A large communal platter of boiled vegetables and desalted cod, around a mortar of garlic pounded with olive oil — the aïoli — blazing like a Provençal sun.

Why this dish? In Arles and then Saint-Rémy (1888-1889), Van Gogh discovered the cuisine of the South: garlic, olive oil, and the sun that bursts forth in his sunflowers. He, who painted the intense colors of Provence, shared the modest table of the Arlésiens, for whom the grand aïoli was the popular festive meal.

Here, in this South where the sun falls in blows of chrome yellow, on Sundays they make a dish that resembles my canvases: everything revolves around a star, and that star is garlic pounded in oil. You take a head of garlic, you crush it at length in a mortar while pouring the oil drop by drop, until the sauce rises, golden and firm like impasto. Around it, you arrange the boiled garden vegetables and the desalted cod, and everyone helps themselves. It is poor and royal at the same time — like a field of sunflowers.

How it was made : Aïoli was the totem dish of 19th-century Provence, eaten on lean days (Fridays) and village feasts. The garlic was pounded in a marble mortar; local olive oil and dried cod brought in through the ports completed a meal that was both meager and generous.

The contemporary twist : Serve the aïoli in a mortar at the center of a large yellow plate, the vegetables arranged like rays — an edible “Van Gogh sun.”

Vincent van Gogh · Charactorium