Month: August 2006

Picasso and Maar

We’ve seen a fair bit of Picasso, or rather his work, in Spain. Both Barcelona and Madrid have some pretty impressive paintings, particularly Guernica. That work falls in the period of Picasso’s life, 1935-1945, being focussed on in the NGV’s current exhibition …

Picasso – Love & War

Dora Maar was an absurdist photographer, and one of Picasso’s mistresses. She also hung onto a lot of stuff. When she passed away in 1997, the contents of her apartment turned out to be a veritable timecapsule. The scholarship that has resulted from the study of her treasure-trove led to this current exhibit. It’s her photos of him, his paintings of her, her knick-knacks that he’s scribbed on, his works-in-progress that she’s captured on film, etc.

The strange thing is that this exhibition is so obviously full of joint works, but Picasso has taken the title. This slight to Maar aside, it’s up to the NGV’s usual standard, and again shows their skill in taking an assorted collection of pieces, a few clear masterpieces (most in their permanent collection anyway), and creates something more than the sum of its parts.

If you’d like to learn about an interesting abstract artist you’ve probably never heard of, and learn some new things about an interesting abstract artist you’re probably sick of hearing about, then this is the show for you.

My rating: 4.0 stars
****

The State of Snow

What a poor ski-season it’s been this year in Victoria. Admittedly, we went to Lake Mountain and not Mount Hotham, but this picture still gives you an idea of the state of things. It’s mid-August, and there should be enough snow to go tobogganing!

Perhaps this photo overstates things. Even though there were patches of rocks, grass and dirt, it was possible to steer between them, following a winding path of snow to the bottom. In fact, the fact that you needed to steer probably made it a little more fun than it would’ve been normally.

Baklava Recipe

The other weekend I baked a few little things for an afternoon tea, and I was asked for the recipe I used to make the baklava. I like baklava, and having it made it now, I’d probably buy it rather than bake it, as it is a bit time-consuming. However, the satisfaction of having done it yourself does add something to the flavour. This recipe is a modified version of the one from Donna Hay’s excellent Modern Classics Book 2.

Ingredients

36 sheets of filo pastry (one 375g pack of Pampas filo is sufficient)
125g melted butter (for pastry)
3 tablespoons oil
1 – 1.5 cups chopped walnuts (100-150g of walnuts)
1.5 cups chopped almonds (150g – blanched is good but not required)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (for filling)
1/3 cup brown sugar
45g softened butter (for filling)
1 cup water
2 cups white sugar
0.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon (for syrup)
2 cloves

Method

Heat oven to 160 degrees celcius. Defrost the filo pastry. Grease a shallow, rectangular tray about 20cm by 30cm (don’t line with foil or baking paper).

Make filling by finely chopping and combining all the nuts with cinnamon, sugar and butter.

Combine butter and oil. Place a single sheet of filo into tray, and moisten with butter-oil using pasty brush. If a single sheet doesn’t fit, just tear the pastry to size, or even cover with multiple pieces of sheets so that whole tray is covered. Put another sheet down and moisten again. Build up 12 layers of sheets this way.

Spread half of the spiced nut mixture evenly across the pastry. Cover with another 12 layers of pastry, as before. Then spread the remaining half of mixture on top. Finish with the remaining 12 layers of pastry in the same way.

Cut the tray of baklava into diamonds – one set of cuts parallel to the sides, and another at an angle. Should make about 28 pieces. Put it into the oven, and bake for 1 hour. But don’t stop yet, there’s the syrup to make.

Put the sugar, water, cinnamon and cloves in a saucepan and cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Simmer for a further six minutes until it forms a syrup, and then remove from heat. Take the cloves out.

After the baklava is cooked, remove and let sit for five minutes or so, then pour the syrup over. It’s tasty warm, or if you’ve got self-control, wait about a day, and it will be even better.