I enjoyed the Painting the Modern Garden exhibition at the Royal Academy- especially the last few rooms featuring a series of water lily paintings by Monet.
Monet’s a hero. He enjoyed an envious and civilised existence, thinking about it, not unlike the sybaritic life of Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripliad, Mr Kipling beard excepted: the luscious gardens at Giverny, the love of good food, the stable of interesting motor cars: Renaults, Panhards and a Bonnet-Zédel. And when the Germans invaded France in 1940, Monet stayed behind. Defiant to the last. A true artist.
Claire Joyes’s Monet’s Cookery Notebooks was one of my recent junk shop finds, and it comes with my recommendation.
I’m going to be making Charlotte Lysès’s Stuffed Onions this weekend. For Mrs Aitch- she doesn’t know yet. A test to see if she reads my blog.
How to make it? You slice the top off of a large white onion, and cook it in boiling water (with the lid on) for half an hour and then leave to cool. Then you scoop out the inside and fill with a stuffing made from chopped chicken liver, chopped chives, dried mixed herbs, 75g grated Gruyere cheese, mashed cooked egg yolk and egg white. Then it’s more grated cheese on top, and into the oven at 180°C for half an hour. Can’t wait.
On a completely different tack. Social Media. It’s love and hate, isn’t it? If any of you are on Instagram, you will find me lurking there at luke_honey. I like Instagram, in many ways I think it’s far better than either the dreaded Facebook or Twitter. Twitter, useful as it is, reminds me, sometimes, of a nightmarish media cocktail party, where everybody’s talking at you (rather than with you) all at the same time, like a Luvvie Tower of Babel. I signed up for Instagram yonks ago, when it first started, but stupidly allowed my account to lie dormant for far too long. Now back in action.
