Feast of color

Artist’s combination of art, recipes yields delicious results

Patricia West-Barker | The New Mexican

12/9/2008 - 12/10/08

"Creativity is all of life's actions," says artist Beth Surdut's Web site.

Surdut moved to Santa Fe from Florida in June, she says, initially to do a series of drawings of the ravens that populate the area.

"Raven invited me to come and I listened," she says.

An entry on her blog expands that story. "I saw no ravens in my three years of river paddling and bird scouting in Florida," she writes, "but once I started drawing Raven on paper, a large crow came to see me. Always chased by a noisy escort of mockingbirds and blue jays, Crow would perch on the turquoise-colored wood railing of my front porch to watch me draw. If he couldn't find me, he would caw and dance on the little tin roof covering back stairs. I'd come out and he'd cock his head to get a good look. That bird never missed a day for weeks."

While she was sketching the birds — a new medium for the seasoned artist — Surdut visited the Santa Fe Farmers Market, where the piles of fresh vegetables inspired another series paintings that she calls "Art from the Kitchen — painted and served by Beth Surdut."

An inveterate traveler, Surdut had visited farmers markets all over the world — she lists the Middle East, Bali, Jamaica, the Florida Keys and Gulf Islands, Puerto Rico, Hawaiian Islands and Australia among her major influences — but it wasn't until she spent time at the Santa Fe Farmers Market that she began this shimmering series of food-focused paintings on silk.

The series of paintings may be new to Surdut, but cooking is not.

"I got the idea for Art from the Kitchen from looking at the piles of beautiful veggies at the farmers market," Surdut says, "and thought, 'Why not paint the major ingredients that make up the recipes I was creating to use them?' "

It started with the beets, she says. "They were just so beautiful. Someone will say, 'I don't like beets,' and then they all but lick their plates (when they taste them prepared this way)."

Grilled peaches with honey were followed by a recipe (and a painting) of coconut custard steamed inside a squash — "something more exotic, more multisensory than pumpkin pie," Surdut says.

The recipe that accompanies the painting she calls Squash Match was inspired by her travels in Indonesia, she says. "I enjoy trying new things when traveling, bringing them home and making them fit into my life here — and for someone newly arrived from Florida, New Mexico might as well be a foreign land — in all the good ways," she adds, laughing.

One of the unusual features of Surdut's kitchen series is that each painting includes a hand. "Hands are essential to cooking," the artist says — and her hands are busy dripping honey, breaking an egg, squeezing a lemon.

Surdut is selling the original paintings as well as color prints. She would love to turn the series into a book of recipes and images, she says, or a series of notecards. She is also open to commissions from local chefs or home cooks who would like her to create images for their signature recipes.

Still, Surdut says, she is not a food painter (or a mermaid painter, referring to an earlier series) or even a silk painter per se. "I'm a creative person who sees things that say, 'Pick me!,' " she says — like the ravens that lured her to New Mexico and the vegetables that brought her kitchen and studio together.

Surdut's résumé includes product design (custom textiles, clothing and other goods for private clients, department stores and museum shops); nonfiction writing for newspapers, magazines and radio; and a grant-supported oral-history project that generated a CD of 20-plus stories told by an 85-year-old woodworker and teacher, Walter Harrod.

"Whenever I do a painting," she says, "I'm thinking about what the next step can be in terms of products." Canvas bags, which she sees as both beautiful and utilitarian, are one example of a potential painting-to-product shift. "Now that we live in a society that has come to its senses about bagging, the obvious next step is canvas bags," she says.

The artist's latest commission is a cover for the Winter issue of Edible Santa Fe magazine. Called Gift of the Corn Mother, the painting features all the historically important regional plants that have fed generations of Northern New Mexicans. (The magazine is available free in natural food markets, the Santa Fe Farmers Market, and other locations around town.)

Surdut sees no division between work and play, between writing and painting. "Everything I do affects everything else I do," she says. "My paintings of food can stand alone or have recipes to go with them."

Surdut believes everyone is creative, "although for some those paths are not necessarily fostered.

"I'm lucky I was given the gift to express myself verbally and visually," she says — and in the kitchen, we would add.

For more about Beth Surdut and her art work, visit surdut.blogspot.com or www.bethsurdut.com. To purchase artwork or discuss a commission, send an e-mail to info@bethsurdut.com or call 978-793-1062.

Recipes

"I used to ride a big 16.2-hand thoroughbred named Zeke, an unlikely name for an elegant ex-race horse. I'd bring him carrots and apples," Beth Surdut wrote in a recent e-mail to explain the name of this soup. "As I met other beasts around the barn, I started bringing more treats. So, as I gathered ingredients for this soup, I thought about how we move toward our goals like a donkey going after a carrot on a stick. If our perseverance is rewarded, we get to eat the carrot soup. And then we want more. So I add squash and spice. I ended up breaking my ankle at that barn," she said. "Nothing so grand as flying over a fence. No, I tripped over a sleeping dog while I was carrying two heavy buckets of feed."



THE DONKEY'S SOUP

(Serves 4)

2 carrots chopped

1 rib celery, chopped

1 tablespoon butter

1 curvaceous butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, chopped

1 tart green apple, peeled, cored, chopped

(squash and apple should be at a 3 to 1 ratio)

3 cups vegetable broth

Pinches of nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, turmeric, cardamom

2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon ground fennel

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon garam masala

3/4 cup toasted cashews



Combine butter, onion, celery and carrots in large saucepan. Cook for 5 minutes. Add squash, apple and broth. Bring to boil. Simmer for 10 minutes or until squash is soft. Purée. Add spices to taste.

Note: Spices grated or freshly crushed will make your senses glow, but if your spice cupboard is lacking, a tablespoon or more of curry powder will suffice.

Sprinkle cashews on top.

* * *

In late summer, Surdut wrote, "The New York Times recently proclaimed that beets are the new spinach. In celebration of that, using produce from the Santa Fe Farmers Market, I painted my artistic and culinary interpretation of my beet recipe that makes grown men lick their plates."



BEETS ME

Golden beets, red beets or a mixture of both

Mâché or baby arugula (just a few leaves per serving)

Crème fraîche or Greek-style yogurt

Honey to drizzle

Fresh lemon juice

Separate plates



Remove greens, clean and cut beets into quarters. Steam till easily pierced — about 8 minutes. Cut into bite size pieces

Prepare a bed of yogurt or crème fraîche on plates. Sprinkle with a light layer of greenery. Arrange beets on top.

Mix honey and fresh lemon juice to taste and drizzle delicately over beets and yogurt.

Serve beets warm or at room temperature.

* * *


SQUASH MATCH

(Serves 4)

1 Japanese pumpkin (kambocha) or squash with low water content and large cavity (or smaller squashes for individual servings)

5 eggs

1 cup coconut milk

1/3 cup coconut palm sugar or white sugar (depending on amount of sugar used, this dish
can be sweet or savory)

Pinch salt

Pinch cinnamon

Pinch cardamom

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Steamer large enough to hold squash above the water, and enough water to last for 45 minutes


Cut a circle around the squash stem to make a lid. Set that aside and clean out seeds and pulp.

In a bowl, beat the eggs with a fork adding coconut milk, salt, cinnamon, vanilla and palm sugar. Pour mixture into squash.

Place in a steamer with squash lid next to, not on, the squash. Cover and steam for 45 minutes. Test custard with a fork. If runny residue, cook longer.

Remove squash from steamer and let cool. Replace top for presentation.

To serve, you may cut the entire squash like a pie or, if you use smaller sugar pumpkins, serve individually or cut each in half to serve two people.

Note: For a delightfully silken custard, do not use “lite” or “light” coconut milk. Very granular sugar substitutes will also negatively affect the texture.