Stardust Memories

Do objects have emotional values?
AD:

Definitely we give them a social life and believe they have an aura. I am in communication with a police psychic at the moment and I am very interested in the power we imbue objects with. I recently went to Rome and was surprised that a lot of relics are hidden. It’s a shame-it’s a natural way for human beings to express the emotional breaks in their lives.

Artists’ commonly seem to utilise the idea of memory and nostalgia to put across their personal ideas. Can you think of a different subject/ area where nostalgia and memory are used to convey or interpret a message?
AD:

Christian Boltanski: clothes, Gerhard Richter & Luc Tuymans: newspaper articles and photographs, Cornelia Parker & Joni Mabe: alchemical objects & relics, Mark Dion in an archaeological way. I love the pseudo-scientific methodology of all of these artists.

Which of our senses is most closely linked to our memories of food?
AD:

I think it’s the texture for me on the whole that is residual, so touch. The first time I tasted coriander it made me feel something exhilarating and I still feel that when I taste it-I love it.

I have noticed a trend in today’s recipe books for ‘nostalgic’ styling, particularly in the visuals. Why do you think that this might be?
AD:

I think it’s true of cosmetics too-perhaps it encompasses two strands that we desire a yearning for a (misplaced I am sure) ‘wholesome’/organic/hand-made-with a knowing sophistication.

Do you think that food and cooking means something different today- has the significance of food and cooking changed over the years?
I suppose there must always have been aspirational aspects to food-Roman food for example-or say something like Steak Tartare-seeming sophisticated and redolent of a certain era and social status.

Do you feel that our food is being designed? If yes, how so?
AD: Yes-packaged-branded

There seem to be a great number of recipe books on the market. One might say that they are very fashionable. Certainly, food is talked about, consumed and bought in huge quantity. Why do you think there are so many cookbooks being published today? Can you account for their popularity?
AD: Maybe many reasons…
Catalogues like ‘Toast’!
Observer Food Monthly
It’s a sociable thing to do and we need to socialise
Anxiety about status perhaps?
It’s a middle class pastime partly

How do recipe books engage the reader?
AD:

For me I like to dribble when I look at one.

What makes memories come alive for you?
AD:

Dreams I think. They are very important to me. Without memory there is no way of going forward. Maurice Halbwachs talks about our need for the past to locate ourselves in the present-I agree even if this is a false past as someone like Raphael Samuel says-we may create a more glamorous past to help us cope with our own identities in the present.

HT: What drew you to it? (or them) – Can you recall how it was presented?

I often cook things that I enjoyed making as a child, not necessarily just because I want to eat them now, but because I can share them with others. It is the memory of the process itself and who I made them with that creates a fond nostalgia for that moment past. (Favourite recipes might be Brighton Pasty, a family recipe, which I made with grandma, Scampi Portokali, a Cypriot dish favoured by my mum, or homemade limeade which reminds me of Sri Lanka).
Do you cook certain dishes or enjoy particular foods because they have special meaning for you? -Could you give an example and describe its meaning for you?

AD:

Most of my childhood was loathsome but when we went on holiday and stayed at my grandparents house in the Isle of Wight I loved it. They had a cook who used to make really simple food but I still dream of it and that was the first time I had butter not margarine. I knew when I was an adult that I would always have butter and would never have to wear tights again! The other food was ham and new potatoes from their garden and a pea soup which I think was 90% chicken stock. My father was a vegan and he tried to impose this on us for years. I have only had one steak but it felt dangerous to eat it and I felt liberated! A lot of my adolescence I was anaemic and craved meat but knew it wouldn’t be worth my fathers rage if I ate it secretly.

Some food memories are not about cooking:
Do you have a favourite or most striking food memory?
AD:

Sorry got carried away above-yes loads. When we went to Edinburgh it highlighted to me how everything I usually hated was lovely in Edinburgh-like the rock. There used to be a baked potato shop called Tatties there too and I loved going there-we were hardly ever allowed baked potatoes at home as the drain of my mother’s oven was too much of a strain on the national grid.

My mum says she loves using her grandmother’s rolling pin. This Victorian piece of wood seems to have its own life story!
Are you attached to certain objects through nostalgia or memory? Could you give an example and describe its meaning for you?
AD:

Loads I think-I think other peoples maybe more than my own. I recently raided my fathers recycling bin. I hadn’t seen him for 18 years so his old papers with the crossword filled in have a strange emotional value for me.

I understand that there is a growing trend in cooking programmes on television, but does this mean that more of us cook from ‘scratch’ ingredients or are we just passively observing the ‘experts’ and so cooking has become entertainment.
Do you cook?
I occasionally cook-rarely. I am going to make bread this week-sometimes I plan something like that or to make a pudding. I am making cyanotypes at the moment and the process is chemical-but really very similar to cooking and I do get bored with it. I admire people that can cook.

Sometimes if I have a fantasy it will be to imagine cooking all the time lots of cakes and looking after babies-this is obviously a desire for nurturing I have denied in myself and probably will for a while.

I think if I had time and a lovely big kitchen and quite a lot of money I would enjoy buying food-but I would prefer leaving it in its singular state-that’s how I felt about the chemicals too really-they looked so pretty on their own the prints couldn’t help but disappoint me-the opposite of alchemy!

Do you use cookbooks to do this?
If I am at my sisters I look at hers-but on the whole I make it up often not very successfully-I should they certainly teach you new skills. I love those old pattisier books

What are your five favourite cookbooks?
Oh dear I am such a novice! I haven’t ever found the one I want-it must exist. I did find a great one in Barnes & Noble in New York-I copied the Baked Alaska recipe down and made it for the person we were staying with. My sister bought some very smelly leeks for the first course that she was making. We went to a gallery to look at a rare Joseph Cornell box, not realising it was a private home and stank their apartment out!

My ideal book would be really simple and things you could do to enhance things say-really simple fish next to…well what would accompany it really beautifully.

What is your favourite recipe? (or recipes)
Gingerbread-from someone called Bronwyn-I suppose it’s maternal substitution.

My mother is and was an appalling cook. She used to put cheap crisps in the oven till they were soggy and call them game chips

Helen Taylor M.A. Food Styling. University of Central Lancashire. Dr.J.H. Birchall [email protected] Questionnaire: Food, Nostalgia and Contemporary Cookbooks

PLEASE ANSWER ANY OF THE FOLLOWING AS YOU ARE ABLE-

Would you care to state your name and occupation?

Annabel Dover

Artist

Food is very important in my life, and food is central to many of my memories:

Do you live to eat or eat to live?

I love food and often if I am feeling depressed I think about food I would like to eat. I have tried to work out what it is exactly-it’s certainly a substitute for addressing emotions. I have noticed I instantly want to eat after an argument. I am much more addicted to (excess) food than I ever was to cigarettes. I also spend a lot of my days feeling boredom and frustration and food fulfils temporarily that desire for that gratification-that sounds more sexual than I think it is-although I think that is certainly an element of it. I recently read bits of Paul McKenna’s ‘I can make you thin’ and he mentioned how to be thin you have to stop eating when you are full-this is an alien concept to me! I think also if I gave up eating too much I might have to visit a psychiatrist-I think I would rather eat too much! I think also it’s an aspect of my life that it seems acceptable to lack discipline in-as it will not actually hurt anyone (unless of course I become morbidly obese!)

Do you buy cookbooks? – Are they old or new publications?

Not really. I look at my sisters-they all have Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s-there is a snobbery they wouldn’t have Jamie Oliver’s now although pre Sainsbury’s perhaps they would have done.

I like Elizabeth David because she was an exciting woman and I suppose there are elements of her writing that alludes to biographical details that Nigella Lawson has adopted in her books and certainly on her programmes. There was a lovely Aga book of the 30s I found at my aunts which was written in a way that almost echoed the aspirations of the soon to be developed NHS…you could see more of a social concern that might be interpreted as nanny-stateism now.

What draws you to them?

I like the idea of ridiculous food I think like a lark inside a quail inside a pheasant etc. repulsive to eat but visually beautiful to imagine-Andy Warhol’s recipes are probably not that apetising to eat. Edward Bawden’s collaboration with Fortnum and Mason highlights the magical as does the great Surrealist recipes of ‘goldfish’ soup which I think was just carrot-revolting but magical like Meret Oppenheim’s furry cup and saucer-which highlights I suppose all of those sensual texture experiences of eating. All the gold leaf and artifice of Lee Miller’s food somehow seems nobler than Fanny Cradock’s lurid mashed potato!

Max de Winter sent you a message of Facebook “Where do I know you from?”

Dear Max,

Sorry you don’t know me. I just liked your name and it is the same as the character in Daphne du Maurier’s book Rebecca. I like the idea that the character was still alive somewhere; the book starts and ends with the recollection of a lost place and a suggestion that the unnamed present day Mrs de Winter and Max de Winter are still alive.

Thank you for being my Facebook friend.

All the very best

Annabel Dover