After our early morning stint in the New York studio at Martha Stewart Living Radio, we headed off up Fifth Avenue to the Guggenheim Museum where found an exhibition of Spanish painting from El Greco to Picasso. It could have been an old fashioned chronological plod through the centuries... but instead it was organized in a series of juxtapositions: similar subjects shown painted in the classical style of El Greco or Goya alongside more modern treatments of similar subjects by Picasso or Salvador Dali.
Of horticultural interest in this often rather startling show were two still lifes by Juan Sanchez Cotan from 1602 and 1604. Both featured a blanched cardoon. Still Life with Fruit and Vegetables, seen in the picture here, from about 1604, includes not only the curled head of the cardoon but other vegetables and fruits suspended on strings and laying on the ledge. The simpler, and more effective of the two (no digitized image seems to be available, sorry - found one later, now added) 
was Still Life with Parsnips, from 1602. It featured a similar setting with the blanched cardoon head and a group four or five roots – in fact I think they’re mixture of carrots and parsnips. At that time carrots were often purple or pale yellow and purple topped as some are in this picture.
The cardoon, Cynara cardunculus, is related to the globe artichoke but instead of the scales in the flowerhead being eaten, the leaf stems are blanched and they turn this lovely pink shade.
These fruits and vegetables, taken from the larder, are organized in a very precise way in the picture shown here and painted in such meticulous detail yet the result not at all like a photograph. It’s far more than simply an exercise in technique and highlights a spiritual connectedness with the everyday necessities of life and a recognition of their transience. Of course Picasso’s Still Life with Newspaper, hung alongside, is even less like a photograph.
Cardoons like a rich soil in full sun. In late summer gather the stems together, tie them with twine and wrap them in 6-8in/15-20cm of black plastic to exclude light or wrap them in paper and then earth them up like celery. About a month later they will be ready to eat and will have turned the lovely pink shade seen in the picture.
Today (a day before it appears in print) my profile in the Daily Telegraph of the most influential writer on vegetables of our times - Joy Larkcom - is available online. You can read it here.
You can also read my choice of the Top Ten New Perennials from last week's Daily Telegraph here. Be sure to click on the In Pictures: Top 10 new perennials link at the top of the page to see a slide show of all ten of my picks.
