To say that art and food are intrinsically linked may be a cliché, but only because it’s true. As she photographed his Long Island home, Robyn Lea discovered a host of different recipes beloved by abstract painting genius Jackson Pollock; the idea for “Dinner with Jackson Pollock” was born.
“Originally, I was there to do a story for an Australian magazine, but even after that was published, I kept being drawn back,” Lea says of the Pollock house just outside of East Hampton. “With each visit there was another angle or object to shoot, or simply the same subject in the light of a different season.”
Inspired by the same light that had previously drawn countless artists to Long Island, including Pollock himself, and by her own foodie sensibilities, Lea found herself embarking on a new project. “I was innately drawn to their kitchen and pantry,” she says. “I photographed pots and pans, delicate rattan basket, their cut-glass collection, and a white ceramic dove on the windowsill.”
After spending so much time in the kitchen, it occurred to Lea to ask about family recipes from the household. What resulted was a compilation of all sorts of recipes — from Jackson’s personal favorites like his “famous” spaghetti sauce to dishes that he made with friends and fellow artists to prescribed recipes to help the long-suffering alcoholic overcome his malady.
“Curiosity led the way,” Lea says. “The new material was so interesting and compelling that I was almost left with no choice but to create a book.”
And so she did. She and head researcher Marina Cukeric tracked down family friends, learning about what Pollock and wife Lee Krasner liked to cook and eat. What she found was a massive collection of stories and recollections, from Krasner, who was ahead of her time in considering the benefits of a raw food diet, to Pollock’s own culinary memories.
“As a toddler and young boy, Jackson would often shadow his mother in the kitchen while she baked fresh bread, whipped cream, churned butter, roasted, bottled, pickled and poached,” Lea says.
She assembled the recipes and stories in “Dinner with Jackson Pollock.” Photographs accompany each recipe, though they are not always of the dish. Often, the photographs are of ingredients, art supplies and the Long Island surroundings that inspired so many of the recipes.
I tried several of them — I couldn’t quite make up my mind.
First, I tried the Cross-Country Johnny Cakes, inspired, according to the book, by a 1934 road trip taken from New York to California in a Model T Ford. The recipe, which became their meal of choice after they bought a bag of corn meal in Tennessee, is the typical all-American griddle cake — easy to make and easier to eat, particularly when topped with maple syrup.
It’s easy to imagine Jackson and Charles driving across the country, sustaining themselves entirely on these cakes as they sketched American landscapes and played on their harmonicas, as the book explains they did. These have quickly become my favorite replacement for Sunday pancakes.
Next, I tried one of the key dishes to evoke Pollock’s time on Long Island: clams. This recipe in particular was prescribed to Pollock by his doctor, Ruth Fox, who specialized in alcoholism.
Lea explains that this is one of the recipes that she found to be the most interesting, as it was part of a nine-page document entailing a full diet regime. “The treatment, written for him by pharmacist Mark Grant, included a regimen of salt baths, vegetable juices, mineral injections, and daily doses of a soy-based emulsion,” Lea explains, citing also prescriptions for a different kind of fruit every morning and lunches confined to liberal amounts of raw vegetable salad.
“Cooked vegetables were allowed for dinner, such as turnips, pumpkin, onion, beets, and squash. Black molasses was allowed but no maple syrup. Wild duck, yes, but no chicken,” Lea says.
“This was all designed to cure his alcoholism – clearly an idea doomed from the onset.”
While the purpose may have been moot, the dish was super easy to make and very flavorful, not to mention beautiful.
The book states that Pollock loved to gather clams on the beach; I can only imagine how fantastic this would be with clams you had gathered yourself!
I also made sure to give one of the only recipes in the book actually attributed to Jackson a try — this is his recipe for spaghetti sauce. Like the other recipes in the book, it’s very simple, but I was surprised at how wonderfully it turned out. Just a few ingredients — mushrooms, pork chops, tomato paste — and the sauce came together in under 30 minutes.
I can understand why it was one of Jackson’s favorites, and I enjoyed the anecdote about the first time Jackson tried spaghetti, when he was eighteen, at Tom and Rita Benton’s NYC apartment.
For dessert, I decided to give the upside-down cherry cake a try. The cake itself contained a surprisingly small amount of fat, which I found both interesting and refreshing. Most of the cake is truly the cherry mixture, which is just sweet enough and allows the fruit to shine through. Not surprising, considering that, as the book notes, cherry recipes were a family favorite.
On the whole, I found all of the recipes in this book to be trustworthy and provide delicious, homestyle outcomes. Most are simple, but the simplicity of them makes them perfect for everyday cooking. The accompanying stories, expertly researched by Lea, take the proverbial cake. Any Pollock fan — or, for that matter, any fan of traditional East Coast cooking — will love this book.
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Images by Emily Monaco, Top image care of Robyn Lea