Palette to Palate

We are fond of "artisty" cookbooks.  Collections of recipes from people who are not cooks, but may have played one on TV, or written about a fork, or other such endeavors.  In 1978, the Guild Hall organized a group of Hamptons artists to contribute a recipe, accompanied by a sketch, to a cookbook. 

The result was the formidable Palette to Palate: The Hamptons Artists Cookbook.  A quick glance and the reader will find the names of artists that are universally known and many who are universally unknown. 

This type of book is always a pleasurable if oddly curated affair.   There are always the less-than-famous folks bolstering the mega-famous.  There is the oddly fabulous recipe, like family cake recipes or goulash from the 12th century and then there are canned soup and crackers, not Warhol's as one might expect.   Warhol had an easy out for the book.  He simply chose a black and white version of his hand colored recipe from 1959's Wild Strawberries, his cookbook with Suzie Frankfurt.

 Another of the very famous is Willem de Kooning.  My idea of existentialist hell is being trapped in a never ending gallery of de Kooning paintings with Muzak playing the entire atonal works of Arnold Schoenberg.  However, you have to love this recipe.  It is a sauce and a paint binding agent all in one.*

Koo's Sauce

(A Family Recipe)

1/2 pint heavy cream, whipped
1/2 pint fresh mayonnaise
2 ounces cognac
2 ounces sherry

Stir well.

Add tomato catsup until pink.

If thin, may freeze for half an hour.

A sauce and a paint binding agent all in one, we just love cookbooks like Palette to Palate.



* OK, technically, de Kooning only used the mayo part as a binding ingredient, but we couldn't resist the idea of making a sauce, pouring it over fish and then mixing it into paint. It is so very Hamptons.