Can you find the red pepper and the orange in this new oil sketch of mine? Hint: the bird shape is lifted from a very famous Manet painting . . . 

“Artichoke" Oil on panel, 16” x 20” 2009
Here is my new painting, another in a series that are all part of a conversation I’m having with 17th century Dutch and Flemish still life painting. The initial inspiration for this one came when I found this gorgeous artichoke at market with its astonishing color. I knew immediately that I had to paint it. 

Here is my new oil painting, “Leap.” I did it after spending time with the Caulfield and Zurbaran paintings I’ve posted here before. If you’ve been following this thread, you’ll recognize that lemon in my painting.


This one’s called “Dark Side.” More coming soon. Enjoy.

In the food world, there has been a huge movement in the last thirty years calling for a rejection of mass produced industrial foods and a return to Oldways--and by this I mean home cooking, authenticity, farmer’s markets, beauty, small scale production, organic, and vegetable gardens at the backdoor (even Michelle Obama has joined).  Some have called it a Food Revolution, and unless you have been living in a cave for two decades you know what I’m talking about. 

Well, there is another side to the argument.  And I can’t recommend enough this fascinating video by Louise Fresco--food and agriculture expert associated with the U.N., who uses the metaphors of Wonder Bread vs artisan whole grain handmade loaf to argue that the foodie nostalgists have completely misunderstood the value of technology, pesticides, and mass production to end poverty and feed the hungry in the developing world. 

For some people, this is blasphemy--akin to suggesting that there is no god.  I wish people on both sides of this argument would be less passionate and listen to one another. 

I suggest watching this video with a very open mind.  It’s 18 minutes long so get comfortable.  Well worth every minute.

Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but this is one of my Mother’s Day presents and I already know what’s in it. That’s because I made it and wrapped it myself. (Giggle.) Doesn’t it look pretty? It’s some of the lavender rosewater cookies that I baked with a group of children to help them make Mother’s Day gifts for their moms, and I made sure to bake extra because these are just too good. When we wrapped up the gifts, I wrapped the ones for me and my colleagues too. If you don’t know this recipe or have never eaten these cookies, you are in for a treat. This dough is so fragrant that raw or baked, it fills the room with a gorgeous scent. One child came into the room where they were being made and exclaimed out loud, “Wow! This room smells amazing! What is it?” When one of my colleagues tasted them she actually whispered to me (so that the children couldn’t hear,) “This is orgasmic.” A cookie that can perfume an entire room and bliss out the taster. Now that’s One Badass Cookie. And perfect for the mom in your life too if you need a last minute gift just about now. Or one to honor yourself. Read on for the recipe, a photo of the beauties in this package, and the Badass Cookie Tip of the Week.

We have been getting some stunning “Hands On” submissions lately.  This, photo comes from Marisa in Australia who has roots in Sicily and Trieste.  (An interesting life, huh?) Thank you Marisa for sending these photos of Niluzza threading pasta. 

My Siciilian relatives live in Ragusa (south-eastern region of Sicily) and my zia Niluzza makes a lot of pasta in a variety of shapes and sizes, especially when I visit her from Melbourne, Australia.

My relatives in Ragusa make causuneddi (Sicilian) but these gnocchi or gnocchetti shaped pasta (in Italian) are known by different names in other regions of Sicily – gnocculi, gnucchiteddi, cavati, caviateddi (in Sicilian). All have an indentation in the centre to ensure even cooking. Some are rigati (have ridges on the surface) and some are lisci (smooth).

The photographs
The first photograph shows zia Niluzza’s special pasta-shaping device (it looks like a loom). It belonged to her grandmother (my great grandmother) and as you can appreciate it is very unique and rare. Small, fine strips of pasta (40mm) are rolled onto a long fine reed and by rolling the reed on the device, she makes grooves on each piece of dough. The small shapes of pasta are then released – the reed, allows them to slide off easily.

In the second photograph you meet some of the members from different generations of the same family. Life still seems to be the same in Sicily when it comes to doing things together and usually all of the women and children contribute to the shaping of pasta. My relatives make these very quickly and I am always embarrassed when I offer to help because even the youngest members of the family shape them faster than I can. It is just practice.

Check out Marisa’s blog http://allthingssicilianandmore.blogspot.com/

Thank you Marisa!

The English painter, Patrick Caulfield (1936 - 2005) painted this wonderful canvas in 1999 titled “Hemingway Never Ate Here.” I love the irreverence and humor of his Pop Art style, and especially this one with its reply to Zurbaran and his rose benighted teacup that speaks so eloquently in the painting that appeared here in the last Kitchen Art column. Hmmm, wonder if I could continue this conversation in a painting of my own . . . in the meantime, here’s another piece of Caulfield’s, “Still Life: Autumn Fashion.”

A bunch of wild ramps (aka the wild leek of the forest floor, beloved in Apalachia)
A few slices of bacon
Some potatoes cleaned ad sliced thin.

Salt and pepper.
Use your judgment and taste preference on all these qualities.

1.  Wash the ramps, taking care to remove any grit or dirt.  Pat dry and cut away the stem and white parts. Cut into two-inch pieces.

2.  Fry bacon until crisp and fat is rendered. (If you’re worried about clogging the families arteries like I am, pour off most of the bacon fat so you’ve got the bare minimum you need for flavor then replace it when enough olive oil to fry your potatoes. If no member of your family has high cholesterol, then by all means skip this step and have fun frying your potatoes in bacon fat.) Remove bacon and set aside.

3.  As if it isn’t obvious now, add your potatoes.  Add some salt--a little or a lot.  As you see here, I pulled down my iron skillet, which I hadn’t used for a long time.  Gosh you forget what a beautiful job it does browning potatoes so quick and perfectly.

4.  When potatoes are getting there, add ramps.  Enjoy the fragrance as they soften.  Add more salt as needed. And some pepper, too.

5.  Cook this until potatoes are brown and ramps are soft and delicious.  Now break up the bacon into bite size pieces and return to pan.  Cook a little more.  You’ll know when it’s done. 

Last year, a friend gave me a bunch of wild ramps she’d gathered from the forest floor in Upstate New York State.  This was my first encounter with the beautiful wild leek of Appalachia fame. You can click and read my post from back then, and find out all about the history of ramps and coalminers in West Virginia and their annual community ramp suppers, and folklorist Mary Hufford’s work with the people of Big Coal River Valley. A beautiful story.

But I’m writing about ramps again now because I’ve decided to hereby anoint them as the official Earth Day Dish of America if someone hasn’t already.  There are many reasons for this.  First of all, ramps have had their forests and land threatened by mining and development.  But also, what could be a better Earth Day vegetable than a wild onion?  A green creature of the forest. The first sign of spring and hope. 

There’s about one week left to order farmed ramps directly from West Virginia, as the season runs through April there.  Here’s a great source where you can buy as little as a one-pound bag.  And no, they aren’t cheap.  If you think it is not very “earth day” to use up fossil fuel to have them shipped here just to satisfy your gourmet fetish, well, the cool thing about the Ramp Farm in Richmond West, Virginia, is that they will also sell you seeds, so you can even try to grow them yourself if you have the right conditions:  moist ground, filtered light---like a forest.

If you want WILD ramps, you can order them from D’artagnan, which is presently sourcing them from West Virginia.  But will continue to follow the harvest as it moves northward through spring.  These are sold only in “chef quantity"--a 5 pound bad--for a steep $94.  I say find three friends to share them with.  They stay well in the fridge for more than a week.  Mine have lasted as long as two weeks.

Now, about that Appalachian style recipe up there.  I just can’t give precise measurements for such a down to earth dish.  I just cooked the things and enjoyed them. 

Happy Earth Day.

“Turkish Woman and her Outdoor Oven,” photo by Holly Chase; all rights reserved.  Location: Mugla Province, Aegean Coast--a village to the Northwest of Bodrum.

“mystic intensity combined with physical paint and an ordinary fruit . . .  quiet.  overwhelming.” Peter Schjeldahl for the New Yorker, April 6, 2009.

I paint pictures. That said, I’ve been thinking a lot about painting and not the pictures. A painting is so much more than the image depicted. It’s also about the artist’s intention, the reality of the painted surface itself. It’s about the way the artist has referred to other paintings by picking up threads from the past and making decisions to continue or break from those threads. It’s about, more than anything, well, paint. This painting, one of my favorites, is now on view at the Frick in NYC. It was painted in 1633 by Francisco de Zurbaran (Spanish 1598 - 1664.) Laura sent me this link to a podcast about this painting by the art critic Peter Schjeldahl for the New Yorker who talks about all these things and more. It’s probably one of the best ways to spend ten minutes of your life as you have your morning coffee or tea, not the least to hear Schjeldahl’s take on why this painting and many others is akin to the experience of having a loaded gun pointed in your face. You’ll also be privy to a surprising fact about Schjeldahl’s education in art. Have a listen, see through Zubaran’s eyes, and if you’re really inspired hike on over to the Frick, where, as Schjeldahl points out, nothing beats seeing a painting, made of the “real stuff” of paint, firsthand.

Question:

My sister and I have been searching for a recipe for Easter Pie that my grandmother used to make at Easter time. The versions that we have found are not the same like she made. Her Easter Pie was made with ham, hard boiled eggs, chunks of cheese and pasta. We have used other recipes and included the food items she used but there is something missing and we just can’t seem to replicate her recipe. I wish I had written it down like so many other of her recipes that I watched her make as a young girl.  My grandmother told me her parents were gypsies who lived in the hills above Salerno and tended goats.

--Sara

Sara.  Wow about the gypsies. 

My Ligurian ancestors made “Torta Pasqualina,” which translates literally as “Easter Pie.” But this not the answer you’re looking for because your family comes from Salerno, which is in the Campania region to the south.  I am certain you are referring to a very different dish that goes by many similar names such as pizza rustica or pizza chiena.  Chiena means “filled” in dialect.  So it is a stuffed pizza.  Italian Americans changed the word from chiena to gain.  So it is often be called pizza gain. Whatever the name, I think this is more or less the same as your Easter pie--an incredibly decadent thing, filled with cheeses and meat and eggs.  It ends the fasting of lent with joy and celebration of Easter. 

In searching for this recipe for you, I found an interesting little book online called ”> The story of a year, many years ago. It appears to be a very personal account of life in Salerno int he 60s or 70s, and includes recipes.  I emailed the author, Marco Ferraiolo, and asked about your Easter Pie.  He graciously wrote as follows (my rough translation):

“I believe the pie you’re looking for from the hills around Salerno is a “Tortano,” which is a pie/brioche traditional to the Campania region, prepared for Easter, and made with a bread dough, kneaded with lard, pork cracklings, pepper, pecorino cheese, salame, eggs.” He describes a method of making it with many layers of pastry surrounding the filling.

In various incarnations, vegetable pies, or torte, exist all over Italy, and it will be difficult to find your exact recipe.  There is no one recipe.  They vary from region to village, to family.

That said, in Arthur Schwartz’s wonderful Naples at Table:  Cooking in Campania, he gives a terrific recipe for “savory Easter ricotta pie,” of which he writes:  Pizza Rustica, an open, lattice-topped or fully enclosed pastry filled with ricotta, diced cheeses, and various preserved pork products, is also called pizza ripiena (stuffed pie) or in dialect, pizza chiena--from which comes the frequently used Italian American name pizza gain. Follow the jump to the end of this story for his recipe. 

I made a lovely visit up to Providence, Rhode Island a few weeks ago.  It’s a great small city with a lively old Italian neighborhood and lots of interesting people there doing great things with food.  I trekked up there for the fun of doing a local television show about “the diversity of Italian food” (an impossibly huge topic) with Alan Constantino--owner of the great Venda Ravioli shop--and Mary Ann Esposito, the legendary host of PBS’s Ciao Italia of the longest running cooking show in America.  It was great fun.  We began with the old question “Is there such a thing as Italian food?” Before we knew it the time was up.  I began to think I’d like to do a ten-hour documentary.  Then maybe we’d go beyond scratching the surface. 

Anyway, I wanted to bring Mary Ann a gift of something from Liguria of course.  So I made corzetti--these round circles of pasta, which are like large coins, imprinted with a design-- essentailly a culinary woodcut.  You need a special wooden carved stamp to make them.  Here they are drying on my porch.

Corzetti are very typical of Liguria and also of Provence, France, which is not surprising as the two regions share a long culinary history

“Presence and Absence” oil on panel, copyright Nancy Gail Ring 2009
Here is one of my new paintings. More to come .  . .

Ballymaloe Brown Bread

3 3/4 cups whole meal (whole wheat) flour
1 1/2 cups (or more) warm water (around 100 to 115 degrees)
2 tablespoons black treacle (molasses)
2 teasp. salt
2 teaspoons dry active yeast (1 1/2 packages granular)

Mix flour with salt and warm it in a cool oven.  (Here Myrtle is telling us to put it in the oven on the lowest possible setting. She wants the flour and bowl to be warm when you mix the bread.) Mix treacle with some of the warm water (about a half cup) in a small bowl and add the yeast.  Grease a loaf tin and put it to warm, too.  Also warm a clean tea towel.  Look to see if the yeast is rising, it will take five minutes, approx and should have a frothy appearance on top.  Stir it well and pour it with remaining water into the flour to make a wettish dough.  (Myrtle says that “The dough should be just too wet to knead.” So you may need to add more water, or if it’s too liquid depending on the weather and brand of flour you’re using.  Use judgmentto make sure it’s “just too wet too knead.") Put the mixture into the warm loaf pan and put this pan back in the same position as used previously to raise the yeast.  Put the tea towel over the pan.  (Or you may wish to use plastic wrap.) When it has risen by twice the original size, it is ready.  Now bake it in a hot oven (450 F) for 35 to 45 minutes or until it looks nicely browned and sounds hollow when tapped.  Remove and cool.

Adapted from The Ballymaloe Cookbook,
Myrtle Allen, 1984

I made my first trip to Ireland last September.  I was quite taken with a number of things--the rocky coves by the ocean, the low-hanging sky, big bales of hay piled in fields and all the quirky bustle of Cork City.  But way at the top of my list of favorites was brown bread.  I found it everywhere, usually in a basket with other breads served at dinner, but also at breakfast, and in shops.  The best of them were wholesome, slightly sweet, nutty, and moist.  A wonderful staple of daily life.  When my friend Elizabeth and I visited her cousin Bridget, I pointed to the brown bread she’d offered us with tea and asked, “Do you make this often?” She laughed at me and said something like “My husband would kill me if I didn’t.”

One Badass Cookie is making a bread today in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. This comes from my mentor and fellow artist Eileen Neff, who visited friends in Ireland recently. She remembers the delicious smell and taste of this Irish Soda Bread comforting her as it baked in her friend, Susan Tiger’s wind-swept cottage during a storm so fierce the wind was forcing the rain that overflowed the roads to run uphill. A bread good enough to quell fear. That’s One Badass Bread. Since there’s a lot of controversy about Irish Soda Bread these days, I was thrilled to get this recipe, a community recipe from County Mayo that is the simple authentic type of soda bread and not the wonderful but sweet, butter-laden, raisin studded version we Americans mostly know. Such a find: fabulous homemade bread practically as good as the time-consuming yeast-risen kind in little more than an hour. Wow. For the recipe, the Badass baking tip of the week, the skinny on how buttermilk and baking soda make this bread rise like crazy and more photos, read on.