Ombre - from Monet to cakes

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment." Jane Austen

Once again I am trying out a new technique to combat lack of inspiration. The idea is to randomly pick a photograph, a picture, an object ... and extemporise upon it, hoping that in some way there will be a connection to food. I find this kind of thing makes you think a little, explore a little and look at things in a different way perhaps with an eye to detail, perhaps the bigger picture. It works with photography I find - stand in some random spot and take five photographs - well it doesn't have to be five, a few anyway. You will be amazed at what even a dull patch of ground will show you.

So today we have Monet's painting - the Parc Monceau - the painting the Met chose to place next to their introduction to their 2026 diary on Impressionism and Paris.

It perfectly illustrates Jane Austen's words really because the thing that attracts me to this painting is the dappled shade - the coolness of it. And yet, Monet is not painting the shade - well if you are to believe his own words: "Light is the most important person in the picture." or put another way: "The real subject of every painting is light." For to state the obvious you cannot have shade without light. In this instance the light is the house in the background - surely not the real topic of the painting - and the spots of light on the white dresses of the seated ladies. Plus the patches of light on the path - which look real - and on the grass - which don't. And I love the parasols (against the sun) which somehow speak of summer and la belle époque.

I have just come back from a walk on a very ordinary day - at the time of my walk anyway. I had decided to take a picture of dappled shade along the way to illustrate this post somehow, but because the sky was completely overcast there was no pattern of light and shade. No light to illuminate the shade, no shade in which to escape from the sun. The sun has now come out, and so there will be shadows here and there now, for, to quote Monet again: "The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute."

However, I am now at my computer and so you will have to make do with a photograph of the shade cloth which we put in place for the summer yesterday - yesterday was hot and sunny - even though it is not really big enough to be truly effective. When we bought it we were enticed by the triangular shape which was somewhat fashionable at the time. A rectangular one would have been better.

Enough of dark and light. I decided to consult Google on ombre - the French for shade - well the painting was French - and food. Not really expecting there to be a connection, so I was surprised to find that there were actually two (no three), one of which was derived from elsewhere. Sort of from Monet in fact.

The first is a Melbourne restaurant - well a salumi bar''highlighting the craft of preservation' , their blurb says, which is part of the mini empire belonging to Guy Grossi - one of Melbourne's major Italian restaurateurs. Why? Well the salumi bar is called Ombra - which is the Italian for shade or shadow. However, it means more than shadow to a Venetian.

"Ombra (Italian for "shadow" or "shade") has a dual meaning: literally, it's a dark area cast by an object, but in Venice, ombra (or ombre) refers to a small glass of wine or aperitif, originating from vendors following the bell tower's shadow for cool drinks. Figuratively, it means obscurity or a ghost, while ombra also relates to the sinister in art or a "shadow government" (governo ombra) in politics."

because:

"Back in the old days, legend has it, wine merchants at Piazza San Marco would move their stalls throughout the day to stay out of the sun, in the shadow of the bell tower. The shadow moved – the merchant moved too. Besides, who would drink warm or spoiled wine!" 203 Travel Challenges

And so today the tradition continues where every café and bar in Venice will have on offer a small glass of wine and a selection of small bites, called cicchetti - mostly delicious things on toast. It's a tradition that Guy Grossi has obviously tapped into with his salumi bar which features a menu of cicchetti to go with your drink. A kind of Italian retort to the tapas bars which are also a trend. In fact the next suburb over from us has a salumeria - maybe we should visit it some day.

So much for ombra which means so much more than shadow. Back to the first food connections that I found, based on the French which has more emphasis on the actual technique of shading - 'ombrer - to shade'. I will come to what that means today in terms of food, but initially this too has history. but not, in this case a history of food, but a history of fashion - specifically from the 1820s onwards - for materials that used shading in textiles:

"Derived from the French verb ombrer, ombre translates to “shadow” and “shading” and is exactly that: a technique that gives the appearance of one color hue fading into the next, from dark to light." Institute of Culinary Creation

In recent times - from around 2000 this morphed into other areas of fashion - hair, nails, clothes before reaching food:

"It has become a popular feature for hair coloring, nail art, and even baking, in addition to its uses in home decorating and graphic design. In contrast to ombré, sombré is a much softer and gradual shading of one color to another" Wikipedia

In food terms it's mostly a cake decorating technique - to greater or lesser effect, other than a unanimous emphasis on 'over the top':

When it comes to savoury things it seems to be mostly reserved for gratins and tarts:

I said from Monet to cakes, but I seem to have finished with the savouries rather than the cakes. Still I think it demonstrates that you can take a starting point that seems to have nothing to do with food, and end up with food, learning a whole lot along the way historically and socially speaking - fashions in everything - some that endure, or evolve, and some that just disappear. It also yet again demonstrates how ignorant I am of the hot trends of the day. Cicchetti are probably worth another look some day however - and maybe grissini.

Monet visited Venice late in his life with his wife Alice. He only made preparatory drawings and a few actual paintings whilst there, as he felt overwhelmed:

“It is too beautiful to be painted! It is untranslatable!”

Maybe all beautiful places are ultimately untranslateable, but eventually he finished 37 paintings. This one The Gondola - was the only one not retouched. I think in fact it is my favourite of the ones I have seen today and for me, in this one it is the shadow that is striking - not the light - although now that I look at it again, I see that the background has a touch of 'ombra' about it.

UPDATE ON THE FRIDGE CLEARING

So yes I did crush some strawberries with cream and a tiny bit of sugar, for my 'fool' dessert. Alas some of the strawberries being of the supermarket kind were a bit too hard to crush easily - but nevertheless it tasted good. For dinner we finished the vegetarian sausage rolls and the leftover cheese, onion and pickles tart. So now all of the precooked meals have gone - other than the ham. Tonight it's the turn of the leftover half of smoked trout, which will be mixed somehow with leftover ricotta and other things and stuffed into pacchieri.

YEARS GONE BY

January 4

2025 - Green beans in a salad

2024 - A chef's life - down, up and down again

2023 - Rambling around a bread challenge

2022 - Do you write in your cookbooks?

2021 - Missing

2020 - Lemon and honey with maybe some alcohol

2019 - Middle-eastern pancakes

2018 - Nothing

2017 - Nothing