{"id":151550,"date":"2013-04-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gracious-khorana.45-76-20-142.plesk.page\/localmex12013x104x1asparagus-benedict-on-quinoa-nettle-cakes-lovage-mint-aioli-htmlx1\/"},"modified":"2023-06-26T17:13:43","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:13:43","slug":"asparagus-benedict-on-quinoa-nettle-cakes-lovage-mint-aioli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/localmilkblog.com\/2013\/04\/asparagus-benedict-on-quinoa-nettle-cakes-lovage-mint-aioli.html","title":{"rendered":"Asparagus Benedict on Quinoa Nettle Cakes + Lovage Mint Aioli"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cooking with nettles, not unlike cooking with offal, always reminds me of a painting of a funeral. Not any painting of a funeral rather just this one painting of a funeral, Gustave Courbet\u2019s Un enterrement \u00e0 Ornans<\/a> (<\/i>A burial at Ornans)<\/i>. It\u2019s an imperious painting, oil on canvas and ten by twenty-two feet. It\u2019s a massive tableau in browns & grays of a provincial funeral (his uncle\u2019s as a matter of fact), and it\u2019s beautifully ugly. But to a certain set back in 1850 it was, instead, offensive,\u00a0presumptuous.\u00a0Even rude. Because you see, ten by twenty-two oil on canvas was a space reserved for velvet narratives, gilded horses. Kings. History. Blues & reds. Nobility. Not actual peasants at an actual funeral. Low subjects on a grand scale, \u201crealism\u201d. It was a fundamental shift in what was perceived as a worthwhile subject and a precursor to modernist painting. While the moderns would depart from the realists stylistically, I think the concept, the fascination with low subjects, with real life, as the content of high art is still with us, this legacy of realism. It was revolutionary at the time. There is no better formulation of it, in my estimation, than Baudelaire\u2019s in one of my favorite essays,\u00a0De l\u2019H\u00e9ro\u00efsme de la Vie Moderne<\/a><\/i>\u00a0(On the\u00a0Heroism of the Modern Life):<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pageant of fashionable life and the thousands of floating existences \u2013 criminals and\u00a0<\/i>kept women \u2013 which drift about in the underworld of a great city\u2026we have only to open our ey<\/i>es to recognize our heroism.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

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Nettles and stomach lining are, in my estimation, the criminals and kept women of the culinary world, the browns and grays of Courbet, and I think this, the\u00a0zeitgeist\u00a0of the 1840\u2019s, is still alive and well when we see these ingredients on fine dining menus, stinging nettles at the French Laundry and organ meat at 11 Madison Park. But this doesn\u2019t surprise us at all, some of us even yawn and call it fashion. The elevation of low subjects on a grand scale is common place now, and that\u2019s always the pyrrhic victory of any cultural revolution, it always seems to jump the shark. But it wasn\u2019t always so, and still, it reminds me of that painting of a funeral, of Baudelaire\u2019s criminals and kept women, of that pageant that is the ugly, the mundane, the quotidian, the weeds, the guts. And of how grateful I am that I live in a time when there\u2019s an audience for the beauty in all of it. Life is far more interesting with weeds & guts, and we\u2019re a lot better off learning to love them because they certainly aren\u2019t going anywhere.<\/div>\n
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I\u2019ll offer, at best, a dispassionate apology for the art history lesson, both if it bored you or if you are fresher than me & found it awfully impoverished, but in another life modernism was a love of mine, and I ate, slept, and breathed Baudelaire along with my gin. It\u2019s still dear to me, and I think about it often, even if I do spend more time thinking about pie crusts than the\u00a0philosophical\u00a0and socio-cultural implications of pigments. I don\u2019t, however, apologize if you find my drawing parallels between nettle cakes and art history pretentious. Because that\u2019s just a very boring way of looking at it!<\/p>\n

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So I give you my tribute to Courbet\u2019s\u00a0Un enterrement \u00e0 Ornans & <\/i>Baudelaire\u2019s On the Heroism of the Modern Life. <\/i>It\u2019s an homage to the\u00a0low as the high, a take on eggs Benedict, that posh hangover cure. It features purple asparagus thicker than my thumbs, asparagus so prized I actually had a nightmare about not getting to the market in time to get my paws on them last week. And it, my most precious produce, alongside the hairy, stinging dead nettles. The ancient quinoa. The glorious egg. Miraculous mayonnaise. Dark and spicy greens. Wonderfully salty southern cured ham. And a few of my favorite mustard colored pak choi flowers because I will always and forever eat flowers at any opportunity. It makes me feel mythological or something. But all of that aside, this is really just me using what is there, what I have. Real food & real light. And that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n

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