This story is part of Ensemble’s colour week, presented by Resene
We’ve all heard ‘eat the rainbow’ before – probably from some nutritionist who talks a little too passionately about gut health and poop. But you might not have heard of the Chromatic Diet, a photography series that French artist Sophie Calle created in 1998, capturing satisfying plates of single colour-themed dinners that she ate every day for a week.
Annabella Schnabel, an interdisciplinary artist and jeweller from Auckland, was so inspired by Calle’s work that she decided to try the Chromatic Diet herself. “I didn’t realistically have the time to do that every day of the week, but I wanted to take that concept and sort of push it to be more of a banquet style.”
With more time to plan weekly dinners, Annabella’s whole family got involved. “My parents were very much on board, it was a collaborative effort between me and my brother and my parents – and my boyfriend, if he was lucky, was allowed to join. At the end of every meal, we would always discuss what colour we wanted to do next.”
Being half German, she also had early exposure to chromatic meals. “Part of the German tradition every year during Easter time, you have a completely green meal called Gründonnerstag, which means green Thursday. So this was already something that I was already sort of raised doing.”
Annabella has also been a vegan for 10 years, although it’s not obvious when you look at her tonal feasts. “Being vegan for so long has made me good at turning vegetables into something exciting. My family also eats all kinds of foods, so we added in ingredients they could eat, like with black we had this really special smoked meat with a charcoal coating around it, and when it was pink they could have salmon. I only had the vegan elements but it was still fun to be able to integrate those parts as well.”
Firstly, what counts as a chromatic meal? I do eat a lot of beige food…
Well, the idea is to have fun. I love integrating art into my life. I feel like it's pretty easy to just slip into the rhythms of what society expects us to do, but why not make your food something really fun, something to be excited by in the middle of your week?
I really wanted to use natural colours, because I feel like using food colouring sort of defeats the purpose. I ended up doing purple, yellow, green, white, brown, pink, black, red, orange and blue.
What colours made the most challenging meals?
It was interesting how certain colours were hard and some were easy. For example, white. When you start to cook a lot of white food, it goes golden brown, or things will char, or when you try to flavour it with spices, it changes the colour. So it was about finding things that would add flavour but still emphasise the white, like garlic, onion, or salt.
I was really excited when we got to brown, because I couldn’t wait for dessert, like tiramisu. But when it came to the savoury side of the meal, you obviously have brown bread, brown rice, meat, mushrooms, but it was hard to think of something fresh to liven up the meal. So then I looked at brown sauerkraut, to add that sort of zinging element.
Can we talk about purple for a moment – the Ensemble colour. What did you serve for your purple meal?
For drinks we had a violet liqueur, and black currant juice as well. For starters we had things like grapes and purple corn chips, then for the main meal we did roasted purple kumara with different jams, purple carrots and cabbage. We had spiralized beetroot, eggplant and purple hummus, as well as bagels that were coloured with beetroot. There were elements of Thai basil and purple kimchi.
We found out that natural foods with that colour purple are really high in something called anthocyanins, which is like an antioxidant – super good for you, but it does have this rich detoxifying effect so at the end of that meal our stomachs were going kind of crazy.
What was your personal favourite colour to do?
I really loved white. It felt very Marie Antoinette, especially with the dessert having pavlova and candy floss, and with the white tablecloth, it all felt very luxurious.
There were interesting elements within that colour which I would have never thought to do that tasted so good, like putting popcorn on top of your meal, it's a textural thing. Popcorn and parsnip. Such a delicious combination.
You mention the tablecloths. What else do you consider apart from the food?
Yeah, I wanted it to be a full sensory experience. My brother would always put together a playlist which would be based upon the colour, so when it came to orange we would be listening to Orange Moon by Erykah Badu or like Golden Brown by The Stranglers.
We had black spice incense burning for the black dinner, and for the red dinner, we burnt a sage stick, which was completely covered with red flowers. It was about integrating all the elements! Everyone dressed up in the colour and we also thought about the plates and set design with candlesticks and flowers, to really exaggerate the experience.
Did you learn anything from doing this?
I learnt how much texture can really elevate a meal, and also just pairing things together that I never would have thought such as corn chips and kimchi. Like that's such a delicious combo. Ultimately I don't think food should have rules and I think that it's all about just having fun and not taking it too seriously.
Now that you’ve run out of colours, what’s next?
I have already had thoughts about new ideas that I'd like to do for dinners or even breakfasts or lunches, integrating a new concept though. So that's something you’ll have to look out for! One exciting thing is that my brother and I are bringing out a limited release cookbook of our chromatic meals, so that people can follow along and use some of the ideas that we did.
• You can follow Annabella at @annabella_sbel
