Marseille, Fish Soup with Gorgeous Garlic Rouille

  Marseille 1575

Marseille is the oldest city in France -- founded by the Greeks in 600BC as Massalia (Μασσαλία).  Under the Romans it became Massilia and went through occupations by the Visigoths and the Aragonese (according to Wikipedia) before becoming Marseille. Flirtations with the Ottomans (and so many others) brought other influences to the table …it was the great port city.  Most of those interlopers left their imprint on the food of Marseille.  Fish preparations like Bouillabaisse are the happy result.

I love the food of the Mediterranean region and it couldn’t be better represented than it is in one of my favorite cookbooks, A Mediterranean Feast by Clifford Wright.  It is a 700-odd page mega-tome –– full to bursting with history, legends and incredible recipes that took him 10 years to complete.  It won the top James Beard award in 2000 for a thousand reasons – scrupulous research, informed and creative discourse about the relationships and influences amongst the cuisines of the area and those brilliant recipes… it’s a great cookbook that makes you think.  I use it often when I am in the mood for something from the region and I am never disappointed since it covers Europe to Africa and the Middle East and explores dishes of the past as well as modern favorites. I was especially impressed at the way Wright wrote of the influence of the Middle East on European Mediterranean food… it was quite an influence.  The diaspora of so many cultures, through war or settlement or commerce, created exciting flavors as they contributed to the local cuisine with their native techniques and spices.

 

From the Tarot of Marseille 

I saw a recipe for soupe de poisson in Wright’s book and it cast a spell on me –– you can almost taste the salt air of the port of Marseille when you read it. This fish soup is a concoction of working class fisherman and the fish that were used were not fancy fish (those would be sold for money) -- these were the cheap, poor man’s fish that became the flavorful base for the soup. 

What about the fish you use to make the soup?  It's not just about taste, it's about sustainability and safety. Soupe de poisson is the original sustainable fish dish –– I used fish that aren’t high on the endangered list and got them from  the wonderful Lobster Place in Chelsea Market, NYC.  They are a great store with a superb and varied selection of fish –– perfect for a fish soup!

19th C. Fish 

You can read about what fish you should buy or stay away from at The Environmental Defense Fund  or the Monterey Bay Aquarium .  It's good to know what you're buying isn't irresponsibly caught or farmed.

 The norm in Fish Farming

Aside from over-fishing, it’s disheartening to realize we now must worry about eating too much fish –– mercury and pollutants from fish farms that use toxic levels of pesticides and antibiotics to deliver cheap fish (as well as using huge amounts of fish and animal byproducts to feed them –– 10 to 20 pounds for 1 pound of fish), further polluting and decimating native fish populations –– it’s a vicious cycle.  

 This is what Veta la Palma fish farm looks like

There are exciting new alternatives you can read about HERE  and in Dan Barber’s Ted Talk HERE as well as in the Saveur 100 this year.  These alternative methods actually help the environment rather than destroy it and make for superbly flavored fish as well. A visionary named Luis Contreras has done it in Spain at an 8,000 acre wetland (out of a 27,000 acre estate) named Veta La Palma  that produces 2000 tons of toxin-free bass, bream, eel, shrimp and sturgeon a year that are fed almost exclusively by an ecosystem that also cleans up after itself. The Dan Barber Ted talk was a real eye-opener for me.  I have enormous respect for Barber as a chef and a proponent of sustainable agriculture and, of course, great taste as seen at Blue Hill at Stone Barns  just outside NYC). Barber said the fish from Veta la Palma, were sublime. "Veta la Palma's fish is unlike any farmed fish I've ever tasted," he says. "It's unlike any fish I've ever tasted. It's sweet and clean – like tasting a bite of the ocean."

Once you've decided on the fish part of the soup, there is another classic component to the dish, rouille.

Rouille –– a garlicky, saffrony mayonnaise served with the soup on olive oil toasted bread.  I was lucky enough to speak to Wright about his unusual version of the sauce that has bread as one of the ingredients.  Wright told me this is a traditional part of the sauce that isn’t as familiar in the US as the straight egg and oil version.  He said he felt there had been a Catalan influence on rouille from Catalan picada family of bread sauces.  Wright said that the bread added bulk and made the sauce richer and smoother. “ It’s traditional in Provencal cooking.  If you leave the bread out, you are just making seasoned mayonnaise.”

The result is rich, fragrant and so delicious –– absolutely perfect with the soup.

Soupe de Poisson based on a recipe in A Mediterranean Feast serves 8

Ingredients

¼ c olive oil

1 large onion

2 leeks, chopped

1 small fennel bulb, sliced

2 ½ quarts water

3-4 lbs fish (I used whole porgie, sardines, whole dorado, blue fish, Spanish mackerel, striped bass and a carcass) Wright recommended using ¼ oily fish and the rest whiter fish (not salmon).  ***Make sure you get some whole fish or have your fishmonger give you some carcasses for the soup. To make a rich broth, you need bones and heads!*

1 pound tomatoes, chopped (or 1 can)

1 T tomato paste

3 garlic cloves

bouquet garni (parsley, thyme and bay)

pinch saffron (from Marx Foods)

½ t cayenne

4 drops Aftelier petitgrain or 1 10” strip orange peel and 1 t orange flower water  (do this to taste… I added more after cooking and straining)

1 oz Absinthe or Pernod or 1 T cognac (I added more after cooking and straining)

3 oz vermicelli, cooked (optional)

rouille (see recipe below)

½ lb gruyere, grated

* some people like to put additional chunks of cooked fish in the soup after removing the solids

Heat the olive oil and cook the onion leeks and fennel about 6 minutes over medium high heat.  Add the water, fish, tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, bouquet garni, saffron and cayenne, season with salt and black pepper and stir.  Let boil for 45 minutes.  Add orange zest and Absinthe/brandy and boil 8 more minutes.  The fish will have disintegrated at this point.

Take out the bones and skin and orange peel.  Pass the rest through a food mill and toss everything that doesn’t go through after several turns.  If you don’t have a food mill, press through a strainer to get some of the solids into the broth. Add the vermicelli if you wish. Top with croutons with the rouille and the grated cheese.

Rouille

Ingredients

1 ½ c French bread (crust removed)
½ c fish broth
4-5 peeled garlic cloves
1 t salt
½ t ground red chili pepper (Wright recommended  chili de arbol and I used Marx foods)
pinch saffron (from Marx Foods)
1 large egg yolk
pepper
1 ¼ c olive oil (save ¼ c for toasts)
5 T butter
40 slices bread

Soak the diced bread in the fish broth. Squeeze the broth out. Mash the garlic cloves in a mortar with the salt until mushy. Place the bread, mashed garlic (saving 1 garlic clove for the croutes), red pepper, saffron, egg yolk and black pepper in a food processor and blend for 30 seconds then pour in 1 cup olive oil through the feed tube in a slow, thin, steady stream while the machine is running. Refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. Store whatever you don't use in the refrigerator for up to a week.


2. Meanwhile, prepare the croutes. In a large skillet, melt the butter with the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil over medium heat with the remaining crushed garlic until it begins to turn light brown. Remove and discard the garlic.


3. Lightly brush both sides of each bread slice with the melted butter and oil and set aside. When all the slices are brushed place them back in the skillet and cook until they are a very light brown on both sides. Set aside until needed.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s Recipe for Pigeon with Olives (Ramereaux aux Olives)

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec 1864-1901

I think we all know the story of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa.  He came from an ancient family, but a thousand years of inbreeding made poor little Henri a mess (they now know it was a hereditary problem – Pycnodysostosis, which caused dwarfism, brittle bones, enlarged nose and lips).  His mad eccentric father, Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse, utterly abandoned him … horrified at the shame of a less than perfect son and heir. Henri’s consolation was his art (the only positive thing about his patrimony was a talent for art that went back generations in the family), and the unflagging love and support of his mother (also ignored by Alphonse-Charles).

Yes, Henri moved to Paris and led a wild, dissipated life in cafés and nightclubs, but he also played the role of the masterful flâneur as well as it has ever been played.  His intense observation of and immersion in la vie de Bohème fed his art… his incredible art.

Oh what art he made!  His deformity may have kept him hobbled in many ways but what he lacked in mobility he made up for with a prolific, super-human outpouring of canvases, drawings and lithographs that captured the soul of his time and place.  You can almost hear Lautrec's spirit entreating,   “Look what you can see through my eyes, look at my world!”. That vision earned him immortality.

What you may not have known is that he was a much respected gourmet and cook and also one of the first and certainly one of the most creative cocktail mixologists in France. He practically originated the cocktail snack and because of his strong ties to the cuisine and products of his Southern-French heritage, he introduced the Languedoc style of cooking to the intelligentsia, fellow artists and denizens of Fin de siécle Paris.  

To do justice to Lautrec’s cocktails skills, you need to visit the inimitable duo of David and Lesley Solmonson at 12 Bottle Bar who will share what they know about Lautrec’s wildly inventive cocktails and those parties.  David and Lesley know cocktails better than anyone around and tell a great story.  I enjoined them to team up this week to do Lautrec justice.  Go to 12 Bottle Bar for the Maiden's Blush cocktail... a Lautrec favorite with absinthe and raspberries!!!

Ces Dames au Refectoire (women eating at the brothel’s table)

Lautrec absorbed dishes from everywhere, he traveled extensively, kept company with everybody who was anybody but also frequented and often lived in the ‘Maisons closes’ where he became close to the prostitutes there as no one had been before. 

The Sofa

 So much so that they trusted him and shared the little intimacies of their lives (and remarkably homey cuisine) with him.

Tournée du Chat Noir, 1896 by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen 

Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, 1891, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Places like Chat Noir, famed Montmartre “cabaret artistique” and the Moulin Rouge were electric destinations for Lautrec and his company of artists, writers and entertainers.

His nearby studio hummed with their presence and colorful inspiration and his canvases reflected his incredible empathy with that environment and its habitués. 

Sterling Nutmeg Grater, 1810 

Traveling nutmeg grater, 1881, G Cohen UK

Symbolist poet, Paul Leclerq said of him: “He was a great gourmand.  He always carried a little grater and a nutmeg to flavor the glasses of port he drank.  He loved to talk about cooking and knew many rare recipes for making the most standard dishes, for in this, as in all else, Lautrec had a hatred of useless frills… He loved dishes which had been simmered slowly for hours and seasoned with perfect art.  He tasted old vintages and liqueurs as a connoisseur.  When he clapped his tongue against his palate and pronounced such and such a burgundy to be like a ‘peacocks tail in the mouth’ one was assured that the bouquets of the wine was fruity and rich.”

He was a member of Club des 30, sportsmen, scientists, men of letters, “a distinguished group of bon vivieurs” who often met at Café Weber, a favorite hang out of Lautrec on the Rue Royale whose patrons included composer Claude Debussy, English writer Oscar Wilde, food writer Curnonsky, authors Colette and Marcel Proust and the nonpareil aristocrat-eccentric Robert de Montesquiou.

 Chateau du Bosc

When he wasn’t out drinking port or vermouth (or champagne when he was in the money) and dining on Welsh Rabbit  at Café Weber’s, or cocktails at the Irish American Bar when the Weber was too crowded, he was having friends in constantly for food and drinks, emptying his pockets and the hampers of prime produce and game his mother sent him regularly from his ancestral home -- Chateau du Bosc in Albi on the River Tarn. He required that his tables were only to be decorated with flowers and his artful menus (although from all descriptions, his studio was crammed to the rafters with decorations from a Japanese Warrior helmet to an African spear, to make up for whatever visual calm might preside at the table).  His ‘violent sauces’ demanded a simple environment to shine, albeit a luxurious one -- his table linens and silver came from the family closets and were of the finest quality even if many of his glasses were pinched from cafes that he frequented.

He cooked elaborate feasts lubricated with great lashings of cocktails concocted by the artist himself with glee and creativity… but not water … he abhorred water so much that water carafes on the table contained live goldfish to discourage their use … spirits or wine only -- alcohol or thirst!  Most of these dinners were celebrated with charming menus and invitations like the one above for a dinner around the bounty of his family’s lands, “Dîner des Tarnaise”

The Orchestra at the Opera, Edgar Degas

Meals with Lautrec were often creative ‘happenings’. The painter Edward Vuillard recalled a meal at Lautrec’s house on the idyllic Avenue Frochot that seemed to end abruptly at the cheese course. Lautrec said “follow me” and rustled his guests away from the table and into his neighbor’s apartment in his building where he presented a Degas painting of his neighbor Désiré Dihau playing the bassoon hanging on the wall.  “This is your dessert”, said Lautrec!

Galerie Goupil

Lautrec’s original recipes were collected by his boyhood friend and frequent dinner and traveling companion the gallery director Maurice Joyant (he took over the directorship of the Galerie Goupil from Theo van Gogh) after the artist’s death.

 

Toulouse-Lautrec Museum

It was Joyant who put together a limited edition cookbook of his friend’s food, La Cuisine de Monsieur Momo in 1930 after creating the Lautrec Museum  at the Palais de la Berbie in Lautrec’s hometown of Albi to display his friend’s art and keep his memory alive.  

La Cuisine de Monsieur Momo by Maurice Joyant

I found the originals for the recipes in an English translation of this book, The Art of Cuisine.  These are recipes that were truly prepared by Lautrec.

In Toulouse-Lautrec's Table, Andre Daguin (father of D’Artagnan founder Ariane Daguin) did a spectacular job of translating the recipes that were often a little vague in the original.  As a master of the cuisine of Lautrec’s homeland and a master chef himself, he was the perfect choice for the job. Its author, Genevieve Diego-Dortignac had access to Lautrec family papers and letters and was able to flesh out the lines of story with a flurry of lovely details. 

Diego-Dortignac said that Lautrec used the 28 herbs that Alexandre Dumas (fabled gourmet as well as author of the 3 Musketeers) had divided into 3 categories, pot-herbs, herbs for flavoring and herbs for seasoning in his Great History of Cuisine.  “ To bake a sole on a bed of tarragon, braise wild boar in sage, add wild thyme or thyme to a fricassee, fry parsley as an accompaniment to fish, cook bass or perch on charcoal with a stalk of fennel, grate horseradish on venison, mix savory with string beans a la crème…. These are the final touches that make the dishes ‘sing’” said Maurice Joyant as he described Lautrec’s cooking.

Toulouse-Lautrec cooking at the Natansons, Edouard Vuillard 1898

Henri inherited a family tradition of personal involvement with the table -- what was served and how it was served was not left to the servants.  He made sure it was always well-prepared and usually great fun to eat.

Maurice Joyant by Lautrec 

His friend Joyant said: “Around him, dishes and ideas proliferated, whether it was in Brussels, London, or in his habitual quarters of Paris and Arcachon [Dumas had a house there], succulent and simple dinners were improvised in honor of the guests, the chosen of both sexes.” Lautrec and Joyant  “sought out and carefully recorded the recipes of ‘clever cooks and of conscientious mothers’”.

Each occasion provided a reason for a party with a menu by the artist. Toulouse-Lautrec's Table author Diego-Dortignac observed that a new painting or drawing or a success of any kind generated more food, more art, more creative cocktails (that were important to the “proper contemplation of a painting”). “Cuisine was linked with his artistic being” in a very singular organic way.  Cooking was for him another facet of the art of living.  He shared the flavors of his version of life as he saw, felt and lived it on paper, canvas and the plate with equal power.

Lautrec had some absolute favorite dishes.  Onions stuffed with garlic puree, studded with cloves and braised in stock was a great favorite, so was Lobster Americaine.  In the home of his friend Georges Henri-Manuel he prepared the dish in Manuel’s drawing room, strenuously refusing to prepare it in the proffered kitchen to the horror of his fastidious friend (flambéing and priceless art and antiques are uneasy bedfellows).  The dish turned out perfectly and was done so well that not a drop was spilt or sprayed.  Another special favorite was leeks in red wine (although he was not crazy for vegetables in general save for additions to meat dishes).

Les Pigeons

He had one dish that was his chef d’oeuvre:  Pigeon with olives.  “Anyone he thought pretentious or snobbish or suspected of wanting to sample the Lautrec specialty out of curiosity alone, he would unceremoniously turn away, giving as his reason: They are not worth of the ‘ramereaux (pigeon) aux olives’ they will never have it, they will never know what it is.”

Thanks to my friends at D’Artagnan , I was able to get the wood pigeon for the dish. As I said,  Ariane Daguin’s father did the recipes for the book, and the wonderful D’Artagnanite, Lily Hodge is a former art historian so she was very interested in seeing what this creation would turn into and honestly, so was I.  Any dish that was so honored must be remarkable.  I was a little skeptical that something so simple could be so magical but it really was… it comes together brilliantly.  If you have never made pigeon before… they are all breast.  The easiest way to eat them is to separate the breast from the carcass to eat politely (gnaw on the little bones later).  Cook the breast as little as possible… it should be red and tender.  Hank at Honest Foods recommends brining pigeon in salt water overnight for more tenderness.

Pages from The Art of Cuisine

Young Wild Pigeon with Olives

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 wood pigeons from D'Artagnan (or Cornish hens or poussin) 

8 oz ground beef (lightly sautéed)

8 oz  French Garlic Sausage from D'Artagnan (lightly sautéed, if it is not pre-cooked) or a mild pork/veal sausage

¼ t of nutmeg

1 t fresh marjoram and thyme (optional)

2 T Truffle butter from D'Artagnan or regular butter 

2 Qt chicken stock

¼ c  armagnac or cognac

3 oz butter

½ oz truffles (optional) 

3 shallots

1 onion

3 strips of smoky bacon, chopped

Bouquet garni

10 oz green pitted olives

1 t molasses

Take 4 pigeons and put a stuffing of sausage and meats and truffles (if you don’t have them use truffle butter or oil) seasoned with nutmeg, herbs and salt and pepper inside the little cavity.  Put the truffle butter under the skins of the bird… take care for the skin is very fragile.  Salt and pepper the birds.

Tie them up and let the pigeons brown in a heavy, shallow pan… mostly the bottom of the bird.  Remove them and put the bacon, shallots and onion into a saucepan and sauté.

Add salt, pepper, a bouquet garni. Put in the pigeons back in the pan, and let them simmer gently for ½ an hour with the saucepan covered. Add some pitted green olives that have been well de-salted (I put them in a pan of water and boiled them, then let them sit in fresh water) and add the armagnac/cognac and cook for 10 more minutes.

Heat the broiler.

Let the birds braise well in the sauce and then remove the birds. Reduce the sauce.  Take the molasses and a few tablespoons of the sauce and brush on the birds.  Stick the birds under the broiler to brown for a few moments to give some color to the skin.

Serve the birds on a dish surrounded by the olives and the strained sauce that ought to be rich and thick.


PS Wild rice with truffle butter is amazing with this dish!

Toulouse-Lautrec's Recipe for Pigeon with Olives

Thanks to Gollum for Hosting Foodie Friday!

Art, Comfort and Cheese Toasties

 1689 Map

I don’t know about you, but I had been feeling pretty good about the world. 

It all began with a courageous Tunisian fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, the everyman who made a  desperate stand against intimidation and tyranny when he was slapped by a petty bureaucrat.  The world paid attention to his mad, heroic, galvanizing self-immolation and reacted with one united voice, NO MORE.  The tumbling dominos of dictators began falling from Tunesia to Egypt and Yemen and we heard a hallelujah chorus celebrating freedom from decades of despotic greed.

Taking their cue from the demonstrations in the Mid-East, the state workers of Wisconsin woke up to the fact that ‘little people’ were being played against one another by a smirking cadre of billionaires like the scenario in that great Twilight Zone, “The Monsters are due on Maple Street”  (see it HERE).  The workers protested that billions in tax deductions for the rich were behind the budget shortfall, not worker’s bargaining rights (yeah, if you make $250, 000 an hour you pay less than half the tax rate a teacher does… that’s fair, right?). 

When it got to Muammar el-Qaddafi, we all thought… about time, this was the craziest mother of all.  But the joy stopped. It stopped dead and then started stumbling backward. He would not go quietly into that good night and had stolen and stockpiled billions of his country’s oil money to insure his rabid jaws would remain firmly clamped on Libya’s throat. 

That feeling of elation gave way to the rumbling indigestion of dread.

Hasegawa Tōhaku, Pine Trees, one of a pair of folding screens, Japan, 1593  

Then came the earthquake in Japan this weekend.  I love Japan. I know those places.  I walked those streets and felt the warmth of its people.  My heart is breaking in solidarity for their loss.  As I write this I have a creeping terror that there will be another tragic shoe to drop… the nuclear shoe.  I am praying that I will not have to change this particular paragraph.  I am praying that the sure hands of providence will return that shoe safely back to its tabi-socked foot and nuclear holocaust will be averted.

When the world is mourning, art can provide a refuge for a broken heart.  Art is light and life and gives comfort.  If we all had a deeper connection to it on this little planet… there would be less suffering, less war and brutality.  All of the hearts that are frozen over and blind to art and beauty make the world a cruel, cruel place.  Art is the reflection of the greatest of what we are.  It can open hearts to the voices of others.  It joins us.

 Voyager Golden Record

We sent out the space probe Voyager with the secret hope that any alien race that found it would want to meet us, or, should they have thoughts about training a weapon on the mess we have made of our water-world Earth, they would hear those strains of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart and be moved to forgive us our trespasses and let us live a little longer.  It would tell them we are capable of greatness… there is something worth saving.  There is hope.

Still Life with Cheese, 1585 by Floris Gerritsz van Schooten

Megan at Feasting on Art proposed cooking directly inspired by art this week, in this case Dutch artist Floris Gerritsz van Schooten’s A Still Life of Cheese, painted in 1585.  For me, food and art provide comfort at its best…and hopefulness.  We all need a healthy serving of that this week.

Haarlem Kitchen Scene by Floris Gerritsz van Schooten

Floris Gerritsz van Schooten (1585-1655) lived during a great time in Dutch history. The Dutch East India Company was trading with the world and brought that world back to Amsterdam.  Their world was more expansive because of this trade and exploration and their society flowered with new knowledge and the rise of a new middle class (surprised that openness and prosperity raises all boats, brothers Koch?).  The Dutch were the first Europeans to establish trade with Japan and brought Western culture and science there in 1609 (and the only westerners allowed to trade with them until 1854).  You see, it’s all connected -- all you have to do is find the thread. It was a Golden Age (1568-1648) for the Dutch in so many ways. Rembrandt and Vermeer touched heaven working magic with faces and light.  Gorgeous still lifes celebrated plenty and the promise of a full stomach as if to express joy in bounty as if to say, after generations of privation, look what we have, we are blessed.

Breakfast by Floris Gerritsz van Schooten

I suspect man has always equated comfort with plenty and a full stomach.  It was half of the formula for survival, the other half being a safe place to live.  As civilization bloomed we expected more from the formula… comfort and deliciousness.  When disaster strikes the formula gets re-set to the basics.  When we triumph over tragedy we use food to celebrate and bring us back from the darkness of want and destruction.

Still Life with Cheeses, Candlestick and Smoker’s Accessories by Floris Gerritsz van Schooten

In this time of sadness I wish I could spread comfort and warmth like stardust from my magic wand.  The only way I know how to come close to that is with an offering of food  (and one of my favorite food quotations).  MFK Fisher wrote in Gastronomical Me : “It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one."

Cheese Toasties have often warmed me after long drives through dark night winds and drifting snows. I always thought the recipe was from Ms Fisher but it is not. It was a gift from the gods of deliciousness that has changed very little since I first made it – small additions of cognac, chili and mustard.  They fill the air with the smell of toasting bread and cheese with a little spice – a smell that makes you feel all is well with the world for at least a few moments.  I hope you will enjoy them and feel comfort and security, love and gratitude. 

Cheese Toasties for 2


Ingredients

1 c grated cheddar cheese (I have used whatever I have on hand many a time, cheddar is my favorite)

 ¼ c mayonnaise

1 large clove garlic, minced

2 t to 1 T chipotle pepper in adobo (or pickled jalapenos if you don’t have chipotle)

1 t rum or cognac

1 t Dijon mustard

2 large slices bread (or 6 slices of baguette)

Toast the bread.  Mix the rest together and spread on the toasted bread.  Put under the broiler until brown and bubbly. Cut into ½ or ¼ size pieces and eat with gusto. 

Be prepared to make more.

John F. Kennedy said in 1963: "The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state," Kennedy said. "... In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having 'nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope." (Thanks to Bill Moyers for this quote)


This blog was mentioned on The Kitchn!  Thanks!