Cooking in Full Color: Anna Maria Horner - No. 216

Flowers, nature, and color creep into the fabrics she designs. Plus her family’s Greek cheese tiropita recipe

Anna Maria Horner.

IF YOU’VE EVER SEEN A FRIDA KAHLO painting or better yet, a room full of her paintings, then you know the power of color. Kahlo painted her life in symbolic hues full of drab but also light giving greens, true blues, frantic yellows, and visceral reds. The same can be said for all artists really, from the famous ones of history to artists in our modern time, who express creativity not just through oils but even through fabric.

Such an artist lives less than 30 minutes away from me, and she had been on my short-list to interview for some time. An author and global quilting force, she’s a joyful who’s-who in the fabric genre and a savvy mother who has raised seven children while building an international business of putting art on fabric.

In addition, her first mentor and high school art teacher is my sister-in-law. So what was taking me so long? I messaged her via Instagram. Which led to a phone call, then groceries and testing her favorite tiropita recipe, and some email exchanges, and now, I introduce, Anna Maria Horner, whose favorite color is pink.

Who drinks very strong, very black, very hot coffee each morning.

And whose favorite artist is Frida Kahlo.

Anna Maria’s Cheese Tiropitas. Recipe below.

‘’Using your hands and sharing what you know are blessed gifts at the core of each one of us.’’ - Anna Maria Horner

We are all talented, Anna Maria says, but our gifts just might be dormant. Hers aren’t. She was born into a talented family in Chicago but raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, as the youngest of three. Her father emigrated from Greece in the 1960s, met her mother while she was in nursing school, and his job as an engineer with TVA brought the family to Tennessee.

‘’I come from a family of artists, including painters, weavers, and knitters, and learned to sew as a child. My father was a painter as a hobby,’’ she says. ‘’My mother, whose family was from northern Indiana, did every home craft there was.’’

They not only possessed this family gift of making beautiful things, but also the urge, the duty, to make things.

‘’Humans are naturally inclined this way,’’ she adds.

Objects in Anna Maria’s childhood home were a mixture of Greek handiwork and American 4-H practicality. ‘’The Greek things in our home were decorative, but the American things from my mother’s side of the family were useful, like a wool sweater to stay warm.’’

Anna Maria, 50, married young, had her first child at 19, and so the construction of her textile business was done with young children around and involved. Her two youngest, 10 and 14, still live at home. Her eldest, Juliana, just sold her Los Angeles makeup company. Her son Joseph is a cook at Butcher and Bee restaurant in Nashville, while another child is a musician, one a tattoo artist, and one a nursing student. ‘’I have very creative children.’’

And she stays connected to them through food so they don’t forget their family’s Greek heritage and their mother’s love, even if it takes an act of Congress to get everyone in the same room at the same time for a meal.

Frida Kahlo. Artist: Magda Pach, 1933. Photo: Heritage Art via Getty Images.

‘’I paint flowers so they will not die." - Frida Kahlo

Like Frida Kahlo, Anna Maria paints flowers but they wind up on yards of fabric or live on a quilt. She also paints a meal in her head and stages a family feast where everyone gathers at her table. ‘’It’s always around food.’’

Just this past April she had accidentally scheduled herself to be away teaching and lecturing over Greek Easter. ‘’I was crushed.’’ If at home, she would have been creating the meal of roasted lamb and potatoes, cheese tiropitas and baklava from her Greek grandmother’s recipes. Her children call the meal ‘’fam lamb.’’

After her class in San Antonio a kind woman named Yezenia noticed Anna Maria was away from her family on the holiday and baked her a traditional Greek Easter bread called Tsoureki with anise and orange blossom and the red dyed eggs on top. ‘’It was so beautiful,’’ Horner says. ‘’She had no idea what she was giving me.’’

The fluid process of cooking for Anna Maria is much like creating a new design. ‘’I am not going to know until I get in there what I’m going to make, and even then, I’ll change my mind.’’

Anna Maria Horner and the top center block of her Our Fair Home quilt.

Inspiration begins at home

Outside in her garden, Anna Maria has planted dahlias, foxgloves, echinacea, black-eyed Susans, and sedum. She tells me her fabrics are inspired by what’s around her, but all I need to do is look at her Our Fair Home quilting collection to see the flowers. It was born out of moving into a 123-year-old home in historic Franklin, just south in Nashville.

‘’Most of the time I have some stray idea or thought and build some narrative or travel to a new place. This new collection is quite floral based,’’ she says. ‘’It comes from the garden and architecture. I think about who lived here in this house before…the different decades and fashions and cocktail parties on the porch, so thus the Lily Pulitzer feel and preppy plaid ties.’’

I can’t decide whether Anna Maria’s art is influenced by her life or vice versa. Like her quilts, there seems to be a pattern to everything about her. She’s a creative machine, and she’s about to begin writing her fourth book on quilting.

And then there are her irresistible and triangular cheese tiropitas. As I made them, folding delicate phyllo pastry over a cheese filling, I could see this is a recipe children might learn. This is a production type of recipe with repetition to it, much like my yeast roll making or our family’s sugar cookies.

Alongside roasted lamb and potatoes, cheese tiropitas may just be a side dish, a supporting act, but, no doubt, there is art to them. And don’t think for a minute that cooking isn’t art. You work with your hands, just like in quilting, knitting, sewing, or painting.

And best of all, after you admire your beautiful handiwork, you can pop these darlings into your mouth, close your eyes, and enjoy!

- xo, Anne

Do you sew, quilt, paint, make beautiful things? How is your cooking like your art?

This Thursday for Paid Subscribers

A beautiful salad for Memorial Day weekend, inspired by Anna Maria Horner and Frida Kahlo. Plus an update on the gun safety situation in Tennessee based on a town hall meeting held just last night in Nashville.

And there’s more from my interview with Anna Maria Horner. Let’s call this… the ends of the bolt (to use a sewing term.)

• In high school Anna Maria hand-printed fabric with potatoes instead of painting her senior art project. She sewed the printed yellow poplin into a dress to wear to prom and got an A.

• Her favorite day of the week is Thursday because it feels ‘’like a practice Friday, but you still have a chance to get the work week right before it's classified as "not enough time before the weekend".

• She’s engaged to Vince, her Australian fabric distributor. They will marry in July in Greece, and all her children will attend, as will her Greek aunts and uncles, 11 first cousins, and her father. He was the only child of six to leave the tiny village of Vassiliko, Greece for a new life in America.

• Anna Maria’s website is presently under some construction and updating, which is sadly bad timing for this post, but keep up with her over on Instagram.

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The cottage cheese and feta filling I jazzed up with fresh herbs from my garden. This was me, not Anna Maria, but I think she’d approve.

THE RECIPE:

Anna Maria’s Cheese Tiropitas

I could see why this artist and seamstress, painter and quilter enjoys the process of making tiropitas. There is repetition to them, and undoubtedly there could be conversation in the kitchen while these little pastries are being assembled. It helps if you’ve worked with phyllo before, but even if you haven’t this is a good place to begin. Let the frozen phyllo thaw overnight in the fridge like the package says. Have your filling ready and the butter melted before you open the package because phyllo dries out quickly. Anna Maria serves these as a side dish to roasted lamb or often makes them a main dish with a salad. I give you options for dressing up the filling even though Anna Maria and her family like them plain —‘’basic and yummy.’’

Makes about 36 tiropitas

Prep: 1 hour

Bake: 20 to 25 minutes

• 8 ounces frozen phyllo sheets (Athens brand) sold in a 16-ounce box with two sleeves, and you will use one sleeve

• 24 ounces small curd cottage cheese, 2 percent

• 11 ounces feta in brine, drained and crumbled (see Notes)

• 2 large eggs

• Optional add-ins from Anne: A handful of thyme or lemon thyme leaves, a pinch of lemon zest, some ground black pepper, a bit of pesto, or a couple tablespoons Parmesan

• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter, melted (see Notes), or more as needed

1. Open the box of phyllo and place one sleeve in the refrigerator to thaw overnight. Place the other sleeve back in the box in the freezer.

2. The next day, make the filling. Stir together the cottage cheese and crumbled feta in a large bowl. Stir in the eggs. If you want to add a dash of seasoning, do so now. Place the butter in a small saucepan to melt. Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

3. Open the plastic sleeve of phyllo and carefully unroll it so it lays flat. Remove one sheet at a time to a work surface or large cutting board. Cover the remaining stack with plastic wrap and then a damp kitchen towel. With the short edge nearest you, fold the sheet of phyllo into thirds, like you are folding a letter. Brush with melted butter. Dab a tablespoon of filling at the bottom of each strip and fold each up like a flag to create one triangle. Flip them onto the side of the loose end or trim the ends with kitchen shears. Place on an ungreased baking sheet and brush with melted butter. Repeat with enough to fill the pan.

4. Bake until golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool, or serve warm. Repeat with the remaining phyllo and filling.

   Notes: By weight, feta packed in brine is mostly brine. Open the container and you will see the feta itself is a 4-inch block that weighs around 5 ounces. Packed this way, it is fresher and has better flavor than pre-crumbled feta. I used unsalted butter but Anna Maria uses salted.

   

   Tiropita production in Anna Maria’s kitchen.