Albert Anker, Still Life: Two Glass of Red Wine, a bottle of Wine; a Corkscrew and a Plate of Biscuits on a Tray, oil on canvas, 43 x 40cm, Private collection

The swiss painter Albert Anker painted scenes of everyday village life. Over his career he painted over thirty still life paintings of both rural and urban table settings. The painting above illustrates Anker’s affinity with the work of Chardin, the still life master that heavily influenced his aesthetic. He sought to make his compositions assessable to the viewer while producing a harmonic arrangement through subtle colour and lighting.

{Pistachio Cranberry Icebox Cookies}

Adapted from Gourmet
Yield: around 30 cookies

3/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup shelled, salted pistachios
1/3 cup dried cranberries

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar and orange zest until fluffy, around 3 minutes. Mix in the cinnamon and flour being careful not to overwork the dough. Stir in the pistachios and cranberries.

Tear off two pieces of cling film. Divide the dough into two equal portions and wrap the cling film around each portion, forming a long log about 2 inches in diameter. Form the log into a long rectangle and repeat with the other portion of dough. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to 3 days.

Remove the dough from the fridge and unwrap the cling film. Slice the dough into 1/4 inch slices and arrange on a baking sheet. Bake in a 180C oven for about 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Use a spatula to move onto a cooling rack.

………………………………………………..

1 Year Ago: Giorgio Morandi – Croissant French Toast

2 Years Ago: Vincent Van Gogh – Holiday Lefse

Pin It

John Frederick Peto, The Poor Man’s Store (detail left), 1885
oil on canvas and panel, 90 x 65cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The American trompe l’oeil artist John Frederick Peto depicted ordinary objects at their actual size in his paintings. Peto worked within the genre throughout his career and The Poor Man’s Store is an early example of his aesthetic style. The jumble of goods displayed through an open window in the painting portrays candies and fruit, gingerbread and nuts. According to historical accounts, this shop window would have been a common sight on the streets of Philadelphia. Due to the disorderly arrangement of the humble items, Peto rarely had wealthy patrons and his work was often misattributed to the more successful tromp l’oeil painter William Harnett by unscrupulous art dealers (1).

 {Old-fashioned Molasses Cookies}

Recipe by my grandmother
Yield: around 72 cookies

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup molasses
3 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup water
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon salt

Mix sugar, butter, eggs and molasses. Dissolve baking soda in water; stir into molasses mixture. Stir in remaining ingredients Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Heat oven to 375F (190C) degrees. Roll dough ¼ inch thick on lightly floured cloth covered board. Cut with favorite cutter. Place 2 inches apart on lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake until light brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Cool.

………………………………………………..

1 Year Ago: Giorgio Morandi – Croissant French Toast

2 Years Ago: Paul Signac – Roasted Vanilla Orange Juice

Joseph Decker, Hard Candy
oil on canvas, 22.8 x 35.5 cm, Private collection

The German-born artist Joseph Decker moved to the United States in 1867. In 1879, he traveled back to Germany to study at the Akademie in Munich and after which, he returned to the States and painted many still life paintings. In his painting titled Hard Candy, the colourful sweets are piled in front of a wooden box with light reflecting off of their smooth surfaces. Candy did not become a major subject for artists until its production was industrialized after the civil war. Once artificial dyes and geometric uniformity became available, artists embraced the sweet confections as one of their most popular subjects (1).

{Peppermint Ice Cream}

Yield: 6 servings

2 cups heavy cream
2 cups light cream
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup crushed peppermint candies

Mix all of the ingredients together in a large, freezer safe container. Stir well, ensuring the salt and sugars have dissolved. Place in freezer and stir every 30 minutes to break up ice crystals to ensure the ice cream is smooth.

………………………………………………..

1 Year Ago: Khoo Kongsi Stone Carving – Murtabak

2 Years Ago: Louis Comfort Tiffany – Pumpkin Chipotle Tartelette

Benjamin Roberts, Still life of plums with a cabbage white, 1862
oil on board, 16 x 21.5 cm, Private collection

Very little research is readily available concerning the British artist Benjamin Roberts. From the date of the painting, one can gather that he was active during the Victorian movement in the United Kingdom. The delicate details of the yellow butterfly, small tendrils on the leaf and the gleaming water droplet upon the plum epitomise the art of this period. The delicacy of the painting is matched in the subtle flavouring in the recipe of the baked custard. With the mellow warmth of the nutmeg and the fragrant vanilla, this simple custard is studded with bright plum slices that are carefully arranged to fashion a purple-tipped flower.

{Baked Custard with Plums}

Yield: 4 servings

2 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
200 ml heavy cream
1/2 cup whole milk
1 plum

Preheat the oven to 180C. In an oven-proof bowl, mix the eggs and sugar together, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the vanilla, nutmeg, cream and milk and mix well. Place the bowl in a roasting pan and fill with water until it is half way up the sides of the pan. Slide into the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the plum in half and remove the pit. Slice each half into quarters and divide each quarter into three crescents. Set aside.

After 30 minutes remove the custard from the oven. It should still be soft but beginning to set around the edges. Arrange the plum slices in a circle starting around the outside edge and moving inwards. Put the custard back into the oven for an additional 15-20 minutes until the centre is just set. Serve warm or at room temperature.

………………………………………………..

The Colour Project

I am very excited to announce that I will be curating an art + food exhibition next year at Brenda May Gallery. We are now accepting proposals from artists so please read the exhibition outline below and contact the Gallery with any questions or visit the submissions page for further details.

‘Art + Food – Beyond the Still Life’ – October 2012

This exhibition will consider the representation of food within the visual arts and beyond the standard still life tableaux. The consumption of food is a universally shared experience, enabling viewers to connect with the issues surrounding consumerism, food production and cultural identity, explored by the artists. ‘Art + Food – Beyond the Still Life’ will be on exhibition during the Sydney International Food Festival.
Proposals for this show must be received by Friday 27 July, 2012.

Janet Tavener, Baby Blue No 3, 2011
coloured resin, 12 x 12 x 12 cm, Brenda May Gallery

Janet Tavener is a contemporary Australian sculptor working in cast resin and ice. Her resin works encompass a range of foods from hamburgers and french fries to the jelly molds that appear ironically similar to the real thing. The resin foods call attention to the artificiality of the products in contemporary consumer culture. Tavener exported the familiar shapes and forms of her resin sculptures into ice for her recent exhibition, ‘Melting Moments’ at Incinerator Art Space in Willoughby. The series of photographs display the sculptures as they melt, highlighting the temporality of life and precarious position of the environment as food production increases the demands upon the earth.

{Vanilla & Blueberry Frozen Fruit Mold}

Yield: 6 servings

300 grams blueberries
2 limes, juiced
1/3 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 cup water
whipped cream, to serve

Reserve 1/2 cup of the blueberries and add the remainder to a large bowl. Add the lime juice and with a hand blender, puree the mixture. Stir in the sugar, seeds from the vanilla bean and water.

Pour the blueberry mixture into a decorative mold. Add the reserved blueberries to the bottom of the mold and let set overnight in the freezer. To unmold, dip into hot water for 30 seconds before inverting. Delicious when paired with whipped cream.

………………………………………………..

1 Year Ago: Florentine Ricotta, Prosciutto & Walnut Salad

2 Years Ago: Édouard Manet – Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce

Historically, the pomegranate was used to symbolise fertility due to the mythical origins of the fruit. As related by Silvia Malaguzzi in her book Food and Feasting in Art, the god Acdestis, violent and lustful, was “handed over to Bacchus, who got him drunk. Once Acdestis had passed out, Bacchus tied up his feet and genitals. When Acdetis woke up, blood seeping from his genitals formed the pomegranate. The fruit was taken to the nymph Nana, who became pregnant by it and gave birth to Atys” (1). From the outside, the pomegranate is a fairly inauspicious fruit. It was not until I sliced it open, the crimson juice staining the cutting board and splattering on my clothes, that the corporeal aspect of the fruit was revealed. Within the iconography of the Christian Church, the pomegranate represents the blood of Christ. The name is derived from the Latin pōmum meaning apple and grānātus meaning seeded. Beating a section of the fruit with the back of a spoon yields a scattering of round ruby seeds.  The pomegranate is sometimes thought to be the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, similar to the ‘garden of paradise’ of Qur’an where the ancient fruit with the jewel-like seeds grew (2).

Jacob van Hulsdonck, Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Pomegranate, c.1620-40
oil on panel, 42 x 49.5 cm, The Getty Collection

Jacob van Hulsdonck was a native of Antwerp who spent a large portion of his life in Germany where he began his artistic studies. Upon his return to Antwerp at the age of 27, he joined the local painters’ guild. Van Hulsdonck specialised in still life painting, becoming a master through his carefully rendered details. In Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Pomegranate, the rough texture of the citrons is meticulously depicted. Small droplets of water lay scattered on the table and cling delicately to the leaf of the orange in the bottom right of the panel. According to the Getty Museum, the blue and white porcelain bowl dates from the Wan-Li period of the Ming dynasty (3). Painted from a high vantage point, the majority of the fruit bounty is visible in the bowl, preserving the fleeting life of the natural products.

{Orange & Almond Cake with Pomegranates & Poppy Seeds}

Adapted from What Katie Ate
Yield: 8 servings

1 1/2 cups almond meal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 eggs, separated
juice of 2 oranges + 1 orange, divided
1 teaspoon sugar
seeds from 1/2 pomegranate
1/4 c almond flakes
pinch of poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Line a 8-inch cake pan with baking paper and set aside. In a large bowl stir together the almond meal, flour, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon. Stir in the egg yolks and orange juice until just mixed, being careful not to overwork the batter.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Carefully spoon 1/3 of the egg whites into the cake batter, folding gently to loosen the batter. Scoop the remaining egg whites into the batter and stir until they are just incorporated. Pour into lined baking pan and slide into the oven for 4o-50 minutes until the top is golden brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Remove from the oven and lift out of the pan by the baking paper. Peel off the paper and set aside on serving platter.

Meanwhile, de-seed the pomegranate and set aside. Juice the remaining orange into a small saucepan, adding any pulp from within the orange halves. Stir in the sugar and mix until it is dissolved. Simmer over medium-high heat until reduced by half. Scatter the pomegranate seeds over the top of the cake along with the flaked almonds. Add the poppy seeds to the orange juice, swirl to mix and drizzle over the cake, covering the top evenly. Serve warm and keep in an airtight container for up to 4-5 days.

………………………………………………..

1 Year Ago: John Olsen – BBQ Tikka Prawns

Gustavo Montoya, Still Life with Bananas
oil on canvas, 80 x 119.4cm, Private collection

Still Life with Bananas is a typical still life subject by the artist Gustavo Montoya. He often painted the fruits and sweets of his native Mexico and the bright, monochrome colour palette highlights his interest in abstraction. The layering of colour from the bright yellow, to a light orange and dark brown suggests the colouring of a flan with the rich caramel crust, pool of caramel sauce and light creamy custard. Flan is a custard dessert that is poured over a layer of caramel and baked in a bain-marie. The etymological origins of flan are quite convoluted and can be traced through French, Old French and Medieval Latin before arriving at the Old High German root flado meaning ‘flat cake.’ In Latin American, the dessert is typically called leche flan as it is primarily served with dulce de leche. The deeply sweet and rich flavor components of dulce de leche are echoed in this flan recipe through the addition of condensed milk.

{Banana Flan}

Yields: 6 servings

1/2 cup sugar
250 ml evaporated milk
2 ripe bananas
1/2 cup whole milk
2 large eggs + 4 egg yolks

Preheat the oven to 170C. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, add the sugar and begin stirring with a wooden spoon. Once the sugar melts, after about 5 minutes, stir only until all lumps are gone and the colour just begins to darken. Carefully pour the melted sugar into the flan mold, or individual ramekins.

In a large bowl, add the remaining ingredients and mash with the back of a fork or squeeze the banana with your hands. Mix until there are minimal banana lumps and all of the ingredients are fully incorporated. Pour the mixture into the flan mold or ramekins on top of the melted sugar.

Place the flan mold or ramekins into a deep pan that is half full with hot water. Slide the water-filled pan with the flan mold into the preheated oven. Bake for about 1 hour and remove from the oven to let cool. If using a flan mold, turn over onto a serving platter.
………………………………………………..

The Colour Project

Combining the ingredients in Tom Wesselmann’s ‘Still Life #2′ was a natural
marriage, the dark molasses flavours of the whiskey compliment the subtle
sweetness of the pear with the toasty hints in the liquor mirrored in the toasted
hazelnuts of the crust. Cinnamon and ginger continue the warming flavour
palette and provides a sharp-spiciness to the tart – the perfect foil to the cooling
whiskey cream, speckled with vanilla seeds.

I would like to welcome all of the new readers arriving from Design*Sponge. I hope you take a bit of time and explore the site. You can find the entire listing of recipes here and if you are curious about the type of art you can find among the pages of this blog, then head on over to the art index and click on the images that catch your eye.

Tom Wesselmann, Still Life #2, 1962
oil and collage on board, 121.9 x 122.2 cm, Norton Simon Museum

The American Pop artist, Tom Wesselmann, was concerned with consumerism during the postwar era and created a distinct collage style of found art collage. He began working with images from magazines and posters but as his work increased in scale, he looked skyward to acquire used billboard signs. Wesselmann disliked his inclusion in the Pop Art movement because he was less concerned with critiquing  aspects of consumerism and instead focused on the aesthetic use of the everyday. A number of elements in Still Life #2 have been cut and pasted including the bouquet of flowers in the center of the frame.

Click here to view the pear tart with whiskey cream recipe on Design*Sponge.
………………………………………………..

1 Year Ago: Johann Christian Berndt – Pear, Goat Cheese & Prosciutto Pizza

{Modern & Contemporary Cakes}

Mondrian
Geometric Pound Cake

Warhol
Tomato Soup Cake

Thiebaud
Pop Art Cupcakes

Hirst
Cineole Cupcakes

Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes, 1963
oil on canvas, 152.4 x 182.9 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

In her Thiebauds series, American artist Sharon Core recreated and photographed Thiebaud’s sugary sweet Pop Art paintings from the early 1960s. The photographs, concerned with memory and repetition give a material form to the painted confections. Core inverted the typical pattern of painting from photographs by composing a photograph from a painting. Ironically, Thiebaud allegedly composed his paintings from photographs which in turn, make Core’s art a series of photographs from paintings from photographs – reinforcing the themes of repetition. The frosting carefully applied to the cakes by Core to appear as brushstrokes upon a canvas mimics the paint Thiebaud applied to look like frosting, once again engaging the idea of ‘object transference’. Issues of artifice arise with the convolution between paint and frosting, food and fabrication found in the dialogue between the painting and the photograph.

Sharon Core, Cakes, 2004, C-print, 152.4 x 187.7 cm

Thiebaud’s ‘Cakes’ can be easily recreated at home using a basic cupcake and icing recipe that is easily adaptable to produce the variety of desserts found in the painting. A bit of patience as well as a piping bag and food colouring are needed.
 

{Basic Cupcake Recipe}

makes 24 cupcakes

2 ¾ c flour
240 g butter, softened
2 c granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 c milk
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until the butter becomes light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each new addition.

In a smaller bowl, sift the flour and set aside. Begin incorporating the flour and milk, 1/3 at a time, alternating the wet and dry. Mix well between each new addition and add the vanilla at the end with the milk.

Line a 12-cup muffin tray with cupcake papers and spoon in ½ of the mixture. Slip into the oven for 20-25 minutes. Check the doneness of the cupcakes by inserting a toothpick into the centre of a cake, if it slides out clean, the cupcakes are done.

Cupcake Variations:

LEMON: Add 2 TB lemon juice and 1 tsp lemon zest to the basic recipe
CHOCOLATE: Substitute ¾ c flour for ¾ c cocoa powder in the basic recipe
MOCHA: Add 2 TB instant espresso powder, 1 TB cocoa powder and omit ¼ c flour from the basic recipe.
PISTACHIO: Substitute ½ c flour for ½ c ground pistachios in the basic recipe.
PUMPKIN: Add 1/3 c baked & pureed pumpkin, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger and 1 tsp nutmeg to the basic recipe. Omit the vanilla.

{Icing Frosting}

4 c icing sugar
1 package cream cheese
milk

Begin mixing the icing sugar and the cream cheese in a large bowl with an electric mixer. Add the milk, 1 TB at a time, until the desired consistency is reached.

Click here for a recipe for chocolate frosting.
………………………………………………..

1 Year Ago: Smoky & Spicy Thanksgiving Menu