The mimosa is brunch’s popular cocktail. Made with Champagne and orange juice, it’s named after the beautiful mimosa flower for its bright yellow hue. But did you know that there is another cocktail made in a similar manner, of Prosecco and white peach juice, called the Bellini. The story of how its name came upon being is not short of gorgeous. It was invented by Giuseppe Cipriani, the owner of Harry’s Bar in Venice, Italy. He named the drink after the 15th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini because its unique pink hue is reminiscent of the saint’s toga in his paintings, such as that of St. Francis in St. Francis in the Desert.
From ancient Roman walls to The Last Supper to Andy Warhol’s Campbell cans of tomato soup, food has long been the subject of art. Plastered onto murals, erected as sculptures, or painted onto canvas, food is a metaphor not only to portray the pure joy and beauty of the ordinary, but to render that of vices, of virtues, and of eroticism. In Boule de Suif, Guy de Maupassant invested a long passage of his short story to elaborate on the food of the courtesan nicknamed Boule de Suif, or Tallow Ball – of “small earthenware plate and a silver drinking cup, an enormous dish containing two whole chickens cut into joints and imbedded in jelly….pies, fruit, dainties of all sorts….a pate de foie gras, a lark pie, a piece of smoked tongue, Crassane pears, Pont-l’Evêque gingerbread, fancy cakes, and a cup full of pickled gherkins and onions.” His salivating depiction stuck with me as a kid, but it stuck throughout the ages because of its ingenious menageries of the prostitute and the nuns, of merchants and noblemen, all piling onto a carriage fleeing Rouen amidst the Franco-Prussian war – the irony between austerity and gluttony, the voluptuousness in the middle of it all – that I still am salivating as I reread it now.
Beyond nourishment, food making can be a form of art in itself. The cook expresses his artistry with food, like the Bellini, creating dishes evocative of stories, of myths, and of the natural world. His craft is likened to that of artistic techniques. In the making of puff pastry, the method of dough mixing is called the détrempe, meaning tempera. As in painting where pigments are dispersed in an emulsion miscible with water, flour is mixed with water and other components to create the dough. In Japan, food arrangement is an art form practiced since hundreds of years. Dishes combines seasonal harmony, the balance of flavors and colors, and the beauty of contrast and empty space into an exquisite painting. The Edo period cookbook, Kasen No Kumi-ito, wrote in 1748, “Take special care with color combinations, seasoning, and arrangement. First, omit none of the five colors: green, yellow, red, white, and black. Second, take all of the five flavors into account. Third, if a dish of namasu, for example, is to be made in the shape of a landscape, you must contrive to see that all else conforms to the same pattern as well.”
After all, food is our most basic need. It nourishes not only our bellies, but our hearts and souls too. It is an inspiration for the arts, and it is art.
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