Professor Butter Beard’s “View of Toledo”
“El mundo hay que fabricárselo uno mismo, hay que crear peldaños que te suban, que te saquen del pozo. Hay que inventar la vida porque acaba siendo verdad” — Ana María Matute, Spanish author
(English translation: You must build the world around you, yourself: you must create the steps that will take you up and help you out of the well. You must invent life, because in the end it will eventually be real.)
“You must build the world around you.” I have been meditating on your words, Ms. Matute, for several days now. Maybe several years, to be fully honest. I consider this current path on my journey to be one of reinvention and ultimately a personal renaissance. As I travel down that yellow brick road, I am finding that by opening self-locked doors, I am dreaming in more vivid flavors and colors, seeking voices in languages other than my own, and soulfully listening to artists share their stories and lessons through their works.
Doménikos Theotocopoulos (El Greco, “the Greek”) is one such artist with an amazing reinvention tale to tell. Born on the island of Crete in 1541, he originally studied at the local Byzantine school intending to be an icon painter, but in his twenties, he fled to grander opportunities offered in Venice and Rome. Scholars believe he was a pupil of Titian, but they also identify the lessons he learned from studying the works of Michelangelo and Tintoretto. Although El Greco was well esteemed in Italy, he failed to secure any major commissions, and was convinced by a Spanish friend to move to Toledo, where he spent the next forty years of his life creating works of art depicting souls and landscapes true to his own unique vision.
With regards to El Greco’s portrait style, Paul Johnson writes that “his light is hard and crude; his colours are icy-blue and tormented yellow; he elongates and elasticizes his figures producing an effect of spiritual anguish rather than beauty.” Some believe that his tendency to show limbs as longer and thinner than they are was the result of astigmatism, but El Greco himself provided his own explanation stating, “the worst thing that can happen to a body is to be undersized.”
Known primarily for his soulful portraits of saints (Jerome and Francis), opera-worthy monumental works depicting the Christ’s miracles, and lusciously moody depictions of bearded noblemen, El Greco is also credited with painting the first Spanish landscape – a “view” of his home city of Toledo. Typically, the goal of most landscape painters is to document the look of a particular time in a particular place, to freeze a single moment and preserve it for eternity. El Greco’s “View of Toledo” does not.
Using his preferred dark moody colors, the artist presents the Spanish city of Toledo at the top of a living rolling hill. The cathedral is center stage surrounded by other recognizable building such as the Alcázar (the royal palace), the Alcántara Bridge and the Castle of San Servando. But the buildings are not where they should be. By changing the locations, El Greco chose not to tell us what Toledo looks like, but what it feels like. The city itself takes up only a little space in the center of the painting. The landscape and sky are alive with movement and fully dominate the canvas. And what a sky! El Greco’s clouds are about to explode and unleash a torrential downpour of water and energy upon the city. Christine Zappella writes, “In El Greco’s Toledo, something is about to happen, and it probably isn’t going to be good.”
El Greco’s reinterpretation of the known, inspired me to expand my own understanding of a baked custard. My flans and crème caramels are usually made with whole eggs and milk or cream. The Spanish “Tocino de Cielo” dates back to the 1300’s and the city of Jerez, where egg whites were used to clarify sherry, so the leftover yolks were given to the local nuns. The nuns created their “bacon from heaven” by mixing the discarded yolks with a sugar syrup kissed with local oranges and lemons and cinnamon and baking them into a light silky custard swimming in dark caramel. My dear sisters, thank you for the lesson and the deliciousness. Gracias de todo corazón!
Tocino de Cielo
Makes Six 3-Ounce Custards
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups water, divided
1 1/2 cups sugar, divided
4 cinnamon sticks
Two 3-inch strips orange peel
Two 3-inch strips lemon peel
12 large egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla paste
Pinch of kosher salt
1) Combine 2 cups of the water, 1 cup of the sugar, the cinnamon sticks, orange peel, and lemon peel in a small saucepan. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Cook over medium heat until the mixture reaches 225ºF on a candy thermometer, about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool for one hour.
2) Combine the remaining water and sugar in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until it reaches a deep amber color, about 15 to 20 minutes. Pour a thin layer of the caramel into six 3-ounce ramekins. Let cool.
3) Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
4) Fill a tea kettle with water and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and set aside.
5) Strain the cooled syrup into a large bowl. Discard the cinnamon sticks and citrus peels. Whisk the egg yolks into the syrup. Stir in a pinch of kosher salt and the 2 tsp of vanilla paste. Divide the mixture among the caramel-lined ramekins. Arrange the ramekins in a deep pan large enough to comfortably fit them. Pour enough hot water from the tea kettle into the pan to make a 1-inch-high bath around the ramekins. Bake the custards until they jiggle slightly when gently shaken, about 40 minutes. Let the custards cool in the water-filled pan for at least one hour. Cover them individually with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours or overnight (even better).
6) To serve, gently run a knife around the outside of each custard to loosen it. To remove a custard from its ramekin, place a small plate over top of the ramekin and carefully flip it upside down. Lift up the ramekin—the custard should slide out and stay on the serving plate.
