Feasting on Art

As far as cookie recipes go, this little beauty has become my new holiday staple. I first tried this recipe by Gourmet a couple of years ago but made too many substitutions. The cookies were extremely disappointing and I filed the card away in my recipe box until a bag of what was described as ‘the best pistachios you will ever eat’ arrived from my mother. The cookies are extremely festive, dotted with ruby red berries and dusty green nuts and extremely moorish, one is never enough. I used salted pistachios and so omitted the salt from the recipe. The salted nuts are perfectly offset with the sweet and chewy cranberries while the butter-rich dough melts in your mouth.

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

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Set against the slate gray skies of winter, the kitchen calls. With my hip pressed against the counter and the trusty wooden spoon I found in the back of a drawer in my first London home, I stand and stir with wafts of steam creating a makeshift heater. In the midst of the season of soup, I have swirled pots of stock until the freezer was brimming. Slowly caramelizing onions is a satisfactory substitute to soup-making; it is a long process that continues to warm the kitchen during the last of the chilly days.

De Scott Evans, A Plate of Onions, 1889
oil on canvas, 25.4 x 30.4 cm

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My favorite recipes are those that intertwine the idea of sweet and savory. When I mentioned to a friend that my next still life painting was titled Mound of Butter she suggested I make shortbread. Updating the typical sweet cookie recipe into a savory biscuit makes the perfect base for a roasted tomato or a slice of spicy chorizo. A baking note: the shortbread should be nearly white when fully baked, overcooking will result in a very dry biscuit. It can also be formed into one of three traditional shapes; fingers, rounds, or a Petticoat Tail (a large circle cut into pointed segments).

Antoine Vollon, Mound of Butter, 1875-1885
oil on canvas, 50.2 x 61 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

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