Inspiration: Renoir’s Girl With A Hoop

Creation: A Curlified, Renoir-ied Floral Centerpiece

My parents gave me a framed print of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Girl With A Hoop on my 14th birthday. It hung in my bedroom since then, up until the time we had to move to another city. There I found a spot for it, along with Degas’ Ballet School, on the walls of the new bedroom. When I visit Dumaguete, Negros Oriental, I know I am truly home when I’m in bed in my parents’ house and I look up to see Renoir’s Girl keeping vigil. I’d like to think that she keeps watch over my room while I’m away.

As you may have read below, I visited the LA Flower Mart this past weekend. It was partly curiosity, but mainly because I’ve always wanted to learn floral arrangement. I’ve been too scared to try my hand at it because of all the colors! I am so bad with colors. So in an effort to understand them and to try my hand at more interesting color combinations, I thought of a plan before trekking off to the Flower Mart.

I decided that my first floral arrangement would be in the palette of a painting that I knew by heart. This way, I could borrow the artistic eye of a master. If the colors don’t come together – I can always blame the painter! I’d be able to consider colors other than those I’d normally use. Plus, it would give me a framework to craft with; I didn’t want to end up getting all these flowers I wouldn’t be able to use.

You know, this little experiment worked! I’m so happy I had a plan before I got there. There were so many flowers of all shapes and sizes that I would’ve been overwhelmed. But I kept referring to the small visual of Renoir’s piece in my notebook and went around with the singular purpose of getting all those colors together.

The best blooms I had to work with were these hydrangeas, because they come in bunches of varied blues and were the only ones with deep blue flowers.

Everything else was either on the purple side or was dyed to look blue (like roses). I didn’t want no dyed flowers!

To add touches of green, pink and yellow, I worked with two other flowers (I had to ask the flower seller the name of each. Some of them looked at me like I was crazy. I guess other people who shopped there knew their flowers in and out!) You’ll see them below. From L to R: Hydrangea (got these in yellow, peachy orange and different shades of blue), Rice Flowers, Soledago Flowers.

Mama also showed me how to flatten the Hydrangea ends with the flat side of a wide knife before putting them into water. I didn’t know about this before, but you apparently need to do this to woodsy stems so that there’s more surface area for the water to seep upwards through the plant, keeping it fresher for a longer time period.

More pics of how the whole thing came together:

I had a lot of fun taking something I loved and transforming it into a creative project. I hope you get the chance to try this out yourself. Have a flowery Earth Day!

Inspiration: Mary Ann Esposito’s Salmone al Cartoccio con Spaghetti di Seppia Nera (Salmon in Paper With Black Ink Spaghetti)

Creation: Salmone al Cartoccio Kuno

Didn’t have black ink spaghetti, but really wanted to give this package of bowtie pasta from Rome a chance.

(Vi, what does the writing on it translate to?)

By the way, that package of pasta was on a shelf among many other packages of pasta shaped like, well, that part of a man that makes him a man. For the love of the gustatory gods, why?!? I mean, I don’t know if those were novelty/souvenir items. I hope they were. I hope people in Rome don’t eat that everyday. I wouldn’t! Ahaha.

By the way, despite the number of pictures, this was very easy to do! And by far, it’s the moist tender and moist salmon I’ve ever made in an oven. I’ve never done salmon right – I always dry it out. The parchment thing absolutely works in steaming the fish to perfection and sealing in all the flavor from the pasta (fresh thyme, shallots, balsamic vinegar, etc.)

You can find the official recipe for Mary Ann Esposito’s Salmone al Cartoccio con Spaghetti di Seppia Nera HERE.

Happy salmone!

Inspiration: The Classic French Croquembouche

Creation: A Curlified Croquembouche Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Cake = good. Cream Puffs = heaven. Cream Puffs heaped on a chocolate cake and held together by spun sugar = help me God. As in Diyos ko, parang awa mo, help me stop eating the things before they get on the cake in the first place!

The first time I attempted to make cream puffs was when I was around 12 years old, with one of the pioneering craftsters in my life, my Manang Malutz. She convinced me to help her make cream puffs and éclairs one afternoon, and I don’t have good memories of that day because a) our oven had a mind of its own and you could never really count on it maintaining the same temp for extended periods of time and b) it was on a sweltering, hot afternoon in the dregs of the province where the heat wraps itself around you and never lets go.

Those cream puffs weren’t exactly memorable, and when my interest in baking was revived as I grew up, I often dreamed of making cream puffs again from scratch. Proper cream puffs too – with a crispy shell and rich custard cream inside. I would look at pictures of the French Croquembouche, a tower of cream puffs that’s sometimes served at weddings (an example of which you see above) and vowed to myself that I would make them again some day. (I found out the “croquembouche” is a French phrase that means “crunch in the mouth”.)

I finally had the chance to make this for a friend’s birthday about three weeks ago. I wanted to make cream puffs and somehow make a birthday cake out of it as well. The first time those cream puffs came out of the oven, I was amazed at how…cream-puff-sy they looked! I almost couldn’t believe I made them myself. I had to urge to call my grandmother in Bacolod to tell her all about it, except that Lola doesn’t remember me anymore and would probably be like “Cream puffs, ano kuno?!?”. But I do think, anyhow, that Lola is always guiding my hand when I bake, especially when I had to patiently fill each of those puffs with custard through a piping bag!

And, it was my very first attempt at spun sugar, which I never thought I could do. Lola surely was the quiet voice in my head telling me to be delicate but purposeful in caramelizing sugar, drizzling it over the puffs, and using the tines of a fork to quickly coax the hardening syrup into cobwebbed strings of pure sugar.

Cream puffs are French in origin and date back to when Catherine de Medici brought her Italian chefs to France upon her wedding to King Henry II. The chef credited for the creation of the dessert was her chef Pantarelli. Sometimes called profiteroles, they’re made using choux pastry dough — a fancy word for the simple combination of butter, flour and eggs that’s cooked over a stovetop and later portioned out to be baked in an oven. It rises because of a high moisture content that steams the dough as it bakes. The result is a hollowed-out, puffed pastry with nooks and crannies waiting to be filled with sweet cream.

Here are some images of the odyssey I took to finally making cream puffs again.

Whew! It was all worth it, though, for the chance to say I finally did it all on my own!

At least I wasn’t as crazy as this guy, Ukranian chef Vaneltyn Shtefano, who made a wedding dress for his bride out of 20 pounds worth of cream puffs! (The poor woman.)