Isn’t it funny what a simple,
accidentally gorgeous photo will conjure up?
At first I was just bemused by how utterly delicious these oranges were.
Citrus in California this year has been spectacular.
We were making cocktails with them. I turned around and was struck by what we had just made, with the collaboration of the angles of the setting sun, an accidental Caravaggisti still life. Or, Caravaggista, since we’re girls, and its now, and it seems our societal right to plunder language at will.
Long before I was a professional chef, I was an art student. I paid my way through college mostly with dollars that I had earned in kitchens and waiting tables. I studied psychology, fine arts and fiction writing. I had big ideas and many sleepless nights. I wrote, I took pictures, I painted, collaged, postulated endlessly, threw parties and cooked for friends.
I fell deeply, madly in love with Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. I fell madly & deeply in love with all those painters that came after him and hailed his dramatic realism and fantastical light. Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith & Holofernes is one of the great Feminist works of art before feminism & girl power even existed.
Thanks to art school & studying my overachieving ass off, I came to understand why Vermeer brought actual tears to my eyes. Have you ever had that happen? I stood in front of a collection of 10 or so Vermeers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and an actual welling up occurred. A single tiny point of light on the rim of a glass.
I was lucky enough to travel to Rome in celebration of my 27th birthday. In honor of that I decided that I would like to create a Caravaggio tour of the city. The sort of awe, humility, wave of inspiration one feels when standing in front of something you have loved from a distance for so long. Its nearly impossible to describe. But there I was, standing in front of the Conversion of Paul. The Madonna of Loreto. The Calling of Matthew. A nearly homo-erotic John The Baptist. We saw so many of his major works on that trip through Rome & Florence, I can hardly remember them all.
That trip to Rome also solidified my love of great food. I had a simply seared steak over arugula. I squeezed lemon over it, drizzled a little local olive oil over it. I cut into it and the natural juices dressed the spicy greens in the most simplisitic form of ecstatic tastiness. That steak literally changed my life. I came home & started applying for culinary schools.
I had cooked professionally when I was younger & spent many hours pouring over food history. But once you eat truly amazing food. Once you’ve had mozzarella in the town Michaelangelo painted his first fresco, eat gnocchi and black truffle down the street from a Pontormo and a handful of Bronzinos, and swipe the last bit of a ragu from your plate with a crust of freshly baked bread across the street from a chapel housing a classic collection of Caravaggios, you change. I changed.
And it’s little moments like these that make me very happy to have chosen a life of food, art and words over any other that I could have. But then again, what else could a romantic with an endless appetite really do? And what other artist would steal my attentions like a queer outlaw with a penchant for the sumptuous?
Beautiful post. I hope to one day experience such things…
When I saw the Water Lilies triptych at Moma for the first time, I felt I’d been touched by god. It sent a shiver up & down my spine. And then my ex decided to touch it. WTF Beaver?
It was odd eating Italian food in Rome/Florence/CinqueT/blah blah blah for 2 weeks didn’t induce the typical food “O” so many people speak of. Maybe it’s genetics, but your Roman steak was my first “bag” of oyster omelette in Bangkok. Though gnocchi remains one of my least favorite “pastas”, the principles you speak of is held dear here as well.
Cheers to this fabulous citrus season. The “dry farmed” navel oranges from the backyard is just as freakin’ awesome as last year.
I love that! I must now daydream of Bangkok!
It’s funny you mention that because I had that same reverent, totally consuming moment when I was served traditional regional Nabe Yake Udon in Kyoto. But that makes sense considering my family & upbringing, being so close to so many types of cuisine. Certain foods speak to us, naturally.
I can remember every detail from the moment we arrived and walked down the wooden walkway to the large private dining room in the back of the restaurant to the last slurp of udon & washing it down with toasty green tea. Each time you heard the waiter coming down the walkway with another bowl of fish or noodles, your excitement mounted. Man, that was an amazing bowl of soup.