a table of props

I am getting ready to work on a cookbook and I went to my friend C who has the best rental collection in the world ! Always fun to catch up and share a lunch. I really did not need that mini mousse tartelette !!!Can you tell what is the art direction for this book ? the type of food ? the culture ?
On another note Dot and her most special Dad spent an afternoon at the park ( Golden Gate Park) for father's day. I am including this really nice abstract image that she took of Stow lake...



Significant built himself a plywood booth for his professional voice over work that he does at home sometimes. It is a 3 sided wood cube that rest against his desk.The only problem : you cannot get out unless you crawl under the shorter side. That was a good laugh for a second. But, I shouldn't be mean, because I had the foresight of telling him to bring back the "outcut" pieces and now I have some really interesting shapes to paint on. Bought a tub of gesso and will cover 16X 60 " canvas.can't wait !

snippets

Last Friday, Dot and i went to the Art Murmur, a multi openings of galleries in this funky neighborhood of Oakland.We wanted to take it in, see what happened and make portraits of each other. The corner street is lively, I bought a couple of independent CD for Dot, peddled by the group itself,and watched mesmerized, the unique performance of this strange, mad artist who dances Bhutto style to his own internal madness.by himself, oblivious, in the middle of the closed street ( 23rd at telegraph)
This week, I worked in many kitchens,the plating kitchen of a famous wine bar-restaurant in SF and learned about roll-ups( the piles of dampened rolled napkins to wipe plates before serving),the photo studio kitchen where I know my way, the catering kitchen on the winery where the shot was taken, 90 degrees in the shade of the olives trees above.....

LE whiffing

My last post about Paris. Went to The laboratoire, a private cultural center, where art and science blend into various exhibits. This time it was the collaboration of molecular gastronomy french super star chef Thierry Marx and Jerome Bibette with his creation of edible "spheres", agar agar gel drops that contains the essence of a flavor, like basil or mango. Thierry marx calls his cuisine : deconstructed, where the raw material is reconstructed in a contemporary form imagined by the chef.So, upon reservation, you had two options, le whiffing where ,at he Whiff bar, you are offered the pairing of a Nespresso flavor with the unique experience of Whiffing , meaning to inspire a flavor ( this time chocolate) through a plastic type cigar, which act like an aerosol and blast and coat your tongue and your palate with a fleeting but unique experience. The other option was a deconstructed meal with the famous pearls added to a dish or two. Since I had only reserved the whiffing and not the meal , I could only photograph the bento box ready to be topped off with the spheres, that you do not see .They were going on top of the first dish, a square mold of tomato, injected with a warm blend of mozzarella and riccota, and topped with pearls of basil essence.
The space itself was truly impressive. A video artist had looped images of micro organisms and deconstructed materials being prepared dispayled on the "restaurant' tables, a unique music accompany the visit to the different sections, the reading area, the bar, the dispaly of the machine used to make the pearls.
of art and wisdom.

Le laboratoire
4 rue de Bouloi 75001 Paris

pitcher picture

I alternate between nature and design.Nature is loose and colorful, design is controlled and muted. I guess it express different sides of my sensibility. It shows my balance, my moderation, my layers.

caddyland

If you have shopped at the Berkeley Bowl, you know what I am talking about. You need to be calm, never feeling in a hurry, with a smile on your face, ready to see the humor in the madness. Well, it is the same approach when you live in Paris and go to your weekly open air market.It is a waltz, a tango of caddies, wheels interlocking in a choreography of angry bitter stressed out parisiennes. But ah the produce, the flowers, the fish....... the pink asparagus ( see below)
to relax, off to the terrace they go, finally ready to exhale and sip a cafe, watch bodies go by, and dwell. or go sit on a modern sculpture and listen to a magical violonist, or if the weather turns nice, behave as if the quais were a beach and soak the sun and view......

paris blues ( and pinks)

When I got there, the chestnuts trees were all in bloom. Quite a sight, as the soft pink and white blossoms opened under the summery skies. It was so hot that you wanted some cool desert to get a blast of bracing flavors.In this case a "verrine" which is a dish, sweet or salty presented in a glass, this one made by Herme .Layers of: syrup of balsamic reduction,genoise,spaghetti cooked in strawberry sauce, genoise, puree of fresh strawberries and mascarpone quenelle....At the outdoor market, I found the first asparagus of the season.Now, you also find the green ones, but I grew up with the white, thick as butchers fingers and delicately tinted by spring dew.Dipped in mayonnaise,they brought me back to an age of wonder and fleeting bliss in the seasons.Walking through the lovely gardens that border the Louvre, I was amazed at the skills of gardening and pruning these trees to the precise square shape, with the inner dome. There was a control in the symmetry and bondage of nature that reminded me of Japanese culture, and in a way explained the attraction that both society have for each other.

going super green

a most wonderful day in Napa the other day with a stop at UBUNTU where J and I had lunch after a yoga class.The food speaks for itself in these images.Beauty of ingredients, done with care, attention and lightness,beauty of presentation, and balance in the tastes and texture.very good , very very good indeed.
It was a busy day, and when I returned home, there was only time to put together my beet borsch previously cooked.

Beet Borsch:
peel beets, put them in water just enough to cover. add salt, dash of raspberry vinegar.cook until tender.cool.grate beets and pour back in "beet broth" adding lemon juice, more salt if needed, more vinegar if needed,top with yogurt, dill and a dash of 'piment d'espelette".savor.

primal elements

For fun and party mood, we headed for Medjool in San Francisco. Always wanted to check their roof top bar scene, and was not disappointed by the view, the ambiance and the crowds. Except that
_you cannot reserve a table there
-there is a huge line of people waiting for tables
- the crowd is young,overwhelmingly white,and seemingly conservative

So we retreated to the cavernous dining room downstairs and some of us had some fun with the food( see Dot with calamari ala greek). Cocktails were inventive (Moroccan refresher with mint and cucumber infusions) and the dishes were good (fries), but I felt like the food was produced on a big scale, with little attention to the details that make a dish really good.
While the city is good and busy and fun, a little bit of waves lapping by your bed, the wind rustling through the big branches of the pines next to the fireplace crackling with pleasure, is not bad either.
So for a little birthday retreat, we headed off to Inverness for a couple of blissful days.
Outside of the French doors, a small private beach in the early morning before the fog lifted calmed our nerves,a Little splashing of ocean water energized us, and the walks on the beaches uplifted our spirits. For sustenance: a lovely meal at Olema Inn ( with an amuse bouche and a view of the dining room for you),and some take out from local eateries eaten by the fire,looking out to nature.
some snaps to give you a sense of it....

animalia

Spring is magic, April is my favorite month, birthday oblige, and i get my inspiration from it.
I will be hanging some work at a new snazzy frozen yogurt place downtown Berkekley and I hope you will stop by .

It is called Yogurt harmony, and what a fitting name. I love yogurt,lived by it growing up, always plain with a dash of honey and a squeeze of lemon juice. Then,we lived through the decade of home made yogurt. that was never quite right , but now we have a local selection of delicious ones. The 0% yogurt ( Strauss or greek) blended with mayonnaise makes a great low fat alternative dip for an entree of blanched asparagus or artichoke. I also add garlic and cayenne and whatever strikes my fancy: lemon juice, fresh herbs..) .
As far as harmony, it has been my philosophy . Harmony of taste, mood, feelings, and colors.....

mysteries

There is a strange thing going on with my little fig tree. It starts to grow a few figs from the get go alongside fresh unfurling leaves, as a teaser of wonderful things to come.After the few have ripened , we will have to wait months for the rest of them to grow to their full belly shape.Why ?
The peaches are so fuzzy, I give them a little loving caress when I go by, it is sensual to feel the silky fur.
Speaking of fur, here is another baffling episode: Saturday morning, I am already out,when significant gets ready to put his sneakers on to go exercise.He picks up a shoe from the floor of his closet, and feels the shoe heavy and starts touching something furry....What would you have done, beside screaming a little and jumping back ( what I would have done),but a baby opossum was there, all curled up and deeply asleep! Now, how did it get there ? If I am right, the house is closed up at night when the opossums roam the neighborhood,we have a crawl space under the house but without a hole to crawl into the house.....then, significant reminded me of the time I found a baby opossum in my bathtub a couple of years back, well, I had put that memory out of my head, it was too scary then ( how did that one get there too ??). Significant put the baby in the bushes and hoped for mother opossum to find it soon after.
After some nature mysteries, on to some human ones : we went on Sunday to the Marsh theater in the mission district to see a performance by Dan Hoyle, a young very talented actor who did a piece on Nigerian oil politics based on his year there as a Fulbright scholar. His one man show is a blend of Nigerian people's words and his own writing. The language is challenging but it definitively brings a sense of authenticity to the local characters he inhabits.The country government seems corrupt to the core,bringing a lot of despair to its people. corruption is a mystery .Why does it Bloom so freely in some country while others wouldn't allow it.....