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muckefuckNot only is today the second night of Passover, it's also the day when Catholics and other Western Christians commemorate Christ's last meal without all the holes in him. I'm not sure how often this occurs (and not everything needs to be looked up on Wikipedia), but there's a certain thrill whenever the two festivals coincide, kind of like history repeating itself.
The usual name in English for the Thursday of Holy Week is Holy Thursday, but I've always liked the sound of "Maundy Thursday", with its reek of tallow candles and musty vestments. In Germany, the most common name is Gründonnerstag and has been since the High Middle Ages, even if no one can adequately explain where it comes from. One theory is that this is due to the custom of eating green herbs on this day, though that seems a bit circular to me: Why associate green herbs with the date of the Last Supper in the first place? It's not like the maror play any kind of role in the Biblical account of the fixins.
In any case, it was an excuse for me to try something new, so I dug out Mimi Sheraton's recipe for traditional Frühlingssuppe. It's quite simple, which is the only reason I attempted it on a school night. Basically, you make a blonde roux, blend it with vegetable stock, and simmer in some finely-chopped fresh green herbs--in our case, mostly watercress and flatleaf parsley with some basil, oregano, tarragon, and chives. After puréeing (sakes alive that immersion blender is a thing of beauty!) you take it off heat and work in some egg yolk whipped with milk and grated cheese--for us, a Grana Padano from Trentino. Those of you with a toque on your hatrack will recognise this as essentially a sauce allemande with lots of veggies and no lemon. I garnished it with hard-boiled eggs because (a) even small meatballs = too much work and (b) it seems a shame to contaminate a dish otherwise so thoroughly vegetarian. The result was a perfectly nice soup, but we both decided it was a mistake to leave out the spinach we had in reserve.
For accompaniment,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches that I dubbed croque-seigneur. You see, I'm extremely particular about croque-monsieur. It is, in its classic form, utterly flawless, but cooks can't resist monkeying with it--most often by substituting a crustier bread. monshu's excuse for using multigrain was "I wanted a healthier croque-monsieur." This is like wishing for low-fat gelato or a vegetarian hot-dog. You can't have a "healthy" croque-monsieur, THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM SO AWESOME. His tasty offering, with its dark bread and chunky slabs of ham and cheese, was like the rough-hewn country cousin to the refined bistro favourite, thus the new name.
(BTW, at the risk of confirming every negative stereotype of the cluelessness of Midwestern gourmands, I should point out that around here, "croque-madame" is used for a croque-monsieur with turkey in place of ham. You should be reassured to know that a Central European stalwart like Meinl is having none of this foolishness.)
The usual name in English for the Thursday of Holy Week is Holy Thursday, but I've always liked the sound of "Maundy Thursday", with its reek of tallow candles and musty vestments. In Germany, the most common name is Gründonnerstag and has been since the High Middle Ages, even if no one can adequately explain where it comes from. One theory is that this is due to the custom of eating green herbs on this day, though that seems a bit circular to me: Why associate green herbs with the date of the Last Supper in the first place? It's not like the maror play any kind of role in the Biblical account of the fixins.
In any case, it was an excuse for me to try something new, so I dug out Mimi Sheraton's recipe for traditional Frühlingssuppe. It's quite simple, which is the only reason I attempted it on a school night. Basically, you make a blonde roux, blend it with vegetable stock, and simmer in some finely-chopped fresh green herbs--in our case, mostly watercress and flatleaf parsley with some basil, oregano, tarragon, and chives. After puréeing (sakes alive that immersion blender is a thing of beauty!) you take it off heat and work in some egg yolk whipped with milk and grated cheese--for us, a Grana Padano from Trentino. Those of you with a toque on your hatrack will recognise this as essentially a sauce allemande with lots of veggies and no lemon. I garnished it with hard-boiled eggs because (a) even small meatballs = too much work and (b) it seems a shame to contaminate a dish otherwise so thoroughly vegetarian. The result was a perfectly nice soup, but we both decided it was a mistake to leave out the spinach we had in reserve.
For accompaniment,
monshu made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches that I dubbed croque-seigneur. You see, I'm extremely particular about croque-monsieur. It is, in its classic form, utterly flawless, but cooks can't resist monkeying with it--most often by substituting a crustier bread. monshu's excuse for using multigrain was "I wanted a healthier croque-monsieur." This is like wishing for low-fat gelato or a vegetarian hot-dog. You can't have a "healthy" croque-monsieur, THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM SO AWESOME. His tasty offering, with its dark bread and chunky slabs of ham and cheese, was like the rough-hewn country cousin to the refined bistro favourite, thus the new name.(BTW, at the risk of confirming every negative stereotype of the cluelessness of Midwestern gourmands, I should point out that around here, "croque-madame" is used for a croque-monsieur with turkey in place of ham. You should be reassured to know that a Central European stalwart like Meinl is having none of this foolishness.)
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Just for you…
Chuck
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Your tallow-candle musty-vestment name is the first one that comes to my mind, FWIW.
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And when the decimalised the currency, they converted old maundy money to new pence at the rate of one old penny = one new penny, so old maundy money (which is still valid money TTBOMK) is now worth 2.4 times as much as it was originally.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maundy_money.
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