We’ve been cooking from
several different artists’ cookbooks lately, because the personalities writing
them are interesting but also because artist’s food is different. For one
thing, artist’s recipes are simpler, use fewer ingredients, and cost less to
cook. One exception to this frugality is Salvador Dali, whose lavish
presentations of food in his cookbook Les Diners de Gala included conceits like encasing all sorts of meats
and seafood in gelatin. Aside from our wild night making Dali’s food for some
hedonists we know, I normally prefer cooking –and eating– simple artist’s food.
But it seemed there was more to artist’s food than simplicity, and I only had
an inkling of what it might be. Maybe it’s that artists, with their eye for
form and color or their sensitivity to the experiences associated with food,
have a unique touch in the kitchen.
"Some
artists hardly go into their kitchens... except for a glass of water or to
scramble some eggs. Others go into their kitchens quite a bit. They make things
they think are good for themselves and other people. They have fun, they really
get into it.
Sometimes
it's really good what they do, I mean extraordinary and good to look at. It
means something. It has meaning. It's simple. It tastes like nothing you have
ever had before, like some great quintessence of food, especially with a glass
of wine."
-Donald
Goddard, Former Editor of ArtNews
Or maybe it’s that artists
have a sense of humor. When my pursuit of artist’s food began I did not suspect
the exploration would take me all the way from cooking colorful, Surrealist
concoctions to sexually suggestive appetizers by Marinetti and his fellow Futurists.
In Food Sex Art, a cookbook of artists' recipes compiled by Paul and Melissa Eidia in the 1980s, there is a loose definition of edible that makes the
book more amusing to read than to eat from. The nice thing about this cookbook
is how many pranks it contains. As long as there are artists, they will be up
to something good. For instance, "Burger
Pravda" is a recipe by Russian artists Komar & Melamid for making hamburgers
out of shredded newspaper. They recommend you experiment with various
publications, comparing the juiciness of the New York Times to others.
Gilbert and George’s
contribution to Food Sex Art was a
photo of themselves eating in a restaurant, accompanied by the words: “We have
no interest in cooking, or in anything else for that matter.”
Another mischievous recipe
was “Flash Light Jello” by Debbie Davis. Perhaps inspired by Dali’s work with
gelatin 30 years earlier, she instructs you to seal a working flashlight in
plastic wrap and submerge it in Jello (leaving access to the on/off switch of
course). After the Jello sufficiently sets, turn the flash light on, flip over
onto a platter and serve. I imagine you could really run with this idea,
encasing all sorts of objects in Jello, depending on the sense of humor of your
dinner guests.
After many experiments, we
invited friends to a dinner party and settled on a summer menu of recipes from
both Paul and Melissa Eidia’s Food Sex Art and The MOMA’s Artists’ Cookbook. In contrast to Food Sex Art,
the earnestness of the food in MOMA’s Artists’ Cookbook inspired us to keep the menu simple, combining easy
recipes from both books. Our party happened on a warm summer night that allowed
us to throw open the windows and doors, letting in the usual honks and clanks
of the Brooklyn streets below. And in the interest of staying cool, we served
only two hot dishes, flanked by a cold one.
The
Menu
Appetizer:
Olives and Prosecco
First
Course:
Artist’s
Vegetable Soup with homemade jalapeno corn muffins
Second
Course:
Too
Hot to Cook Summer Salad
Lazy
Chicken with steamed green beans
Dessert:
Polverones
Cuban Cookies
That cold dish was the “Too
Hot to Cook Summer Salad”, which artist Brad Melamed says he makes because his
kitchen is so small his oven melts his refrigerator door. As city dwellers, we
could relate to this. This tasty dish is simply a Greek-inspired salad with
feta, cucumbers and green peppers. The artist’s instructions: “You figure it
out. Feel free to do your own thing.”
“Lazy Chicken” by Lori
Montana is a quick roasting recipe that requires only a bit of fresh tarragon
and tamari soy sauce. We did our own thing, substituting the tamari with a
mashed apricot sauce after we found seasonal apricots at our Brooklyn farmer’s
market that looked seductive. The result was both lazy and delicious. This
chicken would also be excellent grilled if you have access to a barbecue.
By far the holy grail of
artist’s recipes was Paul Jenkins’s “Artist’s Vegetable Soup.” Although Jenkins
claims he is no cook, he used this recipe to inexpensively feed a party of ten,
and it can easily be doubled to feed twenty. With a mountain of vegetables,
water, and a large soup pot you get an economy of scale that satisfies many.
That is what I search for both in food and in art: economy and taste at the
same time.
Jenkins’s soup is the kind
that you remember for weeks afterwards, hankering for it when hungry. This is
especially so if the first time you tried it, you shared it with friends. Now
all I can think about is soup. Instead of cooking a single meal, I can make
soup out of anything we have and feed all of us for days. I don’t need a glossy
food magazine or an expensive jar of some imported ingredient. I don’t need an
authoritarian celebrity chef. All I need is water, herbs and vegetables. In
fact, I’m heading out to the market now to start John Cage’s “Soup des Jours,”
a soup you keep warm on the stove as it evolves over time, adding whatever
leftovers you have in the fridge each day of the week.
In the end, it’s precisely
that little kernel of experimentation artists throw in that makes their recipes
special. It’s that little note at the bottom: “feel free to do your own thing.”
It may seem minor at first… but in reality, embracing that clause makes us all
better cooks- able to adapt to the availability of local, seasonal foods,
confident and creative in our kitchens. It’s an exhortation to engage, to
employ our own palette and our own mind when making food.
Recipe- Artist’s Vegetable
Soup by Paul Jenkins
Serves 8-10
4 large baking potatoes, peeled
2 large onions, peeled
1½ carrots, peeled
3 celery stalks
2 leeks
3 tomatoes, peeled
1 turnip, peeled
3 mushrooms
1 zucchini
½ tablespoon parsley, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon salt
½ teaspoon cracked white
pepper
8 oz. sweet butter (or olive
oil as a substitute)
1 lb. spinach
4 oz. cream (optional)
Chop all vegetables except
spinach into ½ in. pieces. Place in soup pot. Add spices and water to cover.
Place butter on top. Cover and bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer until vegetables
are tender, about 45 minutes. Remove from flame. Stir in spinach until wilted.
Puree mixture in a food mill or blender (in batches). Return to pot and add
cream [if desired], stirring until hot. Note: this recipe doubles to
feed twenty. The cream is optional. Spinach gives the soup a special taste.
This is an elegant and perky soup.
