Thrifty. Creamy. Hearty. Easy.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. Inspired by a Twitter comment by the design minded @reese on the innocent quality of blind contour drawing. What's that? It's a drawing practice where you keep your eye on the subject and your pencil moving and you never look at what's appearing on the page. It improves hand-eye coordination and confidence.

I hooked on the idea of using that innocent quality of simple lines and shapes on the completely weird brussel sprout plant. And so we ended up with high brow oil painting meets low brow pencil cartooning. I'm liking this hybrid. For the unaware, the brussel sprout plant is the alien of the vegetable world. When harvested, they look like this (the leaves have been cut off those spikey stalks):

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

In the spirit of finding tasty, easy and hearty things to do with the blander winter veg, I challenged myself to ‘do something’ with brussels sprouts that wasn’t just a side dish. You would not believe how many different incarnations this concept went through before landing here. The original idea was to use chestnuts as they go so well with brussels. 

But. 

After shelling, about half of our chestnuts were rotten and they can be such a time consuming pain in the behind to prepare, that they were dumped. I know when I’m cold and hungry the last thing I want to do is sit down and peel an ingredient for half an hour before I can even get started on making the meal. I am quite sure I am not alone in this sentiment. What we have here is the exact opposite. Quick to prepare and made of humble ingredients. Filling and tasty.

Bingo. 

Oh, and it’s not actually a casserole as it never gets near the oven. Casserole just sounded tastier than stew, which rhymes with ‘ew’. Point taken?

1 tablespoon butter

1 onion, roughly diced

1 ½ green apples, chopped fine but rough

2 cups stock, possibly three

¼ cup split peas

¼ cup lentils

¼ cup rice

1 cup cooked mixed beans

125g mushrooms, chopped

350g brussel sprouts (in quarters) or cabbage (finely sliced)

½ teaspoon dried sage

300ml cream

375g potato in bite size pieces

Saute onion in butter until golden.

Add apple and a little stock, put the lid on the pot and cook the apple until it’s mashable.

Mash into a rough sauce.

Then add everything else and simmer, lid off, until all the ingredients are done. This will be around 30 minutes. Keep an eye on the amount of liquid and add extra stock to prevent sticking if necessary.

Serves 4. 

A generous amount of cracked black pepper works well on top.

Satisfying. Cheesy. Rich. Chunky.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm acrylic on paper. The paper is no ordinary paper, it is textured Hahnemuhle 300 gsm 100% alpha cellulose which is acid-free fibre of vegetable origin.

Three cheeses equaled three bovines in my mind and as I have a fondness for petroglyphs, or rock art, I indulged here with a three cow pie in a rock art style, with a hint of the blue veins of blue vein cheese for good measure. This piece is really something in real life with loads of texture and a shimmery effect from all the colour shades which was really hard to catch.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

Cheese, cheese, cheese. This is a dairy fest with a handful of vegetables. Based on the River Cottage 'Leek & Dorset Blue Vinny Tart', this has evolved into full blown deep pie, or tart for purists, with far more cheese and versatile with the veg. It's a bit of a 'clean out the bottom of the fridge' meal and it tastes fantastic. I think the key to the flavour is using a blue vein cheese you really quite like.

shortcrust pastry at least 25x25cm, stretched to fit a deep 23cm pie dish
1 medium to large leek, washed well and sliced fine
solid (not leafy) winter veg to total 400g including the leek, chopped in small bite pieces - broccoli works well, also consider turnip, swede, carrot, pumpkin, cauliflower, celeriac
250g cream cheese
250ml/1 cup water
1 teaspoon honey
a few cracks of black pepper
100g blue vein cheese, grated or chopped small
200g other cheese such as tasty or feta, in chunky cubes
4 eggs

Pre heat your oven to 180C and if you prefer your pastry cases baked blind, then prepare this first.
Put the leek, winter veg, cream cheese, water and honey in a pot.
Heat gently to melt the cream cheese into a sauce, then simmer very gently until the veg are softened. The idea is to have them mostly precooked before going into the pie.
When the cream cheese vegetable sauce is ready, remove from the heat.
Add a few cracks of black pepper to taste and the blue vein cheese. Mix and let the cheese melt.
Let the sauce cool for a few minutes and in the meantime, take your pastry shell in a pie dish, and fill it with the other cheese cubes.
Thoroughly mix the eggs into the sauce.
Pour the sauce into the pastry shell on top of the cheese cubes.
Bake at 180C for at least 40 minutes or more until the sauce has set. It should be firm like a quiche.

Makes a pie 23cm diameter and 5cm depth which serves 6-8 with sides. 

Last weekend I participated in a bit of a crazy art competition. In the spirit of fun and setting myself a challenge I entered this year's Art Blitz, run by Kingston City Council in Melbourne.

Fun? Challenge? Indeed! With just 24 hours to create and deliver an artwork to an announced theme, it may not be everyone's idea of fun, but it's certainly a challenge!

Hearty. Thrifty. Leisurely. Easy.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. Thanks to cold snowy nights and the possibly true or possibly fictitious history of shepherds pie being the dish of shepherds (as in tending a flock of sheep or indeed eating them!) when coming down from the mountains into the village. Also well and truly inspired by Chagall's 'I and the Village' shown below, thanks to the sheep, village and mountains shared by both the shepherds pie myth and the painting.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

Middle of winter. Lashings of mashed potato. Hearty filling beans. Veg and herbs all simmered together in beer until meltable. How good does this sound?

To cook this recipe you will need a lidded casserole dish that can hold more than 1.2L or 2 pints of liquid, or be prepared to clean the bottom of your oven of all the burnt on overflow.

Filling:
2 onions, diced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 cup diced celeriac or 2 stalks celery, sliced
1 tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup dried lentils or split peas (not the little red ones as they just turn into mush)
1/2 cup grains, ie rice (barley is not ideal as it doesn't always cook in time)
2 tablespoons plain flour
2 teaspoons sugar

These liquids need to total 1L:
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
around 330ml beer
stock

Topping:
800g potato
milk and butter to taste for mash

Melt the butter and sweat (lid on) the onion, carrot and celery/celeriac with the salt for around 10 minutes until these are all soft.
Take off the heat and add all the other filling ingredients and stir well.
Then add the liquids and stir well.
Bake in the oven for 1 hour at 160C with the lid on.
Meanwhile, boil, drain and mash the potato, adding milk and butter as you like.
Add the potato topping to the filling.
Place back in the oven minus the lid for another 30 minutes.

Serves 4. 

Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here - this is a personal response to the work of Marc Chagall by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.

In a world filled with depressing soundbite-style news stories of crime & horror, isn't it a wonderful thing to have people who celebrate life?

Chagall's paintings tend to wander through happy reminiscing and imagining. I enjoy this in his work and admire the way he intertwined his symbols, all so fluid and childlike and dreamy.

And being a fan of colour, colour, colour (you may have noticed!), Chagall's masterful use of colour in his pictures make me smile. There's no fear there, nor is it overdone. For such a highly regarded fine artist that nearly everyone loves, I can't help but notice the free linework style he used and how this strongly reminds me of cartooning. Combining cartooning and 'fine art' painting? Thankyou, I'll have a large serve of that.

Most of all, his work speaks to me about emotion. Feelings conveyed by poetic impressions rather than careful explanations. It's so fitting, to me, that he also made stained glass windows! And transformed ceilings...

I think it's a wonderful thing to walk into a public building and be delighted and enchanted by the artwork adorning the ceiling. Unfortunately this does not happen often enough. But if you're in Paris, the opera house that's today best known by the name Opéra Garnier delivers.

These are photos I took while under the spell of enchantment. It was doubly potent because it was so completely unexpected to find the work of Chagall here. It was a random touristy visit that turned out to be a gem of an impromptu idea.

More Marc Chagall links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Chagall

http://www.chagallpaintings.org/mylife.html

http://www.chagallpaintings.org/biography.html

The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me. 

The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.

Light. Unusual. Delicate. Easy.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. Square pastry pieces. Rectangular pieces of leek. Gentle, elegant shades of greens and creams. How could this be anything else but an understated abstract of these elements? Look for the softly glowing glazing, the ghosted background colours and the linework using sgraffito (that's the fancy term for scratching into  paint). This is a very subtle, understated painting, just like it's recipe is subtle and understated.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

While perusing the interwebs for winter recipe inspiration I found this simple recipe posted on Taste.com.au. It looked so, well, elegant. Of course I had to try it. Originally by Gemma Purcell from Good Taste September 2007. It has been adapted, of course.

Now some notes from the kitchen. Firstly, don’t try these with mushrooms as I did. Sweet, caramelised mushroom is just disturbing. Trust me on this. I make and eat dreadful cooking mistakes so you don't have to. Well, actually my chickens & dogs do the eating of the truly dreadful ones. Secondly, leek works wonderfully well, so chic and je ne sais quoi. Onion is the acceptable cousin but not quite as, you know, vavavoom.

2 leeks or 4 small to medium onions
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 cup / 80ml white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
25x25cm sheet puff pastry
125g ricotta cheese

Top and tail your leeks and wash out all the grit. Cut them in half down their length and then into bite size chunks.
If your are using onions, cut them into thick rings.
Gently cook your leeks or onions in butter and oil until softened. For onions, do NOT burn. Golden is good.
Add the sugar to the pan and then the vinegar.
Simmer gently until the sauce thickens, around 5 minutes.
Cut the pastry into 4 equal squares.
Coat the pastry squares with ricotta, leaving a border around the edges.
Top with the cooked leek or onions. Reserve any leftover sauce for drizzling over the cooked tarts before serving.
Bake in the oven
EITHER
at 180 C for 40 minutes on a LIGHTLY oiled tray. Keep out of the hottest part of your oven if possible or the bottoms will go black.
OR
At 220 C on a baking paper covered tray for 15 minutes.

This makes a meal for 4 with the addition of potatoes and a side of greens.