One Fat Man

Oompah Oompah, Bratwurst, and Beer for St Dominic, with the Turin Shroud: 8th August

The 8th August was the feast of St Dominic (it's the fourth in the old calendar). I spent it at the IOSOT conference for work.  IOSOT stands for International Organisation for the Study of the Old Testament. The society has a congress every three years, and this year it was in Munich. I was very excited about this, I'd never visited Bavaria before but felt sure it would be full of the Baroque Catholicism I love, and of good heavy food and beer. I was not disappointed.

I'd also been hoping that my visit to Bavaria could help lay a few demons at rest, with respect to the new pontificate. More on that story later.

There has been a heat wave in Munich. It's been VERY, VERY, hot. The conference did not have air-conditioning and by day four the inmates of the book exhibit were tired and unhappy. I'd been planning to sneak out for Mass at the Dominican church. But in all honesty I was just too tired and zombified to do so. I was moderately fed up about this.

At about 4 o'clock, when I was almost fully catatonic, a small man came into the book exhibit. He had a beard, a rucksack, and was barefoot (which I didn't notice at first). I was vaguely aware that he was going around the room talking to the publishers,  but beyond that my mind remained as utterly blank as it had been before. A few minutes later he arrived at my stand, and held a small card out for me to look at. I sat inert for a while longer before coming to. The man asked me what was on the card. I saw that it was a picture of the Turin Shroud. So I said , it's 'The Turin Shroud'. He said something to the effect of; 'yes, but it should really be called the "Christ" shroud, because it's Christ's shroud not Turin's, the latter being a place'. I nodded in agreement, I could not - and had no wish to - fault his logic. Then he said the card was his gift to me. I said thank-you very much.  He then offered me another card, with a truly ghastly picture of Jesus on it. I politely declined and said I liked the shroud better and to take two of his cards would be greedy. Then he said 'thank-you, you very nice. Goodbye', and pottered off around the room. By this point my brain had woken up and I took more notice of my recent conversation partner. I noticed his barefootedness, and beard, and simple and direct approach. I also noticed that most people were instantly refusing any conversation with him. This didn't seem to bother him much and in a few minutes he was gone.

I sat and reflected for a while. My chief reflection was that had I been in any way awake, or any less inert, I would not have been in any way receptive to this man. I would have turned him away instantly. I'd have presumed him to be crazy, and indeed he may be so. As it was I was given a small grace, for I also reflected that this man had asked nothing of me. He was not a beggar - at least he did not beg anything of me - and he did not push me to say, or react to, anything. It didn't occur to me to offer him anything in return, and this did not bother him. No, this man had quite simply brought me Christ, on my feast day when I had been unable to go to Mass, and because of my inertia I had found myself able to accept him. This made me well up a tiny bit - the heat was getting to me - so I said a few Aves for the man, and tucked the picture away. Here it is:

In the evening there was another feast day treat. The Archbishop of Munich, represented by an auxiliary, hosted a full-on Bavrarian beer garden evening for the whole conference. It was brilliant. I stuffed my face with pork steaks, bratwurst, sauerkraut, kartoffelsalat, tomatoes, pretzels, senf, obadzda, radishes, and sweet roasted almonds, and I drank a lot beer... which was brought round regularly. After a week of VERY tedious receptions where they'd served WATER on arrival followed by 40 minutes of speeches in German before the merest sip of a white wine spritzer I was worried the Archbishop would give us more of the same. But I'd had a large beer and two pretzels within seconds of arrival, and the bishop's speech was two minutes long and mostly said 'drink, eat, be merry'. It was great, and I could not stop smiling for most of the evening. It was partly all the delicious food and beer, partly the oompah music - for which I have a high tolerance - and partly that I knew this exhausting - but useful - conference was nearly over.

It was a great way to spend my feast day, and I enjoyed the excellent company of a colleague from another publishing house and a few sundry academics during it. Here is one of the many plates of food I ate:

Sadly I can't find anything to link St Dominic to Bavaria. But I did go to the Dominican church in Munich on Sunday for the High Mass (because it was in the international Catholic language of Latin and not the alienating local language which I wouldn't have understood), and they we celebrating Dominic on the Sunday as well, so that was nice for me.

If you too feel like getting in the Bavarian mood I recommend you make a German potato salad. It's like an English one, but with more cream, gherkins, maybe some egg. There are many recipes online, I'm sure you don't need one from me. I'm also not going to tell you how to grill a Bratwurst, but you should do that too.

A light summer picnic - the martyrs of Compiegne

We’re in the middle of the summer opera season. This is the time when English people put on evening dress and go into the countryside to have picnics in great formality, in the rain, and attempt to recreate their usual existences in the great outdoors. We take tables and chairs, and china plates, and proper glasses, and relish our ability to make everything as proper as possible (despite the fact that nowadays we don’t have as many servants as we used to). The only thing we don’t really manage is to have adequately chilled drinks, but for many English people ice is a relatively novel concept anyway. 

Chief amongst the summer opera outlets is Glyndebourne, but there are younger pretenders and one of these is Grange Park Opera in Hampshire. I admire this company very much. The first reason for this is that it was started from scratch by Wasfi Kani in 1997. Kani has managed to build a beautiful little opera house at the Grange, and to create festival that supports the work of her Pimlico Opera company, which exists to take opera to prisons.

The second is that Grange Park Opera stage repertoire that isn’t often heard and is in some ways beyond what many would imagine the scope of a small company with limited resources to be. This year they chose to stage Poulenc’s ‘Dialogues des Carmelites’. This is an opera, based on a play by Bernanos, which examines the real life martydom of the Carmelite nuns of Compiegne during the ‘terror’ of the French Revolution. The nuns of Compiegne refused to comply with the Revolutionary government’s law, which required the suppression of their monastery. As a consequence the nuns were imprisoned. This happened first at Cambrai, where they were locked up together with the English Benedictine nuns, who had been living in France ever since Fat Henry booted them out of England when he split with Rome because of his inability to father sons, and his need to fill his empty treasury by stealing Church property. But I digress. 

The Carmelites’ refusal to abandon their way of life led to them being executed. Sixteen of them. From the 80 year-old Sister Charlotte of the Resurrection, to the novice, Sister Constance. Before going to their deaths they renewed their monastic vows and chanted the Veni Creator Spiritus, a hymn sung at solemn profession. It is of course, an invocation of the Holy Spirit.

Shortly after the execution of the Carmelites the reign of terror came to an end, and some credit the Carmelites’ sacrifice with bringing this bloody period of history to a close. The English Benedictine nuns were allowed to travel home to England and set up a monastery there for the first time since the Reformation. They left in 1795, wearing the lay clothes that the Carmelites had been forced to wear in the place of their habits, and which had subsequently been forced upon the Benedictines, after the Carmelites had gone to their deaths. These clothes, some still preserved at Stanbrook Abbey, are the only relics of these great martyrs, who were buried in a mass grave along with over 1000 other victims of the guillotine.

So… a bold choice for a summer opera festival.

The Poulenc/Bernanos opera takes this amazing story of courage and adds to it two fictitious characters – the Prioress and a young postulant/novice - whose lives (and deaths) are a profound lesson for the audience in the nature of making a good death. They also show us the courage people need, and sometimes suprisingly find or lose, in their final moments. Poulenc changes the Veni, Creator Spiritus to a a Salve Regina, which starts with the voices of all the nuns all singing as one, the sound gradually thinning as we hear each go to the guillotine. It sends shivers down the spine.

Grange Park did an excellent job of the opera when I saw it in June, and despite the quails’ eggs and poached salmon, the champagne and strawberries outside… inside the theatre, the piece still packed its incredible punch.

Here is a version of that exceptionally moving final moment from youtube:

 

Grange Park’s run of ‘Carmelites’ sadly came to a close on 12^th July, and it’s a shame really that it is not being performed today, on their feast day. But still, in this good weather and season of summer opera, it is good to remember our own mortality, and to remember the great sacrifice of these Carmelite sisters.

And what of a recipe to accompany this post? It is, after all, a food blog. Well take the quails’ eggs, the strawberries and champagne. The picnic, easy and delicious. If I know anything of nuns then I know that the martyrs of Compiegne would have relished these items and found them delectable.

Veni creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita, imple superna gratia, que tu creasti pectora.

 Quails' egg, anyone?

 

 

 

Bring Flowers of the Rarest - farewell to May for another year.

Now, I said that I wasn't going to do any more Marian recipes for May... but this isn't really a recipe so it doesn't count. It's more a charming anecdote.

By way of a preamble I should tell you that I am prone to breaking into involuntary bursts of song. This can cause me problems. Indeed, since I moved to a new office I've been really having to rein it in. In the old office people were used to me, they even tolerated my week-long inability to get 'Teddy Bears Picnic' out of my head. Given that this was immediately followed by an obsession with 'I've Got a Luverly Bunch of Cocoanuts' I am very grateful to my former neighbours for putting up with me.

Anyway, yesterday I was in Waitrose. I was pottering around in the salad section, enjoying the fact that I wasn't in Morrissons (after shopping in Morrissons since February Waitrose feels like a great Temple of Food). At the more recherche end of the salad section I chanced upon a little pot of 'edible flowers'. This made me immediately burst into strains of the magnificent Marian hymn 'Bring Flowers of the Rarest'. We used to sing this as part of our school May procession (we toted Our Lady round the school singing, and throwing flowers, until we got her to the grotto in the pond area, where she stood interceding for the tadpoles and getting covered in lichen until the end of April the following year). I was jolly happy as the memories started flooding back, until I realised that I was singing a May song to Our Lady in a fruity falsetto at the camp end of the salad section.

Naturally, the only way to save face was to pop the flowers in my basket.  I then took them home, added them to a salad, and ate them.

To be honest they weren't very nice. But there we are, flowery salad for Our Lady to end this month dedicated to her. Heaven knows what I'll do for the month of the Sacred Heart, which starts tomorrow. Whilst duck hearts in soy sauce and honey are delicious it seems a rather macabre association.

Finally, for those of you interested in the song... then here it is, in all its glory, performed with great conviction and tenderness by Irish tenor Frank Patterson:

  

Raindrops on Roses: Cocktails for St Scholastica 10th Feb

We love St Scholastica. Why? I hear you ask. Well, we love her because she was St Benedict’s twin sister. We also love her because she was a tough old bird, and not afraid to stand her ground. Whilst St Benedict happily set up his monastery and wrote his rule for monks at Monte Cassino, St Scholastica set up her convent down the hill. They are the mother and father of monastic life, and I love them.

One of the best known stories about St S. is that one day St Benedict and a few monks had popped down the hill to visit St Scholastica and her nuns. St Benedict got a bit bored of the deep and meaningful chat and wanted to go home. St Scholastica, like all sisters, didn’t want her brother to leave… but Benedict insisted that he had to go home, as he wouldn’t spend the night outside his monastery. St Scholastica then put in a call to the man upstairs, who summoned a massive thunderstorm, which stopped St Benedict from going home. Brother and sister argued for a bit (B was a bit peeved that S had got God to send a storm) but ultimately had a good night talking about all sorts of holy stuff, and it was mutually beneficial.

The result of these events, apart from her being pretty important for nuns, is that St Scholastica is invoked particularly against storms and rain. This got me to thinking about the Sound of Music. We all know the wonderful scene in which Maria (still techinally a Benedictine novice/postulant at this point) comforts the children during a thunderstorm. I’m sure that the real life Maria vT, and even the stage one, must have invoked St Scholastica in this situation. So I thought about the song Maria sings at this point. In the stage show it’s ‘Lonely Goatherd’. Now, unfortunately goat isn’t in ready supply in Surrey, so goat recipes are out… this led me to think of the film. In the film Maria sings ‘Favourite Things’ at this moment. ‘Favourite Things’ presents two possible recipes – crisp apple strudel, and schnitzel with noodles. Whilst both of these would be lovely I’ve been under an awful lot of stress at the moment, so neither are an option right now. But I simply had to do something for St S, my being so fond of Benedictines… and being so very fond of Benedictines I know there’s nothing they love more than a bit of a tipple.

So, I decided to think outside the box, and this led me to gin. I had the idea of creating a cocktail for St Scholastica with gin and my very favourite ingredient, rose water. I have called this cocktail [wait for it]… raindrops on roses, as per the lyric in the song. You may find it useful for Valentine’s day as well as for St S.

Raindrops on Roses

1 martini glass, chilled in the deep freeze

1 shot of gin

¼ shot of rosewater

¼ shot of Waldhimbeer Edelgeist [this is a raspberry liqueur made in the Carpathians. It is very strong, but quite delicious, and in terms of flavour and intensity little compares, it also sounds a bit like ‘Edelweiss’]

A spoonful of simple syrup

Three or four drops of bitters

A rose petal for prettiness

Mix all the ingredients well in a cocktail shaker over ice. Stir, do not shake. Strain into the chilled glass. Garnish with the rose petal. It should taste a little bit like a very cold and slightly less sweet piece of good Turkish delight. Finally, in keeping with the Sound of Music theme, here is a link to a video of me trilling out 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain'.