Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes.

LIVING ART

In our family, holidays are not for  - shudder - activities. Holidays are for relaxing. Ours is not the kind of  family that gets up at the crack of dawn for a hiking expedition followed by a spot of sightseeing. Instead, we prefer to immerse ourselves in Spanish culture by keeping to the Spanish hours -- that is, sleep all afternoon and stay up all night eating and drinking. Siesta is such a beautiful word, so full of lazy promise. I may call my first child Siesta. 

Sometimes, though, us kids get bored, infernally bored of creeping about our comatose parents. Reclining like the Romans and eating calamari in a haze of tinto de verano has it perks, but for the restless, shiftless London girl the novelty quickly fades.

It was somewhat counter-intuitive, then, when this summer's annual Mallorcan holiday turned into a hotbed of activity. We became obsessed with a new project, which we called 'Living Art'.

 It all started last year at the National Gallery's Leonardo DaVinci exhibition, when we noticed a striking resemblance between Cecilia Gallerani's ermine and Alice's new puppy, Inca. Inca frequently gets called the 'white rat' by those who are less taken by her. But we would argue that she looks more like a stoat, or indeed an ermine, for she is a cultured kind of dog.  

Then in the spring we came across David Hockney's 1972  piece Pool with Two Figures, part of a series of paintings by the artist involving swimming pools. This particular pool, however, looks exactly, spookily like the Mallorcan pool we spend so much time lying around. 

 It was another sign: the Californian swimming pool and the mountains in the background were so similar to the ones we knew. We flipped the mountains around using Photoshop, but otherwise everything is completely staged by us -- I told you we got bored. We sourced the brown shoes and white trousers in the market, and found the orange jacket languishing in one of the moth eaten cupboards in the old villa. 

I was cast as the man in the water and my 14-year-old sister Claudia as the man in the orange jacket, and my other sisters Rachel and Alice were creative directors. It took about fifteen minutes to get the perfect shot during which time I had to float underwater with strict instructions not to come up. Considering I nearly drowned and got hypothermia in the unheated pool in early spring, its fair to say we got slightly engrossed and overtly serious about the whole thing, which had started of as a joke and quickly became an obsessive 'project'. Much to the bewilderment of the other guests staying at the villa.

 And a few months ago we learned that a friend of a friend showed it to David Hockney, the man and muse himself!

We framed it and gave it to our dad for his birthday. I think he is still fairly bewildered.

Our cat Pushkin attempted some Living Art of his own:

It all was to lead up to our Magnum Opus, Dejeuner sur L'Herbe. Which really sums up, in a painting, how we feel at the end of two weeks of eating and drinking, with no clothes on. Stiff, bored, slightly overweight. We are all quite swarthy in skin tone, so had to enlist our friend and collaborator, Verity, to be the ivory-skinned muse.

My Photoshop skills have greatly improved since then, so I will admit this piece is subject to more than a little bit of savvy doctoring. But we are nonetheless pretty satisfied with the result. Now the summer's over - onto projects new. Oh, and, here are some (in our opinion pretty inferior) attempts that other people have done, although they are nonetheless entertaining.

--Isobel

Chicken & Green Stuff Risotto

This recipe, as you may have guessed, combines the classic risotto primavera's lightness and Summeriness (well, technically Springiness) with the creaminess and strength of flavour of chicken risotto. And you'll see from the ingredients list that it's pretty healthy, unlike some risotto recipes that use heaps of butter.

The recipe calls for carnaroli rice, not arborio. Used for risotto in most regions of Italy, carnaroli is hailed as the king of Italian rices for producing a risotto unrivalled in its creaminess, but at the same time lighter and looser than most other risotto rices. The grains are shorter and fatter than arborio, resulting in a soft - but not too mushy - risotto. It is available to buy in large supermarkets, Italian food shops and delicatessens, and it's well worth it.

Ingredients:

1 medium onion

3 ish spring onions

2-3 cloves garlic

250g carnaroli rice (not arborio - see below)

1 small glass white wine

2-3 cubes good chicken stock

250g raw chicken breast fillet

1 bag spinach

A handful of peas, just defrosted

A few leaves of basil

Olive oil

200g parmesan/Grana Padano

Salt and pepper

...and half a lemon. Woops.

Some quick preparation:

Tear the chicken fillets into small pieces.

Half-cook the spinach and then put it in a food processor, blender or hand-blender. 

Chop the onion, spring onion and basil, and crush the garlic.

Coarsely grate the parmesan onto a plate. Save some to put on top. 

Put the chopped onion etc in a large, hot pan with some olive oil (or butter if you prefer). 

In a different pan, bring the chicken stock to a gentle boil. 

Add the torn chicken to the onion pan, then add the rice, then the white wine. Squeeze your half lemon in too.Stir until all the wine has evaporated, then add a little of the chicken stock boiling water and stir for another 5 minutes.

Crush (not mash) the peas and add them to the spinach, to make a chunky puree:

And add this to your rice pan. Now, for the next 15ish minutes, gradually add the chicken stock water (which should be constantly gently boiling) to the rice pan. And do not stop stirring. 

Just when you are about to give up, the rice will suddenly begin to bind with the sauce and become soft and creamy. Now, add the grated parmesan and stir furiously. Now it's your choice when to take the risotto off the heat, depending on whether you prefer al dente or soft. 

To serve, season generously with coarse sea salt, freshly ground pepper, good olive oil and more lemon if you want it. Shave parmesan/Grana Padano on top.

I made some sculptures and took photos of them...

                                                  Click on them to make them bigger.

NEW YORK

I made a film. Don't forget to switch to 720p

- Rachel

Dreen Deuce

Its time for those horrible Ds - Detox, Diet, and (renouncing) Drinking. 

WAAAAAH

It's not going all that well. 

Our family is so god-damn enormous that we're barely finished with Christmas. We had our last Christmas lunch yesterday, Spanish style, on twelfth night. Its quite a relief, actually, that it's over. It's tiring being full all all the time.

This, to my intense relief, is what our first shop of 2013 looks like... 

Not a pig-in-blanket in sight

Now I have to say I don't believe in the word 'detox' as such - eating pomegranates and drinking green tea is not going to magically undo all the damage you've done over the festive period. 

I've read conflicting arguments, but I'm of the belief that there is no food that will detox your body for you -- you have to do it yourself, by eliminating the things that are in fact toxic. 

Those elements in abundance over Christmas are the unholy trinity of fat, sugar and alcohol. I swear, my liver hurts at the mention of booze. 

In place of eliminating all the toxic crap, it makes sense to replace it with things that are kind to your body and complexion. This smoothie tastes as nice as pie. Well, not pie, it really doesn't taste of pie at all but it really doesn't taste all that grassy.

I put in an egg white for lean protein -- I believe in egg yolks, I really do, but they do taste yuck raw, whereas egg white all blended up is invisible and tasteless. Instead, I put in a teaspoon of coconut oil. The egg and coconut oil are important additions - smoothies are notorious for giving you an insulin spike if you're not careful, and the protien and (small amount) of fat in this will knock that on the head a bit. 

Do remember that if you are trying to lose weight, you should think of this as a meal replacement and not a snack. Smoothies are often a dieter's downfall as they allow you to consume alot of calories in a very short space of time. That being said, I tried to use fruit and veg that aren't all that calorific.

I use alot of frozen stuff here because its cheap, seasonal (you always get the best of the season in the freezer and it tends to be British too), and makes the smoothie nice and cold. I would recommend going completely organic, as always, but if you can't fathom it, then at least make sure your egg is organic.

Separated at birth

1 egg white (free range, organic, and very fresh, straight from the fridge - or use that pasteurised one in a carton if you're a seasoned egg white eater) 

1 teaspoon coconut oil, just about melted

4 balls frozen leaf spinach or 3 handfuls fresh

a handful of kale, stalks removed (unless you have a vitamix, in which case leave them stalks in there)

a handful of green grapes

a juicy ripe pear

half a small apple 

coconut water (1 juicebox), or use normal water or diluted fresh apple juice

a thumb sized piece of ginger

frozen strawberries, about a cup or handful

half a lemon

Right. If you have a vitamix, you know what to do. bung it all in there.

For us mere mortals with KitchenAids,  I think it works best to blend the greens and ginger first, then add the apple and pear, blend again, then the strawberries and grapes, blend, then the egg, lemon juice, coconut water and oil. And blend it until its completely smooth and green with no distingishable bits of anything.