What’s Cooking? Cool Places, Outdoor Spaces!
Will anyone ever look at water lilies the same way again after seeing a Monet? Seeing the world through an artist’s eye can change your perspective. You’ll notice astonishing details in familiar places that may have slipped right past you. A painter or photographer transports you to Italy, Antarctica, the Far East, or a New England beach. Perhaps the view of a simple country road from your car window is suddenly transformed into a complex composition of shapes, color, perspective, and movement – who knew!
What we love most about summertime and warm weather is that it allows us to spend a lot of our time outside. After a season of being cooped up inside, it’s great to throw open the windows, breathe the fresh air, and walk out the door. We hope you’ll allow some of Paradise City’s artists to show you the way. Using their unique viewpoints, you can roam through gardens, marvel at mountains and be awed by the majesty of the sea.
clockwise: William McCarthy; Ted Tatarzyn; E. Kelly O’Neal; Kathleen Buchanan; Deborah Loeb Bohren on location in Morocco; Peiliang Jin
Deborah Loeb Bohren is an avowed globetrotter, and her photographs capture moments in time from Paris, Cuba, Namibia, Nova Scotia, and iconic images celebrating the breadth of Americana. You’ve never comprehended skies and meadows until you’ve seen the atmospheric landscape paintings of William McCarthy. If you can imagine wicker rockers on an island porch overlooking an expansive view of the sea, it’s just a short step to visualizing a Jack Standish egg tempera or watercolor on your living room wall. E. Kelly O’Neal (the cover artist for the Spring Paradise City Guide) deliberately abstracts her landscape, seascape, and sky photographs by “panning, wiggling, turning, and swooshing the camera during exposure”. It’s their world, and they warmly welcome you to enter it.
What else is cooking at Paradise City? Dust off the grill, it’s BBQ time. Read this week’s recipe for Chickens in the Herb Garden.
Featured Artists
This Week’s Recipe
Gardening is a pastime and a pleasure, an outlet for our creativity. In the spring we can’t wait to get our hands in the soil. Our vegetable garden is what the French call a “potager”, both productive and decorative. The herb garden, which holds sage, several kinds of basil, oregano, parsley, chives, rosemary, winter savory, mint, tarragon, dill, and thyme, is designed as a circle with a Harvest Goddess sculpture keeping watch. This recipe is an excellent reason to grow lots of different herbs.
Chickens in the Herb Garden
4 good-sized chicken breasts, on the bone, with skin
Juice of one large lemon (add some of the rind grated too, if you like)
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. Dijon mustard
2 tbsp. mayonnaise
¼ cup olive oil
1½ tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 cup chopped fresh herbs. Almost any combination will taste delicious.
- An hour or two before grilling, in a large bowl, mix together everything except the chicken.
- Loosen the skin on each breast without detaching it. With your hands, push some of the marinade under the skin of each breast. Then coat all the breasts in the rest of the marinade in the bowl and refrigerate it until ready to grill.
- Lightly oil the grill (we use a gas grill) and preheat it until the temperature reads about 400º.
- Lower the flame and place the chicken breasts skin-side up on the grill. Cook for 15 minutes, checking to make sure it doesn’t flame up. Turn the breasts skin-side down and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes until they are cooked through.
You can certainly use this marinade on any chicken parts – whole legs, boneless breasts or thighs, even a spatchcocked chicken. It can be served with a mixture of Dijon mustard and mayonnaise on the side. And it’s fresh asparagus season here – oil some of that good stuff and throw it on the grill with the chicken!
