By Andrea Blum ( @myamericanpantry ), Montalvo Culinary Artist
LAP residents (left to right) Kalisolaite ‘Uhila, Will Calhoun, Henry Threadgill and Culinary artist Andrea Blum
This week, magnolias are in bloom. It’s one of my favorite flowers and I look forward to finding them in the landscape each year. Even when the spent flowers tumble to the table, I still love the branches! I adorned the table this week with flowering magnolia branches, and as you can see, the conversation around the table happened under, around and through them.
Artist and designer Sebastian Bellver peers through the magnolias
Through the petals I spoke with artist and designer Sebastian Bellver about his recent trip to Brazil with artists Agustina Woodgate and Stephanie Sherman of RadioEE. Together, these three went up the Amazon to a Fordlândia , a city that Henry Ford founded in 1928. The rubber plantations failed long ago and the city was abandoned, but slowly it was repopulated and now it’s part of the fabric of these artists’ work. They took a slow boat up the river, ate from the river and experienced things they still find difficult to articulate. As a contrast to that trip and a continuation of their research, today they drove a fully loaded Tesla through Silicon Valley — or should I say it drove them?
Click the images above to view enlarged versions
Of food note this week, I discovered my new favorite fish. Black cod from Monterey Bay has more omega-3’s than wild salmon. It’s fished here for the Japanese market but I was able to score some from my fishmongers at Water2Table, who source their fish directly from the boats. I cooked it in the wood oven with ginger, miso and garlic. It was divine. Tomorrow I am serving it again with grilled artichokes over mesquite. That should inspire some conversation!
