Food Photo NYC

You can’t make photos without breaking eggs

Time warped egg breaking

The Birth of an Omelet

The contest

It should come as no surprise that Linda and I have been active participants in Dario Milano’s (@foodpixels on Twitter) series of themed food photography contests for some time now.  Dario is one of those rare birds in the world of photography; a working photographer who still finds the time to share his knowledge with those of us who are hungry to learn more.  Dario has created a community of food photographers of which we are proud to be a part of.  Through the contests, which are hosted here on FaceBook, we are able to learn how others see, learn what they think of our work and contribute critiques of the collection of great work that is submitted to each contest.

This most recent contest’s theme was ‘Movement’, suggested by Kulsum Kunwa (@JourneyKitchen), author of the Journey Kitchen blog.  Kulsum won the ‘Black and White” contest with this photo, so she got to choose the next contest theme.

Challenged

So, how do you show movement in a still photo?  There are several techniques that come to mind:

  • Slow shutter speeds which allow for motion blur, as was done by Fred Winograd (@pinball2k) in his entry for the contest.
  • Catching a slice of time during the movement, as was done by Finla Noronha (@Happy_Cook) in her entry, or by Sherron Watson in this entry
  • Suggesting movement by using the image to evoke viewers experiences, such as in Tika Hapsari Nilmada‘s (@miauw17) coffee cup, where we know that the swirling liquid has been stirred by the spoon and is about to be raised by the hand.
  • Time lapse, where the frame contains multiple exposures which show the progress of the motion.

We decided to try to combine several of these techniques to give the impression of movement.  It is pretty obvious that the egg will be falling downward, so it requires just a hint of the path to work.

The photo above is composited from 12 individual shots.  We were able to catch the egg just starting its fall in a few of  the shots, and all the others were caught at various points on their way to the bowl.  One shot captured the splash.  See below for a discussion of the assembly process.

Recycling props

Dishes Made from the 30 Eggs

Servings from the Dishes Made from the 30 Eggs

So now we have bowls in the fridge with 30 opened eggs.  That’s a lot of scrambled eggs for breakfast, so we’ll have to do something a bit more interesting with them.  So here’s what happened (from top, clockwise):

Waste not, want not…but now we have to recover from this egg fest and eat a lot more whole grains and salads and hope my cholesterol levels will not be too badly affected.

Building a photograph

We imported all the shots into Lightroom and applied the standard Lens corrections, sharpening and some simple white balance corrections.  We then selected those that we thought would best contribute to the effect we were seeking.  Once selected, these were opened in Photoshop CS5 Extended as layers.

In Photoshop we selected all the layers, and from the layers panel context menu, selected ‘Convert to smart objects’.  Photoshop churned away for a while and when it was done, there was a single smart object composed of all those layers.  The ‘Layers’ menu now has an entry for ‘Smart Objects’ with  a submenu that controls the stacking mode of the component layers.  After some experimenting, we found that ‘Mean’ gave us the effect of movement that we were after.

We then added back in the original image of the egg just starting to fall and the splash in the bowl, cleaned up the hands and egg-shell and were done.

It was a bit of work but we were pleased that it produced the image that Linda was trying to get.  The contest participants must have liked the results, because Linda won this phase of the contest.  Her choice for the next contest is ‘Fruit as a core ingredient’ and we’re back to the drawing board to come up with fun ideas to figure out and photograph.

 

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Food on the Road: Rocky Mount, Va

The Kitchen Crew at the Hub

The Kitchen Crew at the Hub

Real southern hospitality

Hub Art

On the wall in the loo

We left Roanoke Thursday morning and headed down towards Rocky Mount to pick up the crooked road to Floyd.  At our first fuel stop, we asked about a good home cooking restaurant and were pointed to the Hub, right on the road we were traveling.

The Hub has been in business since 1935.  It offers a variety of southern style dishes and serves breakfast all day.  Country ham, bacon, pork chops, eggs, hotcakes, biscuits, gravy, you name it.  It takes a younger metabolism than mine to keep up with such a menu!  I did have eggs over with sausage patties and biscuits. It being lunchtime, Linda had a grilled tuna entrée with beets and black-eyed peas and bread pudding for dessert.  The food was nicely prepared, lighter than the menu would at first imply and delicious for both of us.  I expected to be reminded of it during the ride later; but instead we remembered it fondly for the pleasant experience and wonderful flavors.  (I wanted to include a shot of our breakfast table, but Linda threatened bodily harm if I showed her after a couple of hours in a car on the road in the steamy heat.)

The restaurant was taken over several years ago by Ricky and Tammy Harrell and they are helped by Gladys, Mary and Karen in the kitchen.  The Harrells decided to keep the Hub the way it was and only changed it to add more items to the menu rather than make sweeping changes.  Ricky had worked for a food supply service and he’d seen too many restaurants go under because new owners tried to fix things that weren’t broken.  His approach has worked well for the Hub.

Ancient Artifacts at the Hub

Ancient Artifacts at the Hub

We asked Ricky about the crooked road as a route to Floyd.  He laughed and told us that the alleged crooked road is really a series of local roads tied together by signs that say ‘Crooked Road’.  He said that there were other crooked roads that he wouldn’t even consider sending us down and by ‘us’, I think he meant ‘old city folk in an SUV used to driving on the Interstates’.

We stayed and chatted with our server, Kim, took some shots of the crew and details of the restaurant and headed out on the scorching route 40, south-west towards the AARP version of the crooked road and onward to Floyd, friends, BBQ and Bluegrass music.

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Food on the Road: Roanoke, VA

 

Dessert in Bed

Maybe they'll finish it...

On the road again

We are headed on a 10 day road trip to visit with friends and family in Virginia and North Carolina.  This trip coincides with Dario Milano’s (@foodpixels) latest food photography contest whose theme is “Black and White food photography”.  We’ve been actively participating in these contests and don’t want to miss this one, so we decided to see what we could do while traveling.

Our first stop was in Roanoke, VA.  This is an 8 hour drive from our home in northern New Jersey and it allows us a rest before heading west to Floyd, VA for several days of barbecue and bluegrass music.  We are staying at the newly renovated Sheraton and were planning to have dinner via room service.  The idea for this photo developed from that and we set out to design and prop the shot.

Our stylists

We could have ordered dessert from the room service menu but we wanted to make sure that we got something that was nicely styled and photogenic.  We went down to the restaurant, Shula’s 347 Grill and spoke with Courtney, the hostess.  We explained what we wanted and she enthusiastically dove in to help.  She showed us the ‘catalog’ of desserts and helped us pick out a couple to try.   She spoke to the chefs and explained what we were doing and that we wanted the servings carefully styled.  She also gave us some additional plates, silver and napkins so we could set up the shot before the desserts arrived.  Everyone that we dealt with there was energetic and eager to help. We had dinner at the restaurant because we had spread out too much in the room to find somewhere to sit and eat.  Our server, Kayleigh, made sure that the desserts would be prepared correctly and even brought them up herself.

The photograph

The idea was to suggest a story of a stay in a hotel, a room service meal and an impetuous dessert.  There was an extra bed which we could use for the linens, some pearls and a camisole top from our packing and the dessert from the hotel’s kitchen.

The lighting is from the table lamp on the bedside stands.  We set the camera on a tripod and shot fairly wide open at f/4.5 at 1 second.  We set up some pillows as flags to darken the upper areas and add a bit of evening mood.

The image was processed in Lightroom and Photoshop, where the black and white conversion took place.

Next stop

We are heading out next towards Floyd.  We plan to take the ‘crooked road’ which winds through the Blue Ridge Mountains and the foothills of the Appalachians.  The locals joke that the road is so twisty, you can see your own taillights as you go around some of the bends.  We’ll report back if and when we get to Floyd…

 

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Cool, man…riffin’ on a theme

Sorbet Cubes and Spheres

Sorbet in 3/4 time

“Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it.”  (Kathy Akers – Writer)

‘Riffing’ is a jazz term for picking up some part of the main theme and repeating it behind a soloist, as accompaniment.  To me, photography is much like jazz in that we are interpreting standard melodies in our own styles and are continuously improvising as we do it.  Take a theme and run with it.  See where you end up.

The basic melody

As part of the continuing series of food photography contests that Dario Milano (@foodpixels) is hosting, the latest theme is ‘Abstract Cold‘, suggested in part by us here at Food Photo NYC since we managed to win the previous contest with this shot of spaghetti.  The cold theme seemed like a good idea at the time; cold can be a color, temperature, mood or attitude, and since the local temps here have been in the mid 90s, cold is a welcome state.   We had some time and we started to brainstorm.

Banana Walnut Frozen Yogurt

Playin' the blues

Linda (@lindafurlong) had been making frozen yogurt and fresh fruit sorbets lately, and they’re cold; seems like they would be a good material for a work of abstract art.  She put the various flavors (colors) of sorbet into different ice cube trays and we had a bunch of blocks that could be assembled into patterns.

Playing the standards

We started with the frozen yogurt and a glass ice cream dish that we got from Lucy, who runs a thrift shop here in town.  The pale warm color of the Banana – Walnut yogurt contrasted nicely against the piece of patterned glass with a sheet of blue paper underneath.  We liked the shot we did, but it wasn’t abstract at all.  Plus the effort of styling the scoops of frozen yogurt, which started softening immediately, was proving to be more of a challenge than the photography.

Lime Cilantro Sorbet

Cool Trio

So we moved to the sorbet.  The first version showed it served in a nice cut crystal glass, arranged with other glass dishes of colored sorbet and garnished with a lime.  It was shot on a piece of plate glass to give some reflections  it was a nice shot but also not abstract.

Peach Sorbet

Classic Jazz?

I guess we were trying to sneak up on abstract because the next variation on the old standard theme was to use a bud vase and some smaller spheres.  When the peach sorbet globes were put in the vase, it really wasn’t that interesting so we took them out and laid them on a sheet of rippled glass with a lone peach in the background and a small serving on the spoon.  This was a bit more interpretive, but not abstract yet.

 

 

Time for some improvisation

Who hasn’t played with blocks as a kid?  So now we’re playing with blocks as old folk!  We started arranging and photographing the shapes and realized that now we were on the right track.  Abstract art, maybe not great art, but closer to the theme of the challenge.  We played, rearranged, shot, rearranged, shot, and now the dilemma:  choosing one from the many candidates.

Mixed Sorbet ShapesSorbet ShapesSorbet Cubes on Ice

Some more variations on the shapes theme

Coda

Fruit Sorbet and Ice Abstract

Modern Jazz?

While setting up for making the frozen shapes, we took the ice maker bins out of the freezers.  The old ice in there had made an interesting sculpture on its own and suggested the idea of using it to contain the colors of the sorbet.  We had to make a new ice sculpture for this, since the ones pulled from the freezer had too many holes to properly contain the flowing liquid sorbet.  Since we had gotten a lot of different shaped and sized ice trays for the sorbet, we decided to freeze a 1/4 inch base for the ice sculpture in a glass tray and then place the other shapes and sizes in it.  Once that was frozen together, we poured some defrosted sorbet colors into it and let them freeze, then poured more and so on.  It was through-lit from the bottom and lit from the top and seems to be pretty abstract.

 Finale

The picture at the top of this post was the one that Linda entered in the contest.  The abstract one here is my entry.  We’ll see how they do.  There were some pretty good ones entered by the other photographers, you know, like I wish I had taken some of them!

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Cherry and Lime Tart: A synthesis of recipes

Cherry Lime Tart Serving

Cherry Lime Tart

A surfeit of cherries

There seems to be two cherry seasons where we live in northern New Jersey.  One is in late April, which I believe consists of imports, and the second is from the end of May throughout the summer.  These are usually Bing and Ranier cherries from Washington State.  Later, if we are lucky, we can get some Michigan Sour Cherries.  The first season gets us psyched for cherries then ends.  By the time the second season starts, we are jonesing badly.

Each week we get more from Whole Foods and if we don’t devour them immediately, we are looking for other uses.  We made this lime tart in the past but we used a simple white flour recipe for the pastry shell.  After reading David Lebovitz’ blog posting on french pastry dough and My Baking Addiction’s Home Made Cherry Pie Filling, we knew that we had hit the trifecta.

My apologies to Jenn and the other healthy recipe bloggers, but there is no way that this could be considered anything but a guilty pleasure.  But we did use whole grain, so maybe they won’t ban us from the community…

Cherry sauce made from mostly Bing cherries

Mostly Bing Cherries for the sauce

The recipe

Cherry Sauce
  • 4 cups of pitted cherries
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup Splenda
  • 3 tablespoons of cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Pastry Shell
  • 3 ounces ounces unsalted butter
  • 1 tablespoon pure olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons of water
  • 1 tablespoon demerara vanilla sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 1/4 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
Lime Custard
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup Splenda
  • 1/2 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
  • 2 teaspoons freshly grated lime zest

The preparation

The Sauce

Inspired by and adapted from a Homemade Cherry Pie Filling recipe on My Baking Addiction’s blog

  1. Combine cherries, water, lemon juice, sugar / Splenda and cornstarch
  2. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 7 to 10 minute frequently stirring
  3. After the mix has thickened, remove from the heat and stir in the almond extract
  4. Allow to cool before using as the topping
Pitted and halved cherries for the cherry sauce

Pitted Cherries Waiting to be Sauce

 

Cherry Tart Sauce In Bowl

Cooked cherry sauce, ready for use in the tart

The pastry shell

Inspired by David Lebovitz in a post about how he learned a new technique for making french tart dough.  We adapted the recipe to use whole wheat pastry flour.

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°
  2. Combine the butter, oil, water, sugar and salt in a Pyrex or oven-proof bowl.
  3. Place the bowl in the heated oven for 15 minutes until the butter bubbles and starts to brown around the edges.
  4. Carefully remove the hot bowl from the oven and pour in the flour and rapidly stir until it comes together to form a ball.
  5. Transfer the dough to a 9″ tart mold with a removable bottom and spread it a bit with a spoon or spatula.
  6. Let the dough cool until you can touch it then pat the soft dough with the heel of your hand and use your fingers to press it into and up the sides of the mold.  Keep a small piece of the dough aside to patch any cracks in the shell.
  7. Prick the dough with a fork about 10 times and bake the tart shell in the oven for about 15 minutes until just lightly browned.
Pouring the Lime Filling into the Pastry Shell

Pouring the Lime Filling into the Pastry Shell

The Filling
  1. In a mixing bowl, whisk eggs, sugar / Splenda until smooth.
  2. Slowly whisk in lime juice and zest
  3. Pour filling into partially baked crust.
  4. Bake tart in upper third of the oven for about 20 minutes until the filling is set and is just starting to turn golden brown.
The baked custard cooling before adding the topping

The baked custard cooling before adding the topping

Putting it together
  1. Cool the baked tart to room temperature
  2. Spread the cherry sauce completely on top
  3. Remove from tart pan before serving.
  4. Try really hard not to devour it until the other family members can at least see it!
Spooning on the Cherry Sauce

Spooning on the Cherry Sauce

With Cherry Sauce Topping

The assembled tart with the cherry sauce topping

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Ceviche…it’s what’s for dinner

 

Squid Ceviche and Shrimp

Squid Ceviche and Shrimp Served on a bed of Radicchio and Arugula

Inspired by the light

We have these west facing large factory windows at our place and when the toxic brew we call air is clear early in the evening, we get some fantastic sunlight through them.  This is what was happening today, and so a photo needed to be taken.  We had bought some squid for its ink (another story) and were too busy to cook it up right away, so we made ceviche:  little preparation and no cooking.  All of the activity had quieted down at our place and we were planning to have a fruitti de mar salad for dinner anyway, so dinner was delayed so this shot could be assembled.

The window of opportunity for the window light is fairly narrow, so we grabbed a nearby plate, an antique fork that I didn’t even know we had, a new brown napkin as background and an old brown napkin as a napkin.  Linda thought that the red radicchio would contrast the plate and I wanted to practice styling the arugula leaves so the stems wouldn’t stick out.  I owe that idea to Nicole S Young (@nicolesy) who has a tutorial for styling pasta on her blog and the ideas there apply to leafy greens very nicely.

The recipe

For 1 pound of squid:

  • 1 cup of water
  • 1 cup of lime juice (or lemon juice, but not as traditional)
  • 1 cup of white vinegar
  • 1 cup of diced onion
  • 1 teaspoon of crushed chilies or Tabasco sauce or red pepper paste or…you get the idea, right?
  1. If you have fresh squid, clean it by pulling out the innards and the long translucent cuttle bone.  There are many detailed sources of info on how to do this.  Google is your friend…
  2. Rinse the cleaned squid thoroughly in cold water then cut it into rings about 1/2 inch wide
  3. Combine the ingredients and let it marinate in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours.  Stir it occasionally to make sure all of the bits get soaked in the marinade.  The acid will be breaking down the proteins and ‘cooking’ the squid.  If the squid is not completely submerged, it will not have the acid soak deep into it and will be raw.  Do not want!

The photograph

Nothing special on our part, the light did it all.  All we did was add a fill card on camera right and a low narrow one in front to keep the edge of the dish bright.  Oh, I also held the camera pretty steady.  F/6.3 at 1/50th sec with Image Stabilization and back button focus lock, Joe McNally’s hand held camera grip technique and ISO 400 for good luck.

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Boiling spaghetti…or is it?

Boiling tri-color spaghetti without any heat

Boiling the spaghetti in cold water at sea level

Inspired

Dario Milano (@foodpixels), a chef, food stylist and food photographer, has created a community of talented and creative food photographers around his series of food photography contests.  Linda and I have used the bi-weekly challenges, each based on a theme chosen by the previous winner, to drive the development of our food photography.  During each of the contests, other photographers comment on the images and thus share a great amount of knowledge amongst all the participants.  We have discovered many imaginative, clever and talented photographers through this group and follow many new blogs for inspiration and recipes.  Oh, did I forget to mention that behind each food photograph is…food?  Our favorite thing to eat!

Finding one’s own ‘voice’

If you scan through the pictures on this blog or visit our Flickr site, you can see how we’ve been trying to hone our skills in the various styles of photography that are currently popular.  The submissions for these contests illustrate the diverse ways that photographers interpret the same theme, and are a fantastic tutorial on food styling, lighting, composition, creative process and, in general, how to make food look good enough to eat!

It is necessary to have a large range of techniques available if one is trying to put together a viable portfolio.  But it is also important to develop one’s own voice within all these techniques.  I am a technical guy:  I develop software for my ‘day job’ and so when I try to be creative, it is my right brain which tries to take control.  Fortunately for our photography, Linda is a graphic designer and it is her left brain on which I rely to take my ideas from technical illustrations to interesting and appealing (hopefully) food photographs.  You are familiar with the expression ‘ I have half a mind to…’  Well, two people with half a mind make a whole one and perhaps an interesting photograph.

Technique requires technical

A large Pyrex container

The Pyrex container used for the shot

For this most recent contest, whose theme was ‘spaghetti’, I immediately went all right brain on my idea for a photograph.  There is an amazing book out there by Nathan Myrhvold, an interesting story by himself, called ‘Modernist Cuisine‘.  It is a technical study of cooking.  It is a six volume, 2438 page work filled with science and gizmos.  It is also filled with some fascinating photography, much of which is highly technical in style.  Needless to say I am impressed; although at $450, the volumes are not in my budget for this year.  It is with this inspiration that we set out to make the spaghetti photos.

My father was a chemist and was always bringing home lab ware.  One of my favorites was this rectangular 12 quart / liter Pyrex ‘thing’.  Having been long retired from use as a terrarium, it would allow us to show the boiling cooking process and we would be able to back light it.  After thinking about boiling 3 gallons of water and dealing with the pasta, the smart one of us told me to find another way.  Since the essence of boiling is bubbles, I decided to simulate the boiling by creating bubbles.  I put together a bubble machine (anyone remember Lawrence Welk?) using vinyl tubing and a plastic grid.  By blowing into the tubing, we were able to roil the cold water, agitate the pasta and be able to reach in to ‘adjust’ stuff without having to call the EMTs.  The grid support also held the spaghetti in place for the photo at the top.  For the boiling pasta, we needed to assist the process by lifting the noodles up and releasing them at the top surface of the water while blowing into the tube.  Otherwise they sank to the bottom and I don’t have enough lung power to get them to the top and looking nice.

The Bubble Machine
Our home made boiling water simulator
The bubble machine in place
Installed and ready for activation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putting the bubble machine to work

It sometimes pays to be a blowhard

We placed our 36″ square soft box behind the container and shot into it.  It was tilted at about 30 degrees towards the camera, so it provided some top light and the spill over allowed us to use a curved silver reflector in the front.  We shot through a hole cut in the reflector.  Many(!) exposures were made to have a variety of patterns to choose from. Lots of breath was expended during these shots; I’m sure glad I quit smoking many years ago.  Lots of spaghetti was cooked and discarded during the process.  I can’t imagine eating spaghetti again anytime soon…

This is the shot we submitted for the contest:

A photo of simulated boiling pasta

The shot used in Food Pixel's contest

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Légumes sous terre

A variety of root vegetables will be used for making health recipes

If only we had known back then

One of the joys of spring in northeastern New Jersey was the selection of fresh root vegetables that were available in the local markets.  They were considered lower class vegetables in my family while growing up and my exposure to them was limited to when we were visiting friends of different cultural backgrounds.  Even so, they were usually creamed and cheesed to oblivion or mixed with other, higher class fare which was more palatable but which masked their flavors.  When they were served at home, they were out of a can and then were cooked until someone remembered them and then dumped on a plate as a gelatinous mess.

But we do know better now

Skip forward two lives and 50 years and food photography and food blogging.  Over the past several months, I’ve been ‘influenced’ into healthy eating by many of the food bloggers that I’ve met online.  I have also been ‘influenced’ into taking pseudo-daily walks, cutting way back on beef based products and eliminating white flour, processed foods,sugars and packaged foods of all types.  In addition, my usual race through the mega-mart has been slowed to a leisurely stroll because every label must be read and interpreted as we learn what and what not to purchase.

So after cutting out 3/4 of my former menu, what’s left?  Plenty! which will be the subjects of many blogs to come, no doubt, but today it’s all about Légumes sous terre, frutto della terra or as we say in New Jersey, stuff pulled outta the dirt!

The roll call

The most common of these has to be the potato, but we are not eating them so the honors in our kitchen goes to the carrot.  We use them in salads, roasted as a side, pureed with ginger and spices in a Carrot-Ginger salad dressing and pureed as soup in our Root Soup.

Clockwise from carrots around the outside of the group are root parsley.  Sometimes known and sold as parsnips, the are close but not the same.  A good discussion on parsnips and root parsley can be found by following those links.  In the past, we would mix parsnips with mashed potatoes to give them a nutty sweet taste.  These days we slice them lengthwise with carrots and roast them to be served as a side dish when we make a roast chicken or Pork Wellington.

At about 8 o’clock in the image above are beets, both red and golden.  Across the top are yellow turnip, horseradish, ginger, a purple top turnip with celery root below it and a rutabaga sitting on the carrot greens.  The horseradish will be grated into some vinegar and used in shrimp cocktail sauce, ginger is used…well, everywhere…and the rest are roasted and served as vegetable sides or as entrees.

Framed in the center are red, yellow and pearl onions, shallots and garlic.

The photograph

We shot this on topsoil.  Where we live, it comes in a bag from Lowe’s.  The light is our big bank light, low at about 10 o’clock with flags to darken the top.  The real work was in the clean up afterward.  Damp topsoil does not vacuum well.

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Cherry Walnut Banana Muffins: Updating an old favorite.

 

Cherry Walnut Banana Muffins

Cherry Walnut Banana Muffins being devoured

Over-ripe bananas

It seems a common practice to buy more bananas at one time than can be consumed before they go past their prime.  That’s why banana bread was invented.  Or perhaps it’s the other way around.  Whatever the reason, banana bread is a wonderful way to salvage those blackened, shriveled and mushy remnants and enforce ‘waste not, want not’.

We’ve been modifying a lot of our standard recipes to fit in better with a healthier diet and it seemed that this favorite would be a good place for some changes.  Whole wheat flour instead of all purpose, Splenda instead of sugar and butter instead of margarine.  Cherries are readily available now and we have been experimenting with them for other desserts so we applied some here too.

We also decided that instead of a single bread, we would try to make individual ‘muffins’ so that the temptation to devour the whole thing once the initial cut was made would be reduced.  With the muffins, we thought we could serve one each and be done with it.  Silly us!

The Recipe

Adapted from Banana Cake recipe in the Canyon Ranch Cookbook.  Makes 6 – 8 muffins depending on the size of the pans, etc.

The ingredients
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, melted
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup Splenda
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 6 oz white whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  • 3 ripe bananas, mashed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 1/2 cup Splenda
  • 1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • pinch of salt
  • Enough cherries to provide 3 per muffin pan, pitted and cut in half
Cherry Walnut Banana Muffins Being Prepared

The steps in assembling the muffins

The preparation
Make the topping
  1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and remove from heat.  Reserve 1/3 cup for the batter.
  2. Add the brown sugar, Splenda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt to the saucepan.
  3. Stir with a fork, pressing when needed, until there are no lumps of sugar.
  4. Add the flour and stir gently until well blended and crumbly.
  5. Set aside
Make the batter
  1. Preheat over to 350° F
  2. Spray muffin cups with non-stick vegetable coating
  3. In a large bowl combine mashed bananas, vanilla, egg, Splenda and salt and mix well
  4. In another bowl combine flour and baking powder and mix well
  5. Add flour mixture to banana mixture and mix lightly
  6. Add the reserved melted butter and mix just until the mixture is moistened
Assemble the components
  1. Fill the prepared muffin pans half way with the batter
  2. Place the cherries on the poured batter and press in lightly
  3. Break up the crumb mixture with you clean fingers and sprinkle it generously over the batter and cherries.
  4. Bake for approximately 20 – 30 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean or until the internal temperature of the muffins are about 210° F

We didn’t have muffin tins!  We had gotten rid of our muffin tins many years ago when we stopped making treats that we could not resist devouring immediately. Now that we have rediscovered our will power (yeah right!), we had just gotten these popover tins and decided to use them.  About 1/2 cup of the batter was poured into the cups, a half-dozen cherry pieces were laid on top and the crumble was sprinkled on top of that.

There were ingredients left over so we used a couple of small tart tins to make use of the extra batter.

 

Cherry Walnut Banana Tart

Shape and size are not a deterrent to over consumption!

The Photograph

These were all shot with studio light.  We used the Einstein 640 mounted in our home made softbox close in to the set.  The brown background is the back of a strip of tin ceiling tile which was salvaged from some renovation work on our loft and studio.  It was cleaned of most of its dust and dirt while planning to use the other side, but this side worked well for the brown feeling that we were aiming for.

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Rhubarb and several somethings new

Sweetened Ricotta with Strawberry Rhubarb Gelee and Sauce

Sweetened Ricotta with Strawberry Rhubarb Gelee and Sauce

The inspiration

Last weekend we had the pleasure of attending Penny De Los Santos‘ (@pennydelosantos) weekend-long online session on Creative Live during which she spoke about, taught and demonstrated how she approaches the art of food photography.  This was the first time that we got to see food photography being done live.  It was an eye opening experience!

There are many things that we need to work on in our own food photography and her sessions help clarify many of those.  One of the most important ones was story telling:  that the shot should be more than just a picture of food and should draw the viewer in by making them think about what is happening in the picture and getting that viewer to relate to the image as a food experience, not just a visual one.

We set out to try to apply some of what we learned by planning a shot that looked like it was part of a dining experience.  We had been experimenting with ricotta cheese making and it is rhubarb season, so a combination of these seemed to have potential.  Because we were not that familiar with rhubarb, this would be a good way to learn about it.  There have been some recent food blog postings about rhubarb, notably:

all of which combined the rhubarb with strawberries, so we concocted this dessert for a photograph.

The photography

So what’s new?

  1. We used natural light instead of setting up our studio lights.  We have some north-west facing large factory windows which are a perfect source since they provide nicely diffused light through the sheer curtains (and acid rain etched glass panes).  The late afternoon sun provided some nice highlights across the set.
  2. This shot is hand held, rather than set on a tripod.  It allows us to move about and find the framing and composition that works for the shot rather than trying to have it all in place before shooting.  We will have to try this even when shooting with studio lights.
  3. And most importantly, we messed up the food on the plate.

The last was difficult one for me in particular.  I tend to be a bit…well, let’s just say rigid and precise when I’m setting up shots.  Some of the comments that I get in critiques is that things look like they were placed too neatly.  The suggestions were that the elements should look like they are where they are because something during the preparation, serving or eating caused them to be there.

So for this shot, we poured the Strawberry Rhubarb sauce on the top and let it drip where it wanted to, sprinkled a couple of strawberries on top and garnished it with some cheese from a pastry bag.  After shooting it this way, we took a spoonful out, carelessly licked the spoon and messily put it back.  It’s a start and I see where this style can go if done right.  The trick here, I think,  is to combine my…er, neatness, with the appearance of controlled messiness.

The recipe

Serves 4

The ingredients
  • 2 lbs cleaned and trimmed rhubarb, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 envelope (3.5 grams) unflavored powdered gelatin
  • 8 ounces fresh strawberries
  • 2 cups ricotta cheese
  • 2 tablespoons sweetener (sugar, Splenda or Stevia)
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • pinch of salt
The Preparation
For the rhubarb sauce
  1. Combine 1 lb of the sliced rhubarb and the brown sugar in a 2 1/2 quart sauce pan.
  2. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally for about 20 minutes
  3. Add the other 1 lb of sliced rhubarb and continue to simmer for another 15 minutes.
  4. Remove from heat and let cool.
For the sweetened ricotta
  1. Combine the ricotta, sweetener, vanilla and the pinch of salt in a mixing bowl.
  2. Chill (the ricotta).
For the gelee
  1. Sprinkle the gelatin on the surface of 1/2 cup of the cooled rhubarb sauce.
  2. Let sit for 5 minutes while heating another 1/2 cup of the rhubarb sauce in the microwave until bubbling.
  3. Add the hot rhubarb sauce to the cold rhubarb sauce and gelatin and stir thoroughly for 2 minutes.
The assembly
  1. In a mold, approximately 3 1/2 inches in diameter by approximately 1 1/2 inches high (see notes for molds) pour 1/4 cup of gelee in the bottom and refrigerate until firm, about 1 1/2 hours.
  2. When the gelee has set, fill the rest of the mold with the sweetened ricotta, about 1/2 cup.  Chill in refrigerator for another hour.
  3. While waiting for the chilling, clean and slice the strawberries and stir them into the remaining 1 cup of rhubarb sauce.
  4. When chilled, turn the mold upside down on a plate and remove the mold (see notes).
  5. Pour 1/4 cup of the rhubarb – strawberry mixture on the gelee (now on the top).
  6. Garnish with more strawberries and a dollop of the sweetened ricotta (or whipped cream or mascarpone, or whatever…
Notes on the mold

You can use anything for a mold, an old plastic container, a tart pan or a silicone cupcake cup.  We made cylinders from a plastic sheet by cutting strips from a desktop calender we bought at Staples for this purpose.  Cut the strips 1 1/2 inches wide and at least 13 inches long.  This will give you enough length to form the 3 1/2 inch diameter (11 inches) with an inch of overlap on each end for taping together.

When it is time to remove the mold, just cut the tape holding the shape together and the spring of the plastic will open it up.  If you want belt and suspenders, spray some non-stick stuff on the inside of the mold before filling.

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