Eric Demay

Dude, be a man and make your own pasta.
Fool, I’m serious.
They’re delicious.
They’re rewarding.
They look rustic.
And things do taste mo’ better when they’re rustic.
They da real thing, man.

So check this out.
Pasta.
Pappardelle they call ‘em.
Homemade by the homeys.
Da real thing.
And I’ll show you fools how you make ‘em.

First, you gotta make dough.
Count one egg per brotha.
Then a cup of tipo double-0 flour for each two of them eggs.
Dat’s it, mix that shit up.
Pound it good till it smooth.
Sexy smooth, brotha.

·

Then you got to roll out that dough.
But not with a machine. Uh-uh, Naw man.
We got no fancy machine.
We brothas got arms, we got a dough roller!
We rollin’, we rollin’ hard!
We do it the real way, like’em brothas do in tha eyetalian countryside.
Like the Godfather, man!
Thinnin’ it out till we sweat.
Rollin’ da pasta dough so thin you see yo big man hands through it.
And you sweating like a pig. A real pig, man.

Yeah it all be crooked.
Yeah it ain’t straight.
But dat’s what make it rustic. That’s what makes it real.
Remember: we ain’t fancy, we real, fool.

So then, we cut ‘em pappardelle.
Not with no fancy ruler. Uh-uh. Naw man.
Not with no fancy machine cutter.
Wit what? you ask. A knife.
Yeah. A. Knife.
Like them do in the eyetalian jails man, they got no pasta machines.
They even use blades, razor blades to mak’em pasta!
So we don’t cut em straight either.
We cut em good, but they’re all different.
And it’s all all’ight.
Don’t ya understand? This is so real, so pure.
Authenticity in da making for you rustic fools.
This is like… this is like raw denim.
Yeah.
Raw denim pasta.
These ain’t nothing like those pre-washed pre-ripped fllimsy designer jeans.
Those lame fakes, they don’t last for shit.
This da real raw thing.
Fo real pasta, man.

—
Ahem. Ouin.

Donc, ce soir nous vous proposons du porc braisée au lait, servi sur pappardelle fraîches, accompagné de légumes racines provençale. Bon appétit. Fool.

As sunsets go, ‘tis a strong contender for personal faves, surely climbing to top 3 as it was setting behind the rock, swallowed by the fog slowly creeping in. I should add that the sunset experience was amplified by the fact we had just finished the workshop, much emotions compressed into 3 weeks time. So then, like the workshop, everything was coming together before our eyes. T’was kind of a perfect moment.

Click the above for a full-screen panoramic sunburn.

• Oh, and so what other day’s end is on the sunset podium? Surely this evening on Ile Verte.

When travelling, high up there on the list, along with finding the off side-streets where good photographs lie, is the discovery, the tasting and understanding of the local food and culinary culture. I’d go to Argentina just for the grass-fed red meat, the trip to China last year turned out to be a two month food binge.

Fogo was interesting, to say the least: what does a Newfoundland island full of fishermen eat during the long winter months? The traditional kitchen is evidently shaped by what was readily available: frozen fish from last season’s harvest (cod mostly) and vegetables form the root cellar (turnips, potatoes, cabbage). Fresh vegetables? Not so much. We were in dire need of greens. Even the hardcore meat eaters were craving spinach and arugula.

The most notable tasty local dish was Fish and Brewis (wikipedia), a traditional Newfoundland concoction of boiled Codfish and soaked hard bread, usually topped with scrunchions (diced and fried salt pork, think bacon bits oreille-de-criss style) and—gasp—sometimes even a drizzle of molasses.

As the workshop covered room and board, food-wise, we were regularly invited to either:

• A homemade meal generously cooked up by a different group of nice local people, usually groups of women: the town hall Firettes, the ACW (Anglican Church Women) or the Winds and Waves Textile Guild.
• Eat out at Nicole’s Café, planned as a group outing for lunch and supper every 4 days. Pretty much the only “good” restaurant on the island, suppers featured three tasty services and wine to spare. Choosing what you were going to eat/taste the next “Nicole day” was for me a highlight. I’d usually go with the fish.
• Spend our Fogo-Dollars at one of the the listed and pre-approved local establishments: we were given printed food-notes by the Arts Corporation, paper money to be used for food supplies. You could spend the fogo-dollars at the grocery store, the bakery, Nicole’s, Chester’s Fried Chicken or Kwang Tung, the one and only chinese (cantonese) restaurant. Inevitably, we were also trying to find ways to buy booze [and wool socks, chewing gum or cigarettes] with them. Fogo dollars: gotta spend ‘em while you have ‘em.

So, without further ado, here’s an assemblage of 18 days of Fogo food:

Or the beginning, depends who’s asking. The most eastern brink: who knows where you fall if you carry on straight ahead.

Seems like swimming or riding a bike, once you know how to net, you never really lose it. One of Elisabet’s first job was in a netting factory, almost 30 years later, her hands still gots it.

Oh! Look in the back! Inadvertent dance steps!

Along the creative production workshops like the one I’m currently attending, the Fogo Island Arts Corporations also runs a residency program for international artists, accommodating artists with « specially designed studios and renovated 
traditional buildings located in remote and community locations across the islands. »

We got to visit the first studios—surnamed Long Studio—still currently under construction, accompanied by Todd Saunders himself, the main architect for the Shorefast projects, including the Inn.

A remote long wooden black box stands still overlooking the sea. Sitting on large timber pillars with glazed walls at both ends, aptly framing the view seaside and land side where the caribou play. The building is completely off-grid, with solar panels generating enough for its needs, and it’s a 20 minute walk from the nearest road.

Just imagine working here all day. They’re aiming to build a few of these studios, all different in shape and size, ideally one in every township on the island. Makes you reconsider your career to become a full-time artist.

One thing that’s ever changing about coastal Newfoundland is the weather, unfortunate slave to the winds and currents’ fancy. You’ll wake in the morning with a bright clear sky over your head, get fog—a nuage!—with your afternoon tea, and finish the day with sleet rain slapping your pretty face.

It definitely adds to the feeling of seemingly endless days, days that encompass a spectrum of weather tantrums. You often end the day with many “Wait, was that really this morning? It feels like so long ago.” And so it Fogo goes.

Brimestone Head, the local small mountain watching over on the northern township of Fogo. Climbed it, looked out from it, love it. Asking around, it’s source of many folk tales, even the idea of being a corner of the flat earth. So there you know.

Berries are a big deal around here. A. Big. Deal. They even hold a festival about them. On the island alone you got partridge berries, bakeapples, marshberries, crowberries, gooseberries, cracker berries, dog berries, squashberries, red currants, black currants, and then blueberries and raspberries, which tend to be smaller but tastier than the common chunky californian ones.

Berries are peculiar to these slightly more rocky, northern regions, which are naturally deprived of larger fruits. And the caribou feed off of these, hunting through the light snow to the lichen and small fruits hidden underneath. We, on the other hand, fed on partridge berry jam and pie and blueberry dough boys. Yummy.

The design workshop area is set up in an church, which was—fault of the diminishing attendance to the worship services—sold to the Shorefast Foundation. Three other churches have experienced the same fate: the foundation ended up buying a total of four of these underused churches (some are quite small though) and is still trying to find an appropriate new use for all of them, sometimes still sharing the spaces with the local congregations; many other communities/denominations on the island are congregating under one roof in aim to reduce operating costs. The buildings, once transformed, are meant to be keep their role as important actors at the heart of the communities.

But for now, the St-Johns Evangelist church in Barr’ Islands is our home base, elegantly hosting the design workshop for the new Inn.

A haiku

Mushroom-tarp bubble keeps warm
Goes up, down, thank you
400,000btu/hr propane heater

The second vehicle to pass our sticked-out amateur hitchhiker thumbs was Charlie and his plower, out of salt, driving to get her filled up at the cityworks yard. Without hesitating, he stopped the truck and let us in. Ol’ newfoundland/irish accent and all, we small talked about the weird weather, caribou, us strangers on the island, his cousin Don which we had met previously at the workshop. Deckers go by the dozen around here, they’re all cousins one way or the other.

The distances are huge, who knows where they’re going, but it’s a common sight around here and I like it.

Once spring comes, pack ice from the arctic will be floating down and filing the bay, the creak of ice cracking with the tide and wind.

I was well raised and taught to finish my plate, no matter what your host is serving you. Though I felt all items were questionable, I finished it all, down to the last spoonful of green stuff. Yum-my.

Fogo’s communities are all shore bound, fishing [still] being the main occupation of the island’s residents. The stages (usually built on the water), stores (on water/land) and sheds (land mostly) were the work and storage buildings dealing with the day to day of fishing, fish gutting, boat building and other woodworking. All stages have a large white dot painted on their door, guiding the fishermen on the docks at nighttime.

The late afternoon sun, the caribous and us came about out together, on the rocks and lichen near the shoreline in Joe Batts Arm. We visited the site on which the ShoreFast foundation is planning to build a five-star Inn/restaurant/art gallery (designed by Newfoundland born Todd Saunders) and for which we are mandated to concept designs for its furniture.

The pickets were placed to mark the buildings outer limits. I love how the color variations and the borders all blend together with the fog.

I’m such an amateur sometimes and I’m banging my head against the wall about it. I realized last night the camera was stuck at 3200 ISO. For 3 days straight. Approximately 200 good pics. It obviously all looked good on the camera’s 2” LCD screen, I didn’t bother to check the results on the computer, thus the unwanted grain & color noise passed unnoticed until yesterday. Ugh. I feel like going back and shooting everything back again.

Anyways, the short plane rides were fun.

I’m leaving Wednesday for what is one of Canada’s oldest and smallest communities and [almost] the most eastern spot on the map: Fogo Island. I’ll be there for the next 3 weeks. Humid, snowy, windy: a total opposite of Dubai.

— Why?

Well, a private foundation, aided by the federal and provincial government, is turning the island’s economy around. Fishing has long long since declined and a renewal of economic activities is needed to keep the outport communities alive. They’re counting mostly on geotourism to nurture the island for years to come. Is has enough history (settlements since the 15th century) local culture (fishing) and geographical specifics (island, ocean) to build a story around it.

— Um, Eric, again: why are you going there?
— Relax, I’m getting to it:

So, during February, the Fogo Island Arts Corporation has invited a dozen young designers/ artists/architects from Canada, the UK and some nordic countries (Iceland, Scandinavia) to discuss the island’s heritage and outport culture and, ahem: « develop ideas for contemporary furniture and interiors inspired by traditional Outport living conditions and reality. » I’m not quite sure about the specifics, but from what I understand, this all ties in with architectural projects the foundation is building (a 5 star inn for example) and objects/furniture/textiles the local artisans, craftsmen, woodworkers, boat builders are going to be producing.

Anyways, it’s a fantastic opportunity. I’ll be meeting a handful of people, they even invited a few well-known speakers (other professional designers and thinkers) from around the globe. It should be good.

I’ll do my best to keep you guys posted, hopefully (photo)blogging a bit at the same time.