Calm down mum, just being punny. There are no metaphorical buns in my oven, but once or twice a week there is a literal loaf of bread birthed from my kitchen. It’s become a new habit I’m proud of to the point of smugness, but the truth is you too could be baking beautiful rustic loaves with a minimum of ingredients, equipment and fuss.

The recipe is by Jim Lahey of New York’s Sullivan Street Bakery, and his no-knead bread recipe caused quite a stir in 2006 when food writer Mark Bittman shared it in the New York Times. You need no more than flour, salt, yeast and water, plus an oven and a heavy pot with a lid. No bread maker, no dough hooks, no kneading necessary. What the recipe does require, though, is time: a slow-rise fermentation of 12-18 hours gives the finished loaf great flavour and requires only a tiny bit of yeast. And the other essential is baking at really high heat, in a covered pot, which makes the dough cook in its own steam forming a perfect crust.

In 2009 Lahey released his book, My Bread, with this basic recipe as the centrepiece and foundation for some gorgeous recipes. Lahey started out as an artist before falling in love with baking, and learning the art of rustic loaves in Italy. I love his no-nonsense approach, at once respectful of the tradition of bread-making and joyfully inventive with new variations. One of my favourite anecdotes from his introduction to My Bread is about how he came to know just how viral his no-knead recipe went after Bittman’s raves in the NY Times. Kitchen supply stores all over New York suddenly reported an unprecedented spike in thefts of handles from La Creuset bakeware. It turns out home bakers were finding their La Creuset handles cracked under the high heat needed to bake Lahey’s bread, so they were resorting to nefarious means of replacement!

If indeed you wish to preserve your own fancy handles, all you really need for this bread is a cast iron pot with a lid. I bought one by American brand Lodge for $40, which is great value considering everything you can use it for. In Australia we often call the same thing a camp oven, or a “mulligan pot” if you’re my dad, and they’re available cheaply at hardware and camping stores. I’ll save my lecture about the beauties of cooking in cast iron for another time!

But back to you baking your own bread. Maybe you’ve tried before and been turned off by a bad experience. We’re taught to fear baking bread,  but you really needn’t be scared. This no-knead bread takes almost no effort; it just takes time. But once you get the hang of the method and a sense for the timing, you’ll start to find it easier to work bread-baking into your weekly routine. Start a dough one evening after dinner – it takes 10 minutes – then the next evening start the second rise when you get home from work. An hour or two later your home will be rich with the smell of baking bread, and you’ll have the inimitable joy of slicing into a crusty loaf you made yourself. Personally it works for me to start the second rise, bike to the park for a run, start the oven pre-heating while I take a shower, then set the bread to bake.

Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread

• 3 cups flour
• 1 ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp yeast
• 1 1/3 cups water
• Wheat bran / corn meal / more flour for dusting

1. Whisk the salt and yeast into the flour in a large bowl or your cast iron pot.
2. Add the water (it should be around room temperature) and mix together. This should take a minute or so, and you may find (as I often do) that it takes up to 1 ½ cups or even 1 2/3 cups of water to bring it together. The end result should be a sticky dough.
3. Cover the bowl and let it be for 12-18 hours, until the dough has doubled in size and is pocked with air bubbles. Leave the bowl in a place that’s not too hot or cold. A warmer environment will see the dough rise faster, in a cold room it will take longer.
4. 12-18 hours later, flour a work surface or cutting board. You’ll need a spatula or bench scraper to get the sticky dough out of your bowl. It should have a surface pocked with air bubbles and you’ll see it stretching in little strings – that’s the developed gluten. Turn out the dough onto the floured surface and make four folds of the corners into the middle, shaping it into a roundish ball. You may find the dough is runny, but it should still be fine!
5. Spread out a cotton cloth or tea towel (not terry-towel, a smooth linen or similar that won’t leave fuzz stuck to the dough) and dust it well with bran or flour. Place your ball of dough on it, seam side down, and fold up it up in the cloth.
6. Let your dough rest for its second rise for 1-2 hours. You’ll know it’s done when it’s grown and if you poke it, it will hold the impression of your finger. If the dough springs back, let it rest another 15 minutes.
7. The oven needs to get really hot so start it preheating when you’ve got about half an hour of your second rise left (or after 45 minutes) – set the oven to 500F (260C) and get your pot in there warming up.
8. Carefully take out the hot pot (it’s seriously hot) and as deftly as you can, turn out your dough from the cloth into the pot. It will land in there seam side up and hopefully centred in the bottom and not stuck to the side! But even if it’s a bit wonky, it will be fine. Pop the lid on and cook at 500F for half an hour.
9. After 30 minutes remove the lid and admire the beautiful shape of your loaf! Now it’s time for it to brown. Continue baking without the lid for 15-30 minutes, until the crust is a nice, deep chestnut brown.
10. It’s going to be tough, given the aromas now wafting through your home, but you need to let the bread cool for a good hour before slicing into it. Just trust me, ok?

The other thing I love about this recipe is its unfuckupability. I’ve made this bread dozens of times now and every now and then I’ll have a brain snap and make a mistake – forget to preheat the pot, totally smoosh the dough unevenly into the pot, add a little too much water. No matter what, we’ve never been disappointed with a loaf; it always comes out of the oven looking fine.

I’d suggest trying this for the first time over a quiet weekend. After making it a couple of times you’ll have the recipe committed to memory, and it will become second nature to start a dough the day before you’re having friends for dinner or a weekend brunch. They might just hate you a little when you say “sure, I baked it myself, it was nothing!”

Not sure how well known The Magic Pudding is beyond Australia – or indeed, even beyond Australians of my mum’s generation – but it’s a classic Aussie children’s book by genius writer and illustrator Norman Lindsay. I love the story that he wrote the book (in 1917) to settle a bet with a mate who reckoned kids wanted to read about fairies, while Lindsay contended kids would rather read about food. I’d agree with Lindsay, but I always found his drawing of the pudding-come-to-life a bit scary! At any rate, the magic pudding I want to write about is for eating not reading. (sorry Mum)

Late last night, despite a smug-making dinner of steamed kale and broccoli, chocolate cravings hit hard. Of course, the cupboard was bare of treats except the packet of TimTams being saved for soul-resuscitation on a really dark day. There were, however, some chocolate chips I’d hidden from myself in the freezer, and after some idle drooling over Pinterest I figured there was nothing to lose by attempting this chocolate pudding.

Have you made pudding lately? It’s crazy dessert alchemy. You start with simple cupboard staples, stir over heat for a while. Nothing seems to be happening and you start to think you’ve been duped… and then in a flash it thickens and comes together and you’re left trying not to eat the entire bowl of hot pudding before it has a chance to chill.

So here’s an easy chocolate pudding, from Smitten Kitchen via Wednesday Chef via John Scharffenberger. No eggs, no cream, no drama – yet still rich, smooth and comforting. I’ve reduced the quantities to a respectable amount for 2-3 chocolate-cravers – for a dinner party of 4-6 I’d use the original quantity (double this) and chill in cute glasses or jars.

Emergency Chocolate Pudding

• 2 Tbs cornflour (cornstarch)
• ¼ cup sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 ½ cups milk
• ½ cup chocolate chips or chunks (preferably dark or semi-sweet)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

1. Mix cornflour, sugar and salt in the top of a double boiler (set a glass or metal bowl over a saucepan of simmering water) and whisk in the milk gradually.
2. Stir occasionally for 15-20 minutes until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
3. Add chocolate and stir for another 3-4 minutes until the chocolate is incorporated, the mixture is smooth and thickened to a pudding consistency. If you find that your mixture doesn’t thicken in that time, you can dump it straight into the saucepan (tip out the water first!) over a low heat. With direct heat you should find it will thicken up in about 30 seconds so have that whisk ready to work out any lumps!
4. If you’re a perfectionist you can strain the pudding through a sieve to remove lumps… otherwise pour the pudding into your serving dish (or individual dishes) to chill for at least 30 minutes. To avoid pudding skin, cover the pudding with plastic wrap pressed onto the pudding’s surface as it chills.

My newfound pudding crush started with this Kick-Butterscotch pudding from Food52, which I made and devoured before thinking to photograph it! Cornstarch and milk form the base again, but butter, sea salt and dark brown sugar bring a delicious butterscotch flavour. Add cream for richness and a dash of whiskey at the end for a grown-up twist.  Again, the challenge is not eating it all immediately.

Five&Spice’s Kick Butt-erscotch Pudding

Original recipe from Food52

• 3 Tbs butter
• ¾ cup dark brown sugar
• ½ tsp sea salt
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 Tbs cornstarch
• 1 cup milk
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 2 Tbs whiskey (optional)

1. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat in a heavy bottomed pan. Stir in sugar and salt to the melted butter, whisk in the cream and reduce heat to low.
2. In a small bowl place the cornflour, then whisk in the milk until the cornflour is dissolved and the mixture is smooth. Stir this into the saucepan and increase heat to medium.
3. Keep stirring for a few minutes, until the mixture thickens so much you can easily see the trail of your spoon. Don’t stop stirring! Remove from heat and stir in the last spoonful of butter, the vanilla, and the whiskey if you’re using that.
4. Strain out lumps if that’s your thing, set to chill in serving dish(es) and cover with plastic wrap to avoid skin.

Here it is, nearly Christmas, and I still need to post about Thanksgiving! I want to tackle what might be my favourite American holiday in two parts – the traditional dishes I’ve grown to love, and the super Aussie desserts I like to take along to represent the homeland! A good friend requested my pavlova recipe today so I figured the time was right to put it into the public domain.

My first thanksgiving was two years ago, and I was lucky enough to celebrate it in full, decadent, family style. It was only about a month after I’d met the boy, so it was a little scary meeting his family at that point! But I survived to return for two more Thanksgivings, and I think the desserts I brought eased the way. Actually, I’m now expected to make pavlova for all family dinners, so it’s possible it’s the only reason I keep getting invited?

Seems funny that it took an invitation to the most American meal of all to prompt me to make my first pavlova. For the uninitiated, the dessert we affectionately know as pav is a deliciously light meringue topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. There’s some contention about whether pavlova is Australian or New Zealander in origin, but it was apparently invented to honour the touring ballerina Anna Pavlova in the 1920s. These days it’s a summer staple, simple and light but still visually impressive and a decadent end to a meal. Plus it’s a perfect showcase for the season’s best fruit. In the US I usually use a mix of berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries) because they’re easily available and no one seems to know what a passionfruit is here. The classic combo would be passionfruit pulp, sliced kiwifruit and some mango. But you can use anything – juicy sliced peaches, chopped pineapple, I’ve even used apples and oranges in a pinch.

I’d always shied from trying pavlova because mum had put the fear of god into me about how difficult it was. And when I started researching recipes my fears were compounded by dire warnings about how easily pav can go wrong. But even though mine have never looked exactly the same twice, I’ve never had a complaint. There’s a good chance your meringue will crack, maybe it will sag a little in the middle. You know what? No one will care. You’ll slather it in cream and people will lap it up regardless. That said, try to take care when separating your eggs, make sure your bowl is clean and dry, and allow plenty of time for your pav to cool in the oven before you have to transport it anywhere. All these simple things will help your pavlova be the best it can be.

Once you master the basic recipe you can get creative with your pavlova. The meringue mixture is quite sculptural and so you can have a lot of fun creating shapes and spikes – you could do individual round or heart-shaped pavs, or pipe the mixture in a spiral to create thin flat discs you can then stack with fruit and cream. My sister suggested whipping some cream cheese with the cream, and marinating the strawberries in balsamic vinegar; I was nervous but of course it was magnificent. You can add flavourings, like chocolate to the meringue; I’ve even seen food colouring swirled into the mixture to create gorgeous colour effects.

It’s so simple. Egg whites and sugar. I know four whites doesn’t sound like much, but this will serve 6-8. Adding even one more egg white makes a monster pav! Maybe that’s what you want? Have fun!

Pavlova

Original recipe from Joy of Baking

• 4 egg whites
• 1 cup castor sugar (superfine)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1 Tbs white vinegar
• ½ Tbs cornflour (cornstarch)

1. Preheat a slow oven – 130C (250F).
2. Line a flat baking tray with parchment and draw a circle or oval for guidance if you like. Think a 7-inch circle for size.
3. In a clean, dry bowl beat egg whites on medium speed until they make soft peaks.
4. Keep beating, adding sugar a tablespoon at a time.
5. Increase speed to high and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks and the sugar is dissolved. (Rub a little between your fingertip and thumb, it should feel silky smooth)
6. Beat in vanilla.
7. Sprinkle cornstarch and vinegar over the mixture and fold in.
8. Spoon and spread the meringue onto the baking sheet and shape it as you like. Create a bit of a wall around the outside (to hold in toppings when it’s cooked), the bottom can be thinner in the middle. You can also play around with creating spiky little peaks around the edges for a creative effect, or keep it smooth.
9. Bake for 60-70 minutes. The meringue is done when the outside has pale creamy colour and feels firm to the touch, making a hollow sound when tapped gently. The inside should still be soft and marshmallowy. But your pav is still a delicate creature at this point, so don’t handle it much. Turn off the oven and let it cool gradually in there, with the oven door slightly open.

Once cool, keep your meringue stored in a cool, dry, airtight place. Only add the toppings when you’re ready to serve, lest you end up with a soggy pav. Top with whipped cream – a cup of thickened cream should be plenty for this pav, add a little sugar or vanilla if you like – and your fresh fruit.

PS – wondering what to do with those egg yolks? Maybe some lemon butter?

Had the pleasure of a very quick trip up to the cute little town of Beacon, in Dutchess County, upstate New York. With the Hudson River flowing and a horizon undulating with mountains, it’s a picturesque town even with its trees naked in chilly late fall; I can only imagine how pretty it must be with the colours of early autumn or budding spring growth. The days are short here now, with the sun setting around 5pm, so we only had time for a quick hike around Madam Brett Mill Park. We skirted Fishkill Creek and followed an old railway line as a cloak of mist steadily settled over everything. It was so lovely though to have a little nature ramble, and only the beginning of the hiking you can do in the area.

Likewise, the town of Beacon has a charming main street full of artfully lit cafes and artisan boutiques. I fell instantly in love when, in search of beer, we grabbed a growler from The Hop. It’s the kind of joint that fetes craft beer and serves posh nosh to match, and that I immediately want to teleport my dad to.  My first impressions of the town somehow reminded me of Bangalow, or some other cashed-up-hippie-hinterland town back in Australia. That feel of a town full of artists in hiding; scratch the surface and you know you’d turn up a quiver of folk musicians and a handful of super 8 filmmakers and leadlighters and wood turners. In fact, the town is home to Dia:Beacon, a gallery that nearly sounds worth the hour or so train ride from New York.

Back in Madam Brett Park, scratch the surface and you could dig up some seriously vintage buttons and fabric scraps – relics of now-dormant factories that still stand nearby. Beacon, once a hub for this kind of production, was even known as the “New York’s Hat-Making Capital” in the 1800s. Yep, it’s only a couple of hours from the city on the Metro North train and I am definitely keen to head back and see what other treasures I can dig up in Beacon.

Are we friends on Instagram?

Henri Matisse by Robert Capa, 1949

Tomorrow marks the opening of a new exhibition at the Met, showcasing Henri Matisse’s idiosyncratic practice of experimenting with the same image in pairs and series of paintings. I previewed the exhibition on Friday night and it’s a lovely, compact exploration of some of Matisse’s different themes with his trademark riot of colour.

Oh, the colours! Blues and greens with pops of orange in Interior with Goldfish… Violets and greens for the exotic Moroccan plantscape captured in Acanthus (1912)…Splashes and dabs of tropical pinks, oranges and aquamarines in his Cezanne-influenced Gulf of St Tropez and Luxe, Calme et Volupte (1904)… Famous compositions like Dance and Nasturtiums… Colours so bright and juicily combined they’ll make your mouth water. And those are just the early years.

There are still lifes, ladies in sumptuous costumes and far less, a smattering of landscapes and plenty of studio interiors. The exhibition highlights Matisse’s  love of windows as a framing device – particularly his view of the Notre Dame cathedral, and from various hotels in Nice where he found “the silver clarity of the light” inspiring. And pacing of the curation serves as a nice primer on the artist’s career, from early experimentation to breakthrough, his struggles with being considered irrelevant alongside the surrealists and Dali, and his critical renaissance after WWII and rich late career work.

Throughout, Matisse’s practice of reworking the same imagery reflects his search for the “essential qualities” of a thing rather than “anatomical exactitude”. Two paintings side-by-side like the Woman On a Divan show how he might work with depth and detail in one approach, then stylise to flat colour in another. “I never retouch a sketch,” Matisse said; sometimes he might rub back into the paint to make a change, but more often he would start again and draw small changes to essentially the same composition.

Perhaps the greatest take-away from In Search Of True Painting is an understanding of Matisse’s process. The finished canvases we know and love may comprise fields of flat colour within bold black linework and simple, almost child-like shapes – but the finished image is the end result of a series of edits and stylisations. Matisse generally started by making quite a lifelike sketch and simplified from there. This approach is most apparent in the exhibition focused on the 1945 Galerie Maeght exhibition in Paris, when some of his best-received paintings were exhibited alongside time lapse-style photographs of the work evolving. According to the curators, “by agreeing to make the photographs public, Matisse tacitly acknowledged that their presence added to the viewers’ understanding and appreciation of his work.” The photographs “dispelled the notion that he worked simultaneously.”

The exhibition is studded with contextual tidbits – Laurette (above), the first professional model Matisse painted, was so charismatic his son fell madly in love with her; Lydia Delectorskaya, the model in Large Blue Dress sewed the eponymous frock herself, and the skirt itself is on show. Even more interesting are the quotes from Matisse.

Why should I paint the outside of an apple, however exactly? What possible interest could there be in copying an object which nature provides in unlimited quantities?”

“When I didn’t know what colour to put down, I put down black. Black is a force: I used black as a ballast to simplify the construction.

As a portrait of an artist’s process, the exhibition is an eye-opener. Paintings that look simple and even effortless, in reality reflect a painstaking process of trial and error, a methodical search for the real essence of an image, an artist who constantly questioned himself. And so it wasn’t just a means to an end, but a journey of discovery.

It is probably just my ignorance of Matisse, but I wish the exhibition had included more about him as a bloke – he seems like a funny one. There are some hilarious anecdotes on the comprehensive website Henri-Matisse.net, my eye went straight to this passage from a 2005 article by Hilary Spurling in Smithsonian Magazine:

So far as modeling went, he applied the same rules to human beings as to a fish dinner. “I’ve never sampled anything edible that had served me as a model… ,” he explained, describing a plate of oysters brought for him to paint from a nearby café by a waiter, who later fetched them back to serve to his customers at midday. Matisse said it never occurred to him to tuck into his oysters for lunch: “It was others who ate them. Posing had made them different for me from their equivalents on a restaurant table.”

Matisse: In Search Of True Painting is on show at the Met until March. Its placement in the museum is also a perfect entry point to the Met’s fantastic collection of modern design masterpieces – from art deco tea sets to modular chairs and spiffy vacuum cleaners, these objects-as-art are well worth a look too.

Matisse: In Search of True Painting. At New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 4 2012 – March 17, 2013

Since I’ve been trying to cook more with local, seasonal produce,I’ve been experimenting with some fruits and vegetables I’d never used before. Some I’d never even heard of in Australia – like jicama, okra, shallots (we call scallions shallots, and I haven’t seen these small sweet onions at all in Oz). Some I’d only ever read about or seen dried, tinned or packaged – cranberries, persimmon, chestnuts.

Inspired by the gorgeous blog Apartment 2B Baking Co (be sure to follow the link and marvel at the delicious goodies Yossy bakes, styles and photographs so beautifully in her tiny kitchen), I decided to experiment with quince as dessert for a dinner party a little while ago. The menu for the night was going to be quite festive and heavy, so I wanted a dessert that was pretty and fruit-sweet without being too decadent. Yossy’s Quince Custard Cake sounded perfect – fragrant quince poached to tenderness, enfolded in a light cake that’s crispy at the edges and custardy in the centre, not to mention the crunch of demerara sugar on top and a dusting of icing sugar.

The only change I made to the original recipe was to bake it in my wide tart dish – only because it’s all I have and I was too tight to invest in a cake tin. I worried the tart dish would be too big, but the cake rose some and ended up quite a nice thickness, not too intimidating for our mostly-full tummies! The cake popped out of the pan just fine, and I quite like the fluted edge for presentation.

There’s something romantic about quince. It’s somewhere between apple and pear in flavour, although the flesh is so hard you could never eat a quince without cooking it first. The skin is hard, sometimes with a little fuzz, and the fruit have this exquisite fragrance that has to be sniffed to be believed! They’re a little knobbly, but noble, almost medieval in appearance – a photogenic fruit to be sure. But once you’ve instagrammed your bowl of quince, and let them perfume your kitchen a while, it’s time to get down to business.

Quince Custard Cake

Original recipe from Apt 2B Baking Co, here.

• 3.75 ounces all purpose flour (about ¾ cup)
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 6 ounces sugar (just under a cup)
• 1 vanilla bean, seeds or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 Tbs liquid from poaching quince
• 4 ounces melted butter (1 stick, 115g)
• 3-4 poached quince, drained and chopped (about 1lb)
• 1 Tbs crunchy sugar (demerara, turbinado)
• Icing sugar for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 350F (175C), butter an 8 or 9 inch round tin and line with baking paper.
2. Whisk together dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) in a medium bowl.
3. Whisk together eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl until foamy, then add poaching liquid and melted butter.
4. Fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, then the chopped quince. Pour into the baking tin, smooth the top and sprinkle with crunchy sugar. Bake for 50 minutes or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan, dust with sifted icing sugar and serve with cream or crème fraiche if you like.

Poached quince

• 5 cups water (or substitute some white wine if you choose)
• 2 cups sugar
• ½ lemon cut into wedges
• 1 strip orange zest
• 1 vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 medium quince

1. Peel, core and cut each quince into 8 wedges.
2. Combine sugar and water (and wine, if using) in a medium saucepan over medium heat, until sugar dissolves. Then add lemon, orange zest, vanilla and quince, and stir to combine. Bring to a simmer and cook until the quince are soft enough to poke with a fork, but not too mushy. It could take 20-40 minutes depending how ripe your quince are.

You can store the quince in their syrup until you’re ready to use them – the drained syrup is good for fancy cocktails, apparently! I used my leftover quince to make a cranberry-quince relish inspired by a holiday-themed dinner I helped out with at Sunday Suppers.

Cranberry Quince Relish

• 1/2 bag fresh cranberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1-2 Tbs red wine vinegar
• handful of poached quince

1. Rinse and drain the cranberries. Place them in a small, heavy saucepan with the sugar and vinegar. Simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until the berries are bright and soft and gooey.
2. Remove from heat and fold in quince. Once cooled, store in jars.

“Style” by Marcos Chin at Brooklyn Public Library

Can you believe it’s December tomorrow? This year has gone crazy fast, and all the Christmas decorations, gift guides and carols that popped up before the Thanksgiving hangover had even subsided are a scary reminder of 2012 being all but done. The fact we’re nearly in December also means I’ve left it way too long to tell you about a fantastic free exhibition happening at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch (my office). But December 1 – tomorrow! – is the last day of the exhibition, so hurry and check it out!

Design sketch from NY label Ruffian

Fashion Illustration: A Contemporary Look showcases the fabulous work of Brooklyn and New York-based illustrators from the past few decades. It’s a small exhibition, with different artists’ works scattered around the building, but what could be sweeter than stumbling upon beautiful drawings while waiting for an elevator or having walked into an unfamiliar hallway? Illustrating fashion is a unique art, striving to evoke the movement, texture and colour of clothing along with less tangible qualities like mood, the designer’s voice and the artist’s personal style. Quite a juggling act for the artist trying to weave together their own vision with an interpretation of the designer’s work that will appeal to both the fashion industry and those who will ultimately wear it. This exhibition shows work in a range of media, from pencil sketches and sweeping ink linework to ethereal watercolours, computer-generated imagery and even masking-tape!

It’s interesting to see how fashion illustration has evolved over time, with trends and the innovations of new artists, but I think the bold, fluid, sexy lines of the pieces by Antonio Lopez are my favourite. His work was groundbreaking in the field, he both influenced and mentored many who followed in his footsteps – Carlos Aponte, also on show at BPL, was mentored by him. And Lopez was a fascinating fixture of the New York scene of the 70s, pally with Andy Warhol and the glamour set. There’s a great photograph of him drawing a statuesque Jerry Hall up on the second floor near the Popular Library, along with more of Lopez’s work.

Illustrations by Antonio Lopez at Brooklyn Public Library

Fashion Illustration: A Contemporary Look features work by: Anja Kroenke, Antonio Lopez, Autumn Whitehurst, Carlos Aponte, Don Oehl, Elaine Pedlar, Izak Zenou, Jennifer Lilya, Marcos Chin, Richard Haines, Samantha Hahn and Sara Singh. The exhibition is flawlessly curated by Brandon Graham. If you’re interested in fashion illustration, or pretty things in general, his website WouldYouRockThis.com is a fantastic resource.

Fashion Illustration: A Contemporary Look is on view at the Brooklyn Public Library (near Prospect Park at Grand Army Plaza) until December 1.

Grace Coddington, creative director of US Vogue, spoke in New York last night about her new memoir, Grace. The flame-haired former model was the break-out star of 2009 documentary The September Issue, stealing the show from Vogue editrix Anna Wintour with her slightly-crotchety opinions.  She’s worked with the cream of the crop, from photography to styling to models, creating her trademark luxuriously narrative-driven editorial shoots. Ever since The September Issue threw her into the spotlight, Coddington said people have clamoured for a memoir. Notoriously shy, it took her a few years to cave. A reported $1.25million deal from Random House can’t have hurt either!

It was interesting to hear Coddington in conversation, outlining her isolated childhood in desolate Wales. She admitted she knew nothing about fashion – her mother sewed all her clothes – but supposes she responded to the narratives of the photographs she coveted between glossy covers.

Ever on the cusp of trends, Coddington found herself a model in London just as the 60s scene broke. How was it?

It was wild. It literally changed overnight.

With Mary Quant’s groundbreaking designs, suddenly young people had fashions to call their own. Overnight, Coddington said, the photographers changed, the music changed. Everything came alive. She also spent a lot of time in Paris, but says there was no comparison in the scene.

The French are very chic. The English are absolutely not chic. But they can be cool.

Eventually, apparently after a comment about her becoming too ancient to continue modelling, Coddington began the transition to magazine editorial at British Vogue. “I was old. I was 28!” she laughed. “You can have a longer career as a model now with digital…. the camera now lies. Through its teeth!”

I think the funniest part of the conversation was about Coddington’s disdain for blogging, reality television, and technology in general. She’s an unapologetic luddite. Asked how she stays up-to-date with a world driven by email and social media, Coddington said: “I get my assistant, Stella, to do it all. She reads my computer for me.” Indeed, she described her first computer, appearing on her new desk when Vogue moved offices, “I literally did not open it for three years.” How many emails were waiting then? “Oh, billions.”

So how did this anti-screen queen manage to write a manuscript? Longhand.

“So, there’s a longhand version of this book somewhere just waiting to be auctioned off?” asked an audience member. No, it’s all “scrumpled in a waste paper basket” somewhere.

Grace – both the book and the human – seems warm, funny and a little uncomfortable in the spotlight, enough to share juicy tidbits someone more PR-beholden wouldn’t dare to. As well as gossip, the book is laced with fabulous photographs from throughout the decades, and fun little illustrations as well. For a taste, The Telegraph has an excerpt here you shouldn’t miss, particularly if you like jibes at Anna Wintour! The New York Times has a nice review too.

So what does Coddington say are the three things you need to succeed as a creative director?

Perseverance. You need to dream a bit. And be passionate about what you do.

Image credit: Jezebel.com

Where I come from, it doesn’t snow. Sure, there’s the odd mountain top in the southern states that might get a dusting in deepest Australian “winter”, but in Queensland you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of… a snowball.

So despite how scared I am about freezing to death as my first northern winter approaches (not to mention my first winter of any sort after two years of endless-summer-jaunting between Australia and the US), imagine my excitement to wake up to a blanket of snow the day after my birthday:

Prior to this I had seen snow exactly twice. Around new year’s on my first trip to New York in 2008/09, when I giggled gleefully around Riverside Drive in a light flurry, peering at the world through snowflake eyelashes and marvelling that the flakes peppering my dark coat made me look like a lamington. Then Halloween weekend 2011, the eerieness of waking hungover to find it’s snowing in October and then trekking to a bluegrass gig in Midtown in full costume (Miss Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction) with freezing slush in my shoes.

This time around I was determined to enjoy it, and not just from the warmth of the apartment! It was no weather for biking, so the Free Spirit stayed home with her basket full of snow. I took the train in to Manhattan and took some pictures of what was a beautiful sunny day on the High Line.

How crazy, seeing flowers amidst the snow…

What a day!

The Brooklyn Public Library has become my freelance workspace of choice, since I am notoriously poorly-disciplined. Being in a public space rather than at my kitchen table stops me from constant mindless eating, and having randoms able to see my computer screen deters me somewhat from dallying on gossip and recipe sites. That’s right, my primary method of procrastination is now menu-planning. It’s pretty tragic. But staking out a space on the second floor at BPL, near the window overlooking Prospect Park if I’m lucky, seems to help. Unlike working in cafes, there’s no need to feel guess-I-should-buy-a-muffin-guilty about hogging space and wifi – although the Central library has a super cheap cafe of its own. There’s no status anxiety of having the only non-Mac laptop – I guess I am amongst my people in the library.

Anyway, I’m getting distracted by my library love – she’s been closed since the storm, I hope the damage hasn’t been too bad – from the real purpose of this post. Because there’s a fatal flaw in my library workspace, which is that my favourite desks are in the wing that houses all the natural science books, which includes books about food. So as I’m walking to my safe space of no-recipe-porn, I have to walk past a constantly changing display of recipe-porn books. DO’H!

Last week I got distracted by one called Forks Over Knives The Cookbook. I plucked it from the display and lost about an hour of work-time leafing through it. Forks Over Knives is all about a plant-based diet, cutting out meats, animal products and processed foods as a way to improve health and lose weight. There’s a documentary of the same name, and it turns out it’s one of the better-known, better-loved vegan bibles. Now, I’m a meat lover and could never part with eggs or cheese, but I recognise the value in a mostly plant-based lifestyle. I do, however, usually shy away from vegan/whole foods recipes. Not because they don’t look delicious (have you seen Sprouted Kitchen?), but just because they seem so much more complicated. So once I skimmed the introduction of Forks Over Knives and realised what kind of recipes I was dealing with, I didn’t expect to be drawn in by many of the dishes. Wrong!

The breakfast recipes snared me first, and after a test-batch and a proper batch, I know this granola is going to be on permanent rotation in my kitchen. It’s all natural and cuts out the honey/oil of my previous go-to granola. I love the simplicity of this technique. You cook dates with water to create a natural caramel, blend it with spices and orange zest for extra flavour, and slow-bake for crunchy texture.

All-natural Baked Granola

Adapted from Forks Over Knives The Cookbook; makes 4 cups

• 4 cups rolled oats
• ¾ cup pitted and chopped dates
• Zest of 1 orange
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
• ½ tsp salt or to taste

1. Preheat oven to 275 F (135 C)
2. Measure out oats into large mixing bowl, set aside. Line 2 baking trays with parchment.
3. Place chopped dates in medium saucepan with 1 ¼ cups of water and bring to boil. Cook over medium heat about 10 minutes – add more water if needed to keep dates from sticking to pan.
4. Remove dates from heat and pour the mixture into the blender with your orange zest, cinnamon, vanilla and salt. Process until it’s smooth and creamy.
5. Add date mixture to oats and mix well. It’s so sticky I find it easiest to just use my hands. Spread the granola out on your prepared pans, I like to leave a few clumps for extra crunch. Bake for 40-50 min, stirring every 15, until crispy. Let it cool before storing in airtight containers. (Granola will get crispier as it cools.)

From this basic recipe you can play around as you see fit – add a banana to the blender, or maybe some apple would be nice. You could try using almond or coconut essence instead of vanilla. And after the granola is cooked and cooled, stir in your favourite goodies – I added cranberries and slivered almonds.

The book has some other great ideas, like porridge or muesli you can prepare the night before for an easy but nourishing breakfast.

Slow-cooker Steel Cut Oats

Adapted from Forks Over Knives The Cookbook; serves 3-4

• 1 cup steel-cut oats
• ¾ cup dried fruit
• 1 cinnamon stick
• Pinch of salt

Combine oats, dried fruit and cinnamon stick and salt with 4 cups water in a slow cooker. FOK used a cup of dried apple and a cup of dates, both chopped, but I brought it back to a handful of cranberries, handful of dates and handful of dried apricots all chopped finely. Cook on low overnight, about 8 hours or until oats are tender. Remove cinnamon stick before serving with milk and grated apple, and a sprinkle of brown sugar. The fruit and spices should make it tasty enough that you don’t need much sweetener.

Soaked muesli

Another breakfast prepared overnight. Soak rolled oats (1 cup serves 2 people) with ¾ cup milk (almond milk if you want to stay plant-based), ½ cup chopped dates, ¼ cup coconut and a chopped banana. OR ½ cup raisins, ¼ tsp cinnamon, 2 Tbs molasses and 1 chopped/grated apple.

Forks Over Knives The Cookbook goes far beyond breakfast. I made a portabella and porcini mushroom stroganoff which was pretty rad. Love the look of these sweet potato home fries on the website. And I want to try the recipe for vegetable stock and a barley and sweet potato pilaf… I’ll report back!