African Vanielje on Sep 03 2007 at 9:59 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
If it wasn’t for the fact that I can’t draw, paint, sculpt or take very good photographs, I might have been an artist. No, that’s not quite right. I am an artist, at least I feel like one. I create, I delight in aesthetics, I respond to colour and light, pattern and design. What I meant was that all this stuff makes me happy. I love it. I could do it all day, every day, except that I wouldn’t be good enough at it to make a living.
But that does not mean I have abandoned it completely. I love designing cakes, baking and cooking, and take my inspirations from the oddest places. Martin who has a site on molecular gastronomy believes that up to 80% of our appreciation of food comes from our olfactory senses. Now I can’t argue percentages, but I have a pretty sensitive nose and often find the smell of a dish more overpowering than the taste. I sometimes unthinkingly describe the taste of something as the smell of something else. I once tried to describe what a synthetic strawberry milkshake at a fast food chain tasted like. ‘It tastes Pink!’ made perfect sense to me. It certainly didn’t taste of strawberries. And this is what I love about food. (Not pink milkshake).
It engages all your senses. It has to look and smell good before you want to put it in your mouth. It depends on mood, emotions and memories as to how you will react. If it feels horrible in your mouth you will not stop to taste it. It’s so wonderfully diverse and subjective. And it’s so temporary. Once it’s gone you have to rely on these same senses to recreate the dish for you, and the more powerful the impact, the better the memory. Complicated? Yes. Challenging? You bet! Inspiring? Absolutely! Artistic? No doubt about it.
Sometimes it is just the absolute beauty of the raw ingredients that inspires me. The delicate , alien lines of a tiger prawn, the simple symmetry of half an apple, the incredible colour jolt of a courgette flower, or the delicious cerise memory of beetroot. The root itself is no great beauty, and it’s only a glimpse of the early leaves that hint at the treasure within.
The vibrant colour does not just have aesthetic value either. Strongly coloured veg are often an indication of high levels of carotenoids such as beta carotene, a great antioxidant, which boosts our immune systems.
Like honey bees to flowers, Demeter knew what she was doing when she picked her palette. I certainly can’t deny the irresistible kitsch of a young beetroot leaf salad or a deep pink risotto. I wouldn’t even try. Guess what we had for lunch today…
This delicious risotto was made with beetroot from the kitchen garden, as well as onions. The chives were picked fresh from my kitchen windowsill and this recipe is my entry for Andrea’s fabulous new event Grow Your Own, round 2.
I couldn’t agree more!!! The raw beauty of a fruit or vegetable is so inspiring. I think we have all found ourselves buying something at the market that drew us by its color or look that we had to have it. We get it home and have no idea what to do with it, or wait for an idea to surface, in the meantime, hate to ruin its perfect beauty.
And the olfactory subject…such a good one. Another fact is that it is the sense that is most connected to our memory. So smells evoke memories more powerfully than any of our other senses. Yet another reason why cooking is so emotional and eating so passionate.
Don’tcha just love this world we live in?
yes a wonderful world.. i do admit i love risotto with barolo .. even if it us “strange pink” in colour.
at the end of the it is all about smell, texture color and aroma.
Ritu, my father and husband will not eat beetroot, pumpkin or cooked carrots because they are the wrong colour. For my daughter and I it is the complete opposite. I am very drawn to vibrant colours in food, as long as they are natural.
I generally don’t like beetroot – but it’s a textural thing for me. I have recently discovered roasted beetroot which has a more palatable texture and takes the edge off the “earthiness” of beetroot.
And I LOVE courgette flowers! Just a pity they are hard to come by unless you grow your own
Jeanne, I agree with you about courgette flowers. And I love them stuffed or as fritti. Beetroot I have always been passionate about. I ate it almost exclusively when I was pregnant, and bizzarely, my daughter loves it as well. I love the earthiness of it though and seldom bother to peel it. Yum!
I love beets. In the Southern US, they are often pickled, which is my favorite way to enjoy them. Your salad is so beautiful and colorful! Thanks for a fabulous entry for Grow Your Own!