Professor Butter Beard’s “The Starry Night”
“This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” – Vincent van Gogh
Earlier this week, I was driving home with Nellie at 10pm along Ocean Avenue absorbing the sound of the waves while jazz played on the radio. We had just finished a photo shoot for “Much Ado About Nothing” and Nellie was lolling her big head outside the window with her tongue and ears flapping in the salty breeze. She had exhausted both herself and the actors who chose to challenge her to races through the cemetery campus. They lost. I let her enjoy the wind, while I, out of the corner of my eye, witnessed the moon and stars’ reflection flash dancing on the water.
Vincent van Gogh also witnessed the stars’ dance from a window. Although, his window was in the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, in southern France, where he sought relief from his emotional suffering while continuing to create art. As a patient, he lived well in the hospital and was granted many more freedoms than any of the others receiving treatment. He was given freedom to leave the hospital grounds (with supervision) and he was encouraged to paint, read and write within his own private room and studio. Officially, he had been diagnosed with epileptic fits and advanced paranoia, but to the doctors, it seemed his mental health was recovering. Unfortunately, he relapsed and fell into disturbing hallucinations and overwhelming thoughts of suicide. His art returned to darker tones with deeply energetic brushstrokes plowing through dense layers of paint.
“The Starry Night” was created during this dark spell and is based on van Gogh’s actual view of the night sky as well as his imagination, memories and emotions. The gorgeously rich blue sky appears turbulent, even anxious, with intensely swirling whirls of pattern that seem to roll across the canvas like powerful waves. The sky is lit with two glowing spheres, which according to MOMA, represent the crescent moon and Venus, the morning star. But it is the soul of the spinning stars that brings us back again and again to this work of art. “The sight of the stars always makes me dream,” van Gogh once wrote. “Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star.”
Every time I visit MOMA, I complete the day with a “hello” to my friend Vincent as I mentally step into his dream of the starry night sky. And yes, I am one of “those visitors” who the guards have to tap on the shoulder as I let my face get a little too close in order to fully appreciate the light playing on the canvas landscape of thick paint and shadows.
When it comes to creating my own baking art, rhubarb is the true “star” of early spring. Pies are the perfect canvas, with the deliciously tart fruit mingling among a handful of raspberries or strawberries to add a shimmer of sweetness and enhance the natural shades of pink and red. May I offer you a slice, Vincent? Let’s tip back our straw hats, stare into the evening sky and talk some “blue.”
Rhubarb Pie (with a handful of raspberries)
1 two-crust pie
Pie crust:
1/3 cup room-temperature water
4 tsp cornstarch
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp granulated sugar
½ tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground ginger
20 Tbsp unsalted butter (2 ½ sticks), cut into small pieces
¼ cup cold buttermilk
Filling:
4 cups rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 ½ cups fresh raspberries (you could also use strawberries, cut into quarters)
1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp kosher salt
The juice of half a lemon or orange
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1) In a small microwavable bowl, whisk together the water and cornstarch. Microwave on high for a total of 40 seconds, stirring once after 20 seconds. Let cool for five minutes and then chill in the freezer for 10 minutes while you start the pie dough.
2) In a food processor, pulse together the flour, sugar, salt and dried ginger.
3) Add the butter to the processor and pulse until the butter is broken down and the mix looks like lumpy sand.
4) Add the chilled cornstarch mix and the buttermilk and pulse until mix just starts to come together.
5) Dump the mixture into a medium bowl and gather the dough together by lightly squeezing it into a ball. Divide the dough into two discs, wrap each in plastic wrap and chill at least 2 hours before use.
6) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
7) Roll out one of the dough discs to 1/8-inch thickness and line your pie plate with the dough and crimp the overhang. Chill the plate while you make the filling
8) For the filling, whisk together the sugar, flour and salt. Gently, stir the juice and vanilla into prepared fruit and then fold in the dry ingredients.
9) Roll the second disc of dough to 1/8-inch thickness and cut as many star shapes as possible.
10) Turn the fruit into the chilled plate and dot with the butter. Place the star shapes over the fruit slightly overlapping the edges of the stars. Brush the stars with an egg wash (one egg mixed with 2 Tbsp water) and sprinkle granulated sugar on the top of the stars.
11) Place the pie on a large parchment-covered baking sheet and bake for roughly 1 ½ hours until the stars are golden brown and the juices in the center of the pie are bubbling.
12) Let cool on a wire rack before serving.
