I just got back from Marbella, Spain, where the weather is hot, the sun’s always shining and the colors are intense (at least in July).

For me, the South of Spain—Andalusia—conjures up my beloved Velasquez, García Lorca and of course the native son of Malaga, Picasso. It was my first time in this part of the country so I did the usual tourist things. The great hotels of Marbella looked empty under the sizzling sun; I loved all the local decors like Plaza Romano in Hotel Puente Romao:

Andalusia is the land of Flamenco (not to be confused with the pink bird flamingo) and these paintings by Fabian Perez, translate the passion of this dance into beautiful images:

But the real ladies of Spain were painted by my beloved Velasquez: the Infantas (daughters of a king of Spain, in this case Philip IV)— infanta Margarita who stared at me for years from a poster in my kitchen and infanta Maria Theresa who became the wife of Louis XIV and lived way longer than her poor sister, Margarita.

I will make a post about Velasquez and one about Goya, once I visit the Prado in Madrid, but for now this post should do. These ladies with these extremely wide panniers inspired me to do a little Velasquez of my own:

I even drew one on the walls of the majestic Villa Padierna…

Las Meninas are everywhere in Spain even on a couple of Spanish fans I bought!

I wrote this post listening for the nth time to the superb Miles Davies’ Sketches of Spain, one of his best works.

Now let me take you to old town Marbella. It is a maze of narrow streets with white houses, restaurants and Bougainvillea galore! For good food check out Da Bruno.

Lots of small shops offering completely unnecessary but fun stuff:

The blue hour (the sun sets at 10 pm in summer) is accompanied by a dizzying fragrance of flowers.

I especially liked the  300-year-old statue of the Virgin—Virgen de los dolores— surrounded by dazzling plants:

A fun thing to do was to go to the open air market, bustling with life and colors; my mother (below in the middle) and my cousins were busy making good deals:

Southern Spain is a polka dotted country and they start dancing flamenco early:

Seeing all the beautiful vegetables, the Southern Californian (read Mexican) in me couldn’t resist treating everybody to a homemade quesadilla:

I went south of the border in every detail even the beer:

The trick is lots of green onions!

A good meal with family and friends is one of the blessings we usually take for granted.

Now back in Spain again, I shouldn’t be impressed with flowers but these hibiscuses were a red that only Goya would have understood…

The Villa had a swimming pool, a shallow spanish tile pool, a lion head fountain and Sepideh, my cousin, did her best to model for me by all three!

She looks so authentically Spanish that she’s had gotten into fights with some people in Malaga who accused her of lying when she claims to be Persian; the fact that she speaks Spanish well has not helped!

Can’t resist a poem of Garcia Lorca (english first and then spanish):

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.

Spain is a beautiful woman…

Check out this clip for a passionate and seductive flamenco dance by Belen Maya and its vocal version, Cante Jondo or deep song.

Watch the legendary Antonio Gades dancing it to perfection here.

Listen to Miles’ Sketches of Spain here.

Watch Carlos Saura’s Iberia trailer here.

For the beautiful poem (in Spanish and English) I used in my infanta image, read Dave Bonta’s post here.

Ms. Foodie goes to Hollywood

April 11th, 2010

After living for a few months in Switzerland, I couldn’t wait to get to my favorite Cuban restaurant in Los Angeles, Versailles; everything tastes more delicious and was way cheaper in the good old U.S. of A.

The most famous item in the menu is the garlic chicken and even for somebody who is not a “beer person”, this Corona was just too good to miss:

I tried to go back and rediscover all the inexpensive great restaurant of my hometown like the King and I where they still serve the best Thai food since the first glass noodles I had there 25 years ago.

To have the best restaurant cheeseburger in Los Angeles (Tommy’s is still great), I went back to the Westside Tavern—they have a gorgeous bar,

and they serve a rare cheeseburger to die for:

I love old diners (my first impression of America remains diners with bad coffee in New Jersey and New York) and I miss Bob’s Big Boy in Santa Monica; Coogie’s who replaced it has a super fresh simple chopped salad:

Nothing says more southern California than a killer burrito like this world famous border burrito from Eduardo’s Border Grill in Westwood (surviving the attack of Persian restaurants in the area):

The dudes are preparing them with tender loving care,

worth every cent of its 8 dollar price!

So I am not very beer, or burrito or hamburger but Switzerland does this to the poor Californian foodie who comes back: I wanted to eat everything in every menu of every restaurant!

Lemons and limes are always fresh at Eduardo’s,

so are different kinds of salsas:

It takes mediocre expensive food to change Ms. life is too short for bad food and cheap wine’s  opinion about inexpensive modest restaurants of L.A.

All of the above places were great and gave me a lot of pleasure (and poundage!) but the tea at André’s was as usual priceless…

The worst thing for a tea drinker is having to dip a teabag into tepid water! The number of times that I have been served some warm water with a sachet of Earl Grey; that’s not what you do to a cup of humanity

persian tea estekan micheleroohani

For me, Stakan Chai (a glass of tea in Russian—and Persian) is how tea (or chai) should be served: in a small transparent glass, no milk and definitely no lemon. Tea is, after water, the second most widely-consumed beverage in the world.

I was invited by Yoon Hee Kim to a Korean tea ceremony and here are some of the pictures:

korean tea ceremony micheleroohani yoon hee kim

“The chief element of the Korean tea ceremony is the ease and elegance of enjoying tea within an easy formal setting.” Here, Yoon Hee is preparing a green tea with amazing grace:

yoon hee kim preparing tea michele roohani

The ceremony was slow and tasteful (so unlike the rushed teas I prepare for myself) and the tea masters had beautiful fairies to help them,

korean tea ceremony yoon hee kim micheleroohani

and plenty of people to serve:

korean tea ceremony micheleroohani

As interesting as the actual ceremony was the parade of beautiful traditional Korean gowns or Hanboks:

jeogori michele roohani korean tea ceremony

My friend, Ock Ju explained that the different colors and styles indicated the wearer’s social status; some of the embroideries were breathtakingly beautiful.

jeogori korean embroideries micheler roohani

I love this 19th century painting I found in “The Book of Tea” about Persian women gathering around a samovar (samaavar):

19th century painting perisan women around a samovar michele roohani

To see some fabulous pictures of tea in different cultures, visit Yoon Hee’s site.

A NY weekend —short and sweet just the way I like it.

chrysler building dusk michele roohani

The Chrysler building is still magnificent—I like the upper east side best.

manhattan subway lexington and 51st street michele roohani

sometimes photographers have to take some risks,

yellow cab madison avenue manhattan michele roohani

New York is a walking city and the shop windows are fabulous—I have dedicated an entire future post to it—Bergdorf Goodman’s window displays are so sophisticated, they are like mini-exhibitions.

window shopping manhatan marie antoinette michele roohani

India is big on Fifth Avenue:

manhattan fifthe avenue store display michele roohani

so is the cathedral

saint patrick cathedral manhattan michele roohani

Manhattan is a “hall of mirrors” with a maze of old and new architecture to dazzle you:

manhattan skyline michele roohani

Brownstones are beautiful in springtime,

ochre brownstone new york michele roohani

so are bluestones!

brownstone manhattan NY blue michele roohani

Prepare yourself to eat half a cow at Carnegie Deli,

carnegie deli pastrami michele roohani

and then the other half:

carnegie deli cheescake michele roohani

Jim Dine’s Venus on the 6th avenue,

jm dine venus manhattan michele roohani

The upper west side is younger and hipper—Amsterdam avenue leads you to a little gem of a café,  good enough to eat.

amsterdam avenue ny traffic light michele roohani

A hole in the wall, Zibetto espresso bar, is an ideal place to get you going again,

zibetto espresso bar manhattan ny michele roohani

to see some more of this beautiful city:

audrey hepburn marilyn monroe NY michele roohani

its buildings,

manhattan skyline grisaille michele roohani

and its skyline.

manhattan skyline traffic light michele roohani

I visited the Metropolitan museum and the Frick Collection as my usual pilgrimage but the most exciting show was at the New York Public Library. I have two great exhibitions to tell you about but that’s got to be in the next post.

Related and Suggested Posts and Resources

Babooshka dolls and Franz Kafka in Prague

Coffee from paradise

August 17th, 2008

I had the best coffee in Los Angeles  last week at Caffé Luxxe. Following  a tip from the director of Coffee Quality Institute—aka the Cupper Gods—I experienced the joy of having a real espresso outside europe: “espresso should have a rich honey-like texture topped off with a velvety, dark red-brown “crema.” This is the sign of una bella tazza di espresso: a beautiful cup of espresso.”

Here is my first cappuccino:

caffe luxxe cappuccino michele roohani

I was so sick and tired of (at best mediocre and at worst just plain bad) coffee served in the chain stores. The horror in the eyes of my european friends  after receiving a bit of bitter coffee in the bottom of a big paper cup has always amused me! It looks like they are serving you what’s left from the previous customer…

caffe luxxe cappuccino michele roohani black and white

I went back this morning for an early cup and standing at the counter, Italian bar style, I read a horrifying article about Putin and Georgia (call me a masochist) and remembered all the problems I was trying to forget… The great coffee brought back the vanished smile to my face!

café  Huntley michele roohani santa monica view

They have a great Synesso machine and Yaniv, the talented barista creates these fabulous cups with panache! To see how, watch this short clip and if you have a better attention span (read more than 30 seconds) watch this one on the craft of making coffee art.

So is coffee good for us? An excellent article on the subject by Jane Brody in New York Times has some answers.

Finding a European style café that serves great espresso in Los Angeles can almost make one forget the world’s problems.  Now If you really want to be scared just look at this map from Le Monde Diplomatique.

balkan map le monde diplomatique michele roohani

How is that for a nightmare in the making? Not only we are not at the End of History  but people like Fukumaya should start paying attention to the latest conflict involving Russia!  You take Kosovo, we take Georgia and Moldova!! Be scared people, be very scared…

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests.”  Winston Churchill

These are sobering times – now you know why I needed to find a good cup of joe.

You eat your values

April 21st, 2008

“You eat your values – don’t let them be fast, cheap and easy” says Alice Waters, the revolutionary chef and cookbook author. Maybe it’s my age but I’ve started to think seriously about what I eat; junk food has never been a sin of mine but Waters and Dr. Oz have pushed me to eat better.

green tomatoes micheleroohani

I’ve been too lazy to go to Farmer’s markets up to a few months ago but I am hoping that my health is worth a little more money and a little inconvenience. Cooking becomes a pleasure again when you use fresh ingredients like in this simple Thai chicken and mint dish.

cicken a la menthe

Alice Waters has started the “Slow Food” program that teaches children to make the right decision about how and what they eat.

eat your vegetables micheleroohani

This doesn’t mean of course that great food shouldn’t be appreciated just because it’s not green enough. I was at a friend of mine’s today for a fabulous sunday brunch that ended with these great cakes made by her talented sister, Mona; The chocolate mousse and the baby kiwi cakes were divine.

chocolate orange cake micheleroohani

baby kiwi cake micheleroohani

I took a tour of the kitchen and w o w…

spices micheleroohani

Just look at these pastry molds:

pastry molds micheleroohani

it’s true that a beautiful kitchen like this one makes you want to cook but I have had very delicious food coming out of small/dark/chaotic kitchens in my life (just dare to go to almost any parisian café’s kitchen)…

Today’ s food crisis makes us forget that good food like flowers should be affordable to everyone. As Jeffrey Sacks says “you can’t tell people who are dying of hunger in Africa to tighten their belts, as if they had belts”!

Ranunculus or Persian buttercup micheleroohani

I would like to finish the post with these pictures instead of some starving kids in Africa which is approaching a meltdown with the crazy Mugabe and the criminal Janjawids.

ziba shirazi painting micheleroohani

How did she go from chocolate mousse to Darfur? I bet that you didn’t see it coming…

Ok people, brace yourselves – this is going to be an image heavy post! I will take you through a couple of days in Paris – the way I like it: hitting the streets early in the morning to catch the blue hour of this great city; Montparnasse is a very busy neighborhood at 8:30 am.

montparnasse early morning 1

This was my first time witnessing the changing of the ads:

montparnasse advertising

I walked to a favorite café that reminds me of my twenties, La Rotonde.

la rotonde

I don’t like them anymore (remember the whipped cream out of a can?) but nostalgia and Balzac take me to them every year.

balzac rodin rotonde

the cafés are changing in Paris – here is the old generation Select and the trendy Lotus.

select montparnasse

cafe lotus montparnasse

Of course anything that remotely reminds me of Los Angeles while I am in Europe is not welcome so this kind of restaurant/café just makes me wince but the worst offender is Starbucks and its paper cups.

starbucks in paris

I bought a pariscope from this news stand,

news stand montparnasse

and had a coffee while looking for the hottest exhibition in Paris.

pariscope montparnasse

I decided to see Giacometti in Centre Pompidou .It was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!

giacometti man

What a great show it was – complete with the artist being filmed while painting and sculpting.

giacometti hands

His drawings (included some fabulous small notebooks), paintings and sculptures made a large window into the soul of this great creature…

giacometti square man

giacometti woman

Even though I am not a big fan of the Centre Pompidou, I have to admit that the view is breathtaking…

paris roof eiffel

I visited the Maillol museum a couple of days before this and liked its architecture as much as the collections:

maillol stairs

Maillol is very different in his style from Rodin – they were good friends.

maillol bronze

The picture bellow shows the plaster versions of the bronze sculptures above.

maillol plaster

On a more colorful note, living in Los Angeles, I am deprived of pretty store windows – abundant in New York, Paris and London.

fornasertti paris

I am ending this post with two images of my loyal laptop that’s getting very old but gets the job done.

mac cafe paris

tulips mac shokoufeh

Café crème or Petite Arvine, a good post I hope.

Ok, I’m a pig!

November 12th, 2007

I am not a chocolate person – I am not an ice cream person – I am not even a french fries person but I have no resistance when it comes to good pastry with tons of real cream. It’s not the sugar I am after, it’s the fat!

chantilly dessert sweet sundae ice cream almond

Ah…real whipped cream; the sexier name would be Chantilly…Making it the right way is an art in its way to extinction – even in Europe; I made a scene a couple of years back in la Rotonde, when they served me a café liegeois with cream coming out of a can! I left the café more heartbroken than angry…

chantilly dessert sweet sundae ice cream

Well boys and girls, this post was supposed to be about “fiber to the curb/kerb”, a telecommunication system based on fiber-optic cables, but i found this subject sweeter on a Monday.

cafe au lait heart coffee

Being a wimp with a high cholesterol count and in the absence of real Chantilly, I treat myself to a “hearty” nonfat cafe con leche. Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not. “

Too much noise for an espresso

September 21st, 2007

They say that alcohol lubricates the conversation; i would say that coffee or tea do that job way better (you start sober and stay that way). I am coming from a tea (called chai and almost never mixed with milk) drinking country where even babies are given sweet tea beside their mother’s milk, but i can’t be ambivalent towards coffee in all its glorious variations, taken preferably in a Viennese coffeehouse or a French café.

espresso_cafe_creme_coffee_book_nightcap

Today’s blogs/internet forums are becoming like the coffeehouses of previous centuries where people got together and exchanged ideas, read, wrote and generally got inspired; to be alone yet surrounded by like minded people. My beloved Stephen Zweig or Gustave Klimt have been ardent patrons of coffeehouses. The slow “coffeehouse death” of 1950’s has been reversed rapidly, of all entities, by Seattle’s Starbucks & other American coffee companies who went on a rampage with their idiotic “grande/venti/tall” shouts! I take mine “chez Peet” (the guru of everyone in gourmet coffee revolution). Too much noise for a small coffee… What’s missing is the true conversation; how can you have one when you are busy slurping your pumpkin spice frappuccino (770 calories)? Ok, so I am not proud of my decaf soy latte neither (they say decaf is the devil’s blend!)

cafe_metro_paris_coffee_cream

I am very happy that this poster of mine got published. It should hit the sites like allposters.com, art.com, etc…by the end of September.


Carbon Footprint, global swarming

September 15th, 2007

I feel kind of stressed out about this whole carbon footprint calculations. Just took a quiz with them and i am not proud of the result! I am not much of a carnivore but now i have to worry about that “once in a while” steak. A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Reading the Deep Economy, has been revelatory to say the least. I also suggest Bill Mckibben’s article in the NY review of books.

apple_red_carbon_footprint_global_swarming

I just listened to the Slate podcast called global swarming and i have to admit that i agree with the idea. On a more cheerful note Alice Waters should cook for all of us…