NARRATOR: Throughout history, food
has served as subject matter, inspiration, and, of course,
sustenance for artists.
Food has also been the art on a number of occasions.
Today, we're going to recreate a highly original meal that
sprang from the mind of a highly original artist.
And it even comes with a souvenir necklace.
Our meal in question happened in 1971
at FOOD Restaurant at the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets
in New York City's Soho neighborhood.
This artist-run restaurant was founded
by Caroline Goodden, Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris,
Rachel Lew, and this guy, Gordon Matta-Clark, who I
will tell you more about later.
Their menu changed every day based
on what was fresh and available and what their rotating cast
of contributors wanted to make.
Often, soups and gumbo and fresh-baked bread
prepared in their open kitchen, a novel idea at the time.
On Sunday nights, artists were invited to be guest chefs.
And the most legendary of these meals
was offered by Matta-Clark.
For $4.00, you could enjoy the Bone Meal comprised of oxtail
soup, a green salad, marrow bones, stuffed bones,
frog legs provencale, and pot roast bones with sliced peaches
and coffee or tea for dessert.
This one's going to be a doozy, guys,
so I've called in some assistance in the form
of sound artist Stuart Hyatt who is going
to help me deal with what's going
to be a rather overwhelming number of dishes
and, of course, bones.
We don't have the original recipes
so we're using the most epic cookbook of all, the internet,
to pull from a variety of sources.
For the oxtail soup, we're using Jamie Oliver's Insanely Good
Oxtail Stew recipe, which calls for five to six pounds
of oxtail, cut into about two-inch chunks.
You can ask a butcher to do this for you.
We've pre-heated a roasting pan in a 425 degree oven
and then carefully add the oxtail to it,
glugging over some olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper,
and then scooting it around a little before putting it back
in the hot oven for about 20 minutes.
While that's in there, we're going to prep our veg,
starting with two leeks.
Yours don't have to be this large unless you want
to make a lot of dumb jokes.
But you're going to trim them and cut them
in half lengthwise.
Leeks are always full of dirt, so we give these
an extra wash on the side before chopping them
into about one-inch segments.
We're also going to cut up four to five carrots and four stalks
of celery in a similar manner.
And while we're cutting, we're going
to talk about Gordon Matta-Clark's cuttings
because they're much more impressive than ours.
Gordon Matta-Clark was the child of American artist Anne Clark
and Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta.
He studied architecture at Cornell,
but his interest skewed much more
into dismantling ideas about architecture
as well as actually dismantling architecture.
During the second summer FOOD was open,
he redesigned the space by making cuttings into the walls.
And he displayed some of the elements
he extracted that fall at the alternative exhibition space
112 Greene Street that he co-founded with Jeffrey Lew.
From there, he began making bigger and more ambitious cuts.
He took a house slated for demolition in New Jersey
and literally split the thing in two,
making a huge cut down the middle
and selectively removing pieces of the foundation
to then jack it apart.
He cut into the side of Pier 52 on the west side of Manhattan.
He cut through two 17th century buildings
in Paris slated for demolition near the Centre Pompidou, which
was then under construction, creating a conical void that
opened up views into the structures from the street.
Part sculpture, part performance, part archeology,
Matta-Clark's cuttings took dead,
forgotten spaces and made them alive and poetic,
if only for a moment, revealing the uneasy divides
between public and private and the dark side
of urban development.
His work is mind-blowingly amazing.
And if you don't agree with me, we can just never be friends.
After all that, what seemed like an enormous amount of cutting
is totally doable.
And also, chopping up a few sprigs
of fresh rosemary and fresh thyme
doesn't seem so difficult either.
Strip the leaves from the stems as best you can.
Then give those a rough chop.
Get out a bay leaf, and set these aside.
We're also going to prep for our roasted marrow bones,
working from Fergus Henderson's recipe published
in "The New York Times."
For this, we're going to wash and prep some parsley
because when you're serving bones for dinner,
you must distract with a considerable amount of garnish.
Remove some of the stalks but not so many
that you seem like a crazy person.
Give some a rough chop and some more a fine chop for use later.
We'll also need two shallots, which we'll thinly slice.
We're also going to get some garlic ready for later on.
And we might as well have a side-by-side garlic prep
competition.
I have a more strategic, precise method,
while Stuart's I'd describe as a little more caveman, Cookie
Monster.
During this display of teamwork, I'll
note that FOOD Restaurant was truly
a communal effort, the co-operative energy
and labor of dancers, musicians, and artists of many stripes,
including many members of the Philip Glass ensemble.
Co-founder Caroline Goodden was an original member
of the Trisha Brown Dance Company
and said of FOOD, "I wanted to have a place
to eat, with food that I liked, that was open
when I needed it to be.
And I wanted to create a workplace
for artists that had no restrictions on how many hours
a day or days a week the artist worked so that they could be
free to suddenly drop out as needed to produce their show
and still have a job when they were through."
OK, you'll see that each of our garlic methods
are equally effective.
But if you're still feeling competitive,
you can always decide the winner by thumb war.
And let's also prep some lemon juice, taking four lemons,
rolling them to help soften them up.
And we're using a reamer to juice them.
Then pour through a sieve to remove the seeds and pulp.
And then when some mysteriously sneak through,
repeat the process.
For our stuffed marrow bones, we're
riffing off of Martha Stewart's recipe.
And while Martha would only use fresh wild mushrooms
hand-selected by her on-staff forager,
we're going to rehydrate a variety of dried mushrooms,
including porcinis and chanterelles,
by submerging them in hot water and letting
them sit for a while.
And while the recipe doesn't call for it,
Stuart went renegade and is chopping
some diced onion for what will be the stuffing for the marrow
bones.
And with that, it's time for the all-important step
of standing back and admiring all of your prep work.
Ah, isn't it lovely?
Our 20 minutes has passed, and we pulled out the oxtail
after it started to turn golden.
We'll go over to the stovetop to make it into a stew.
And we'll heat up a large ovenproof dish,
add a tablespoon or so of olive oil, and in
go our carrots, leeks, and celery.
We then add in the rosemary and thyme, the bay leaf,
and give it a stir, and let it cook for about 20 minutes,
stirring frequently.
Over on the right, Stuart is making some clarified butter
for our frog legs-- a process through which you
melt unsalted butter over low heat
to separate the milk proteins that start to gather on top.
But back to the oxtails, we're adding two heaping tablespoons
of flour, flour cloves, and give it a good stir.
To that we add a hefty cup of red wine, a 28-ounce can
of good plum tomatoes, stir, stir, and add our oxtails
into the mix.
Then, fill to cover with either boiling water or beef stock.
We're using beef stock and bring to a boil.
Over in the butter corner, Stuart
spoons off some of the milk solids
that have congregated on top and maintains it at a simmer.
When the oxtails are at a boil, cover them up and send them
into a 325 degree oven and let them hang out
in there for five hours, stirring every once in a while.
I know what you're thinking about this butter--
why are we going to so much trouble
to clarify it when it's perfectly delicious as is.
Two reasons-- Matta-Clark was fascinated
by the science of food.
Before the restaurant, he would experiment in his studio
by brewing vats of water and agar, the gelatinous stuff
from seaweed, mixing in sugar, yeast, salt, oils,
dairy products, and all sorts of stuff.
He spread it into trays and let it fester and dry into sheets.
He called these works "Incendiary Wafers" after one
unexpectedly exploded.
He also fried photographs of Christmas trees
along with sheets of gold leaf and sent them
to friends as gifts.
The second reason we're clarifying butter
is because once you spoon off the proteins
and boil off the water contained in the butter,
and after you pour everything but the last bit
through some cheese cloth, your butter has a higher smoke
point for frying those frog legs and also a longer shelf life.
In Indian cooking, this is called ghee,
and you can buy it off the shelf in many grocery stores.
All right, now is probably when you want to take a break
and have a sandwich while the oxtails are hanging out
in the oven, so I'll tell you a little more history while we're
waiting.
FOOD was part of an ecosystem of experimental art
in 1970s lower Manhattan, made possible
by the cheap rents of a Soho that was a far cry from what
it is today.
Along with the exhibition space 112 Greene Street,
"Avalanche" magazine was founded in 1968
and documented the work and writings
of this new generation of artists, whose
work was largely ephemeral.
FOOD, which placed regular ads in "Avalanche,"
became a meeting site and hub for all
of the artistic activity happening
in the area at the time.
And while it was never a profitable business,
it importantly employed and supported
a huge number of artists.
OK, guys, we're about an hour and a half from mealtime,
and we're now going to assemble the parsley salad that
will go on top of our roasted marrow bones.
Into a bowl goes a cup of roughly chopped parsley,
sliced shallots, and 2 teaspoons of capers.
Then take three tablespoons of your lemon juice,
add two tablespoons or so of olive oil, and whisk.
Set that aside and have it ready to mix with the parsley salad
right before serving.
For our frog legs provencale, we're
using a recipe from "Saveur" magazine, that's
a version of the dish served at the French restaurant La
Grenouille in New York.
La Grenouille, perhaps you know, means frog,
and you're going to need a good number of them
to make this dish for a crowd.
You can order them from a butcher
or find them in the frozen section of some markets.
Or, you could just put out a dish and hope they hop on in.
You'll need to snip apart the legs
and then cover them in milk and put them in the fridge
to soak for about 30 minutes.
I think this acts as a tenderizer,
but if it has another purpose, I'm
sure you won't hesitate to tell us.
It's back to our stuffed marrow bones,
and our recipe calls for beef marrow bones split lengthwise.
These will go into a pot of boiling water
for about 10 minutes.
While those are going, we add some of our clarified butter
to two skillets.
Into one will go some chopped onion for the stuffing,
and into the other will go two to three slices of white bread,
sliced into cubes to make croutons.
These you'll stir frequently until browned on all sides.
To the onions you'll add the rehydrated mushrooms
which you've secretly drained and diced off camera.
Then you're going to pull the marrow
bones from the boiling water and set to cool for a few moments
while you get rid of the scary bone water
and try not to retch.
When they're cool enough to handle,
scoop the marrow into the onion-mushroom mixture
and stir it until it all kind of melts together and season
with salt and pepper.
Then you go about the unsavory task of cleaning up the marrow
bones using the knives that you care least
about making more dull, hacking and pulling away the remaining
meat and tendons.
Happy Halloween, you guys.
Let's turn to some smaller, daintier legs
and return to our frogs, which we've removed from the milk,
drained, and dried on paper towels.
Season these with salt and pepper
and then give them each a light coating
of flour before arranging them in a dish
like they're a super sweet Rockettes kick
line and sing, (SINGING) "Hello, my baby, hello, my honey,
hello, my ragtime gal."
Now, it's time to fire the unstuffed marrow bones.
So we're going to take about five pounds of center cut
beef marrow bones, about three inches long each,
and arrange them on a foil-covered pan.
These will go into a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes
or until the marrow is soft and has begun
to separate from the bone.
We're getting really close now, and the oxtails are done.
So we pull them out of the oven and skim off some of the fat.
Don't worry, there will still be plenty of fat in this meal.
Set that to cool for a bit, and then we're
set up to do side-by-side frog leg frying.
Heating about six tablespoons of our clarified butter
in each of two skillets until sizzling, add the frog legs,
being careful not to crowd, and cook,
flipping once, until golden brown.
This shouldn't take more than four to five minutes.
And we overcooked ours, and they started falling apart.
Don't do this.
Cook them in however many batches
it takes not to crowd them.
And when you're done, transfer them to a platter.
You're also going to add a handful of parsley
to the mushroom marrow mixture and then toss in the croutons.
By this point, your guests have arrived
and are available to help.
Now, you're going to make a sauce for the frog legs
by discarding the old butter and adding fresh clarified butter
to the skillet, adding in a few cloves of your chopped garlic.
And stir constantly until lightly browned.
Over on the left, we're filling the marrow bones
with the mushroom-crouton filling, by the way back.
Back on the sauce, turn off the heat,
add a tablespoon of lemon juice, and season
with salt and pepper.
Then drizzle this around and on top of your frog legs.
Scatter some parsley and race it to the table.
The roasted marrow bones are now ready.
So we've pulled those from the oven
and placed them on serving dishes for the table.
We also combine our parsley salad
with the lemon vinaigrette we made earlier.
Finally, we are ready to eat, and we've
decided to do this in a communal family style,
not forgetting a big green salad and plenty of fresh bread
and butter.
Now, if all of these bone-intensive dishes
don't appeal to you, you can consider some other FOOD
dinners, like Matta-Clark's meal of live brine shrimp served
in hollowed-out eggs.
He also proposed a dinner for sculptors
by sculptors where all the utensils would be hammers,
chisels, and screwdrivers.
And Mark di Suvero proposed a dinner
that would be served through the window with a crane.
But that never actually happened.
Now, at the original bone meal, after the plates were cleared,
the leftover bones were scrubbed by musician Richard Peck
and then strung together as necklaces
by Robert Rauschenberg's then assistant Hisachika Takahashi.
They were then returned to the diners with the idea
that they could wear their leftovers home.
For this critical, final step, we
decided to invite a special guest to our bone meal--
jewelry designer Allison Ford--
to enjoy the dinner and also collaborate with us.
We could pretend like we took these bones from our dinner
and, poof, magically transformed them into perfectly clean
and dried jewelry-making material.
After we cleared the table and Allison set us up
with a spread of supplies, we all
dove into making our own necklaces
with our lovely bones.
The truth is that we tested these recipes in advance,
harvested the bones, and then spent quite a bit of time
cleaning and drying them.
There are lots of ways to clean bones.
You can consult Google, and that will be another fun Halloween
surprise.
But I think there's a reason I couldn't
find any photos of the original bone necklaces,
and my guess is that they were wet and still had gook in them.
Well, our dinner may bear little in resemblance
to the original Matta-Clark meal.
It was a supremely fun and intense, cooperative effort.
I now have a better understanding
of why FOOD Restaurant only lasted three years
with its original members as they
became exhausted with the effort and moved on to other things.
Was it art?
For some, yes.
It was part of a moment when art and artists were consciously
exiting the traditional space of the gallery to experiment
within the arena of real life.
As Caroline Goodden wrote, "It was
a beautiful, nourishing, vital, stimulating, new concept
which was a living, pulsating, hub of creative energy
and piles of fresh parsley.
Oh, and we also yielded some really impressive works
of wearable art.
The "Art Assignment" is funded in part by viewers like you
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that allows you to support creators
you like in the form of a monthly donation.
If you'd like to support the show,
check out our page at Patreon.com/ArtAssignment.
Special thanks to our grand master
of the arts, Indianapolis Homes Realty.
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