Professor Butter Beard’s “Evening Snow at Kanbara”
“Snow, it won't be long before we'll all be there with snow
Snow, I want to wash my hands, my face and hair with snow
Snow, I long to clear a path and lift a spade of snow
Snow, oh, to see a great big man entirely made of snow…
I'd love to stay up with you but I recommend a little shuteye
Go to sleep
And dream
Of snow, snow, snow, snow, snow”
- written by Irving Berlin for the 1954 film “White Christmas.”
Snowbound. Yesterday, both Nellie and I were truly snowbound. A “snow”-icane sat over the Jersey coast for eighteen hours, swirling close to twenty inches of snow into three-to-four-foot drifts, burying all hope of escape. Not that we minded! This time, the weather team gave us enough warning to stock up on butter and sugar, dog treats, bacon and chocolate. Nellie played tug-of-war with her tail, morphed into a jack rabbit when we stepped outside, dragged me over the snow as if I were a bobsled, and then snored like a hibernating bear while I read yet another biography of Vincent.
As I journeyed with Vincent, I found myself drawn into his oil painting of a blossoming plum tree. I already knew that he was a great admirer of Japanese art. In fact, he wrote that “it made him happy and cheerful.” I read on to discover that his inspiration bloomed from Utagawa Hiroshige's “Plum Garden in Kameido.” My afternoon reading suddenly took a delightfully unexpected turn eastward.
Hiroshige was born in 1797 to a samurai family in Edo (modern Tokyo). After his parents died, around the age of fourteen, Hiroshige began to take up painting and studied for several years under the artist Toyohiro. An invitation to join an official procession to Kyoto in 1832 gave Hiroshige the opportunity to travel along the Tōkaidō route that linked the two capitals. He sketched the scenery along the way, and when he returned to Edo he produced the series “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō,” which contains some of his best-known prints including “Evening Snow at Kanbara.”
Now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the woodblock print depicts deep snow covering the slope of Kanbara in the glow of early evening. Fresh snowflakes falling on the houses, trees, and mountains create a quiet that is broken only by the imprint of the crunch of the brave travelers’ footsteps in the snow. According to the Met, this scene is almost entirely imaginary; as it rarely snows in the Kanbara area, in present-day Shizuoka Prefecture.
To create a woodblock print in the traditional Japanese style, an artist would first draw an image onto washi, a thin yet durable type of paper. The washi would then be glued to a block of wood, and using the drawing's outlines as a guide, the artist would carve the image into its surface. The artist would then apply ink to the relief with a brush (not a roller as in the Western style). A piece of paper would be placed on top of it, and a flat tool called a baren would help transfer the ink to the paper. To incorporate multiple colors into the same work, artists would simply repeat the entire process, creating separate woodblocks and painting each with a different pigment.
In 1856, around the age of 60, Hiroshige "retired from the world", becoming a Buddhist monk. Two years later he passed away (during the great Edo cholera epidemic, though it's not known if this was the cause of death), ten years before Monet, Van Gogh, Whistler, and a host of Impressionist painters became eager collectors of Japanese art. Just before his passing, he wrote the following poem:
I leave my brush in the East
And set forth on my journey.
I shall see the famous places in the Western Land.
The image of the snow-capped mountains followed me into the kitchen. I had a container of egg whites at the ready after making a delicious meal of pasta carbonara on Friday night. While I finished journeying with Vincent and Hiroshige, I slowly baked two trays of vanilla meringues, eventually dipping them into melted white chocolate and dusting them with a fresh snowfall of sparkling sanding sugar. And yes, I am quite enjoying them today, with a mug of steaming Earl Grey, as I write these thoughts and look forward to another ride on Nellie’s bobsled.
Meringue Cookies Dipped in White Chocolate
Makes 4-to-5 dozen cookies
4 large egg white (120 grams), room temperature
¼ tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla paste
¾ cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
5 ounces white chocolate (I use Ghirardelli chips – about ½ the bag)
Clear sanding sugar (or sprinkles of choice)
1) Preheat oven to 200 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment.
2) In the bowl of a standing mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites (it is very important that they are room temperature, or they will not reach full volume), the vanilla and cream of tarter until foamy and white. Increase the mixer speed to high and whisk in the granulated sugar, one tablespoon at a time. Whisk until stiff flossy peaks form. Spoon the meringue into a piping bag fitted with a star tip and pipe into your desired shape (trying to maintain a 1” diameter cookie).
3) Bake for 75 minutes. Turn the oven off and let the cookies stand in the oven with the door closed for another hour.
4) After the hour, remove the pans from the oven and let the cookies remain on the parchment while you prepare the chocolate. In a small bowl, microwave the white chocolate, twenty seconds at a time, stirring after each zap, until the chocolate has melted and has a smooth consistency. Dip the tops, or bottoms, of the cookies in the chocolate, let the excess drip off, and then replace the cookies on the parchment. While the chocolate is still warm on the cookies, sprinkle the sanding sugar or sprinkles over the chocolate and let sit on the parchment until the chocolate has cooled and fully hardened.
5) The cookies should be stored in an airtight container – but not in the refrigerator.
Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, Tokyo (Edo) 1797–1858 Tokyo (Edo)), “The Residence with Plum Trees at Kameido,” from the series “One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo” 1857, Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), “Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige),” 1887, Oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
