I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
-- Winston Churchill
A death which in its odd and different way .............was that of Qu Qiubai. He could not depart on the Long March because at 36 he was dying of tuberculosis. Captured by the Kuomintang, before his execution he composed a testament, called ''Some Superfluous Words,'' for which the orthodox have not forgiven him. Although expressing envy of the young who manned the barricades, he ended on a sardonic note, praising flowers, moonlight and factory chimneys, recommending ''Anna Karenina'' and ''The Dream of the Red Chamber,'' and stating, last of all, that ''the Chinese bean curd is the most delicious food in the whole world. Goodbye and farewell!''
This is a pretentious name for roast pork , but its derivation, if correct, is interesting. In 1430 the Greek and Roman Bishops held a Council in Florence to discuss some question concerning the Roman and Greek churches. One day at dinner they were served with this roast pork, which the Greek Bishops liked so much that they cried “Arista” (“excellent!”). Since then roast pork flavoured with rosemary and garlic is Arista for the Florentines and roast pork for everybody else. Here is the recipe:
Clean your loin of pork of the skin the part of the fat; make little holes in the meat and in each hole put pepper, salt, a clove of garlic, a spray of rosemary, and a clove or two. Salt well outside and put it to roast on the spit or in the oven. When cooked you may call it Arista, if you like.
Falsu Magru
Take enough lean of beef to make ten thin slices, which you beat well. Season them with pepper and salt. Spray on the top of each one a little layer of butter, sprinkle over some grated cheese mixed with grated bread, some parsley, chillies and sage all finely chopped. Make a layer on the top with sliced boiled eggs and cover each piece of meat with a slice of ham as big as the meat.
Roll each piece of meat up and tie with string.
Now make the following sauce in a casserole. One onion, one carrot, a piece of celery, two cloves, all finely chopped. Fry these ingredients in a casserole with a piece of butter; when the onion is brown, put in the casserole two cupfuls of broth, with a teaspoonful of tomato sauce. Let this simmer for ten minutes, then add your meat rolls, and let them cook gently till tender. Serve with the sauce over them.
Salad Rocket
Nec minus erucas jubeo vitare salaces. – Ovid
Et Veneres revocans eruca morantem. – Martial
He who would follow Ovid and Martial should take: twenty leaves of salad rocket, wash them thoroughly, and with half a lettuce and a clove of chopped garlic make into salad, seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar. Salad rocket is certainly a stimulant.
Recommended by Columella, and by Turner and Culpepper.
Shrimp and Rice on Toast
Cook your rice in broth and drain it well. Mix it with some chopped shrimps, already boiled, season with salt and put the above on pieces of toast.
Place a small piece of butter on the top and cook for a few minutes in the oven. Serve with Cayenne.
Pistachio Cream
Take out the kernels of half a pound of pistachio nuts, beat them in a mortar with a spoonful of brandy, and put them into a tossing-pan, with a pint of cream, and the yolks of two eggs, finely beaten. Stir it gently over a slow fire till it is thick, but do not let it boil. Put into a soup plate and when it is cold, stick some kernels, cut long-ways, all over it.
Early Birds
Heat a quart of ale mixed with a tablespoon of powdered ginger and nutmeg. Whisk up three fresh eggs with a gill of cold ale and two ounces of moist sugar. When well frothed up, add the warm ale, by degrees and a glass of eau-de-vie. When this is done, drink immediately.
Boil the lentils in 3 to 4 cups water for 20 to 30 minutes until tender. Test to ensure that lentils are al dente tender, but not overcooked.
Drain, put in a mixing bowl, and mash, but do not puree. (You need to preserve the texture of the lentils).
Combine with the rest of the ingredients. Adjust spices to taste.
Refrigerate for several hours until the flavors of spices, vegetables and lentils blend. Serve cold or at room temperature
YEGOMEN KITFO (COLLARDS WITH SPICED COTTAGE CHEESE
For the cottage cheese:
12 oz. cottage cheese
1/3 cup niter kebbeh (see below)
2 garlic cloves, slightly crushed
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
For the greens:
2 lbs. collards, chopped
2 tbsp. chili pepper, finely chopped
1 tbsp. fresh ginger, grated
1 tsp. garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tsp. ground cardamom
1/4 cup niter kebbeh
2 tbsp. onion, finely chopped
Mix the first group of ingredients together and let the flavors combine at room temperature for 15 minutes. Remove the garlic cloves if desired.
In several tbsp. of water, steam collards for about 20 minutes. Add the rest of the second group of ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Serve the collards and cottage cheese mixture in separate dishes or spoon greens over cottage cheese in one large bowl.
NITER KEBBEH (CLARIFIED BUTTER WITH SPICES)
1 lb. butter
4 tbsp. onion, chopped
1 1/2 tbsp. finely chopped garlic
2 tsp. fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp. turmeric
2-4 cardamom seeds, crushed
1 inch piece cinammon
2-3 whole cloves
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
Slowly melt the butter in a saucepan, then bring to the boil. When the top is covered with foam, add the other ingredients and simmer uncovered on lowest heat until the surface is transparent and milk solids are on the bottom (45-60 minutes). Pour off the clear liquid and strain through a double layer of cheesecloth, discarding the spices and solids. Refrigerate. If strained a second and third time, mixture will keep well either chilled or at room temperature for 2-3 months.
INJERA (FLAT BREAD)
4 cups self-rising flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
2 cups club soda
Combine flours and baking powder in a bowl. Add club soda plus about 4 cups water. Mix into a smooth, fairly thin batter.
Heat a large, non-stick skillet. When a drop of water bounces on the pan's surface, dip enough batter from the bowl to cover the bottom of the skillet, and pour it in quickly, all at once. Swirl the pan so that the entire bottom is evenly coated, then set it back on the heat.
When the moisture has evaporated and small holes appear on the surface, remove the injera. It should be cooked on only one side and not browned. If your first try is too pasty and undercooked, you may need to cook it a little longer or make the next one thinner. But as with French crepes, be careful not to cook them too long or you will have a crisp bread that may be tasty but won't fold around bits of stew.
Stack the injera one on top of the other as you cook, covering with a clean cloth to prevent their drying out. To serve, lay them on a platter in overlapping concentric circles, beginning with the inside and moving outwards until edges of the outer ring fall over the edge.
Pete Quaife on recording "The Virgin Soldiers Theme"
"Ok. As you might know I used to live opposite Ray on Fortis Green - which meant that I was often at his place listening whilst he was composing. I was there when he finished The Virgin Soldiers theme and, being very fast on the uptake, I had the melody and arrangement down pat. Ray suggested that, as I knew the piece, I play session bass on the recording - which I agreed to. When I arrived at the studio the room was filled with real, live musicians! This was a first for me and so I proudly made my way over to the bass amplifier and plugged in - in full view of the professionals (who were probably wondering who the hell I was). After a while the arranger came round handing out the sheet music to each musician. He got to me and asked "Are you the bass player?" "Yep!" I replied, smiling at the others. I put the music on the stand and began to studiously study it - dismissing the fact that I couldn't read a note! With a cool shake of the head I sat back complacently and waited for the first run-through. We went through the number several times without any problems. I can tell you I had never felt so proud. Suddenly the arranger decided to make a change to the arrangement....! I knew now that my musical ear was about to be tested to the max! I sat and listened as hard as I could to what the pianist was doing. After a couple of tries I felt I had it in the bag - the change wasn't that drastic. However, the arranger began to make his way slowly around the studio making the necessary changes to each musician's score. When he got to me he again asked, "And you are the bass player?" I nodded and he took my music score and went to make the changes. Suddenly his face took on a confused look as he studied the score - then, with a sigh he turned the score upside down - that is, the right way up.... Can you imagine how I felt?"
"Iwonder how Mr. Hodgkin reacts to words like“beautiful,”“voluptuary”and “immaculate.” He has bristled at being called anintimist, which years ago became his burden in the way that “colorist” became a knock on Bonnard. Mr. Hodgkin now makes some very big pictures, while he continues to make very small ones, sometimes decorative (another standard put-down), but more often tough and muscular. The ravishment of color belies the ambition; only occasionally does it undermine it. As the film critic Anthony Lane, a longtime admirer of Mr. Hodgkin’s, points out in the show’s catalog, Mr. Hodgkin has been, on the one hand, “applauded as a Chardin de nos jours and, on the other, scorned as a kind of advanced interior decorator.”
He asks, “Is Howard Hodgkin an artist of the small scale?” Then he answers his own question: No, he is “an extremist.”
That’s a surprising way to describe a careful painter, but I know what he means. Mr. Hodgkin is not a small-scale painter, even when his pictures are small; he can be uneven, but his best work is, in a sly, almost deceptive way, what serious abstraction ought to be about. It is inspired by memories or “emotional situations,” as Mr. Hodgkin says. He rarely reveals what these are. His titles hint teasingly at them. He’s a reader, a collector, an expert on Indian miniatures, a widely curious consumer and an assimilator of art history. His paintings are full of more or less buried allusions."
Michael Kimmelman, reviewing the Yale Center of British Art show of Howard Hodgkin, New York Times, Feb. 20, 2007
Watching the Vogels attending various Manhattan galleries and museums during the 1970s and 1980s was a curious delight -- they were almost like living works of art.
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States
Dates:
June 26 – September 12, 2010
Location:
Walter & Leonore Annenberg Gallery, Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building
Description:
Imagine Dr. Barnes, minus the fortune.
Herbert and Dorothy Vogel collected Minimalist, Conceptual and post-1960s art over the course of more than four decades. Herbert (b. 1922) worked as a postal clerk, and Dorothy (b. 1935) as a reference librarian. Setting their collecting priorities above those of personal comfort, they used Dorothy's salary to cover their living expenses and devoted Herbert's salary to the acquisition of contemporary art.
In 1992 they pledged more than 2,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and are now distributing 2,500 more pieces to institutions across the country.
PAFA has been designated to receive fifty works from The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States program being administered by the National Gallery. These fifty works, a diverse assortment of mostly small-scale works on paper (plus some small canvases, constructions, and sculptures), comprise the exhibition. Of the 31 artists included are examples by important figures such as Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Nam June Paik, and Richard Tuttle.
While the Vogels’ best-known art interests are minimal and conceptual art, their collecting also encompasses the diversity of directions that characterize the post-minimalist period, including works of a figurative and expressionist nature.
As the first collectors to buy work by many artists who were then unknown to a wide audience, the Vogels offered encouragement at the start of the careers of several figures who went on to achieve considerable acclaim. Owing to these artists' continuing close relationship with the collectors, many works of art collected by the Vogels were gifts, marking special occasions—such as Dorothy and Herbert's birthdays and wedding anniversary—and often personally inscribed. In this sense the Vogels' collection is a keen reflection of their friendships with artists.
Curator:
Julien Robson, Curator of Contemporary Art
The sky is blue but there are clouds in my head,
With big decisions looming ahead.
The sun is out but the room is so grey,
So much confusion headed my way.
Get positive, try to be gay.
News Of The World, tea and biscuits in bed.
The headlines said that Diana is dead.
She couldn't act much but she put on a show.
She always smiled even when she felt low.
I used to fancy her a long time ago.
So today has got to be a good day,
Today is gonna be a good day,
Today is gonna be a good day,
Good day, good day, good day.
Holes in my socks and I can't find my shoes.
It's no surprise that I'm singing the blues.
So many holes in my life still to mend,
And someone just said that the world's gonna end.
So today better be a good day,
Today is gonna be a good day,
Today has got to be a good day,
Good day, good day, good day, good day.
If we blow away the past with a bloody great blast,
Make it fast, make it fast.
So have a good day today because it could be your last,
Make it last, make it last.
Will it light up the sky?
Will it blot out the sun?
Well we've waited this long,
So it better be a good one.
Good day, good day, good day.
Yeah, it's gonna be a good day.
Hey baby, if you come back home it'll be a good day today.
They could drop a small atom bomb on this city today,
But if you walk through that door honey, you know it'll be a good day.
And now survival is my only aim.
I call friends and see if any remain.
Who was that girl who used to be my flame?
I'd call her if I could remember her name.
So today is gonna be a good day,
Today has got to be a good day,
Today is gonna be a good day,
Good day, good day, good day, good day.
Hey Diana, I've really got to learn to take a tip from you,
Put on my makeup and try to make the world take notice of you.
Yeah, it's gonna be good day today.
