Happy Movember!

Today is the last day of Movember! Congratulations to everyone who participated… truly a worthy cause. I love it when charity movements really catch momentum and become part of cultural phenomenon, every bit counts, and the greater the movement, the greater the change. At Sunday Lunch, SS and I did our bit for Movember and ordered a round of these fabulous Mo’Puddings at the OXO Tower Brasserie. Delicious chocolate peanut butter MoBro brownie served with a Mo cookie… and with £1 donated for every pudding, I think we’re onto a winner!

Tagliatelle à la Cecconi's

Cecconi’s at Burlington Gardens is one of most favourite restaurants in the whole entire world! I love their breakfasts, and often dream of the perfectly cooked duck egg with freshly shaven truffles… I love their cocktails… They make a mean dirty martini… They have the yummiest Noscerella olives… Their Vermentino is so delicious and unbelievably priced… They have Prosecco on tap… the list could go on forever, but the thing I love most about this restaurant is their amazing pasta!

During term-time in St Andrews, my housemates and I would dream of the delicious, garlicky, prawn and asparagus pasta. We dreamt and dreamt, drooled and drooled a bit more, until we got off our backsides, picked up the appropriate groceries and re-created this perfect dish approximately 352 miles (not that I Googled it or anything) away from its birthplace. And it was divine! And instead of adhering to the portions set out for us, we set our own portions… terribly dangerous stuff…

Even though I’m back in London, and Cecconi’s is only a stone’s throw away, I still like to make this perfect meal at home. And it’s precisely what I made the other night when I had a few friends round. This recipe comfortably feeds 4.

            200g of uncooked prawns, butterflied

            bundle of asparagus

            4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

            150g of tagliatelle (Cav. Giuseppe Cocco)

            olive oil

            salt and pepper to taste

Prep all the ingredients. Butterfly the prawns, make asparagus ribbons, chop up the asparagus core and tips, peel and chop the garlic. Bring to boil a large pot of water and generously salt the water before adding the tagliatelle. Allow the pasta to cook on its own and add the asparagus about a minute before the end of cooking time (mine was 3 minutes without the asparagus, and 1 minute with the asparagus). Drain the pasta and asparagus, saving a generous cup of pasta water, and set aside. In a large pan, heat up some olive oil and add the garlic and prawns and stirfry. When the prawns are almost cooked (pink and opaque looking) add the pasta and asparagus to the pan and combine all the ingredients together. Loosen up the mixture by adding the pasta water, the whole cup is usually needed. Serve immediately with Gran Padano, if desired!

Healing oneself, one tea at a time

I am a huge fan (and believer) in holistic medicines, especially traditional Chinese medicines. In the East, food and medicines are hugely interlinked with certain foods possessing certain qualities that act upon the body in certain ways. Tea is no exception, with different teas affecting the body in different ways. With this in mind, we can utilize this everyday warming beverage as a health-boost with desired effects on the body and the mind.

For skin care, Longjing Green Tea is recommended… this Chinese green tea comes from the West Lake in Hangzhou, where it is often said that the women have the most beautiful skin in Asia. On a more technical note, the cooling effects of green teas are great for summer heat, or if one possesses a hot constitution, resulting in bad skin!

To relieve fatigue, Tie Guan Yin, the most popular oolong tea provides the perfect high caffeine pick-me-up. Farmed in the Fujian province of China, the tea possesses fragrance, taste and a serious kick! The tea infuses especially fast, so it is recommended that a small vessel be used when brewing.

Ju Hua Cha, also known as Chrysanthemum Tea, is great for relieving hay fever. In Chinese medicine, hay fever is associated with ‘wind’ and ‘dampness’. The use of the most external part of the plant, the flower, leads to the qi being channeled to the exterior parts of the body, protecting it from wind entering the body. Furthermore, it is said that chrysanthemum has a special connection to the eyes, relieving dryness, itchiness, soreness and tearfulness.

Victoria Beckham is reported to be a fan of Pu’er Tea, originating from the Yunnan province, for its weight-loss properties. Properly brewed Pu’er Tea is thought to be warming and the lightest tea on the digestive system. Its ability to help the body drain ‘dampness’ further aids the proper running of the digestive system, resulting in weight-loss.

For an overall health and immune system boost Ganmai Cha, a Japanese green tea made with roasted rice, is a great long-term way to boost one’s immune system and harmonize what is considered to be the main motor of the body in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the spleen. The potential of the ‘over-cooling’ effect on digestion in normal green tea is counteracted by the roasted rice, which is added to give the tea a warming nature.

… So I guess the next time I’m in Shanghai Blues for some dim sum I’ll make sure to order the Pu’er, or look out for the Longjing!!

Sweet Potato Pie

The turkey-less Thanksgiving I had this year has left me feeling somewhat empty… All of Friday I moaned about not feeling over-stuffed and spent most of the day dreaming of mashed sweet potato with marshmallow, green bean casserole, roasted carrots and parsnips, brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, chestnut stuffing… all those delicious treats were sorely missed, but what I missed most about a proper American Thanksgiving feast was the inevitable buffet of desserts that would top off the mammoth feast.

Last year we had several pies, of which the sweet potato variety was my favourite! And so I decided to bake one. I scoured the Internet for BEST SWEET POTATO PIE recipes, tweaked a few ingredients, upped the sweet potato ratio to present the yummiest sweet potato pie!

Piecrust

            2 cups of plain flour

            pinch of salt

            ½ cup of rapeseed oil

            4 tablespoons of rice milk

Sift together the flour and salt before adding the oil and rice milk. Combine all the ingredients well to create a dough. It should be quite firm. Mold the dough into a pie dish (or whatever you will be baking the pie in).

Filling

            1 kg of sweet potato

            ½ cup of white sugar

            ½ cup of brown sugar

            4 tablespoons of golden linseeds, soaked in 8 tablespoons of water

            ½ cup of melted butter

            1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

            1 teaspoon of cinnamon

            ½ teaspoon of nutmeg

Boil the sweet potatoes in their skins for 20 minutes until they are cooked through. Drain the water and cover the cooked sweet potatoes with cold water. When the sweet potatoes have cooled, peel the skins and mash. Add to the mashed sweet potatoes the rest of the ingredients. Mix well, and pour into the piecrust and bake for an hour at 180°C. After an hour, take the pie out and allow to cool for 15 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream, whipped cream or on its own!

Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes

Sugimoto's silver gelatin print side-by-side with Rothko's works. Sugimoto's photograph echoes the composition of Rothko's painting, and we can see that the Pace chooses to emphasize this by lining up the horizon line of the works. 

Three Sugimoto prints alongside each other. In real life, the prints are extremely shiny and the tonal disparities between the works are beautiful. 

The only piece in the exhibit to display any colour, Rothko's painting taking pride position at the end wall of the gallery.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Mark Rothko is definitely in my top 10 of artists of all time… and as someone who loves a lot and likes a whole lot more, top 10 is a pretty sizeable accolade. The international super-gallery with spaces in New York, Beijing, and now London had a show in their Burlington Gardens space showcasing the works of Rothko and juxtaposing his paintings with the photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto. Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes is in lieu with the Pace’s long-established tradition of exploring in their exhibitions the affinities between artists working across decades and mediums.

The Rothko paintings exhibited were the lesser-known works of the American artist painted just before his death, with all eight paintings dated 1969, the year before the artist’s suicide. These grey and black colourfield paintings were juxtaposed against the seascape photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto. Sugimoto’s photographs echo the black and grey tones of Rothko’s paintings, selecting photographs where the sea is almost black and the sky fading into a dark grey. The photographs certainly echo Rothko’s exploration of abstraction, but through the medium of photography. The artist’s composition seems to capture the nuances of the waves and the subtle moonlight as opposed to the sea in all its powerful glory.

I couldn’t quite decide whether the juxtaposition between the two artists served to highlight their similarities or their differences. At first glance, there was clearly a textual difference with the shiny, polished silver gelatin photographs gleaming over the coarse, painterly works of Rothko. While Sugimoto seemed to depict very definitively through the mechanical means of photography, one could sense Rothko’s human gestures in his layers of painted clouds. However, Sugimoto’s abstract and minimalist composition makes the works of the two artists incredibly relatable. Sugimoto’s lack of true focus on object evokes the Rothko-like search for a greater, more ambiguous contemplation – perhaps metaphysical?

The Pace’s selection to exhibit the artists’ works side-by-side is an interesting one, especially considering the disparities in periods. Ultimately this teaches us about humanity and the concerns that cross generations. The contemplative works of the two artists are suggestive of cyclical eternity, of night and day, of life and death.