Cubanismo!

The Cuban artist Carlos Estévez believes “that works of art...are men’s supreme effort to conquer the universe.” Mr. Estévez, who was born and educated in Havana and still works and lives there, has a show up at the University of Buffalo Art Gallery called “Images of the Thought”. Earlier this month, we had the privilege of catering his opening reception.

The reception brought 200 people to the gallery, which is on the Main Floor of the UB Center for the Arts. As the guests arrived at 5, Mr. Estévez went through the galleries and briefly explained each work of art. He works in a wide array of mediums, from drawings to ceramics to painting to installation art. He has developed a distinctive visual lexicon that owes something to primitive mythology and cosmology as much as 19th and 20th century science. Human figures are prominently featured in his work; from a distance his canvasses, which have a somewhat neutral palette, resemble old-fashioned medical charts, like those used by palm readers or phrenologists. From mid-range to up close, the details in his work have the whimsy of Cornell, as well as the mandala abstraction of Kandinsky and Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes.

After Mr. Estévez finished explaining the exhibition, we started serving a buffet of Cuban specialties. We offered homemade beef empanadas, grilled eggplant on skewers, and plantain chips with mojo sauce, which is a light-textured, spicy citrus dressing, like a vinaigrette, that is common throughout the Caribbean (and allegedly originated in the Canary Islands). We made miniature version of the traditional Cuban sandwich with roasted pork loin, ham, mustard, and dill pickles grilled between bread. Lacking the necessary plancha that gives the sandwich its characteristic, panini-like flatness, we used a grill pan and weighted the sandwiches down under a baking sheet with a heavy, water-filled pot. Hundreds of guava-filled pastellitos were assembled and baked in advance by hand, and we fried up an enormous batch of savory, crunchy bacalaitos, a salt cod fritter. Without access to a good Cuban beer, we poured Corona and white wine and other soft drinks. We were pleased when the artist and many other commented on how authentic the food was; a Cuban émigré even mentioned that the bacalaitos were as good as she or her mother could have made.

“Images of the Thought” is up at the UB Art Gallery, on the UB campus in East Amherst, until mid-February 2010.

The National Bird

Thanksgiving Week reminds us that for several years back around the turn of the millennium, we prepared the holiday meal for members of the McCormick family, the Illinois-based clan descended from the early 19th century inventor of the mechanical reaper. Over the past two centuries, various McCormicks went on to prominent roles in American life, including Chicago politics and journalism. We knew Matt McCormick, who worked in high-end Washington, D.C.-area real estate, and over the years, he engaged us to cook and serve the traditional holiday meal in various residences in Georgetown, Kalorama Heights, and the Embassy Row areas for his parents and other family members.

After several days of preparations, as the guests entered the media room/lounge of Mr. McCormick’s residence, our assistant served Pimm’s Cups, Campari-and-sodas and Oysters Rockefeller. (The main event was adult-oriented; various nannies looked after the children.) Around four the adults moved the dining room and the huge, circular glass-topped table. Mary McCormick, Matt’s mother, oversaw the table setting, which included Royal Worcester china, Christofle silver, and Waterford crystal. Fresh flowers and votives completed the ambience while classical music piped throughout the house. At each place was a small, hollowed-out pumpkin with its lid. Then our work really began.

We’d prepared a soup with cooked fresh pumpkin, chicken stock, spices and cream. We called it a bisque although it wasn’t thickened with rice. Bringing the bisque just to the boiling point (so it would stay hot but didn’t curdle), we poured it into an enormous, hollowed-out pumpkin set on a ceramic serving platter. After pouring white wine for the first course, our assistant removed the lids from the pumpkins at each place setting, propping each at a just-so, Martha Stewartesque angle. We followed behind, lading piping hot soup into each. The assistant followed with a silver dish of homemade sage croutons.

After the guests finished and our assistant cleared and reset for the main meal, the two of us circled the table with platters of the traditional meal. One year we carved at table, but mostly we offered a heaping platter of sliced turkey or turducken with homemade cornbread or cornbread-and-oyster stuffing with individual hollowed-out orange cups of fresh cranberry-orange relish. The assistant followed with mashed Idaho potatoes—the McCormicks insisted on Idaho spuds put through a ricer—and giblet gravy. We continued to alternate with service of the various side dishes, including Grandma McCormick’s creamed corn pudding, mashed sweet potatoes baked en casserole with Bourbon and pecans, and fresh French-cut green beans with sautéed fresh mushrooms and a light béchamel. Once the entire menu was served, the assistant took over in the dining room with wine service—Mr. McCormick was fond of the wines from the Bourgogne region—while we refreshed each of the platters and quietly returned them to the table so the guests could help themselves to seconds.

Desserts included traditional pies with homemade vanilla bean ice cream and fresh whipped cream, served from the sideboard onto varicolored Limoges china plates with pewter scrollwork (which had to be washed by hand). Once the guests finished with dessert, some two hours after the start of dinner service, they adjourned to the living room for espresso-strength coffee brewed and poured from a silver coffee service, and served with rock candy sugar stirrers; Bigelow-brand teas were offered from a passed caddy.

We particularly remember that by Mary McCormick’s request, we passed assorted See’s Chocolates on a silver tray. See’s isn’t as well-known in the Eastern United States as elsewhere, and in certain circles the service of a domestic chocolate product might even be frowned upon. The late Claudia Cohen, for example, insisted on candied ginger and truffles from the famed Maison du Chocolate in Paris, and on the East Coast there are certainly better-known artisanal chocolatiers. See’s, however, uses E. Guittard chocolate—another Bay Area product—which is couverture-quality. This means that the chocolate has a higher percentage of cocoa butter, giving the end products more sheen, a mellower, creamier taste, and the distinctive “crack” when broken. See's Chocolates achieve a marvelous balance between American and European elements...much like that first Thanksgiving did way back in the early part of the 17th century.