Hey, Mr Hockney, try this on your palette

Ah, I do love a good pun.  Especially a really specific pun.  I read a review recently of David Hockney's current exhibition of landscape paintings at the Royal Academy, where the reviewer was desperately trying to find something wrong with an exhibition that she had clearly enjoyed - my favourite attempt at a damning comment was "it looks like what it is".  Oh no!  How awful!  A painting of something that represents the something!

Truth be told, I'm not a massive fan of modern art as I find that a lot of it is rather self-conscious and earnest.  You have to rummage around to find some joy in both the process of making art and in the end result.  However, two artists that seem to have this joy are Anish Kapoor and David Hockney.  Kapoor seems to be fascinated by the different ways you can make art and so many of his pieces seem to be an expression of this fascination - how big can I make it, how precise can I make it, how simple can I make it, how pure can I make it - and a whole room of his most recent exhibition at the RA was dedicated to little piles and shapes of colour pigment.  Hockney is famous for his use of colour, in wide, exuberant swathes of the stuff, lavishing it over massive areas of canvas.  So it is total genius on the part of the RA to stage his current exhibition over the months of January, February and March, precisely when we are all seeking colour, warmth and joy.

Hence my pun.  Hockney likes colour, he's an artist so he probably uses a palette, but hey, that sounds like palate, and a man's gotta eat, so he'd probably like this food because it's colourful.  Boom!  Clear as mud.

I was making a vegetable curry recently (from a Cinnamon Club recipe in an Observer Food Monthly magazine) and I was struck by just how much the vivid colours of the ingredients were cheering me up.  It wasn't just the smell of the spices, the promise of a warming, healthy dish and the satisfaction of making a curry from scratch that lifted my wintry spirits, but also the intense freshness of the colours:

Green globes from the Green Giant

Almost festive chillis and tomatoes, and earthy spices and ginger

Lush coriander and a lemon so juicy it reflects the light

The resulting bowl of zingy freshness

A few weeks later, and I was craving more clean flavours, but this time a little less curry-ish and a little more stir-fry-ish.  In actual fact, what I really wanted was just a plate of pak choi, but I thought that I should probably have something to go with it.  Apologies for the bad lighting, which has somewhat dimmed the perky pink prawns and sunny yellow baby sweetcorn that accompanied the green pak choi and mange tout:

However, not all joyful colour comes from healthy veg.  I still harbour fond memories of my yearly Christmas treat, although it already seems like so long ago that I was lured in by these shiny beauties...

Let us revel in our winter of dark nights and cold winds, for the colours of art and food shine all the more brightly against them.