Professor Butter Beard’s “Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning”
This past Saturday morning, I began my weekly chores early, awakened by the sound of the brave spring birds. While I walked Nellie and packed up the car with dry cleaning and shopping lists, the last star was shimmering in that special kind of blue sky that signals daybreak. Upon leaving Wegman’s with this week’s supply of butter, sugar and flour (and a bit of poultry and pasta), I witnessed the wind whipping up and angry blue and grey clouds concealing the sky, releasing large flakes of snow to dance as they fluttered in the breeze. Just fifteen minutes later, the sun broke through, promising another welcome dose of Vitamin D and an anxious Nellie ready to run and herd the neighbors and flustered deer. All this show of light and nature - within a span of just two hours.
Claude Monet was fascinated with depicting the ever-changing play of light and shadow on color. Between 1890 and 1891, Monet, a founding member of the Impressionist movement, created over thirty paintings of the same wheatstacks in a field near his house in Giverny, France. In the fall of 1890, he asked his neighbor, Monsieur Quéruel, to leave his wheatstacks untouched in the field over the winter. These stacks typically stored sheaves of grain (wheat, barley or oats) to be later thrashed to create flour for breadmaking. The local method of storing the grain was to use straw or hay as a thatched “roof” for the stack, shielding the grain from the elements until, once dry enough, they could be thrashed. This drying process could last from harvest in July until the next spring, thus becoming a perfect “still-life” for Monet’s study of how the light and shadows and colors changed at different times throughout the seasons.
Every morning, Monet would ask his stepdaughter, Blanche Hoschedé, to bring him two canvases, one for sunny and one for overcast conditions. He soon learned that he could not capture the shifting light and ambience on merely two canvases, and as a result, poor Blanche was quickly charged with bringing him as many canvases as her wheelbarrow could hold. It is written that Monet’s daily routine evolved into carting paints, easels and ten to twelve unfinished canvases back and forth from his studio, working on whichever canvas most closely resembled the moment.
Monet’s Wheatstacks series was a financial success. Fifteen of them were exhibited in May of 1891 by Paul Durand-Ruel, one of the most important art dealers of the 19th century, and every single canvas sold for as much as 1,000 francs within days of the opening. As a result, Monet was able to purchase outright the house and grounds at Giverny and to start construction on a waterlily pond.
The shape of the winter wheatstack with its snow-capped lid and deep caramel foundation inspired the baking of this rich coconut cream pie. Go ahead and use all twelve egg yolks – you can save the whites to bake a delicious angel food cake a few days later. And don’t be intimidated by baking a pie shell. I will be emailing my recipe, with instructions and photographs, to my blog subscribers later this week. Hint, hint. And I bet, in just the time it took to read this essay, the light from your window has shifted in a manner that both you and Monet can admire and appreciate.
Coconut Cream Pie
Ingredients:
Pre-Baked Pie Shell (I will be emailing my recipe and “how-to” with images to subscribers this week. Hint, hint!)
2 ½ cups unsweetened coconut flakes
12 room-temperature egg yolks (save the whites and bake an angel food cake!)
2/3 cup white sugar
½ tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
4 cups (1 quart) whole milk
1/3 cup cornstarch
2 tsp vanilla paste – used separately
1 cup heavy cream
2 Tbsp confection sugar
1) Gently toast the coconut in a non-stick pan over medium heat until slightly golden and aromatic. Make sure to shake the pan often so the coconut does not burn. Set aside to cool.
2) In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, salt and nutmeg.
3) In a heavy medium saucepan, whisk together the milk and cornstarch and slowly bring up to a simmer, stirring constantly.
4) Temper the milk mixture into the yolk mixture and return the combined mix to the saucepan and to the heat. Whisk constantly until the mixture reaches 170 degrees. Remove from the heat and stir in 1 tsp of the vanilla paste and 2 cups of the toasted coconut.
5) Pour the custard into the pre-baked pie shell. Make sure the pie shell has cooled for at least 1-2 hours before filling. We don’t want any soggy bottoms! Cover the custard top with a piece of plastic wrap and chill the pie for at least three hours.
6) When ready to serve, whisk the heavy cream, confection sugar and remaining 1 tsp of vanilla paste to stiff peaks. Remove the plastic wrap from the custard top and mound the whipped cream over the custard. Sprinkle the remaining ½ cup of toasted coconut over the whipped cream.
Monet photographed by Nadar in 1899, “Wheatstacks, Sunset,” 1890, and “Wheatstacks, End of Summer,” 1890.
