Gossip girls

Three beautiful hens from Russell Orchards

 in Ipswich having a gossip session

Renaissance judgements

In Renaissance days the ten lines of this little Spanish leaflet 

were mighty powerful.

 Translation:

THE POPE SAYS: …… I am the head of all.
THE KING SAYS: …… I obey the Pope.
THE KNIGHT SAYS: …… I serve these two.
THE MERCHANT SAYS: …… I cheat these three.
THE LAWYER SAYS: …… I confuse these four.
THE PLOUGHMAN SAYS: …… I feed these five.
THE DOCTOR SAYS: …… I kill these six.
THE CONFESSOR SAYS: …… I absolve these seven.
CHRIST SAYS: …… I suffer these eight.
THE DEATH SAYS: …… I take them all away.

With paints instead of words Michelangelo Buonarroti—the divine artist— 
illustrated a similarly dark message with his Last Judgement painting.

Some details...

Happy Chinese new year!

Gung Hay Fat Choy—it's the year of the dragon! Chinese New Year’s Day is today, marking the most important time of year in Chinese culture. This is a time of vibrant colors, dragon dancing, loud noises to chase bad spirits away, and symbolic foods. Dishes served during this 15-day period all have unique significance and meaning for things such as wealth, good luck, a long life, etc. Xīn nián kuài lè!

Curvaceous!

I'm loving my new curvaceous accordian side table that I just got from Wisteria. Shown like this it looks like a sculptural piece of giant ribbon candy, but I flipped it over with the flat end up to make a nifty side table. It stands about 20 inches tall and is a very heavy piece of wood. Catch the wave!

This piece reminds me of Frank Gehry's Wiggle Chair. I painted a watercolor of it for my Chair du Jour blog back in 2009. Every day for a year I painted a different chair—check it out!

Chanterelle mushrooms

photo, Dan Ryan

One of the most memorable and sexiest dishes I've ever eaten was in Gdańsk, Poland, in 2005. It was in a cozy outside cafe on a bustling pedestrian-only zone, and the meal was a creamy chanterelle mushroom sauce served over a tender breast of chicken. Ohh la laa! What that French sole meuniere dish was to Julia Child, this meal was for me. It was silky, creamy, buttery and divine, and the memory of it haunts me. The word that I always use to describe it was butterscotchy. Not being sure what wine or cognac they used to flavor the sauce I have tried to replicate the flavors, and I think I have come close using Marsala wine. Fresh golden chanterelle mushrooms used to be difficult to find and only when in season, but now you can find them at Whole Foods markets any time. The chanterelles are ridiculously priced at around $20 a pound, but are worth the splurge once a year or so. Marilyn down at Vidalias Market in Beverly Farms offers them occasionally too. This dish may not take you to Gdańsk, but you'll love the butterscotchy flavor.

2 chicken breast paillards
2-3 cups chanterelle mushrooms
1 large diced shallot
Marsala wine
1/2 cup créme fraiche
sprig of fresh thyme
1 tsp or so of diced parsley
1 tsp olive oil
2 tblsp butter
salt and pepper

Season chicken paillards with salt and pepper and quickly sauté them in olive oil on both sides. Remove from pan and keep warm. In the pan sauté the shallots until clear, then add in half of the butter and the mushrooms and sauté for about 2 minutes until tender and soft. Add in the Marsala wine and light to flambé (watch your eyelashes and keep a lid close by for safety). Once the flames die out, add in the créme fraiche, thyme leaves, and salt and pepper. Simmer on low heat for around 10 minutes to infuse the sauce with the mushroom flavor, then taste for seasoning (adjust if needed) and melt in the remaining butter. Place warm chicken paillard on a plate, spoon mushroom sauce over them and sprinkle with diced parsley.

photo, Dan Ryan

Oh and a funny postscript—after dinner we were served a glass of Polish Goldwasser (goldwater), a strong, cinnamon tasting root and herbal liqueur with flecks of 22 karat gold in it!  We liked it so much we brought a bottle home with us.

I took this photos of these lovely chanterelles at an outdoor market

in Helsinki, Finland, 2005

Notes:

—You could serve this over a bed of buttered papardelle noodles, 
   as we did in the picture above.

—It's a rich sauce, so it's nice with a crisp chardonnay 
   (Frei Brothers is very good) or champagne.


—You can find similar gold flecked Goldwasser type liqueurs here in the states.

San Gimignano skyline

I made this oil painting of the enigmatic and gorgeous San Gimignano skyline. What are all those towers about, you ask? Basically it was the conspicuous consumption of the day—people keeping up with the Joneses. They were just showing off their wealth and power by outdoing each other with these tall towers, though none were permitted to be built taller than the City Hall tower. This walled medieval Tuscan hill town has an interesting history, which you can read about here and you can also see some good photos of the town here.  During the Renaissance it was a stopover point for Catholic pilgrims traveling to the Vatican. Those towers must have been like New York City skyscrapers back then, seen from miles and miles away. Once upon a time there were 72 of these towering golden rectangles, but now only 13 remain.

+ + + 

We've been to San G three times now—the first time was in 1993 when we were on our honeymoon. The word is out on this charming little hilltop town with its myriad towers and it attracts serious crowds of people today, but back then it was a sleepy town with much fewer tour buses. These days cars are not allowed to drive up into the town, but that is precisely what we did back in 1993. Yup, we drove into the center of town and found a lovely hotel with a room on the second floor that overlooked the Piazza della Cisterna (the main square with the water well). The place was the Hotel Leon Bianco, and it's still running today. (See photos below!) Their outside cafe was just below our window and in the morning we awoke to the sound of clanking dishes and silverware and the heavenly aroma of strong Italian coffee. Ahh, memories!

photo from the Hotel Leon Bianco website

Me looking out our window at Hotel Leon Bianco in San Gimignano in 1993

Tuscan olive grove—III

One more Tuscan olive grove painting, this one is in shades of yellow. 

 (Search my blog for more of my Tuscan landscape paintings.)

Tuscan olive grove II

Here's another Tuscan olive grove painting in shades of greens. 

 (Search my blog for more of my Tuscan landscape paintings.)

Tuscan olive grove I

I got into a painting groove this weekend and painted four new canvases, all Tuscan landscapes (in oils) from photos I took during my visit there last September. I am doing a series of olive trees—love the gnarly twisted trunks and ethereal shimmering leaves. This painting—in shades of purples—is of a row of olive trees that lined a long dirt road, creating a tunnel effect. 

 (Search my blog for more of my Tuscan landscape paintings.)

Kale chips rock!

I actually called my mom after making these crispy greens to say "Look mom, I ate kale!" You see, growing up I was reluctant to eat a lot of greens other than the usual lettuce, string beans, peas, etc. Mom was a great nutritionist and always made very healthy dinners for my brothers and me-even while working a full time job. Sure, she snuck kale or spinach or broccoli into soups and casseroles, but really I didn't actually appreciate those green veggies on their own merit until I was older—like around 50 or so. KIDDING! Late 20s, max. Thanks mom!

+ + + 

Trim out the thick center stem of kale leaves and cut remaining leaf into bite sized pieces. Coat with olive oil and sprinkle a dash of garlic powder and salt and pepper. Place leaves on a baking sheet in a 350° oven for 10-15 minutes, then remove and add a squeeze of lemon juice.

Theyyyyre heeere!

Those garden catalogs are arriving in my mailbox—little teases of springtime and green and growth. When we're housebound on cold and blustery winter days (It was 5° when I woke up this morning!) garden catalogs and books really deliver a dose of sunshine and possibilities. The plants and flowers always look so big and colorful in the catalogs, don't they? There are no weeds or bug eaten leaves, just pages and pages of beautiful combinations and potential. I am thinking about planting a huge cutting garden on the west side of my house, filled with loads of colorful dahlias, zinnnias ans sunflowers—really hot colors like pinks and oranges yellows. Am I crazy? It would be lovely but would mean more edging and weeding! Get those stickies and scissors out and create your perfect dream garden!

Gorgeous portrait—Louise Bourgeois

                                                                                      portrait by Annie Leibowitz

I have a thing for gorgeous portraits and also for older faces. This one of the artist Louise Bourgeois in her elder years, made by photographer Annie Leibovitz, is stunning.

Click on the gorgeous portraits label below for more gorgeousness!

A cheese guy and an opera singer...

This is a postcard I got in Lucca, Italy last fall.

Sounds like the start of a good joke, doesn't it? Nope. I meet the nicest people shopping sometimes! I was perusing the cheese section at Whole Foods recently and was chatting with the two cheese guys working there—Giovanni (yes, Italian, accent and all) and Brian. Turns out that Brian is not only a cheese guru, but his real love is Opera. Yup, he's a tenor opera singer, and what an amazing voice he has! Please have a listen to Brian Landry...he's trained and performed in Italy, and is the real deal!

I love opera posters!

opera poster graphic, Diane Carnevale

Minding my Ps and Qs

Pumpkin and Quinoa, that is! Pumpkin soup is so velvety and delicious anyhow, but add to it some cooked quinoa and it's super nutrish and delish. This curried lentil soup is accompanied by a curry lentil crisp and both recipes are from Gordon Hamersley. You can find his recipes here on the Food & Wine website. I added the quinoa on a whim but you could add any whole grain or omit if you wish. I also added thyme and a swirl of crème fraiche.

+ + + 

I never understood the origin of that phrase, "to mind your Ps and Qs." It was something that was said to us as kids when we needed to be reminded to mind our own business. There are many meanings given on the Internet—Urban dictionary is particularly interesting—from it being shortened in pub language from pints and quarts to priorities and qualities (Example; "Always remember that you have 'priorities' in life, and the 'qualities' of your character will help you achieve them...") 

But the most credible and logical definition to me is in both Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia, where the phrase is said to have originated in the printing business; you see the lower-case Ps and Qs could be used interchangeably by typesetters by flopping them.

Equus quagga, zebra

photo, Diane Carnevale (taken in Venice, Italy)

Haven't we all been a little enchanted by the zebra since we were little kids? As you can tell by my blog banner I certainly am. The playful red zebra background is wallpaper that is produced by Scalamandré, and comes in several different colors—love it in the Zanzibar gold!

In red the wallpaper once adorned the walls at an well known Italian restaurant in New York city called Gino's. According to the New York Times, “Mr. [Gino] Circiello was a hunter without the means to pay for an African safari, but he reasoned that he could at least afford zebras on his wallpaper. So he commissioned a friend [Flora Scalamandré] to design wallpaper depicting leaping zebras pursued by arrows.” How could you not have fun dining next to such delightful walls, even if it is, um, a hunting scene? Sadly Gino's has since closed its doors after 60 decades, but in its day the restaurant was a popular eating spot with visits from notable names such as Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, Jackie O, and Ralph Lauren to name a few.

So what is it about zebra's stripes that make them seem so unusual and otherworldly? Are they white with black stripes, or black with white stripes? (Anamalia experts claim the latter.) I think they are just fun. I snapped the photo of the top zebra, a poster in Venice, last fall, and below are are some more images.

Illustration, Lodolphus

photo, unknown

photo, Tim Lyman

Wild orchid

photo, Dan Ryan

Here's a little splash of the sunshine to help us get through the winter. This gorgeous yellowish green with a pink center looks extra tropical against the orange wall of my bathroom, where they're a great location for orchids because they absorb moisture from the air. This one has buds still ready to open so hopefully it will last for weeks. 

Bok choy stir fry!

photo, Diane Carnevale

Look at all that goodness! Baby bok choy greens, onions, broccoli, sugar snap pea pods, bean sprouts, scallions and water chestnuts all combine to make a quick, easy and healthy meal. Here's a recipe you can follow from Gourmet magazine, but I encourage you to add your own favorite ingredients to make it your own! You could add some rice vermicelli noodles, red pepper, shitake mushrooms, pineapple, chicken, shrimp, or tofu, or whatever... It's all good!

Countdown to Downton

Get your cufflinks and white gloves out... Downton Abbey is returning to PBS tonight! I'm utterly enchanted by any sort of well done period piece films, whether it's set in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Regency, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian or post Edwardian times—especially when there are British accents involved! In these sorts of films and in each time period there was a correct fashion, a proper vocabulary and a way things were done. In the latter periods they held or attended grand dinner parties at which they actually engaged with one another with seemingly effortless witty repartee. Writers that inspired some of my favorite films—Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Agatha Christie, the Brontë sisters and E. M. Forster, to name a few—came up with some pretty juicy plots! That's why I am so excited about Downton Abbey's season 2! I like that it has an Upstairs Downstairs sort of vibe, plus who doesn't sometimes fantasize about being a wealthy dowager countess in fancy frocks with a lady's maid... hmm? 

Meyer lemon bounty

                                                                                                                        photo, Diane Carnevale

These beautiful meyer lemons came from a small tree that I got at Home Depot last Spring. I bought two that day, one for me and one for my mom. I hate to admit but mine fizzled from neglect over the summer—they are still alive now, but just didn't get the TLC they deserved to fruit the way these, from my mother's tree, have. I think she had close to a dozen lemons drooping heavily from the little stalk! Meyer lemons are the result of cross breeding from lemons and tangerines, and have a sweeter, less acidic taste than an ordinary lemon. And like regular old lemons they are versatile in the kitchen in both sweet and savory recipes. So what do do with these tart sweets? A meyer lemon souffle or cake? Or a warming bowl of Greek Avgolemono soup? A meyer lemon salsa to spoon over chicken or fish? How about preserved Moroccan lemons, meyer lemon risotto with basil, meyer lemon blueberry scones, or meyer lemon marmalade? The possibilities abound!

   photos from Saveur, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine and Gourmet Magazines

Mmm...mmm...good!

PUBLISHED ON TASTESPOTTING!

Smokey thyme roasted tomato soup with crispy cheddar frico

Tomato soup is a tricky business. If you don't use enough herbs it can taste bland, if you use Italian herbs it can taste more like something you put over pasta, and if you add too many hot spices then it becomes perilously close to tasting like a gazpacho or a salsa. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those flavors, but I wanted my tomato soup have its own identity. So I experimented in the kitchen and came up with a really rich, smokey, tomato soup—essentially a riff on the Barefoot Contessa's roasted tomato soup. I love that she roasts her tomatoes first, which caramelizes them and brings them up to a new level of deliciousness. I don't use the basil that she calls for—Sorry Ina!—love you GF but I don't want marinara sauce. Instead I amp up the fresh thyme, only add a dash of red pepper flakes, cut back on the onion (which to me makes the soup too sweet) and finally, but possibly most important, I add a splash of liquid smoke. Combined with the charred tomatoes, that dash of smokiness is sublime. To finish it all off, we all know Mr. Cheese and Mr. Tomato are the best of pals, so a crispy cheddar (thyme) frico on the side is a perfect pairing. Campbell's has nothing on this soup!

photo, Diane Carnevale

Cut your tomatoes in half lengthwise—then drizzle with olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper, and roast cut side up in a 400° oven for 45 minutes. I highly recommend lining your pan with aluminum foil for easy cleanup!

Squirrel snacks

HEY! Who is that messing with my pumpkin?

Looks like Miss Squirrel found a nice snack of pumpkin seeds!

Okay, I slacked and never put my fall pumpkin on the compost heap until this squirrel made a mess of it. It's such a pretty thing, a pumpkin, and is that not the most perfect stem, all twisted and gnarly? At one point this squirrel was literally inside the pumpkin with just her head peeking out. Rascal. She's pretty plump so I don't think she's starving, though she could have some babies in the oven—it's that season for squirrels. Stay tuned.

  photos, Diane Carnevale

Frizzle + drizzle

This roasted yellow pepper soup is nice to cook on a cold day because you fire up your oven and warm up the kitchen. Charring the peppers helps you remove the skin from them. Then chop them up and sauté them along with some leeks and garlic, add in some good chicken stock and simmer away. Sometimes yellow peppers can have that funky under ripe bitter flavor, so the addition of just one small potato thickens this soup and adds a savory balance of flavor. Then you just whizz it all up in your food processor or blender. I garnished my soup with slightly frizzled leeks and a drizzle of chive oil.

 

More seasonal confusion

                                                                                                            

As I was walking out to the compost heap today I saw a most wonderous sight for early January—some of my crocus bulbs were blooming! We had a warmish December with only a few short cold snaps, so it's no wonder that they are ready to bolt out of the gate. You may recall my post back in November of last year where I mentioned my forsythia bush blooming out of season too. The cold is coming, and there's no doubt that winter and snow will still happen, but what a treat to see crocuses blooming in January! With the cold temps predicted to arrive tonight these fellas will die off and go back to sleep, then reappear in the spring as scheduled.

Superfoods blast!

Had enough of all that holiday merriment and jollification? 

Want to give your body a good clean start? 

Try a few days of an intense antioxidant rich superfoods blast. 

Get out your juicer or blender and start whizzing up some goodness! Combine fruit and veggie superfoods (which of course are full of high levels of micronutrients—vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals) to make juices and soups that will help flush all of those evil toxins out of your body, build up your immune system and give you energy. I am not a nutritionist so I don't want to pontificate too much on the gritty details, but here's a link for more information, and you can also find a kajillion recipe combos on the web. Think colorful, natural, unprocessed and nutrient dense whole foods and use more veggies than fruits to avoid too much sugar. Any juice combo will pack a whopping nutritional punch, and in as little as three days (abstaining from all those evil inflammatory foods) you will feel terrific. Drink lots of water too and get creative—your body will thank you!

Spinach and beet juice and kale... Oh my!

Here are some deliciously weird juice combos

kale leaves, granny smith apple, lemon juice, green grapes or kiwi, parsley 
(this is my personal favorite—I add chia seeds too)

carrot juice, orange juice

guava nectar, strawberries, kiwi

beets, carrots, aloe vera pulp, ginger root

cucumber, green apple, wheat grass, aloe vera pulp, lemon juice

strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, pear, pom juice
 (and kefir or plain yogurt if you're doing dairy) 

tomato juice, tomatoes, cucumber, celery, yellow, green and orange peppers,

jalepeño pepper, cilantro, lime (basically, a cold gazpacho)

mango, coconut water, shredded coconut, honey, plain kefir or yogurt, 

ginger root, cardamom powder, cinnamon (Indian lassi)

grapefruit, mint

+ + +

Once you've had enough of juices alone, 

just keep that superfoods groove going!

Check into Bon Appétit Magazine's Food Lover's Cleanse.

A clean slate!

It's a whole new year, and time to wipe

that slate clean and start out fresh!