Fun. Spiced. Homely. Robust.

***

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. Ready to have some fun? Relive some happy childhood memories?  Dump your diary in the bin, clear the kitchen table, sit down with a bunch of friends and have an innocent child-at-heart partytime. 

Remember -  play with your food!


Original artwork can be purchased in the Official Art Store. To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.

***

The meatless meals recipe

This quote from a recipe tester says it all, "makes commercial gingerbread look like sweet sludge". 

This gingerbread has a real and robust flavour that you can actually taste. It's just as easy to make as any other gingerbread. The secret ingredient is glace ginger. 

1/2 cup golden syrup or similar
1/4 cup raw sugar
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2  tablespoons finely chopped glace ginger (the secret ingredient)
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
pinch ofsalt
2 cups plain flour
several tablespoons water as needed

Heat the golden syrup almost to the boil, then add sugar, butter and milk. Mix well until sugar is dissolved and butter melted then remove from the heat source.
Mix the dry ingredients together, including the glace ginger.
Slowly add dry to wet ingredients, mixing carefully to avoid lumps.  A few tablespoons of water may be needed to make a dough that will hold together and can be handled easily.
Roll out to 3/4 cm thick.  Cut out fun shapes.  Decorate with currants, sultanas and candied citrus peel if you want.
Bake for 5-7 mins in 180C/350F oven.
Eat straight away or cool on a wire rack if you can resist.

Makes about a dozen 10cm tall gingerbread people.

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

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter who is generally credited with creating the first purely abstract art (in Western art) in 1910.  

His geometric abstractions were inspired by music, colour symbolism and psychology, and a deep need to express his inner emotional/spiritual world (nowdays known as abstract expressionism).

From Artchive, "His "inner necessity" to express his emotional perceptions led to the development of an abstract style of painting that was based on the non-representational properties of color and form. Kandinsky's compositions were the culmination of his efforts to create a "pure painting" that would provide the same emotional power as a musical composition."

I have no interest in Kandinsky's work before he moved to abstracts. And there are some varieties of his abstracts that I really don't like, as in this Composition VII shown above, even though it is considered to be one of his masterpieces. So, so hideously busy, ugh. It still has his trademark visual balance though.

The works I prefer explore carefully balanced lines and shapes and colour, with plenty of space to breathe around them, a plain or sparse background. 

They are busy but uncluttered. They look both simple and complex. There are many small marks within big spaces. 

 There is a flow of line and colour. 

There is a sense of innocence or childlikeness. A feeling of musicality. A playfullness. I think this quality is important to me. It's also what I enjoy in the work of cartoonists.

 

They are precise, yet flow and balance, just so. He seems to have quite a command over his lines. They walk the tightrope of precision and freedom.

I remember seeing his work when I was in primary school. It had a huge impact on me. You could say it spoke to me. In adult language, it was the compositional balance that really hit me. I am still enthralled by his ability in this area. His art is just shapes and marks in colour and they are always so lopsided, quirky and visually perfectly balanced.

More links to Wassily Kandinsky

http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky

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.

Chunky. Thrifty. Homely. Filling.

***

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on board. England is known for it's dreary grey days. The greyest and foggiest of these days are called pea soupers, when the fog is so settled and thick that you can barely see a few feet in front of you. This painting is an interpretation of a 'pea souper', with a nod to the lovely misty and ethereal tree paintings of Melbourne's Kathryn Ryan.

Original artwork for Autumn and Winter paintings can be purchased in the Official Art Store. To be kept updated on the availablity of Spring and Summer paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.

***

The meatless meals recipe

This recipe is an inspired conglomeration of several pea soups I have known and enjoyed. The first was a family recipe for your bog standard Pea and Ham soup. Very flavouful, somewhat missed once I stopped eating meat. The second was another family recipe for a Pea and Mint soup which was interesting for it's enormous use of mint, but not outstanding in itself. And finally there was the Ainsley Harriet cup-o-soup version of Shropshire Minted Pea Soup from when I was working in London. Drinkable in a cup-o-soup kind of a way, it caught my attention with it's unusual spice and tang. Unfortunately this was due to the inclusion of the world famous Worstershire Sauce which contains anchovies and I stopped drinking this once I realised.  But then it was game on to create my own Pea soup which was flavourful like the Pea and Ham, super minty like the Pea and Mint, and tangy and spicy minus the anchovies like the Shropshire soup. Success below!


1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
a few cracks of pepper and salt
500g dried green split peas
7 cups weak stock
2-3 small bay leaves
up to 1 teaspoon hot paprika
1/4 - 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 cups roughly chopped fresh mint (this is about 36g of leaves or 4 cups unchopped) - err on the generous side

Saute the onion in butter until soft with a little pepper and salt.
Add stock, split peas, bay leaves, 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, and two big pinches of hot paprika.
Simmer gently with the lid on until the peas are completely broken down. This means at least for one hour, and preferably, for two hours.
Taste test. Check for heat/spiciness and cautiously add more hot paprika to suit. It's heat will vary depending on it's age (less heat with age). Also check for tartness/tang. Depending on the balsamic vinegar and your tastes, you may want to add more to suit.
Finally, stir in all the roughly chopped mint.


Makes 4 rather hearty bowls.

Delicate. Easy. Quick. Creamy.

***

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil and graphite on linen. I have a soft spot for Victorian era or olde worlde looking botannical illustrations. Now this painting is not strictly in that vintage style as I've aimed to loosen it up a bit with watercolour inspired brushwork. The result is rightly a bit more modern, while harking back to an older era where cucumbers were routinely eaten as a sole sandwich filling, and held in much higher regard than they seem to be today.

Did you know that all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store?  If you want to get your mitts on the original, it is drying and awaiting it's professional photoshoot before being allowed in the shop.

To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.

***

The meatless meals recipe

It can be somewhat odd making soups in high summer, but sometimes that's exactly what you want to eat. Some people enjoy cold soups at this time of year. I don't enjoy cold soup at any time of year. I did, however, try this soup both cold and warm and I can say that it works either way. So if chilled soup is your thing then you can make this and put it in the fridge. If warm (not hot) soup is your preference, this is delightful. It also uses a good quantity of cucumber which I have discovered grows as prolifically as zucchini. Just so you know, not deseeding or peeling the cucumbers turns this into an entirely different and rather ordinary dish. I am generally not in favour of peeling and deseeding vegetables or of creating extra work in the kitchen. In this recipe it is essential. Peel, deseed then weigh your cucumber. It is absolutely worth it.

1 Tbl olive oil

700g cucumber that has already been peeled and deseeded (about 1.4kg whole cucumber), sliced or grated

4 spring onions, chopped

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 cups stock

2 teaspoons fresh chopped dill

2 avocados

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

black pepper to taste

Soften the spring onion in oil.
Add grated/sliced cucumber, lemon juice, stock and dill.
Heat until the cucumber is warmed through and softened. It doesn't need to be 'cooked'.
Add avocado and white wine vinegar and puree until velvety smooth.
Serve and garnish with more dill.
Add salt and pepper to taste. A generous amount of pepper works well.

Serves 4.

Easy. Fresh. Satisfying. Chunky.

***

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. Making use of the square brush technique I talked about in my previous post, a summery rendition of this jewel studded dish all plated up and ready to gormandise. The real meal is pretty much as colourful as the painting is.

Did you know that all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store?  If you want to get your mitts on the original, it is drying and awaiting it's professional photoshoot before being allowed in the shop.

To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.

***

The meatless meals recipe

I enjoy the freshness of salads but often find them not filling enough. And so I have a tendency to tinker with them until they become full main meals. This is one of those tinkerings. One hot London evening (an oxymoron most of the time), I felt inspired to feast on the well known Italian tricolore or caprese salad of fresh tomato slices, fresh basil leaves and fresh mozzarella slices. Lacking those ingredients, and being hungry enough for a full meal, this is basically what I came up with. It's been refined over the years into a jewel studded crown of a summer meal.

Big thanks to Mari and Catriona in helping me give this recipe an appropriate name!

200-250g haloumi or paneer cheese, in slices about 1/2cm thick (both of these cheeses can be fried without melting out of shape)
around 310g zucchini, in slices about 1/2cm thick (using a long diagonal works well)
around 240g eggplant, in slices about 1/2cm thick
1 clove garlic
around 260g fresh tomato in slices about 1/2cm thick (about 3 medium tomatoes)
plenty of butter for frying

125g / 3/4 cup couscous
zest of 1/2 lemon
chopped parsley, about 25g
1 cup / 250ml boiling water
slosh of olive oil
optional 'clean out the fridge' veg, diced really fine - 1/2 cup

juice of 1/2 lemon

If you are using haloumi for this dish do not salt anything as it is frying. I repeat -DO NOT ADD SALT- Haloumi is very salty itself and any extra salt will make your tongue weep. Paneer, on the other hand, is usually not salty at all, so taste it first and go for your life.

Fry the zucchini slices in butter.
Fry the eggplant slices in butter. Mince the garlic and add to the frying eggplant. Once you have a bit of browning on the eggplant add some water to the pan. This speeds up the cooking time significantly and ensures the cooked eggplant is lovely and soft.
Fry the haloumi slices. It doesn't need much, just enough to be golden brown on the outside and heated through.
Meanwhile, put the couscous, lemon zest, parsley, olive oil, optional minced veg and boiling water in a container with a lid, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Your couscous is now cooked!
To serve, I like to make a ring (the crown!) around the outside of the plate with the zucchini, eggplant, haloumi and fresh tomato slices all alternating. Then I fill the middle with the couscous mix.
A squeeze of lemon juice all over finishes this off.


This makes a meal for two. Unless you are using a BBQ to fry the ingredients it's not really practical from a cooking space point of view to make this for more than two people.