During January 2013's Chef's Table excursion, I picked the artwork: "Family Concert" by Jan Steen.
Jan
Steen was a Dutch painter of the 17th century while the "Family
Concert" is an example of genre painting which is a scene of everyday
life.
At first glance one would think that this was
something of a scene of a fun family affair, and I would tend to agree
until I started to really look at the painting in detail. There is a lot
of disconnect going on in this particular painting... lots of harmony
and chaos thrown together.
Very much like a traditional family scene... so that was my inspiration... harmony and chaos:
A lover of the Dutch Baby Pancake, I decided to use that as my basis and popped that in the oven to cook for a while...
From here, I decided that I loved the idea of
creating a quiche that I found a simple filling / recipe for a
traditional quiche and changed things up to use ingredients that are
probably more prominent in Dutch cooking as opposed to French (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/spinach-quiche/).
I did a couple of test runs which provided very good
results and the one presented at the Chef's Table had a bit of a
"souffle" feel to it, which just added to the "organized chaos".
All in all this felt like a win in many levels...
but not at all perfected... perhaps with a few tweaks here and there I
would be happier with the results, but hey, that's the perfectionist in
me ;-)
