The Picasso of Salads
A salad can be many things. Abstinence. Forbearance. Seasonal. Vegan. Caesar. Waldorf. You name it, it be it.
A salad can also show you many things. Skill or lack of. Thought, or lack of. Care, or lack of.
To illustrate..
I went to the Picasso Museum once. In Malaga. I intended to go. I was not just passing. I did not know it was Picasso's birthday. I expected to pay. But, it being picasso's birthday, the good folk let everyone in free. And I enjoyed it that much more because it was free. I felt I was one up on the rest of the world tramping through those hallowed doors on the other 364 days of the year.
Hang in there...
One of the exhibits had you huddle up to a TV playing a film of the master himself, wielding brush, standing on the other side of a plate of glass.
Fade in. The master wields his brush. A pass in the air materialises as a stroke on glass. Another, and another. The image is complete.
Picasso paints a bull. In a dozen strokes, the thing is done. A bull is more than a dozen strokes but that was all it took. In the hands of a master, a series of passes became a ton of testosterone and beef.
True mastery means distilling things down to its essence. As Leonarda Da Vinci said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Back to the salad, then, as a work of art. As its finest, a salad is demonstration that the unremarkable can become remarkable with enough thought.
Take for example, the salad Nicoise. Simplicity itself: some tuna, a boiled egg, beans, herbs, green leaves, dressing. You could pick up the ingredients without having to venture any further than the canned vegetables aisle.
Had Picasso chosen salad making instead of art, he would have done a few key things. Simple but key.
Discard the beans with brown bits on them. Blanch the rest. Don't serve them raw. Cut them to a size that doesn't stick out of your mouth. Don't shred the lettuce. Soft boil the egg. Get some real tuna.
Make a dressing. That does not mean just olive oil. Season it. Serve it on a plate that isn't too small. Give us a knife that cuts rather than brutalizes.
Had Picasso chosen to make salad, these simple strokes, assembled with thought, would form one memorable image. On your tongue, given, but an image nonetheless.
Picasso never worked at the Caledonia Bar and Restaurant at Glasgow Airport. He never even flew over it. That much was obvious.
I feel I've made up for not paying to get in to that museum. I paid for that salad Nicoise. And boy did it hurt.
Watch the master himself on Youtube: http://youtu.be/E94BFivA4tA read more