If you look to the right of this post you’ll see a plug for something called The Minimalist Cook and a free recipe ebook. Well, here I have to declare an interest, this is not Google or affiliate advertising, it is my wife, Meg Wolfe’s, blog- or rather one of her. blogs.

She used to be a cook with her own commercial kitchen but she had to give that up due to health reasons and is now channeling her energy into writing about cooking. She has always had a love of writing and the language and has built up years of experience in the cooking field so this was a very logical step.

That explains the cook part of the title but where, you may ask, does the minimalist part fit in? Well, we have downsized a lot recently, big barn of an energy hogging house effectively in the middle of nowhere, to a small compact, well insulated property in the middle of a town center. This was done partly through choice but, it must also be said, a lot through necessity. Anyway, to cut a long and boring story short, we both actually got to enjoy having less stuff around, spending less time acquiring stuff and more time disposing of stuff. Meg has extended this approach and is really developing the whole minimalist cooking idea.

Some who reads my rants and stuff here knows that I lean left politically and have a background in environmental biology so the whole sustainability, smaller carbon footprint intelligent consumer thing is not a huge leap.

The Minimalist Cook website obviously relates to Meg’s cooking activities. You really should enter your email address and hit the submit button on the right hand side of this page and you will get a free recipe ebook with 25 recipes that are really easy to make and some wonderful food photography to boot (my very modest contribution) on the day of release, the 21st September 2010. Anyone who doesn’t sign up by the day of release  will have to pay a still very reasonable $4-95. All that will happen if you do sign up is that you will receive newsletters approximately once a month with loads of interesting stuff and exclusive, never published before, recipes.  you will not get sales pitches and you will definitely not get emails from anyone else as we do not under any circumstances sell or give our list away.

Click here or on the image below the sign up form to download a sampler free recipe ebook with seven basic but great main course recipes. This will take you directly to the ebook, pdf file no sign ups or trial offers or  other diversions en route I promise!

Meg’s other blog, which is drawing in huge numbers of visitors and therefore becoming established very quickly, is Minimalist Woman This is a more personal look at her journey towards making do with much less and actually enjoying the process. It is easy to see why she is picking up such a large following.

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I have just finished reading the novel Spin by Canadian Sci Fi author  Robert Charles Wilson . The Novel is good old fashioned hard science fiction but with character development and a depth that is rare in the genre. Now don’t get me wrong, I am extremely old school and tend to think that characters in science fiction novels should do two things and two things only, push the narrative along and explain the sciency stuff.  What they should not do is be flawed and have emotions. Oh, and it goes without saying that they should never ever have sex.  The reasons for this is twofold, I like plot, I like stuff that makes me feel connected to the larger universe and I like stuff that makes me go wow but the main reason is that science fiction writers tend to be crappy  at doing human emotions and really really crappy at doing human sex.

And while I am in full on tangent mode one other thing, when I refer to science fiction, I mean science fiction, not horror, though Stephen King gets a pass, and definitely not anything with dragons, wizards or trolls or any characters called Elric the Bloodhunter or similar.  I remember when all of that dross conveniently had its own section in the local library so that it could be avoided by normal people. Whoever decided that it was a good idea to mix up science fiction and fantasy/ horror deserves to be disembowled by Elric the Bloodhunter.  Nowadays  finding proper science fiction amongst the aforementioned  crap is a real chore.

Anyway, back to what was meant to be a review. Spin is an amazing book. It certainly has the wow factor in spades and the main science theme was big enough and fleshed out well enough to have me doing calculations in my head about the timelines while I was going to sleep at nights. The ideas are big on all scales, time, distance, evolutionary, systems and everything else.

As hinted at earlier, Robert Charles Wilson can write people, not just adequately or well enough but superbly. Of all the characters in this book there was only one who grated a little but that was resolved well at the end. The others had me sucked in completely. Some of the relationships play on old well worn themes. The father and son ongoing  pissing competition being one example but this was handled adroitly enough not to grate and in fact added much.  Most importantly, all of the main characters were essential and the story would have been much diminished if any one of them were removed.

Affiliate Link | Spin by Robert Charles Wilson eBook

The author uses a split timeline narrative technique to good effect. This normally annoys the hell out of me, I find that I only get into one of the  narrative streams and feel deprived when I have to wade through pages of the one that I don’t like.  This wasn’t the case here, Wilson seems to have the rare ability to cut in and out of timelines at exactly the right point. The two narratives flow seamlessly, no mean feat.  The split human timeline also mirrored the big theme of the story, the two very different timelines on the Earth and in the rest of the universe.

This is the first book that I’ve read by Robert Charles Wilson and tomorrow I’ll be going to the library to get another one.

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson  is the first of a trilogy. The second is Axis and the third the as yet unpublished Vortex.

UPDATE: I have just read the first 50 pages of Axis and it is pretty good. Tentative conclusion – highly recommended. It is definitely not just a rehash that is for sure. I like the way the author has his characters  refer to things that happened in the first book in vague,  terms and not authoritative ones – this is much more realistic.

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Cubism originated in the first decade of the twentieth century. It is an abstract art form where the normally observed view is dissected by the artist and then put back together again, but with the conventions of representational art removed. Complex shapes are reduced to basic geometries, depth cues are removed, and faces which would not be visible to the observer from one position are nonetheless represented on the canvas. It is definitely one of the more academic art forms and the first branch of Cubism, Analytic Cubism, was well named.

To understand Picasso and Cubism it is important to know something about both the artist’s development and the state of art at the time.

The Evolution of Cubism

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque are credited with the invention of Cubism. Accounts differ as to whether it originally Braque’s or Picasso’s idea or whether it was a genuinely equal discovery. The most widely accepted version is that Picasso persuaded Braque to make the move from Fauvism to the new form.

Cubism did not spring from nothing though, and its roots can certainly be seen in the work of the Post Impressionists Gauguin and Cezanne, especially the latter. Cezanne was a reductionist; he stated that all of nature could be reduced to simple geometric forms such as spheres, cylinders, and cones. More importantly, he developed a style that used what can best be described as facets of color which gave his paintings a sense of more than one viewpoint. There is general agreement, however, that these works were not truly Cubist. The first true Cubist works from Picasso and Braque did not just use viewpoints that were relatively close in space, like Cezanne, but would go to the extreme of showing both the back and the front of an object next to each other and on the same canvas.

Picasso’s Formal Art Training

Picasso received formal art training from his father, starting at age seven. By age thirteen his father, a respected art academic, announced that his son had surpassed him and gave up painting. Picasso attended formal art schools but he didn’t respond well to them, possibly due to finding the work too easy, and his father was his main teaching influence. Many people assume that Picasso only worked with abstraction but this is far from the truth. His father was a hard taskmaster and emphasized the importance of copying the work of the Masters and of studying the human figure.

Blue and Rose Periods

Picasso’s working life is often broken up into artistic periods. Paintings from his Blue Period were generally pessimistic in nature and the predominant color was blue. Next came the Rose period when his paintings became warmer in tone and more optimistic. Both of these periods were characterized by being representational with little hint to the level of abstraction that was going to become the hallmark of Picasso’s works. He did gradually increase his use of symbolism during these periods and this provides a less tenuous connection to his later work.

African Period

After the Rose Period came his African or African Influenced period. The paintings from this time show a definite trend towards the Cubism which would come later. The paintings from this period possess the use of geometry and composition, as well as the palette which would carry over into Cubism, but the underpinning philosophy of the art form had yet to take shape. Analytical Cubism introduced a level of detachment and a movement away from the expressive which was a prerequisite of modern art, especially minimalism and conceptual art. Undoubtedly it was Picasso’s friendship and conversations with Braque that facilitated the jump from the largely decorative African Period to the much more substantive Cubism.

Picasso and Cubism

Picasso produced Cubist work for a decade from 1909 until just after World War I. The first three years were spent developing Analytical Cubism and the next seven, Synthetic Cubism. Synthetic Cubism was developed by Picasso and Braque along with Juan Gris. A strong argument can be made that Gris was actually the pioneer of Synthetic Cubism and Braque and Picasso the followers. Unlike the inventors of Analytical Cubism Gris tended to work with strong bright colors and often used them in unconventional ways.

Further Reading

No artist or art period can be studied in isolation from either their geography or their time. To understand both Picasso and Cubism, it is essential to know a little about the other artists working at the time and about the artists who in turn influenced them. With this in mind I’d recommend gaining an overview of Picasso, and of the following artists at the very least.

• Matisse
• Cezanne
• Gauguin
• Braque
• Gris

Wikipedia is an excellent resource and it is always enlightening to read not only the main page for each subject but also the discussion pages. Art history is no different than any other history in as much as different interpretations are always possible and the Wikipedia discussion pages give a good insight into this process.

I am Steve A. Wolfe, a visual artist and minimalist photographer.

For writings about minimalism check out my wife’s blog Minimalist Woman

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Most of the great artistic movements can be seen as either an extension of a preceding movement or as a reaction to one. Minimalism falls into both categories. It was a direct and forceful reaction to Expressionism in general and to the raw emotion and anti-intellectualism of Abstract Expressionism in particular. Minimalism was, however, firmly rooted in one overarching movement of the time and that was Modernism, which had already started a reductive process. It also provided the bridge between Modernism and Post Modernism. Put simply, it sought to do away with all external references, especially emotional and historical, and to create art that was completely self contained. Minimalism first appeared  in the 1950′s in New York as a subset of Abstract art but became a dominant trend in the 1960′s and 1970′s. Many sculptors were associated with the movement and pieces featuring large flat planes, industrial finishes and industrial materials were common. Geometry was extremely important as this represented the most pared down representation possible, a form stripped of everything decorative but still retaining its essence.  Repetition was also prominent, not only in sculpture but also in two dimensional art and also the other art form that embraced the genre,, music.  This music tended to consist of repetitive pulses or small groups of notes with changes being very gradual. Writing also had its own drive towards the minimalism. Authors tended to use fewer adverbs and adjectives and didn’t describe everything down to the last detail which allowed the reader to fill in the blanks deliberately left by the author.

Minimalism was also hugely influential in design and architecture with traditional Japanese buildings being perhaps the most dominant influence. Design, by its nature, is functional, unlike the fine arts such as music and painting which by definition have no practical job to do. Architects embraced this with such novel concepts as making a floor double as a radiator and removing internal walls to create multipurpose spaces.

For a deeper understanding of the topic I recommend reading Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author never, as far as I know, claims to be dealing with  Minimalism per se, and the work itself is definitely not a Minimalist work, but one of the main themes running through the entire work is a discussion about the Romantic world view versus the Classical world view. The former represents the surface as being all-important, i.e. the decoration, the visible, while the latter argues that the appearance of something should be determined by its function and that this is where true beauty lies. Pirsig  uses the motorcycle engine as a metaphor for the Classical world view stating that everything visible when looking at an engine exists purely as an offshoot of its function. Minimalism, however it is expressed, always comes from the Classicist viewpoint. It can appear to be a very dry academic subject, as most think of art as being about emotions and surface, but Pirsig’s novel removes much of the abstraction involved and weaves a discussion of a Minimalist philosophy using concrete examples into an book that, though very complex, is also a really good read.

I have deliberately not listed names of prominent exponents of the genre as I felt that this would make the article too disjointed and the names are easily available elsewhere.  I recommend looking up Minimalism on Wikipedia as a jumping off point as there are some extremely good articles on there written by many different people. As with any art movement there are many conflicting views, even among experts or maybe especially among experts, and the discussion pages allied to the Wikipedia pages will give an insight into some of these.

For much more about day to day minimalism check out Minimalist Woman Or if free minimalist recipes and cooking tips is more your thing Minimalist Cooking

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Not only is this a simple tuna salad Mediterranean style, but it is also an extremely healthy one. No processed ingredients are used and best of all, the top stays firmly on the mayo jar! This recipe will provide enough for several large plate servings where it is the main attraction or for many more where it is part of a larger catering operation such as a buffet. Of course if it is just for yourself then scale back accordingly. This salad is best made before going to work as the flavors really intensify while it is stored.

To make the dressing:

• 4 Tb good olive oil.
• Juice of 1 whole lemon.
• 1 Tb Dijon mustard.
• A few finely chopped tarragon or basil leaves, to taste, or 1 ½ tsp dried tarragon or 1 tsp dried basil.
• Fresh ground pepper & Kosher salt to taste.

Then Stir dressing into a salad mix made up of:

• 2 finely shredded medium sized carrots.
• 24 oz canned Albacore tuna, drained and crumbled.
• ½ red bell pepper, chopped.
• ½ small onion, chopped.
• ½ c pitted and chopped Kalamata olives.
• 2-4 oz crumbled Feta cheese.

Cover and place in fridge, preferably for several hours.

The salad can be eaten immediately after preparing but the combining of all the different flavors is the thing that really makes this dish work. Admittedly it is a little bit more involved than just slapping some mayo and the contents of a tin of tuna into a bowl and stirring in some chopped onion but your taste buds will really thank you for the small amount of extra effort.

Serving Suggestion

Serve on a bed of crisp lettuce or with half of a large star cut tomato.  To prepare the tomato just make half a dozen cuts in a zig zag pattern around the middle. Only cut part way through the tomato and when the final cut meets up with the first cut just pull the two halves apart. Scoop out the seeds and pulpy tomato, then fill with salad.

This simple tuna salad can also be used as a straightforward sandwich filling. Of course the better the bread the better the sandwich.  A wholegrain or really good artisan bread is recommended but anything without high fructose corn syrup is more than acceptable.

Wine Suggestion

Either a medium bodied crisp  rose or, if white is preferred, a medium bodied Reisling would both work well. Heavier wines are probably best avoided with this light Mediterranean style dish as they could easily overwhelm it.

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Here is something new for this site – a recipe. Not a photography food article or a political food article just a recipe for its own sake.  We had this the other evening – it tasted wonderful. For more recipes see the link at the end of his post. My wife is the cook by the way.

Baking parchment is extremely versatile. It can be used for anything from lining cookie sheets when baking scones or cookies to making small packages to bake bite sized savories in. The parchment preserves the flavors and is often a better choice than aluminum foil as it can handle acidic ingredients without the nasty chemical reaction that occurs with metals. A slice of lemon or tomato can be added prior to baking when the parchment is used. This makes the parchment method especially suitable for fish. Fish can be pretty expensive, at least around these parts, so shopping around is a must. Currently Mahi Mahi filets are can be had for a song and they can be cooked just like any other white ocean fish. It has a similar taste to other whitefish such as flounder or tilapia. Mahi Mahi is often known by its alternative name, dolphin fish although it is not related to dolphins in any way.

The parchment paper should be cut to roughly twice the size needed to cover the fish filet. Olive oil should then be brushed onto half the parchment and the fish placed, skin side down on the oil. Slivers of green onion, carrots, celery, red bell peppers, a thin slice of lemon and a sprig of thyme should be placed on top of the fish. If you are using foil rather than parchment leave the lemon slice out at this stage. A dab of butter and a sprinkling of salt and pepper should now be added. Then roll the edges of the parchment together to create a seal. The fish is now ready for cooking and should be placed in an oven preheated to 400F for approximately 20 minutes. When the fish is fork flaky it is done.

The fish can be either served on or off the parchment. A chunk of no knead bread and a simple salad make for a perfect but light main course. An accompanying glass of wine is highly recommended. A Chablis would be just about perfect or a light red such as a Pinot Noir if white wine isn’t your thing.

The parchment paper parcel method is often referred to as En papillote, literally French for in parchment. Technically although the food is baked in the oven the process is one of steaming as the food is cooked by the moisture contained in the parcel. Poultry is the other food most commonly cooked by this method.

For more about this and other very simple recipes check out my wife’s blog Minimalist Cook For a sample ebook containing 7 basic recipes check out this basic recipe ebook. Sign up for the news letter and get a free copy of the full ebook on the day of publication.

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Minimalist cooking is about simplicity. It is about reducing everything from ingredient lists, shopping trips, anxiety, social fears and more.It is about not letting these tyrannies and the greatest overarching tyrant of all, the marketer, from sucking the lifeblood out of something that should be life affirming, a source of great fulfillment and above all else fun. Remember that it is the marketer who tells you that you have to be the provider of perfection at the dinner table otherwise you are a bad parent, a failure, someone who should be shunned by strangers and disowned by your children. Haven’t got that expensive spice in the rack? Well, you’ll just have to lose a couple of hours driving to the store, guzzling gas, polluting the planet, raising your blood pressure and exhausting yourself to the point where you will enjoy neither the cooking, the eating or the socializing that should all be the highlights of a day. Alright, that was a little over the top but the point is important. We really do need to get out from under the Marketer, he is not our friend.

Banishing the marketer leaves room for all sorts of other stuff, exciting stuff like your own thoughts and decisions. The marketer would have told you that you had to have a rice cooker because that is the only way to cook rice and, more importantly, that your social group would have regarded you as an abject failure if you didn’t have one. Now you can make a decision firmly based in logic. Marketers hate logic. Are you going to be cooking rice more than once a week? If so a rice cooker would be a good purchase, once a year and it would be best to muddle through with a saucepan. It is not complicated. Incidentally, if some in your social group does regard you as an abject failure for sticking with the saucepan it is probably time to subject them to the process described.

Now, try this process with the stuff that currently takes up shelf and cabinet space in your kitchen. Do you really use that pasta strainer often enough to justify the space it takes up? Do you need fifteen saucepans and five frying pans? or a tool for every single kitchen related task that you may or may not do in your lifetime? Throw the excess out. On second thoughts don’t throw it out, give the rice cooker to your friend who does cook rice everyday and take the rest to the local thrift store.

Now, extend this process to your cooking ingredients and you are well on the way to having a minimalist kitchen. Kick out the marketer and the rest will follow. Space will appear in your kitchen as if by magic but perhaps more importantly a space will be created inside your head for you to fill as you please.

To find out much more about minimalist cooking check out Minimalist Cook and for all other aspects of minimalism, Minimalist Woman. I have been interested in minimalism for many years especially as it pertains to photography and art. Most of the images on these blogs were taken or created by me.

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The rise of minimalist cooking is changing the art of food photography. The following is a look at some of the techniques adopted by photographers to capture the simplicity and the spirit of this modern cuisine. Whether it is because of the recession or a genuine desire to downsize and simplify, minimalist cooking has become extremely popular.  Everything from expensive and hard to acquire  ingredients to rarely used, specialized utensils and equipment have been pared back to the bare minimum. Less is definitely more. Many photographers have noticed this change, either consciously or intuitively and are evolving and adapting their techniques to suit. The old sumptuous saturated glistening overfilled image just doesn’t seem to be a good match for this new approach to cooking and food in general.

The photographers who get this and have a feel for the subject have started to utilize a few specific techniques which serve to emphasize the subject matter but in a much more understated way and this article will lay out a few of these basic techniques. It is not intended to be a comprehensive photography primer and most of the techniques will not require expensive equipment. It needs to be stated though, that even a basic dSLR camera will be capable of much more flexibility than even the best point and shoot due to the amount of control available to the operator. This does not mean however that perfectly acceptable results cannot be achieved with the point and shoots, just that the range of possibilities is smaller.

Simplicity is the Key

When composing the shot keep things very simple, plain white plates and brushed steel or plain counter tops work very well. If the image needs a bit of additional color, a sprig of a fresh herb such as sage is more than enough. Shoot on a level with or just a few degrees above the food. We are used to looking down on food and, in photography, offering a fresh perspective is always a good idea as it wakes the viewer’s brain up. It also adds interesting possibilities for lighting but more about that later.

A blurred background is generally a good thing as this emphasizes the subject. This can be achieved by either using a long lens e.g. a 300ml with a wide aperture from a few feet away with a dSLR or by utilizing the macro setting on a point and shoot and getting in really close, normally within a foot of the subject. Both of these approaches have the added benefit of giving a very narrow depth of field. This means that only a small proportion of even the main subject is likely to be in focus. This concentrates the viewer’s attention even more.

The Tripod

The only piece of equipment that is essential for taking high quality food photographs, other than a camera of course, is a tripod. It may not be required for every single shot but not having one would rule out a lot of potentially good shots. The choices would be between a small  tabletop model, probably best with the smaller point and shoot camera. This would enable the tripod to be set on the same surface as the item being photographed, very useful when the camera has to be close to the food. There is a small tripod available that has flexible legs enabling it to be wrapped around objects such as  tree branches and signpost poles. This type of support would come into its own for say, picnics or barbecues. The bigger dSLR cameras tend to be too heavy for the smaller tripods  and generally require a normal sized model. The advice usually given to photographers is to buy the most expensive tripod that they can afford. I would say buy the tripod that will do the job without breaking the bank.

Whatever tripod is used always either release the camera’s shutter remotely or use the timed delay function built into just about every camera now on the market. Pressing the shutter causes the camera to vibrate so doing this off camera or giving the camera time to settle down before the shutter release makes for a much sharper photograph. This leads us to the main reason for using a tripod: the photograph can be taken in natural light, i.e. flash isn’t essential. As a rule of thumb good natural light is always preferable to artificial if the choice is between one or the other but often the best photographs use a combination of the two.

Lighting

While the above applies to food photography in general  there are specific lighting approaches that give a more minimalist feel. The use of a very strong  back light is one such approach. The best source is a window that occupies the entire background. This will give a very bright background with any colors reduced to pastels and objects such as trees, cars or other buildings reduced to abstract shapes. Now if this were the only light source used the food itself would be silhouetted and appear far too dark so a little fill light is needed. This is a blast of light from the camera’s flash that is not as powerful as it would be if there was no ambient light but is powerful enough to illuminate the main subject. Point and shoot cameras generally have a setting that automates this process while a little more experimentation may be required with dSLRs and flashes.

A couple of quick points about lighting that applies to all photography. Direct light is harsh and produces heavy sharp shadows. I think that it is safe to say that in all minimalist food photography this is a bad thing so we need to soften the light. This applies to both natural and artificial light. With expensive off camera flashes a small diffuser that fits over the bulb is usually enough. In the case of smaller cameras with built in flashes a little ingenuity goes a long way. If the flash can be covered with a piece of semi transparent clear plastic or even a piece of greaseproof paper results can be improved dramatically. The worse light source for photography is the small built in flash units on cheaper cameras. As for natural light, direct sunlight is to be avoided which is why a North or south facing window is best. If direct sunlight is the only option then a semi transparent plastic shower curtain attached to a frame of plastic piping makes for a great diffuser.

The Computer

Of course the process does not end with pressing the shutter. Once the session is finished, or even during the session, the images are uploaded to a computer and edited. Usually the editing consists of little more than a bit of sharpening, a slight color correction or a minor crop. It is possible to use the computer for just these technical chores but, with a little imagination, the computer, can become a creative tool in it’s own right. A minimalist approach to photography requires an awareness of what is essential to the image and what is incidental. It is often possible to lose information by increasing the exposure at this stage, often an increase of two thirds to a full stop can really make an image pop. Part of the reason that this is so effective is because it makes dull and off  whites bright. This effect is often used in fashion photography but works equally well with food.

Technique and Eye

There is no great mystery regarding what makes for great minimalist food photography. The best advice, as with all types of photography, is to find images that you like which were taken by others, see which techniques were applied, then practice. Hopefully a combination of good technique and a practiced eye will produce something unique. The following techniques work well for me: diffuse natural light from behind the subject and fill flash to fully illuminate the subject; a low point of view, get close to the same level as the food; blur the background and aim for a small depth of field; on the computer, sharpen the image a little, crop and color correct if required. Above all, experiment and have fun. One day I may be practicing and writing about a technique that you have discovered.

For more about food photography and minimalist cooking including examples of my photography check out my guest post on my wife’s blog Minimalist Cook. I have been fascinated by minimalism for many years, especially as it pertains to photography and the arts. For more about minimalism in general and additional examples of my camera work check out my wife’s other blog Minimalist Woman.

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Download The Minimalist Cook from this page

she used to have her own commercial kitchen but has had to stop baking due to health reasons. She has always enjoyed coming up with new recipes and writing so recipe ebooks and blogging is a very natural career move for her. Me? – I do the photography and the layout.

Anyway, enough waffle, here is the first installment of her plans for world domination, a free 7 recipe ebooklet with simple but extremely tasty main course dishes. The photographs are, of course wonderful, but I’m biased.

The recipes include simple roast beef, easy roast chicken, and a chicken and pecan salad, tuna salad, a really good bean salad and the best chile I’ve tasted.

The Minimalist Cook

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