Orford's 2nd Annual Food Revolution Day - 18 May 2013
Musical Fruit & Veg by j.viewz
Here's j.viewz (musician Jonathan Dagan) cover Massive Attack's Teardrop hooking up some fruit & veg to his Novation:
Brilliant.
Mortar & Pestle
I was trying to capture a bit of grinding action while making some Smy Chutney apple and pepper chutney at my cousins house for an upcoming tutorial. Here's a minute-long sneak peak featuring her stunning antique mortar and pestle. I love the differing depths of imprints left from thousands of times when the pestle has met its mortar. I am quite happy with my own mortar and pestle which is not an antique but solid, sturdy and large enough to hold rather a lot of herbs, spices and more and keep them in place as I pummel them to pieces. I am so used to the rhythm of grinding pink peppercorns in my own m & p that when using my cousin's I felt as if it was gently laughing at me for trying to rely on brute strength rather than the finesse needed when using hers. It has a basin worn smooth through use and I found I needed to alter my technique to get them to break apart. The pink peppercorns were a perfect contrast to the creamy mortar and their intense aroma would form the basis of a fantastic perfume.
I also love imagining who has used these tools and for what purposes, what is its history, what time is its place? That last phrase is a slight amendment to the phrase that one of my historic preservation professors, W Brown Morton III, used to ask us when studying old buildings, sites and items, "What time is this place?" It has stuck with me and while the people below aren't using the same exact type of mortar and pestle as my cousin's the images capture the differing uses from inside to outside, for food, science, art and more.
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Joseph Janney Steinmetz - photographer
Untitled (man with large mortar and pestle), c. 1940
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A Vanitas still life with an adder in a pestle and mortar, a sculpted head,
an astrolobe, an anatomical sculpture, a musical pipe, a skull,
a violin, a globe, musical scores, manuscripts, a paint pale.
Antonio Cioci, Italian, 1722—1792
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Woman p
ounding rice using a wooden pounding tool and a hollowed out log
on a
British East Florida plantation.
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Old woman with pestle and mortar
Caravaggio
1571 -1610
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Italian apothecary. 18th-century
National Historic Museum of the Medical Arts, Rome, Italy.
Atelier Food
Swedish project
seeks new solutions and innovation through food. International chef Stefan Eriksson began the new project in Stockholm which aims to
explore the relationship between food and society.
Fellow chefs, artists, designers, business leaders and more gather to examine the future of food and its symbiotic relationships with culture, sustainability, transportation and development through workshops, food labs and discussions.
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Still Life by Petter Johansson Art Direction And Design
I am currently thinking, researching and writing about food to an extent that my conscious and unconscious are wandering a plan much like the one in Petter Johansson's beautiful images above. I am unable to read Swedish to fully understand everything on the website but the interviews in English are fantastically eclectic and the ethos of the project makes me want to march to Atelier Food Lab and get involved. I look forward to following their work closely.
Classification Charts - Mushrooms
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I
have been fascinated with all manner of classification charts since I was a small gir
l and spent what felt like hours
,
but was probably twenty minutes, in a doctors waiting room.
There was a poster on the wall
of edible and poisonou
s mushrooms and I got lost in a
small
world of colourful mushrooms
;
some edible, some dangerous. Neither of these are
the p
sychadaelic 70s one I saw many years ago
but they have th
e same effect.
..
making me want to eat
the correct one in order to shrink and play amongst them
with fairies.
Big Hair Competition 18th century-style
1776. Matthew Darly.
The Extravaganza or the Mountain Head Dress of 1776.
London.
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If it were the 1760s I would be the height of fashion as big, extravagant hair was all the rage, the latest trend to hit London from France. By the 1770s the trend was satirized by the caricaturists. I particularly love the two following styles which feature whole fruit and veg stalls within the hair of each lady.
1777. Matthew Darly.
The Fruit Stall
(Market Fruits Ready to be Eaten). London.
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1777. Matthew Darly.
The Flower Garden.
London.
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This one has either a figurine or pocket-sized man perusing the orchards in her hair.
Becca Rothwell's NYE Duck Breast with Plum Gumbo
via Becca Rothwell's Instagram
aka
aka
Thank you so much to Becca for sharing her photo of the New Year's Eve meal she made. Using one of my all-time favourite combinations of duck and Smy Chutney Plum Gumbo she explains:
"I pan-fried the duck with a squashed garlic clove and some sprigs of thyme, deglazed the pan with red wine and stirred in a good teaspoon of your plum gumbo, let it bubble for a few mins to reduce down a bit then poured over sliced duck for a NYE meal.
"
It looks amazing! All I want now is duck, chips and kale!
Check out
for all sorts of fun regarding eating, cooking, crafting and baking...basically the creative quadrality of fun!!!
Mika Tsutai Plates
These managa-inspired plates from Mika Tsutai of Kyoto are amazing and would be so much fun to plan a meal with! More can be found and purchased at
.
Brains
When someone says they’ll tell you what’s on your plate after you’ve eaten it, most people will instinctively feel either excited or apprehensive about what has been set before them. The statement in itself lets you know that something unusual is there. I had already deeply inhaled the Testa in Cassette di Ligure presented before me and noticed a strong oily aroma and managed to simultaneously state and exhale, “Well it’s offal isn’t it?” “It’s brain....and heart, tongue and other offal,” came the response. I’ve tried tongue and find it rather tasty, however the bite that I took was admittedly smaller than the one I would have taken after the word ‘brain’ caused an involuntary image of 1950s black and white zombies to flash before my eyes. The Testa had a matte sheen, a strong aroma and the flavour was a bit briny (this is a 100% unintentional pun, I swear). The slices had a firm texture despite being wafer thin and were lacking the rich salt and meat flavours that I look forward to from salumi.
While in San Remo, Italy a pink, white and red salumi caught my eye at a deli and reminded me of a marble that I photographed at the Pantheon in September:
"That one looks nice," I said and we took several slices of Testa in Cassette di Ligure, a salami typically found in Liguria made of pig’s head, tongue, muscle and heart. Known as headcheese in English it translates as ‘head in box’ and the components are encased in strips of beef and cooked until cured. I enjoyed the Testa’s cellular beauty that comes from the traditional culinary techniques that endeavors to use all of the animal more than the flavour itself and luckily there are countless cured meats to be discovered.
Mont D’Or
Q: Do you want to eat something really fattening?
A: Yes, why yes I do.
Mont D'Or is an unpastuerised French cheese available from September to April only. Every last bit of this rich, creamy, ever-so-slightly nutty delight was warmed and eaten with bread and washed down with wine.