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We are nature

30 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by Sophie James in Not food, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Art, Environment, Exmoor, Writing

I wrote an article on environmental art (with the title We are Nature, taken from a quote by Andy Goldsworthy) and interviewed some lovely artists and – if you would like to – you can read about it in the new issue of Exmoor magazine. I was so inspired talking to them that I was tempted to give everything up and start a brand new life, but Naomi the editor advised I get over my cystitis first, which I am endeavouring to do. It was also lovely to return to my ‘neck of the woods’ after so long. I am a West Country girl and I know these here parts. The issue is available to order from the website (details below).

I wasn’t sure I knew what environmental art was (so many artists resist the term, but we had to call it something – other options are land art/eco art) but that in itself became a starting point for discussion. Amongst many things it explores the effects of time, the relationship between people and their natural environment and the beauty in loss, decay and regeneration.

It can be urban or rural, ephemeral or permanent, and is often made with found materials: leaves, flowers, branches, ice, stone. You may not even notice it. There is a debate about whether it even needs to be noticed. There is also nothing preachy about it, it doesn’t exist to explicitly ‘tackle’ environmental problems.

I like the performance art side of it, because it speaks to the performer/actor in me. I like its obliqueness. I also like how it attracts an outsider view, and outsiders generally. To paraphrase artist/sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, it takes you somewhere you’ve never thought of going, “whether it’s in the mind or the world.”

Thank you to metal artist/sculptress Belle Cole, sculptor Michael Fairfax and beach artist Ieva Slare and her family for such lovely chats and genuinely inspiring views of the world.

And lastly, the photo above is of me and my dad, on Exmoor, 13 years ago. I was about to get married and move to LA. I was very happy, and strangely relaxed despite all the planning, probably because I was based on Exmoor at the time and was infused with its spirit, and everything was just…unfolding. Also, my dad, Tony James, is a ‘proper’ writer, a journalist since the age of 16, and a West Somerset ‘local’, having been adopted many years ago from his native Derby. Still supports Derby County though. He is one of Exmoor magazine’s lead writers.

Andy Goldsworthy: “We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.”

One of the original environmental artists Richard Long on A line made by walking: “My first work made by walking, in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going ‘nowhere’. In the subsequent early map works, recording very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as art.”

Find out more about the magazine at facebook.com/exmoormagazine & https://www.exmoormagazine.co.uk/shop/editions

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The little lunch

10 Saturday May 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Art, Bananas, Cake, Chocolate, Food, France, Recipes, Stories, Stories from the Stove

Bananalowerres107

I seem to have an endless supply of browning and defeated bananas. We buy them principally for the B&B guests who never eat them. But they may do. They never say outright that they don’t like bananas; there may come a time when they will feel like one, and that moment will be hard to define, but when it comes we better have a bunch of bananas standing by.

I think in the last year we have probably had two straight-forward banana-eating guests. Still, we continue to buy them and then I make banana bread with the softening, spotting ones, which I give to the guests who don’t eat bananas and strangely they wolf it down. We have French guests now and they have what I think is the classic French attitude to breakfast – it should hurt. Their plates afterwards are beautifully smeared with arabesques of apricot jam and chocolate (from the chocolate banana bread, a variant*), the French press empty but for the coffee grounds, the French girls’ voices throaty from their first blissful draw of nicotine. Of course they are beautiful and slender. This is how it is.photo

If you are English and were at school during the 1980s you would have gone on a French exchange programme; you lived with a French family for a few weeks and the French student then came and lived with you. You learned their language and way of life and they learned yours, sort of thing. I also did this in Bilbao, northern Spain where I lived on chocolate biscuits for four weeks and learned to say “I know what you’re up to and I’m going to tell my mum what you did when I get home” in Spanish.

Annie was nicer; she was from Normandy and liked smoking and camping. She drank bowls of black coffee just before she went to bed, and wore extremely tight jeans. We were both fourteen but I got the impression she was worldlier than me. Sometimes we went on long walks into the countryside, or at other times she would hitch up the family’s pony – what she called a ponette – to a wagon and we would ride to an old lady’s house nearby and buy Coke from her fridge.

Annie lived in a rural area and there was not much to do except this, and eat chocolate sandwiches. I met other kids in the area because they too would wade into the fields, pale wheaten and straggly, and we would all smoke. I had never smoked like this before; filtered Gitanes, in a beautiful, uniform white that made me think of freshly laundered shirts. I watched them gulp back big blue lungfuls. I think I knew then I wouldn’t be able to inhale and remain standing. It was on my return to England that I did it in the privacy of my bedroom – I inhaled a Gitanes and fell to my knees.

Anyway, it’s all rolled into one in my mind; the smoking, the Coca Cola, the way Annie sat on a bench outside the boulangerie and handed me the long snout of bread to try, its crust sharp, almost splintery in the mouth followed by chunks of dark chocolate that she had fed into the crevices – our petit déjeuner, our ‘little lunch’ eaten vaguely in the morning. And lastly (and lastingly), the boys in the field one of whom in a lull in conversation languidly enquired “Do you make love?”

I think I pretended not to understand which wasn’t too far from the truth; something to do with the strangeness of the present simple. As if it was a hobby. It was the only time I remember being singled out for attention. I replayed the moment endlessly in my mind, trying to reframe my muteness as intrigue, but really I was just lost for words.chocolate142

I wanted to showcase these beautiful drawings of bananas and chocolate by Jasmin Bhanji, who currently lives in Kenya, though is formerly of north London, and it’s strange because since she’s gone to Africa, I’ve got to know her better and that is one of the wonders of the internet. I knew her in person in England (she’s my new cousin) and now I know her through her drawings and photos of her amazing pots and her blog, Jasmin Bhanji Studio.

*I lifted the recipe for double chocolate banana bread wholesale from Emma Gardner’s baking blog Poires au Chocolat (who in turn adapted it from Smitten Kitchen), so it would seem a bit silly to repeat it here when she has already done such a lovely job and I did nothing to improve it seeing as it was, in my view, perfect. If you like bananas and chocolate and a big fistful of cocoa powder and eating oblong cake, then this is for you. A bit naughty you might think for breakfast, but not if you imagine you’re a Parigot (slang for Parisian), in gold sandals and a lamé cardigan.IMG_1833

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Savage stuff

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 71 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Art, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Spices, Stories

IMG_1085Paprika is a savage red, and though it might sound strange, I like a bit of savagery. I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown LA yesterday where there was a lot of visual angst on display. Cavernous warehouses full of ripped metal and brown swaddling, swirling red daubs and matted roadkill. The colours were rust and grey and dried blood. Nothing had a frame, the frame was no longer needed. The only room I liked was the one housing the permanent collection, the ones always there: Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns.

But it was a small, angry picture, the first one I saw as I entered, that held my attention. It was by Dubuffet, and it was called Le Havre. It was a map of sorts and the colours were wild and fierce. There was little attempt at verisimilitude. The painter’s quote next to it caught my eye. It said “Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.”

IMG_1107

The paprika in the photo was in a bowl, powdery like pigment, along with other spices and teas in a stall at the farmers’ market. You were allowed to lift up a spoon of it and smell, and this helped because the one above was smoky and the other paprika was not. But the colour was the reason I bought. It made me want to stick a finger in the middle. It was an angry red, savage, mad and violent.

Just so you know, paprika is the dried and ground flesh of peppers (cayenne pepper comes from dried and ground chillis – it’s easy to get confused). The peppers are dried from the oven, sun or smoke (the best over oak fires) and used mainly in Spanish and Hungarian dishes. Paprika can be sweet, smoky or hot with a huge variation both in flavour and colour. Try not to put the powder over direct heat or it will scorch and taste bitter. It has an affinity with coriander and cumin and potatoes, as well as chickpeas and dusted over halloumi. I tried it with Jerusalem artichokes to very good effect. The roasted almonds with paprika recipe is a Spanish one and smoked paprika is recommended.

Roast almonds with paprika and rosemary

Adapted from Sam and Sam Clark, Moro

250g whole blanched almonds

2 tsps of olive oil

1 tsp of smoked sweet paprika

1½ tsps of flaky sea salt, like Maldon

2 sprigs of rosemary, chopped finely without any wood

Preheat the oven to 150C/300F. Place the almonds on a baking tray and dry-roast in the top of the oven for about 10 minutes or until starting to turn golden. Remove and stir in the olive oil, paprika, salt and rosemary. Return to the oven for around 10-15 minutes. Everything should be sizzling and fragrant. If you would like to crisp everything up a little more, give the nuts a shake in a dry frying pan/skillet at the end. Remove and cool before eating.

Jerusalem artichokes with garlic and paprika

Adapted from Nigel Slater, Real Cooking

Serves 2

500g Jerusalem artichokes (3 or 4 big handfuls)

Butter, about 75g

6-8 cloves of garlic

A couple of bay leaves

1 heaped tsp of paprika

Peel the artichokes and slice them into rounds. Melt the butter in a shallow pan, one which has a lid. Drop the garlic cloves, whole and unpeeled, the bay leaves and the paprika into the butter and whirl it around with a wooden spoon. Add the artichokes and cook over a moderate heat until the chokes and garlic are slightly golden. Take care not to let the butter burn. Pour in a small glug of olive oil if it looks that way. Turn the heat down so the butter is lightly bubbling, cover with a lid and cook for about ten minutes. Shake the pan as they cook. Remove the lid, turn up the heat and continue cooking until the artichokes are tender, golden and crusty. Eat with the smashed open garlic pearls.IMG_1022

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