Feasting on Art

Although Frida Kahlo is best known for her striking and emotionally revealing self portraits, she created about 40 still life paintings that provide just as much insight into her preoccupation with death and her overwhelming loneliness. I was recently given an anthology detailing Kahlo’s entire body of still life paintings and have become so enamored with her work that I will be completing a five part series of my favorite artworks. This is not the first time Kahlo’s art has appeared on this site and I hope by the end of this series you will adore her work like I do.

My partner introduced me to dim sum and so he was naturally pleased to find out my recipe this week was for prawn dumplings, especially when only last week I made congee. This is my very first Daring Cooks challenge so I have to admit that I had the recipe before the painting. If my food budget was a little higher I would have splurged and made lobster dumplings but I opted to work with prawns and to save my pennies for a visit home. The dumplings are a bit fussy to make and very time consuming. I had leftover filling and made it into a hot and sour soup (recipe at the bottom of this post).

Utagawa Hiroshige, Lobster and Gray Prawn (from the series A Variety of Fish),
Edo Period 19th Century, colour woodcut, 25.2 x 36.7 cm, Tokyo National Museum

Read the rest of this entry »