Carrot Top

I just came across a recipe for Prune Pithiviers in Dorie Greenspan's "Sweet Times", filled with a prune Armagnac pecan blend. Interesting. The ham one from Julia I've had and it is good but the concept of other fillings has never quite sunk in with me and Pithiviers. Hard to walk away from that indescribably delicious almond one. But this one sounds good, too.

Pretzels, in little chipped fake-wood laminate bowls.

Based on the foods you noted above, some sort of jerky would fit into the menu maybe. Highly spiced to induce thirst. I hope you are also planning on including a large battered jukebox, enough drunk guys to start a fight, and some good-quality floozys in the decor.

Katie encapsulted what seemed to me to be a close-to-perfect philosophy on eating or not eating bunnies in her posts in the Not a Sweet Little Bunny thread, and I admit that thoughts of Katie's pet bunny will haunt me forever and will prevent me from eating any future pet bunnies that may force their way into my home. Another post I distinctly remember (and one that will remain in memory) is when she posed the question of why are young inexperienced male sommeliers (in my mind they always dressed in Ralph Lauren and were strangely skinny) hired in certain restaurants rather than female sommeliers with possibly more knowledge. That question hung there like a balloon that had an inappropriate saying emblazoned across it . . . and like a balloon it finally disappeared into the distance to land wherever it will. I like that balloon she lofted in that question though, and though nobody attempted an answer, I'll keep the question somewhere in my mind. She also seems to be an exceptionally pleasant person. She deserves all good things and many of them. Best to you, Katie. Don't be a stranger.

Right now I'm reading "New Sudden Fiction" - an anthology (2007) of short short stories (2500 words). Two stories so far have had food oriented subject lines, though in an indirect way. Yann Martel's "We Ate the Children Last" tells of what happens when pig's stomachs have been successfully able to be implanted into humans as replacement parts . . . first due to medical reasons then afterwards because the people that received them preferred to eat trash rather than fresh food so it was quite a cost-effective thing to do. Frederick Adolph Paola's "The Wine Doctor" is about a traditional doctor practicing medicine in Fascist Italy of the 1930's and his relationship with the man who is known locally as the wine doctor who practices the prescription of various sorts of wines (based on their composition down to the soil, the weather, the grape etc.) to ailing people in the same town. Both stories are fantastic. In both senses of the word.

Those ideas are really fun as is the concept. I hope you'll let us know how it proceeds.

One good thing about seeing Ratatouille is that I didn't have to see "No Reservations" instead. My very favorite part is where the rat gets inside the guys chef's coat and tickles him so that he dances around like a . . . well . . . like oil-coated linguine on electroshock. Obviously when I say oil I mean EVOO. But as far as direction given by a rat pulling on your hair it happens all the time.

Love it. I see it as a movie. Black and white except for the scenes that occured within restaurants or galleries/museums. These scenes would be drenched in color, deep scarlets and blues jumping off the screen with shocking aggression. Naturally it would have to be a light comedy with horror movie undertones. Naturally it would preview at Cannes and win some-prize-or-other. It's a shame, really, because the history of gastonomy is a fairly easy one to consume and comprehend as it has not been all mucked up by the writings of academics. Yet. .................................................. I woke up this morning with the sureness of thought that it should not be cooking that aspires to be art but rather that it should be that art aspires to be cooking. And if I can remember why I thought this I'll try to write a post later, for all this lovely focus on talking about art and Adria et al has been a fantastic way to avoid writing this thing I have due yesterday.

I try to avoid work. As a matter of fact right now I'm trying to avoid work and better hop to it. It's a shame that one can't just read and cook (or eat) all day long. ........................ Actually I just picked up a book-that-has-aged-gracefully from the library. It does have a peculiar sense of its own time about it, like a seventy year old hippie who still ties a bandana over their trailing long (now grey) hair, but what is inside it is good. Bert Greene "The Grains Cookbook". Really good compilation of recipes and information. Still worthy after all these years.

Mmm. Sherry, I do not know any woman who can get away with really saying with full veracity that all she ever does is read. But it is a wonderful thing to aim for to be sure. What a block-buster of fabulous books you mentioned in your very first post! Some I have not read and will now have to take a look at. As they say, one can never be too rich or have too many books.

This might be nice to use as placemats. I'm pretty sure Kinko's or someplace like that could enlarge it and adjust clarity (or however you say it ) then print on suitable paper. "The Seven Deadly Sins" is the name of the painting. It would be interesting to have a seven-course meal with each course representing a sin . . . or alternately (and more easily) seven things on a large plate, each one metaphorically representing the sin from the painting, placed in the same order on the circular plate as it was painted on the circular painting . . . This is getting pretty far away from the original question of spaghetti and meatballs, but it's fun to imagine, anyway.

There's also a recipe for chocolate and nut "pepperoni" that I've used before on a surreal pizza (sweet short dough, raspberry jam, white choc "mozzarella" and the chocolate "pepperoni") that could be used for the meatballs in a sweet or sweet and savory version of spaghetti and meatballs. My favorite table decoration is the orange with a small black face mask on it stabbed with a small knife hanging out of it dripping pomegranite juice blood.

You could put the pasta (and meatballs if you wanted) into individual covered tarts. If there was no printed menu most people would think they were getting chicken pot pie. The sauce could be a bright green herbed one . . . Blue is startling. Moving a bit further away from traditional pasta and meatballs, a low flat bowl of clear turquoise colored "broth" made from gelatin and flavored with extracts or flavorings could hold wavy perciatelli strands topped with tiny pink fish cut-outs made from a dense seafood forcemeat . . . Alex's idea could be taken further by use of gnocchi dough molded then gently poached into larger shapes. Three or four to fill a plate or perhaps one singular larger one. But you'd really have to be sure of knowing your guest's reactions before trying this.

Often, aside from ingredients, I do not measure time when cooking. All of a sudden, you just know its done. I have a friend who has a different way of measuring readiness when it comes to making pilafs (she is Persian). She says she knows when the pilaf has reached perfection by quickly tapping the side of the hot pot near the top with a finger she just touched to her tongue. If the finger is not completely dry when taken away from the pot, the rice is not yet done. If it dries instantly, the rice is done. She claims she has seen lots of people do this.

It would take a critic willing to risk pushing the envelope to do that. With an editor/publisher behind them who had enough certainty that their particular audience would want to read it. I don't know enough about critics currently writing to even hazard a guess but am having fun considering which countries it would possibly occur in first, and why. Interesting to consider how the piece would be shaped when written, too. Aside from drawing parallels between this and that tradition and methodology and pulling rabbits out of history's hats to display with a winning yet silent grin, would the critic talk turkey about food? Would they say things like Adria's rendering was an epiphanic volcano of sheer pleasure that rocked my previously dull and despairing tastebuds to skitter into a quick and humble bow followed by a lengthy and ardent kowtow as they prayed beseechingly for more of this delightful dish. Would art critics start the sideways slide into being foodwriters? ................................................................................... After the inspiration of your paper mache idea sprouted into its subsequent nonsense, naturally Dali's cookbook came to mind, and the dinners from it. One wonders where that stands in terms of "what it is". Both the cookbook and the cooking/food expressed from it. Is it a cookbook written by an artist? Is it art shaped as a cookbook and food? Or has it landed in the Twilight Zone of definition?

One gain (apart from whatever lands directly on Adria) is that one more small step has occured in the world of cooking to move the work of cooking towards being considered a profession rather than a trade by society-at-large.

quote paulraphael I like the idea of a huge paper mache (but not really paper mache, just something edible that looked like it) carrot with some greens attached laying in the center of a knife-worn large wooden plate (a plate that looked very Old Dutch). The large plate with the huge carrot would be placed in front of the diner and when they took up their oversized silver cutlery to eat it (as everyone knows you have to show good manners in restaurants - it would be terribly wrong to pick up the thing with your hands and chomp on it like Bugs Bunny) the taste would be of something else other than carrot. Sauerbraten maybe. Baby paper mache purple-black eggplants would be nice too. Four or five of them on a those large wooden plates, each with a different flavor. Licorice. Pickled herring. Lemon mousse. Marshmallow fluff. And of course one that just tasted like plain eggplant. Or one that actually was just plain eggplant. This concept would have to be thought of (if it were thought of at all by anyone) as being more in the mode of surrealism than conceptual art though, for it would be too absolutely dreary to try to write a serious manifesto for it.

How beautifully ironic that it was a shovel. Now if he had been a chef it might have been the more delicate spoon.

Wow. Just as I was giving up on finding anything on this ekmegi that would show that it existed in the form I thought she described, I decided to check Wikipedia on Turkish cuisine. There is yet hope.

Excellent find, that film, Adam. What an incredible oven! I am beginning to think that the "ekmegi" she was trying to describe to me is similar to pide. Possibly when she said "cornmeal in the bread" she might have been referring to the bit of coarse semolina that can cling to the bottom. And also possibly she may have been talking about two different varieties of this "pizza" - not sundried tomatoes, anchovies, spinach and parsley all together on one bread but two varied combinations: the first the tomatoes and anchovies, the second the spinach and parsley. That would seem to make sense. So far I can not find any reference to all these things put together on a maize-enhanced crust, so it may have been the language barrier which created the pizza I thought existed. I'll ask her next time I see her. Well. I still think it sounds good whether it was real or not.

Does "ekmegi" mean bread in a broad sense I wonder or does it mean bread where cornmeal is part of the dough? When she was talking about this, she drew a map of Turkey and gave me a geography lesson about all the countries that surround it, bodies of water that touch it, with footnotes of history attached. That part was all quite clear. But when it came to the recipe questions I posed her, as can happen, things got vague. But I do remember she was pointing on the map drawn with pen on white blue-lined index paper with her well-manicured finger while she spoke of this specific ekmegi with such pleasure - her finger tapping again and again on the northwest corner of Turkey, on the edge of the Black Sea. But that finger was insisting on my geography lesson, forget about recipes. It sounded to me to be similar to a nicoise tomato-based tart without the olives baked onto a yeasted cornmeal based bread. I wouldn't be surprised if there are variations using chickpea flour too . . . I don't know why, but it just sounds as if it should be so considering the relationships/histories/geography. At any rate, it sounded really good.

Quote docsconz: It was circular to me in that moment, doc, because I was struggling to defend a concept that had seemed right to me at the time I was thinking it. I had to stop for a moment and use my mind in a clear way instead of an emotional way in order to find my way to thinking of an artist is an artist because they say they are. I can find two excuses for my mind being resistant to this idea - one is that the art world in NYC that I lived in which was composed of working/showing artists, vital galleries, and the critics and curators who interlaced it in the 70's and 80's was teetering on the edge of saying clearly (as a concept) that an artist is an artist because they say they are . . . but the inevitable judgement of quality of any art piece was done in the exact same thought. There was "Is this art? Is he/she an artist? Does this suck or not?" all in one breath, without separation as has now seemed to develop based on the accounts being given here. I never had the experience of thinking that a weekend artist who painted or who did whatever they did on a clearly amateur level could be considered a "real" artist, because my concepts of art were formed from within the art world at that place and time, and the snottiness level of the professionals was marvellously high. Any work that did not hit a certain level was dismissed with a snort of supreme derision by those that inhabited this world, along with all the bourgeois qualities that it seemed to represent. So wrapping my mind around the idea that anyone who says they are an artist is an artist was difficult for me based on this history. After thinking about it and letting the idea seep around a bit in my mind, I can see that it would be a likely next step in what was happening in the art world, though. It makes sense. My second excuse is that I have not paid much attention to all this in recent years, so this is a wonderful learning experience. You were in agreement, doc, and I am too. The two points that most interest me are in bold above. The first is worthy of thought, even in the Adria scenario. The second one . . . I have to say that I distinctly remember photographers and video artists who actively pursued the artworld as much or more than the artworld pursued them, so I think it was a two-way dance in many cases. There was a lot of pounding on the door to be let in. Which ties into the Adria thing too for one has to wonder just for the wondering of it whether he did or did not, subconsciously or consciously, take Marinetti into his bag of tools when he set out to do his art, which he does not call art but cooking. I have a thing for seeing how things work in a detailed fashion, aside from trying to decide what they are. Call it a choreography fetish maybe. ............................................. Paul: You've done a fantastic job of making clear what your points are about "being an artist" . The only side note that I do have to make is that I must assume that the concept of validity and the word itself as applied to specific genres of art or to art history within the art world must have been in the pages of Artforum magazine as late as the 70's and 80's (the 70's and 80's of the 1900's that is ) and it must have been used in discussion by those who read Artforum as something meaningful to discuss at that time . . . as otherwise I never would have been exposed to the concept of validity within this context, as outside of being there then and reading a lot during that period I have absolutely no formal or informal exposure to the art history or theory in extended or historic readings. So it may have been that people stopped using the word as you say . . . but within "the last century" that is really "the end of the last century". Which (to me) does not really seem to be all that long ago.

I wrote a very long response to your post, Paul, then tried to edit it and then realized that there was some sort of circular logic going on in your posts that was inescapable. Momentarily, anyway. It will be interesting to hear more commentary on all this.

Someone recently described to me (with much delight, and it did sound delicious ) a Turkish sort of "pizza" or topped (cornmeal-based) bread. Her name for it was ekmegi but the references I've found to ekmegi so far are much simpler than her description. The toppings on the ekmegi she descibed were hamsi (which I believe is anchovies?), sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and parsley. Is this a particular regional variation on ekmegi? What other variations exist if any? I'd love to try to sort out a recipe, too, if anyone knows where to find one. This is not a recipe she (or anyone she knew) made at home, but more a "streetfood".

Agreed that it is confusing, Paul. Anything worthwhile and above the basics of existence often is. And each of us will have our own ways of approach to answering these questions for ourselves. I can see your point but it is a softer worldview than mine. It is less demanding. And in some way you are focused on looking at the player as individual, I think, whereas I am focused on looking at the player within the playing field. It is nice to think of everyone who works at art as being an artist, and it is true, too. But only a small percentage of that art will be graded as momentous and important or even "valid" by those who judge from within the milieu . And those people who judge are those who are considered the most expert, the most knowledgeable about their own milieu. And that critical analysis and acceptance or not will generally provide financial and community support for the work that they grade. I hand it to Adria for having passed these critical tests at least in one instance. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future both with his work and with those with similar intent or shape in their work. Will others be invited into the 'art world'? Why or why not? A fascinating saga. According to this you wrote above, Adria in your opinion is an artist because he endeavors to make art? Nothing more nothing less? Would any or all other cooks or chefs who endeavor to make art be equal to him in terms of being an artist then? The critical apparatus is being used no matter whether it is separating or including in any category . . . whether that category is the one of "what one is" or whether it is in terms of "how well one does it". Apply the mind to something and one has already applied the critical apparatus in some fashion. (And to offer advice which says: and etc etc. is merely using rhetoric to give force to the suggestion that everyone should follow what your own critical decisions have been in this case. ) ............................................ P.S. All in all I am not sure who is the better artist, when stretching the term to include many things: Adria? Or the organizers of the show for the museum who ended up being provided with food prepared by him without even having to obtain reservations for el Bulli. How often does Adria do "home visits" such as this I wonder? An excellent piece of performance art done by the organizers. So quietly and without fanfare for their skills, too.