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throughout history food has served a
subject matter inspiration and of course
sustenance for artists food has also
been the art on a number of occasions
today we are exploring the gastronomic
adventures of a most distinctive
distinguished and delightfully deranged
artist known round the world by just two
syllables
Dulli we're working with a reprint of
Dolly's 1973 cookbook laden ADA gala
named after the extravagant dinner
parties he would host with his wife and
muse gala there's an introduction to
this approach to eating and entertaining
or de Linnaean gastro aesthetics by
Dolly's associate and hype man piya room
again there follows a caution that the
book is quote uniquely devoted to the
pleasures of taste if you are a disciple
of one of those calorie counters who
turn the joys of eating into a form of
punishment
it says close this book at once it
features 10 chapters of elaborate menus
and recipes drawn from the leading
French chefs of the famed Paris
restaurants of the day such as Maxine's
La Serre and la Tour de Jong it's
chock-full of sumptuously 70s food
photography and fantastical
illustrations by Dali while many of the
recipes are mighty difficult for a home
cook to attempt or contain hard to
source ingredients we found one recipe
that seemed to capture the right level
of de línea NEX s while also being
within the realm of possibility Bush of
crayfish and Viking herbs from famed
Paris restaurant la Tour de Jong open
since 1580 - not without its challenges
to be sure they explained in small print
above that after giving us this recipe
the chef decided that he wanted to keep
the exact ingredients a secret we
present the recipe anyway for its
reading pleasure so we're gonna piece
this together as best we can the recipe
asks us to prepare a few may the French
term for fish stock but gives no amounts
so we're also using this quick and easy
fish stock recipe from Daniel grit sir
that's posted on serious eats we're to
start with two pounds of fish bones and
heads of lean white-fleshed fish like
snapper or bass which I called a local
fish market to request they said they
could get grouper for me which I
accepted but after unwrapping
I realized quickly it wasn't phone so
much mostly skin and grouper flesh with
little tiny pin bones in it not ideal
but since they didn't charge me and we
live nowhere near the ocean I can't
really complain so let's pretend these
are fish bones and cover them with cold
water as we're asked stirring in two
tablespoons of kosher salt and letting
them stand for an hour to rinse away any
areas of blood in our hypothetical bones
as our fish bits soak unnecessarily
we're gonna prep our veg upping the
amounts from the recipe so we yield more
stock and try to make up for our lack of
bones
first we dice a yellow onion then a
large fennel bulb followed by three
leeks which we have lengthwise and gave
a good rinse before mincing next up four
stalks of celery diced and then four
cloves of garlic which we give a good
whack remove the little green sprouts
since they're supposedly bitter but it
probably doesn't matter and then roughly
chop we're gonna go ahead and drain and
rinse our fish parts since there are no
bones really from which to remove blood
and then head over to the range to heat
two tablespoons of olive oil in a large
stockpot in go all of the veggies which
will stir until they begin to soften
after that in goes our fish which we
stir around a bit and then add in two
cups of dry white wine after this we
move back to the original dali non
recipe recipe which along with white
wine calls for vermouth we add half a
cup and cognac which we don't have so
we're gonna sub in some less fancy
brandy this might be an excessive amount
of alcohol for a stock but it seems to
Linnaean and is gonna cook off anyway
when it begins to steam we add in water
to cover it all and then in goes parsley
tarragon dill this is the biking part
and then salt and precisely 10
peppercorns the whole thing is going to
be ruined if it's not exactly 10 as we
bring this all to a bare simmer and let
it cook for about 20 minutes it's time
to get to the why of all of this and
learn a bit about its instigator
Dulli was born in figitus Spain in 1904
with this really long name that I'm
going to share on screen rather than
mispronounced in Catalan after his
expulsion from the Academy of Fine Arts
in Madrid where he befriended Luis
buñuel and Federico Garcia Lorca young
Dali escape to Paris
met Picasso
also the founder of Dada Tristan Tzara
there he contributed to surrealist
publications and was welcomed into the
surrealist ranks by Andre Breton after
the success of his shocking 1928 film
Ashiya and Alou Delhi made the film in
collaboration with buñuel basing it on
images from their dreams a hand crawling
with ants from dollies and from buñuel's
a cloud slicing the moon in half like a
razor blade slicing through an eye
informed by Freud's then new
psychoanalytic theories the surrealist
were attempting to explore the depths of
the subconscious through writing and
visual art rejecting the rational and
tapping into the powerful thoughts and
desires and dreams that lie beneath we
know some people who made a cool video
about it that you should check out
Delhi's name became synonymous with
surrealism although they would give him
the boot by 1934 and he contributed some
of the group's most memorable images and
concepts including his paranoia critical
method a process he used to systematize
confusion deliberately disorienting his
state of mind in order to look at the
world in a new way bringing together
disparate images that he would later
paint calling them his hand-painted
dream photographs and disparate objects
as well in the summer of 1929
Dulli had Met Gala the then russian-born
wife of artist Paul Ella warred and
within a year the two were inseparable
and married by 1934 without gala
Dulli said later in life he would be at
the bottom of a pit full of lice and
drops of melted wax the couple moved to
New York to escape World War two and
their Dolly's notoriety ballooned to
even greater proportions in 1948 they
returned to port II got Spain where they
spent most of the next 30 years except
for winters spent in fine hotels in
Paris and in New York City
the couple was known for their opulent
imaginative dinner parties attended by
many celebrity guests and uh Leigh's
work continued all the while expanding
from painting to jewelry fashion
furniture and a dream sequence for a
Hitchcock film by the time of the
cookbook he was a household name as well
known for his antics as his art now that
it's simmered long enough were
to skim the scum off the surface of the
stock which I presume you might have
more of if you actually have bones in
your broth after scum skimming you'll
pour the whole thing through a fine mesh
strainer and push through to make sure
you're extracting as much flavor as
possible
you can now discard everything but the
stock or do as I did and pull out the
fish to feed to your dog we're gonna
pour the stock through the strainer one
more time as we put it back in the
stockpot to make sure we got out any
stray bits which it turns out we do have
now that that's ready it's time for a
new segment on art cooking and for it
you're going to need a very special
kitchen implement a box cutter because a
mystery box has arrived folks and I am
going to unbox it oh and make sure
you've got your stock simmering which I
had forgotten but back to the box which
I've carefully opened to find no
messages or instructions there is a bag
but I can't seem to find where it
originates a wise person would have
maybe made a cut in the bag but I did
not I just sort of slid the contents out
and soon realised my folly oh there's
the opening it's the live crayfish of
course which were no mystery to me
really since I ordered them in advance
from a crawfish farmer in Louisiana and
tied this whole shebang around their
availability and arrival but while the
contents were not a mystery they were
nonetheless surprising not only in the
way they so dramatically unfurl from the
box but also how lively they are no
doubt because I just shocked them out of
their cold slumber as we attempt to get
this situation under control
I start to feel a tremendous amount of
guilt for what I'm about to do which
reminds me that Dolly was raised by a
devoutly Catholic mother and once blamed
their religion for his feelings of guilt
surrounding sex he initially followed in
the footsteps of his atheist father
shocking many with his scandalous
portrayal of corrupt priests in Ossetia
and Alou and because of another 1929
work he's so delicately titled sometimes
I Spit with pleasure on the portrait of
my mother the Sacred Heart but by 1949
Dulli had drifted back to the church
even having a private audience with Pope
Pius the 12th in 1949 who blessed his
recent painting depicting gala as the
Virgin Mary dally considered himself a
religious mystic reinterpreting
Christianity through the lens of modern
science his paintings from the 50s
explore this position which he called
nuclear mysticism and follow a classical
style influenced by Italian Renaissance
masters I'm distracting of course from
the matter at hand which is the terrible
reality that I have to dispatch these
crayfish as quickly as possible
releasing them into the indiana winter
would not be wise I am reminded of David
Foster Wallace's brilliant 2004 essay
consider the lobster in which he
confronts the brutal reality of lobster
death and while these are not lobsters
they're freshwater cousins and while I
eat animals all the time
I nonetheless feel sorry and seek
repentance for my sins Dolly's recipe
has poached the crayfish in the broth
for 20 minutes but to make this faster
we set up additional pots of boiling
water and accomplish our feat in batches
then we pull our cooked crayfish and
allow them to cool we're instructed to
chill them overnight so we wrap them up
put them in the fridge and break for the
day 24 hours later our crayfish are cool
we're feeling chipper and we're ready to
assemble this sucker we're gonna start
with the topper and you'll need a nice
ripe December tomato a lemon and a
truffle first we cut the lemon across
the middle in a zigzag pattern like the
picture and then do the same a little
less successfully to remove the stem
portion of the tomato we ordered some
whole black truffles preserved in salt
because the price was right and they
were the best reviewed truffles that
were too insanely expensive we picked
out the largest one threaded it onto a
metal skewer we didn't have one with a
fancy silver finial like the picture
followed by the tomato and then lemon
now we set that aside and put on our
serious face to figure out the
engineering of our crayfish Bush
starting with a platter followed by a
bowl at letoure Dajjal in Paris all of
this would be silver of course and then
I weight down the bottom with a bag of
raw rice one bowl facing down and then
another facing up into that one I put a
styrofoam topiary cone which I've
wrapped in plastic
something I'm positive did not happen at
Latorre Adarsh all but heck I then fill
the base of the bowl with the smaller
crayfish and then when I reach the lips
start to use the bigger guys and let
their claws hang over the side is in the
I stack and stack following the picture
to the best of my ability phew
this is hard work guys I'm getting warm
it's a good thing I have on my all art
was once contemporary art assignment
t-shirt available for purchase at
dftba.com but back to work I add in some
curly parsley and continue my stacking
then use toothpicks to fix the crayfish
to the cone I'm deeply curious how they
accomplish this the restaurant in a way
that would be pleasant for the eating
process anyway Dulli is quoted in the
cookbook as saying in fact I only like
to eat what has a clear and intelligible
form if I hate that detestable degrading
vegetable called spinach it's because it
is shapeless like liberty the opposite
of spinach is armored
I love eating suits of arms in fact I
love all shellfish food that only a
battle to peel makes it vulnerable to
the conquest of our palate the book is
rife with such descriptions of Dudley's
approach to gastronomy which he
considers a high art and calls quote the
most delicate symbol of true
civilization with this cookbook Dulli
hoped to present to us not the usual
drab work of cookery that field
earmarked by mediocrity and
characterized by having been reduced
until now to its bare physiological
attributes but instead a new world
revealed to us in a witty shower of
intellectual exuberance and Dionysia
kubilay ssin for as ridiculous as this
crayfish tower might seem as I
constructed it my feelings of guilt for
these creatures lifted instead of being
dumped on a table covered in newspaper
which has its merits to be sure these
crayfish are being presented in a grand
and celebratory manner showing off their
magnificent suits of armor
this is food taken very seriously Dulli
is quoted in the book as saying i know
with ferocious exactitude what I want to
eat gastronomy takes on a spiritual
dimension for dolly the book compares
the creation of this high cuisine to a
ritual that quote Sublime's and
transcends the profane into the sacred
events into rituals ingestion digestion
assimilation into liturgy
transubstantiation Holy Communion and
mass it goes on but is perhaps
best summarized by this statement by the
artists the sensual intelligence housed
in the tabernacle of my palette beckons
me to pay the greatest attention to food
this process and this object are truly
ridiculous it's not necessary to boil
your crayfish and fish broth and
construct them in a bush with a truffle
on top in order to enjoy them but I did
enjoy them and I enjoyed this process
tremendously
Dulli was 68 when he published this book
and a larger-than-life figure a master
of self-promotion a quarter of
controversy derided by his critics as
having peaked in his youth and
descending into commercialism and greed
but the mythos of Dahle and the reality
of Dahle are presented in this cookbook
as one here we are granted access into
his world we paid the greatest attention
to food and the results are triumphant
transcendent and positively Dolly Ness
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