The Edible Monument

The Edible Monument considers the elaborate architecture, sculpture, and floats made of food that were designed for court and civic celebrations in early modern Europe. These include popular festivals such as Carnival and the Italian Cuccagna. Like illuminations and fireworks, ephemeral artworks made of food were not well documented and were challenging to describe because they were perishable and thus quickly consumed or destroyed. In times before photography and cookbooks, there were neither literary models nor a repertoire of conventional images for how food and its preparation should be explained or depicted. Although made for consumption, food could also be a work of art, both as a special attraction and as an expression of power. Formal occasions and spontaneous celebrations drew communities together, while special foods and seasonal menus revived ancient legends, evoking memories and recalling shared histories, values, and tastes. Drawing on books, prints, and scrolls that document festival arts, elaborate banquets, and street feasts, the essays in this volume examine the mythic themes and personas employed to honor and celebrate rulers; the methods, materials, and wares used to prepare, depict, and serve food; and how foods such as sugar were transformed to express political goals or accomplishments. This book is published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Getty Research Institute from October 13, 2015, to March 23, 2016.

Describes America's most famous and lesser known monuments and memorials, as well as other landmarks, national parks, and preserves.

A further volume in this series, this year discussing not so much food or its preparation as its portrayal in any number of art forms such as popular music, crime novels, film, theatre, literature, and fine art. There are also some papers which concentrate on the art of food, or art relating to food: an instance is the art of tissue-paper orange wrappers (a recondite but riveting item). My impression, when this subject was first mooted, was that all contributions would revolve around paintings and high arts. I was mistaken, there is a remarkable spread: the arrangement of 18th-century desserts; cookery and the Cuban Santeria religion; drink in 19th-century English fiction; food in film noir; the cook as artist in 18th-century England; architectural food design in France and Italy; popcorn poetry; food and eating in Bronte novels; and much more. These volumes are sometimes indigestible fricassees if swallowed at once, but think of them as platters of oysters - each may contain a pearl. By the finish a bracelet at least, perhaps a necklace, is the consequence.

Over seventy-five salad recipes, with contributions and interviews by artists & creatives like William Wegman, Tauba Auerbach, Laurie Anderson, and Alice Waters. Julia Sherman loves salad. In the book named for her popular blog, Sherman encourages her readers to consider salad an everyday indulgence that can include cocktails, soups, family style brunch dishes, and dinner-party entrées. Every part of the meal is reimagined with a fresh, vegetable obsessed perspective. This compendium of savory recipes will tempt readers in search of diverse offerings from light to hearty organized by season. Recipes include: Collard Chiffonade Salad with Roasted Garlic Dressing and Crouton Crumble Heirloom Tomatoes with Crunchy Polenta Croutons Flank Steak and Bean Sprouts with Miso-Kimchi Dressing Grilled Hearts of Palm with Mint and Triple Citrus Golden Crispy Lotus Root with Asian Pear and Yuzu Dressing Shaved Cauliflower and Candy Cane Beet Salad with Seared Arctic Char Curly Carrots with Candied Cumin And many more The recipes, while not exclusively vegetarian, are vegetable-forward and focused on high-quality seasonal produce. Sherman also includes insider tips on pantry staples and growing your own salad garden of herbs and greens. Salad—with its infinite possibilities—is a game of endless combinations, not stifling rules. And with that in mind, Salad for President offers a window into how artists approach preparing their favorite dishes. She visits sculptors, painters, photographers, and musicians in their homes and gardens, interviewing and photographing them as they cook. Utterly unique in its look into the worlds of food, art, and everyday practices, Salad for President is at once a practical resource for healthy, satisfying recipes and an inspiring look at creativity. Praise for Salad for President “Part relational art, part self-discovery, Salad for President turns our notion of ‘salad’ on its head in a funny, beautiful, and most personal way.” ?Bon Appétit “Makes even the most unrepentant meat eater consider their leafy greens; it is a decidedly bitter, yet delicious, pill to swallow.” —John Martin, Munchies

As Long as we Both Shall Eat is a culinary history of wedding feasts. Examining the various food customs associated with weddings in America and around the world, Claire Stewart not only provides a rich account of the foods most loved and frequently served at wedding celebrations, she also offers a glimpse into the customs and celebrations themselves, as they are experienced in the West and in various other cultures. Shesheds light on the historical and contemporary significance of wedding food, and explores patterns of the varieties of conspicuous consumption linked to American wedding feasts in particular. There are stories of celebrity excess, and the book is peppered with accounts of lavish strange-but-true wedding tales. The antics of wealthy socialites and celebrities is a topic rich for exploration, and the telling of their exploits can be used to track the fads and changes in conventional and contemporary wedding feasts and celebrations. From cocktail hours to wedding cakes, showers to brunches, the food we enjoy to celebrate the joining of life partners helps bring us together, no matter our differences. Readers are treated to a tasty trip down the aisle in this entertaining and lively account of nuptial noshing.

A group of 17 international experts examines continuities and discontinuities in the culinary cultures of the Ottoman Empire, East-Central Europe and the Balkans from the 17th to the 19th century.

No medieval writer reveals more about early English drama than John Lydgate, Claire Sponsler contends. Best known for his enormously long narrative poems The Fall of Princes and The Troy Book, Lydgate also wrote numerous verses related to theatrical performances and ceremonies. This rich yet understudied body of material includes mummings for London guildsmen and sheriffs, texts for wall hangings that combined pictures and poetry, a Corpus Christi procession, and entertainments for the young Henry VI and his mother. In The Queen's Dumbshows, Sponsler reclaims these writings to reveal what they have to tell us about performance practices in the late Middle Ages. Placing theatricality at the hub of fifteenth-century British culture, she rethinks what constituted drama in the period and explores the relationship between private forms of entertainment, such as household banquets, and more overtly public forms of political theater, such as royal entries and processions. She delineates the intersection of performance with other forms of representation such as feasts, pictorial displays, and tableaux, and parses the connections between the primarily visual and aural modes of performance and the reading of literary texts written on paper or parchment. In doing so, she has written a book of signal importance to scholars of medieval literature and culture, theater history, and visual studies.

Let’s face it: roast beef and potatoes are all well and good, but for many of us, when it comes to gustatory delight, we’re all about dessert. Whether it’s a homemade strawberry shortcake in summer or a chef’s complex medley of sweets, dessert is the perfect finale to a meal. Most of us have a favorite, even those who seldom indulge. After all, sweet is one of the basic flavors—and one we seem hardwired to love. Yet, as Jeri Quinzio reveals, while everyone has a taste for sweetness, not every culture enjoys a dessert course at the end of the meal. And desserts as we know them—the light sponge cakes of The Great British Baking Show, the ice creams, the steamed plum puddings—are neither as old nor as ubiquitous as many of us believe. Tracing the history of desserts and the way they, and the course itself, have evolved over time, Quinzio begins before dessert was a separate course—when sweets and savories were mixed on the table—and concludes in the present, when homey desserts are enjoying a revival, and as molecular gastronomists are creating desserts an alchemist would envy. An indulgent, mouth-wateringly illustrated read featuring recipes; texts from chefs, writers, and diarists; and extracts (not the vanilla or almond variety) from cookbooks, menus, newspapers, and magazines, Dessert is a delectable happy ending for anyone with a curious mind—and an incorrigible sweet tooth.