Student budget forces me to muster enthusiasm for the new range of faux leopard at H&M so you can imagine my fragile state of mind come Day Three of Fashion Week when a call came from Ingrid Pankonin of Miel Cooking asking if I was free to cater an event with her.
My initial reaction was to query the necessity of catering for The Fashion Set at all. They eat? Crostini is the new sushi? Raw is the new cooked? Binge is the new purge? Pay cheque is the new unemployment? I was in before I even heard Olsen Twins, Anna Wintour, Karl Largerfeld and Pierre Herme. No calories for guessing which of these characters I most hoped to meet.
Ingrid runs her catering and private chef business out of the Bay Area in California. On what was meant to be a relaxed holiday before attending the Salone del Gusto slow food festival in Turin, Italy next week she instead found herself designing a crafty menu tasty enough to trick even the most ardent black-attired-smoked-out-design-queen to at least consider delicious consumption.
We prepped and assembled and juiced and toasted for hours as 6-foot mannequins peered occasionally through our kitchen door with confused lust. I studied the languished drift with which models saunter the earth. They don't appear to labour with steps and movement like the rest of us, but glide with a vague disinterest in the rest of the imperfect world (as advertised by me...in effect carrying a watermelon...though the dressing rooms to the kitchen because Karl doesn't like his house to smell of food therefore keeping his refrigerator in the bathroom. Fact) We pureed and diced in complete denial to the possibility that water, no ice, salad no dressing might be the preferred order of the day.
In summary, Anna Wintour never touched her macaron platter. The Starbucks-mad Olsen Twins are more goth-elfin and uber-directionally-over-robed than I ever imagined and in a perfectly French mess of fashion mayhem the show went off with only a few blazered man tantrums and little cerebral utilisation by the pretty-boy ‘waiters’.
As for me, Pierre only showed up in macaron form (his olive oil and vanilla macaron is arguably life altering depending on the level of drama in your life), but Ingrid introduced me to a perfect and oddly surprising canapé combination I will definitely borrow (with credit) next time I cook for people who actually eat. She takes a halved and standing baby radish beneath a baton of ripe avocado, a slither of preserved lemon (home preserved in San Francisco) and a cross of chives. The flavours tickled every part of my mouth by surprise one after the other. Ingenious.
Her crostini combinations of Confit fennel with espelette and Guerande salt; Fresh pea puree with crumbled feta and shredded mint and roasted artichoke with Parmesan and black pepper were simple but delicious….and so small they were basically carb free?
After my brush with Fashion Week glamour, I took a moment to reflect and more importantly eat a meal portioned to 100% adult size. We ended up on the bank of St Martin’s Canal in the 10eme, with a bio Jamon Iberico, fig and Gorgonzola pizza from Pink Flamingo (67 rue Bichat, 75010, Paris, 01 42 02 31 70) on it’s way. While we waited for our crisp and toasty pizzas, beers in hands, balloon cast to the sky (the high tech apparatus which ensures the pizzas find their way from the hot ovens to patrons lazing a few blocks away in the dusk sun) I wondered what Anna Wintour was having for dinner…I’m sure she’s having pizza too I smiled.
“[Insert subject of envious lifestyle] is back from The Row show. radish, artichoke and fennel and a hint of s&p, i've fallen in love. sipping champagne only made it go down better.”
