Gabriel Rosenthal
Grease Burns
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Butter
Artistically rendered recipes from the kitchen of Gabriel Rosenthal
With a foreword by the author
Foreword
I have always understood cooking as the never-ending lesson, the quest to understand the alchemical transformation of a pile of “ingredients” to a fully-fledged “meal.” It is because of this transformation process that I believe the changing of forms is integral to any understanding of cooking. Transformation is also my point of entry to the conflux between experimental art, food, cooking, and, most importantly, cookbooks.
This project owes much of its conceptual foundation to the Fluxus movement. Some of the works produced by Fluxus artists made use of performance art scripts, known as “event scores,” that consisted merely of a few lines written on a small piece of paper. Often, these event scores described a series of actions that, when performed, would constitute a work of art. These performances were often extremely simple, notably mundane, and did not require an audience.
Through event scores and performances, Fluxus artists sought to elevate the banal and complicate the simple acts that constitute “a day in the life.” In many ways this functioned as a challenge to high-brow art and culture which rely on formality and gatekeeping to delineate what is inside and outside the protected circle of authority.
I understand the event score to be extremely similar to a recipe, and although the latter is significantly lengthier, both are a set of instructions that, through action, produce an experience. That experience is, for me, a generative site for questions about the cultural capital of embodied knowledge, domestic labor, and mundane rituals.
In this cookbook, I have created recipes that are part instruction manual, part event score, and part personal archive. Some of these recipes are inspired by specific ideas and philosophies practiced by experimental artists from history such as Claude Debussy and Marcel Duchamp. These recipes offer a specialized history of the challenges to artistic form that serve as foundational theories which I rely on to read the recipe, and the cookbook, beyond simply a record of food-specific ideas and instructions.
Other entries are my own re-renderings of artistic engagements with food, including Alison Knowles’ “The Identical Lunch” and Martha Rosler’s “The Semiotics of the Kitchen.” These recipes feature dishes directly inspired by specific pieces of food-centric art. They focus more on my personal interpretations of the ideas presented in the original art works, rendered as recipes.
This project is both a collection of recipes from my kitchen that have defined my life in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic and an archive of ideas from our class readings and discussions that made their way into my notebook. Each entry is accompanied by some context for and my thoughts on the piece of art or artistic philosophy that inspired that particular recipe. I mined my notes from class and from reading/watching/listening to class materials to pinpoint which specific ideas really stuck out to me throughout the semester. In doing so, this project became almost a journal of sorts for me to catalog my favorite artistic interventions from the course all in one place.
Much like experimental art, the recipes in this cookbook-let are imperfect and open for interpretation. They are not meant to represent the platonic ideal of anything, but they are a pretty good place to start. Tweaking, teasing, testing, and tasting is encouraged for best results.
The Ice Cream I Make for My Mom
For the purposes of this project, Claude Debussy’s notes on “Pélleas et Mélisande” offer some extremely valuable insights into the relationship between art and cooking. My personal favorite line speaks to the limitless possibilities of experimental space: “I wanted music to have a freedom that was perhaps more inherent than in any other art, for it is not limited to a more or less exact representation of nature, but rather to the mysterious affinity between Nature and the Imagination.” As part of my process for this project I chose to read “music” here as “cooking,” and this became my mantra going forward. I decided that experimentation is what happens at the intersection of “nature” and “imagination” and Debussy had handed me a critical point of overlap between art and cooking: the state of transformation. Artists take materials and through technique, and some intention, transform those materials into a work of art. Trade out paint and clay for carrots and onions, brush strokes for knife skills and you’ve got yourself a cook. In his rendering of “Pélleas et Mélisande,” Debussy sought to maintain the integrity of the original piece while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of the musical form. I am inspired by his desire to preserve the characteristics of the original work during the process of experimental transformation. I think ice cream fits this idea neatly, in that mastery over the archetype requires intimate understanding of the original. Or, once you know how to make ice cream base you can make any kind of ice cream. I chose The Ice Cream I Make for My Mom specifically because the ingredients that flavor it are added after the ice cream base is finished. The recipe is the result of experimentation born of necessity: my mom and I couldn’t find an ice cream that was both maple-y enough and had a satisfactorily crunchy, and even distribution of pecans.
An Identical Lunch: Soup and Sandwich
Alison Knowles’ “The Identical Lunch” is a standout work of food-centric art. The piece is based on the presupposition that a work of art does not require traditional artistic mediums or even an audience. The work renders the banality of the midday meal significant, through an artistic lens as a mindfulness exercise using imminently relatable imagery: food. “The Identical Lunch” asks questions about the act of consumption and opens space to explore the symbolism of the mundane. Knowles’ original piece consisted of a tuna fish sandwich with butter instead of mayo, lettuce on whole wheat toast served with a choice of buttermilk or cup of soup. Her friend, George Maciunas, took this meal and blended it then served the cold tuna fish soup to the audience to create a piece of his own. I think that Maciunas’ adaption, and Knowles’ interest in it, demonstrates that the meal itself is a mutable subject, and “lunch” is truly the medium. For my version, I sought to tackle the challenge of a sandwich that would taste just as good blended as it does on the plate. While tuna fish sandwiches are quite tasty, Maciunas’ version is frankly, kinda scary. An Identical Lunch is both tomato sandwich and gazpacho, and true to the original the recipe is the same for both, mostly.
Found Food: Back of the Fridge Fried Rice
In an essay titled “The Great Trouble with Art” Marcel Duchamp formally registered a series of complaints regarding what he understood to be a lack of creativity in the art world. Duchamp believed that art had lost its “spirit of revolt” and was greatly wanting for new ideas. This void led Duchamp to a fascination with the decomposition of forms which led to his “ready-made” series; sculptures made from found materials that lack an artistic function. This idea was not wholly original, but great artists steal, and with the ready-made series Duchamp perfected and popularized a practice of “found art.” Unlike traditional art forms, found art relies on both explicitly stated intention from the artist and the socially constructed meaning attached to a given object. Duchamp’s ready-made series challenges the idea that art must be made with “art supplies” and turns the eye of the viewer toward the pre-existing meaning baked into the everyday iconography of the world. For my purposes, Duchamp’s ready-mades provide an excellent point of engagement with two critical cooking practices: upcycling, and foraging. In the modern world, where the average person doesn’t have immediate access to food straight from the source, “foraging” for food often involves rifling around in the fridge through takeout containers, assorted condiments, and half-drunk sodas. Therefore, my recipe for a “ready-made” meal relies on one of the most ubiquitous casualties of take-out frugality: left-over white rice from your favorite Chinese food spot. The instructions are intentionally vague as this dish is meant to be a dumping ground for whatever is currently taking up space in your refrigerator.
The Essentials
I was totally fascinated by “Appalachian Spring” as a production and particularly in Isamu Noguchi’s vision of American pastoralism. I became really fixated on the ways in which Noguchi’s sets evoke an extremely distilled “Americanness.” Noguchi chose to represent the pioneer spirit of the ballet using notably minimalist forms: a chair, the silhouette of a home, a fence. It is as if he boiled down his perception of the American pioneer aesthetic into its most essential shapes. This question – what is essential? – turned me toward American’s most iconic food items. I sought to identify which of these quintessential, American food staples captured the “essential” qualities of “Americanness”. Apple pie? Hot dogs? Minnesota Hot Dish? I landed on the cheeseburger, and this recipe is how I make one for myself. I think that cheeseburgers exemplify three essential characteristics of the American experience: the cheeseburger comes to America by way of immigration; was popularized by the working class but has been commodified heavily by the aristocracy; and the best versions of it use heavily processed, and well-branded products. It was important to me that my perfectly American food be something that reflected our country’s rapacious foreign policy. That is to say, the international cultural capital of the cheeseburger was what ultimately sealed the deal. Inspired by Noguchi, this version trims out all unnecessary burger toppings and retains the most essential.
An Updated Classic
I never knew my paternal-step-great-grandfather, Anthony Gambino. He was born before the turn of the 20th century and left behind in Sicily at 14 because his family couldn’t afford his passage to America. He saved enough money to get to New York on his own, where he rejoined his family and opened up his own barbershop. Grandpa Anthony lived into his 100s, and my dad once asked him about the most amazing technological advancement of his lifetime. My dad expected his Grandfather to say the moon landing, or the 747, or the computer. But Grandpa Anthony chose the electric trolley car, because once they got rid of the horse everything after that was just icing on the cake. As technology continues to become increasingly convenient, it becomes a point of intersection between all forms of production, cultural or otherwise. What Grandpa Anthony noticed is that there seems to be two distinct categories of technology: inventions that permanently change the way people do things; and inventions that simply improve on existing ideas. The drum machine and the synthesizer fall into the former category. Using this technology artists like Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder built disco culture and invented electronic music. Their music was a reflection of its moment in history, when technology and creativity collided. In the world of cooking, the sous vide machine is one of those inventions that changes the way things are done forever. For this recipe I chose a classic example of post-modern, American fine dining – steakhouse cuisine – and updated the preparation to make use of the modern convenience of the sous vide machine. The up-side is that a complicated steak dinner becomes a “set and forget” meal to be prepared throughout the day. The down-side are the barriers to access that come with rapidly advancing technology.
Martha’s Mug and Microwave
I first encountered “The Semiotics of the Kitchen” in a course called Feminist Performance. We only took a cursory glance at the piece as part of a larger discussion, but I didn’t find it particularly memorable. It was only while reading about Julia Child that I came to fully appreciate Martha Rosler’s seminal work of performance art. Child, as it turns out, was quite the enemy of progress when it came to the diversity of the average professional kitchen. From certain vantage points, Child is as much a part of the culinary world’s elitism problem, as she is part of solution to gender disparity in kitchens. Which brings me back to Rosler, who describes “The Semiotics of the Kitchen” as: “An anti-Julia Child replaces the domesticated ‘meaning’ of tools with a lexicon of rage and frustration.” Rosler reminds me that nothing is sacred, and that the very building blocks that we use to conceptualize the world are laced with the tools of oppression. “The Semiotics of the Kitchen” is a challenge to those symbols that are taken for granted, and re-renders them through defiance, and fury. The piece is a timeless example of the power of art to reframe the ordinary into roses worthy of stopping to smell. To evoke the layers of symbolic, and metaphoric meaning that Rosler is unpacking in her piece I wanted a dish that prominently featured an ingredient with a similar depth of semiotic power: cornbread. Corn, and the various breads made from it, is intimately tied to every stage of the history of both North and South America. It has gone from the primary subsistence crop of countless indigenous cultures, to of one of the most ubiquitous sweeteners on earth. What remains true, is that no matter what point in history you look, American food culture is a corn culture. I wanted a version of cornbread that reflected Rosler’s rejection of existing semiotic meaning and refusal to stand on ceremony. So, I opted to skip the cast iron pans, and luxurious butter baths and go with a cornbread cooked in a mug, in the microwave.
