Matisse's table
It doesn’t matter the palette, where colors live, the brush can explore; where the brush explores, the canvas blooms; where paint dries, the globe is tasted, interpreted, and offered to whomever would receive it.
So, tonight we are in the southern States, in easy reach of some of the tastier kitchen paints. Tonight’s menu:
Caribbean black beans, cooked with garlic slices, rock salt and rough-ground pepper; accented with spicy Italian sausage, the flavor “lightened” with sliced sour oranges (a variety of kumquat) which I picked this evening from the tree out back, and “greened” with fresh cilantro, in the soup and as a garnish. Long-grain rice cooked with peppercorn and bay. As side dishes, fresh sliced yellow bell pepper; a fruit plate of papaya, banana pieces and bosc pear sprinkled with fresh lemon juice; and an accent plate of half-ripened green mango (sweet-tart, not soupy). A small glass of yesterday’s Beaujolais, and grapefruit juice mixed with Perrier.
The visual and tactile “colors” are as important as those of taste. Someone said (a book? a cook?) that in the Japanese kitchen, presentation is 75% of the meal. I might not go so far… but then, the ingredients of todays meal were simple enough, and absolutely nothing elaborate in preparation. Maybe those small touches are what make art of the table, pleasure of the meal, and the world spin round another turn, stirring up a well-lived day.