Feasting on Art

Frida Kahlo and her pet deer, Granizo, 1939, photograph by Nickolas Muray

In the book Frida’s Fiestas, Kahlo’s step-daughter Guadalupe Rivera reminisces about unpacking the groceries with Frida after a visit to the market,

“At one point she said to me: ‘Look at this watermelon…! It’s an amazing fruit. On the outside, it’s a wonderful green color, but on the inside, there’s this strong and elegant red and white. The pitaya is a bright red, like a pomegranate sprinkled with black dots. Then there’s the pitahaya. It is fuchsia on the outside and hides the subtlety of a whitish-gray pulp flecked with little black spots that are its seeds inside. This is a wonder! Fruits are like flowers: they speak to us in a provocative language and teach us things that are hidden.” (p.24)

Kahlo later arranged these fruits into a still life painting titled The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened. For her life and art intermingled, she decorated her table and her tresses with fruits and flowers in the same way they were scattered across her canvases. Like the fruit, her art teaches us – the viewers – about her hidden things, thoughts, fears, and emotions.

This is the fifth and final entry in a series of posts examining the the still life paintings by Frida Kahlo. Click the paintings above or the recipe links below to visit the individual posts for more information about Frida.

Sometimes I can’t help myself, I just have to indulge in a bit of kitsch.  Cupcakes and  pharmaceuticals are not a likely combination but I stayed true to the spot painting production and created a slightly different shade for each little cake and arranged them in a random order.   The cake is the red velvet variety sans the red colouring. It is moist and rich and wonderfully sour paired with the lemon cream cheese icing.

I want to send a quick thank you to Sarah and Otiena. Sarah designed beautiful business cards for my blog and business and Otiena interviewed me for the site Under My Bed. Also there are only 26 more days until the recipe contest closes – entries are already rolling in, don’t forget to submit yours!

Damien Hirst, Cineole, 2004
etching in colours, 114 x 112 cm, edition of 145

Damien Hirst is one of the leading members of the ‘Young British Artists’, an art group active in the 1990s. He rose to fame with his works featuring dead animals suspended in tanks of formaldehyde. His spot paintings were composed of randomly coloured circles each a slightly different variation and were named after pharmaceuticals. The spot series along with the spin paintings were produced in a factory by his assistants. According to Hirst he only created a handful of spot paintings himself  because “I couldn’t be f**king arsed doing it; They’re shit compared to … the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She’s brilliant. Absolutely f**king brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.”

{Velvet Cupcakes}

adapted from Jamie’s America
makes around 30 mini-cupcakes

3 TB butter
1 c sugar
1 egg
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 TB cocoa powder
1 c flour
125 ml buttermilk
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp white vinegar
food colouring
cream cheese frosting

Preheat the oven to 180C and prepare a mini muffin tin with butter. Mix the butter and sugar together until it is light and fluffy. Gently stir in the egg, pinch of salt and vanilla extract. Alternate adding the cocoa, flour, and buttermilk to the egg mixture, stirring gently until you have a smooth batter.

In a small cup add the baking soda to the vinegar until it begins to fizz and add this to the cake mix.

Spoon the cake batter into the mini-muffin tins and slide into the oven. The little cakes will finish quite quickly so keep an eye on them. Mine were done in about 8-10 minutes. Pop out of the tray and let cool before frosting.

Make one batch of the cream cheese frosting and divide into small bowls. Experiment with tinting with food colouring and mixing the colours. Create a different shade for each cupcake.

The day Ozoz’s package from the Netherlands arrived was a very exciting one, not only because of the delicious caramel cookies but  also the beautiful cookbook filled with the things I love. Ozoz writes the food blog Kitchen Butterfly and is one of the most dedicated bloggers I read, posting every other day. She kindly sent me a copy of the cookbook Dutch Culinary Art which she first wrote about on her blog back in December after meeting two of the three writers. The book is filled with traditional recipes introduced by sweet little anecdotes about their origin and history. Dispersed throughout are opulent still lifes and pleasant kitchen scenes. Ozoz’s blog is more than just a record of recipes and culinary delights, she provides useful travel guides as well as everything you would need to know about food before visiting the Netherlands. I only wish I knew about her blog when I lived in the UK and frequented the ‘Orange Country‘ – her affectionate name for the Dutch countryside. Thank you again Ozoz for the beautiful book and for working with me on this collaboration!
 

Visit Ozoz’s blog Kitchen Butterfly for a recipe for Pumpkin Ice Cream & Lemonettes.

Willem Kalf, Still Life with a Chinese Tureen, 1662
Oil on canvas, 64 x 53cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Willem Kalf was a still life painter from the Golden Age of Dutch art. His work usually features the same subjects, a Chinese bowl (the painting above bears the title of this oft replicated object), damask tapestry, and silverware. The paintings contain a very dark background, isolating the objects on the edge of the table. In the Still Life with a Chinese Tureen the outline of the glass is barely visible, a characteristic of Kalf’s work. Later in his life the artist turned to dealing in art rather than painting. It seemed he always had a business mind because if a composition proved successful he would make multiple versions for clients – perhaps why his body of work is considered to be limited in terms of subject matter.

According to Dutch Culinary Art, Parrot Tongues are “a typical Dutch joke. Actually just leftovers, but presented in a very nice way. The name, of course, brings memories of Roman times when people feasted on tongues of nightingales and larks.” These little ‘tongues’ make for a very delicious appetizer. The sweet pork meat is paired with the sweet flesh of a pumpkin and livened up with fresh lemon juice and vinegary seeded mustard.

{Papegaaientongetjes (Parrot Tongues)}

adapted from Dutch Culinary Art

2 TB softened butter
1 egg
1/2 c milk
1/2 c plain flour
1/4 c pureed roasted pumpkin
1 TB chopped fresh parsley
1/4 tsp nutmeg
pinch of salt

4 cooked pork scotch fillets, cut into triangles
1/2 c canola oil

With an electric mixer, cream the butter and beat in the egg and milk. Slowly add the pureed pumpkin and flour until a smooth and thick batter forms. Add the nutmeg, parsley and salt to season.

Heat the canola oil in a deep skillet. Once the oil shimmers, dip the pork triangles in the batter and drop into the oil. Because the pork is already cooked the Papegaaientongetjes fry very quickly, 20-30 seconds. Flip and cook the other side golden brown and remove from the oil and dry on kitchen paper.

Serve immediately with a squeeze of fresh lemon and a scattering of chopped parsley.
 

Don’t forget to submit your entry to the recipe contest, only 32 more days until the deadline. The first recipe has been submitted – get in early to get the best spots in the photo gallery!

H2Ope for Haiti is an online raffle launched today by Jeanne of CookSister in conjunction with BloggerAid. In an effort to provide relief and clean drinking water to those suffering in Haiti she enlisted the help of food bloggers from around the world to submit a prize for a raffle. All proceeds will be given to Concern Worldwide, a non-governmental international humanitarian organisation that works around the world to reduce suffering and work towards the ultimate elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries.

Visit the prize page to peruse the long list of contributions. I was asked to submit a print of my Berry Flag photograph from my post about Strawberry Shortcake back in June. If you would like to own a little piece of Feasting on Art then enter the prize code HFH20 when you purchase a ticket. To purchase a ticket, visit the Justgiving page after noting the prize codes for the things you would like to bid for. You will find complete instructions on how to buy your tickets (which cost £6.50) and specify your chosen prizes on the Justgiving page. Please read and follow the instructions carefully and e-mail Jeanne (emailcooksister AT googlemail DOT com) if you have any questions. Bidding closes on Sunday the 28th of February at midnight.

Check back tomorrow for a new recipe for Parrot Tongues!

Hello friends!! On April 3rd Feasting on Art will be one year old! I am very proud of this site and to celebrate I am holding a recipe competition. To perpetuate the dialogue about food and art I want to get all of my readers involved so don’t be shy, even if you’ve never left a comment please participate! The very first painting I posted here was a still life by Renoir and it seemed only appropriate to post another of his paintings a year later. I chose a still life that could be adapted to either a sweet or savory recipe, see my posts for Strawberry BBQ Pulled Pork, Strawberry Shortcake, and Berry Vlaai for inspiration. I know that many of you are in the middle of winter so feel free to use frozen strawberries, strawberry jam or even a flavored liquor or vodka in your recipes. Also don’t assume strawberries have to be the central ingredient, you could make a lot of interesting things with lemon using strawberry as an accompaniment. You can find the contest and prize details below.

Pierre Auguste Renoir, Strawberries, 1905
oil on canvas, 46 x 28 cm, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, France

Contest Directions: Create an original recipe with the ingredients depicted in the still life painting Strawberries. Post the recipe on your website including the painting above and a link back to this blog post about the contest. The post title needs to state ‘Feasting on Art Recipe Contest.’ Once the post is live ,email the following information to tresjoliestudios AT gmail DOT com with the subject line ‘Entry: Feasting on Art Recipe Contest‘:

Name, Mailing Address, Recipe Title, URL to recipe on blog, 100 px by 100 px image of recipe

The entries will be made into a photo gallery and the picture  you submit will link back to your entry post. The image order will be determined by entry date so email your recipes ASAP to be at the top of the list! Contest Deadline: Saturday 27th March, 2010. The winner and entry gallery will be posted on the one year anniversary of the blog, Saturday 3rd April, 2010.

Judging/Prize: Entries will be judged on the creativity and originality of both the recipe and the photography. Get  experimental, don’t limit yourself to only sweet recipes because the painting depicts fruit. Pending availability, the winner will receive the cookbook The Impressionists’ Table: A Celebration of Regional French Food Through the Palettes of the Great Impressionists by Pamela Todd.

Best of luck to all of the contestants – I cannot wait to see the great art inspired recipes!