless and women have left these men due to the ravages of disease.  I can't see how Mother's Day can be anything but morose at best.

I think about this cycle of loss-grief-mother-child as I am also grieving the son I had and facing the teenager he has become.  It feels like a second losing of a child.  First the one that was in my body and now the one that come into my life when that ship sailed.

 (Thank you Bill Viola)


Watching this child shift from child to teenager is like traveling on the overland routes of the Silk Road.  Extending 4,000 miles, the routes enabled people to transport goods, luxuries such as silk, satin, hemp and other fine fabrics, musk, other perfumes, spices, medicines, jewels, glassware and even rhubarb, as well as serving as a conduit for the spread of knowledge, ideas, and cultures, between Ancient China, Ancient India (Indus valley, now Pakistan), Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. 

While there are spices, jewels and other goods to be found on the journey.  The road to get there can be rough.

Promises, Promises

So I tried to keep the promise of blogging more often in 2011.  However, that was better in concept then in practice. 

I am following a new to me credo for 2011.  If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all.  Given that - the missive of raising a tween who is about to cross the bridge into a teenager is taking everything out of me.  I don't mean to bitch and moan about how difficult it is, any parent of a teenager knows this.  All I am saying is that it takes every bit of energy, compassion, and discretion to make it through a 24-hour period with this man-child.

Because of this, I have turned to an more internal life and have found silence to be the most enjoyable moments of the day.  To be alone, still, and breathing are the only desired things I wish to do.  It is a craving that I have never had and nothing else will do.

I am not a Buddhist, but Suzuki Roshi talks about finding your composure and being settled. He spoke of it as "being settled on the self." Being settled on your self means never losing your composure. This is more than just having some false way of holding yourself. It means not being pulled off your place by anything. Not reacting to someone’s anger, not reacting to someone’s emotions, or feelings, or ideas, in a way that pulls you off your place. It also means taking good care of things, not just of yourself, not just of the people around you, but of your whole environment.

I have found that I must find ways to incorporate this into my daily life in order to keep sane and secure.  For now, I will look to find purpose and being settled.  The discomfort that must co-exist is something I must endure.  The sadness, pain, fear, and uncertainty will have to ride shotgun as if it is my co-joined twin.

To celebrate the rites of Spring and to enjoy some traditional French food, I have chosen to make a braised of lamb shoulder with the "caviar" of beans, flageolets, which I found at a special foodie store in Culver City.

Epaule d'Agneau Confite aux Herbes de Provence
- One shoulder of lamb, central bone still in, about 1.5 kg (3 1/3 pounds)
- Olive oil
- 2 to 3 tablespoons herbes de Provence (a mix of dried thyme, rosemary, basil, and marjoram)
- Half a head of garlic
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- Salt, pepperServes 4 to 6.

Coat the meat lightly with olive oil and rub it with the herbs to cover all sides. Wrap tightly in plastic (or return to the butcher's paper wrapper), and refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight.

Remove the meat from the fridge half an hour before cooking. Preheat the oven to 250°F. Separate the garlic into individual cloves, but leave each clove in its own skin.

Place the meat in a heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid -- cast-iron is ideal.  Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper, place the garlic around it, and pour the wine into the pot. Cover and slip into the oven.

Cook for 4 hours, flipping the meat and basting it with its juices every hour or so. If the juices run a bit low -- this may happen if the lid of your pot is not perfectly tight -- pour in a little more wine or water. The meat is ready when it is dark brown and very tender. Serve with flageolet beans (recipe below).

Flageolets
- 300 grams (10.5 ounces) dried flageolets beans (substitute the smallest dried white beans you can find)
- Olive oil
- 2 onions, peeled and sliced
- Stock or 1 bouillon cube- Salt, pepper

Serves 4 to 6

You don't have to soak the beans overnight.  Just cover with 4" of water, bring to a boil and cook until done. Rinse and drain.

Heat a little olive oil in a medium heavy-bottomed pot. Add the beans and onions and cook for 15 minutes, stirring regularly, until the onions are soft.

Pour in cold stock (or cold water plus one bouillon cube) to cover, bring to a simmer, and cook for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the beans are tender but still holding their shape. Season with salt 30 minutes into the cooking, and sprinkle with freshly ground pepper just before serving.