Ice age art at the British Museum

I visited the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum the other day. The show has been extended to 2 June because of interest, but I booked about a month ago to get the day I wanted.

The exhibition is definitely worth booking, and we discovered why tickets have been at such a premium - partly no doubt because of public interest in the subject material, but also because the museum was obviously limiting visitor numbers. Before entering our names were ticked off a printed list, and the exhibition space was mercifully void of crowds.

All the pieces on display were small, so it was a welcome relief not to have to peer over the shoulders of packs of people, as so often happens at blockbuster museum exhibitions. I would have only one suggestion to improve visibility - some of the pieces could really have used magnifying glasses, they were so tiny.

On display are over 100 objects created between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. The objects include the famous corpulent 'goddess' figurines of highly stylised female forms, but also a range of other (mostly) female figures of different body types - not all mother-goddess fat.

20,000 year old steatite carving © RMN/Jean-Gilles Berizzo

Of more interest to me were the carvings of animals, including the big game animals but also lions, birds and even fish. There were also a number of decorative non-representational carvings, including a fragment that the curators speculated was a map of a settlement. Other objects with intriguing uses were an articulated puppet in human form, a carved disc with holes which could have been spun on string to create a moving image, and carved spear throwers.

20,000 year old bison from the Zaraysk Kremlin Museum, Russia

I am fascinated by stone age art. One of the best places to see it is in the Dordogne in France. We visited the Lascaux caves several years ago, but I didn't find this to be the most interesting site in the area, since you are only able to see reproductions of the wall paintings (though the effect is still very impressive).

Of more interest were the carvings at L'Abri de Cap Blanc, a rock shelter with a bas relief frieze of bison and horse carvings.

image from www.europreart.net

Why is this period so fascinating? There are overwhelming differences between us and people from that period. They left behind no writing and very few material objects, so most of what we 'know' about them is extremely speculative.

But we do know they are us. Physiologically and genetically they are us. If you took an ice age baby and raised them today, they would be exactly like us. Take away our history, culture and technology, and we are the same.

In fact, it is their technology that I find so fascinating and impressive. I am impressed by their skill and dexterity, but even more so, I am impressed by their ingenuity. In order to create the beautifully carved objects in the exhibition they had to develop not only their carving skills, but also to create the very tools they used to make those objects.

It's as if in order to knit a garment I had to raise the sheep, make knives to sheer the wool, carve a spindle to spin the fibre, and finally carve knitting needles to knit with. And I'm leaving out all sorts of essential implements in between.

And on a less practical, more theoretical level, I love the way stone age people undermine modern national ideas of sovereignty and identity. During our tour of L'Abri de Cap Blanc, a French tourist tut-tutted with disgust when we were told that a skeleton from the cave had been sold to a museum in Chicago back in the 1920s. Quel horreur - the patrimoine of France being sold off to the highest bidder!

Of course, it is ridiculous to say that these people were 'French'. The idea of France, the very possibility of the idea of France, didn't arrive for many millennia. Indeed, without the influence of ideas from other diverse places like Babylon and Greece, France in its current form would never have arrived at all. Yet in our nationalism we call stone age people found in Europe 'us' but the Babylonians 'other'.

I was inspired by the exhibition to finally buy The Mind in the Cave, an archaeologist's theory of how we became human and began to make art. In the introduction the author argues that modern humans could not recognise the Neolithics for who they were until after Darwin, because we couldn't figure out how to fit them into the Christian time frame of 4000 years of history. Essentially, we couldn't recognise them as 'us' until we learned about evolution.

It rather makes me wonder what the Babylonians would have thought.

Cooking with mustard from the Maille boutique

Cooking with mustard

Mustard, like vinegar, is an essential condiment for the well-stocked kitchen. I always have at least three varieties of mustard in my fridge, for both cooking and sandwiches: Coleman's English mustard gives a nice kick to sandwiches, Dijon is essential for salad dressing, and whole grain mustard is great with pork and pasta. And all serve for many other uses as well.

I always make my salad dressing fresh, usually French vinaigrette, in just the quantity that I need at the time. I've made it often enough that I don't need a recipe or measuring utensils, but basically it is David Lebovitz's classic mix.

Whole grain mustard is probably my favourite mustard - it combines flavour and texture and is useful in all sorts of cooking, from Indian to Italian and French. One of my staple recipes is pork and mushroom pasta in a mustard garlic sauce - you just sauté strips of pork with mushrooms and garlic in butter and olive oil, add a few dollops of mustard at the end (with a sprinkling of chives, if available), and throw it over pasta. I start boiling the pasta at the same time I start cooking, because it is that quick.

Another favourite is baked chicory with chicken in a sage and mustard sauce. It calls for both Dijon and whole grain mustard, so is chock-full of mustardy goodness. Check out my Cooking with Mustard pinterest board for these and other mustard recipes (and please share your favourite mustard recipes in the blog comments).

Maille boutique

With my mustard obsession, it was essential that I visit the Maille boutique in Paris located at 6 place de la Madeleine, just opposite the Madeleine church.

Early 19th century neo-classical Madeleine church

The area is full of fine food shops, and the upscale boutiques of rue Saint-Honoré are just around the corner. But the great thing about mustard is that anyone can afford it, even the fine and fancy blends offered by the Maille boutique. Maille has been making vinegar and mustard since 1747, so one can assume they have probably perfected their technique by now.

With more than 40 varieties of mustards to choose from, as you can imagine I was like a child in a candy shop.

wall of mustards

After much vascillating, I came away with four small pots - citron & harissa, pistachio & orange, gingerbread & chestnut honey, and celeriac & truffle shavings. Unfortunately I had to ignore the offerings of vinegar and cornichons, due to limited baggage space... next time!

Ridiculously pleased with the Maille experience

I tried the celeriac & truffle in a salad dressing last night, and it was AMAZING! The handy little brochure I received with my purchase gives serving suggestions for each of the mustards. According to Maille, I am to try the lemon & harissa with bbq meat and grilled fish, the gingerbread & chestnut honey with salmon or pork, and the pistachio & orange with seafood pasta.

I can only say... d'accord!

Time to start gardening

Here it is, already April, and I haven't started gardening yet! Actually, I take that back - I did start a few pumpkins on the windowsill. But I haven't been down to my allotment in at least a month. The weather has just been too cold and dreary to even bother.

But now that it is April, it must surely start warming up soon. So, I am beginning to think about what I want to grow this year. I'm currently in Paris for a few weeks, so I can't actually get down to the allotment until the middle of April, but my gardening mojo finally started to come back after I found a fabulous vegetable print at a street flea market near Place d'Italie on Easter Monday.


Print by H. Demoulin. Sc

It is a colour plate from the Nouveau Larousse illustré, an illustrated encyclopedia published between 1897 and 1904. It is an interesting guide to the wide variety of vegetables available in France at the time. I noticed that the now ubiquitous courgette (zucchini in the US) is not present, though there are a number of other gourds in the cucurbita family, including the large French pumpkin in the middle, one that I always try to grow because it is the most delicious.

Inspired by my encyclopedia of vegetables, I went down to the Quai de la Mégisserie to visit the plant shops. Paris has not expelled these kinds of house and homeware shops to the suburbs, so you can still find everything you need right in the center of town.*

Streetside garden shop

I like to buy at least some of my seeds from France and the US, because I can find things that aren't readily available in the UK. This time I bought a pumpkin with white skin called Potiron blue de Hongrie. I also picked up some long beetroots, called betterave crapaudine - which coincidentally look exactly like the beetroot pictured in the encyclopedia (no. 19). Apparently it is an old variety of beet that is coming back in style.

Just goes to show, if you want to be à la mode - in both fashion and vegetables - you come to Paris.

(And if you want to see the other things I plan to grow on my allotment, visit my allotment gardening board on pinterest.)

*The pet shops are also located in this area - we always stop in and say hi to the cute (and overpriced) puppies and kittens. This is another thing you wouldn't find in the UK, where shops seem to have stopped selling cats and dogs altogether.