Cheryl Maeder carefully controls focus, blur and colour in her photos to create impressionistic but fleeting glimpses of an idyllic world – childhood nostalgia in art form.
I have no real idea how she does these. But they make me want to grab my camera and start experimenting right away.
You can buy Cheryl’s photos or check out her ‘Dreamscapes’ portfolio here.
One thing I’ve added to my 101 List is to learn Thai cookery. It’s so thoroughly and deliciously complex, looks so very beautiful and is a wonderful vehicle for consuming tons of healthy vegetables and lots of yummy seafood.
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It’s also a cuisine about which I am almost completely ignorant. I love it, but rarely stray from Pad Thai, Tom Yum Soup and Red Curries on the menus; never cook authentic Thai at home (though here’s a stab at inauthentic Thai) and have never been to Thailand.
For the purposes of the list I defined my goal as completing six workshops or classes on the subject over the next three years. I know that Thai cooking is as complex, if not more so, than French cuisine, but I figured that six workshops would be enough to give me a somewhat reasonable grounding.
The class in Thai Comfort Cooking I took at PCC in Greenlake was perfect for a beginner like me. The amazing teacher Pranee Halvorsen, is a lovely Thai lady from Phuket, despite the Norwegian married name. She took us through four courses of a Thai comfort food feast, with detailed recipes and wonderful stories, chopping and stir frying all the while and patiently answering all our questions.
She showed us her favourite products, talked about specific Thai techniques and ingredients, offered substitutions for difficult to get items and demonstrated how to make garnishes and ingredients such as sauteed shallots, crushed chilli peppers, vinegar and jalapeno condiment and dark soy sauce, and then served out each dish to eighteen people, so we got a fabulous lunch along the way.
By a huge coincidence Pranee had been a student with me at Jackie Baisa’s photography workshop, so she very kindly let me take photographs throughout the class. Again the overhead lighting was flat and unforgiving, but the dishes were too exquisite (and exquisitely delicious) not to look amazing whatever the photography.
I’ll be attempting to cook all of these dishes over the next few weeks so there will be recipes and more pics coming. In the meantime feast your eyes on these pics.
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Another weekend, another photography workshop, another tick on my 101 Things list. This time with Seattle food and wedding photographer and fellow oxtail stew lover Jackie Baisa.
A bunch of us came together at gourmet cooking store ‘Dish It Up’ in Seattle’s Magnolia district. For the first part of the class we discussed Jackie’s extremely informative hand out and also critiqued a bunch of Jackie’s photos that hadn’t quite made the cut – this was an extremely useful exercise, and I need to get into the habit of doing it both with my own photos and those in magazines.
Then after a sneaky lunch at Nikos Gyros (at last, I have found decent Greek food in Seattle!), the real fun began when ace private chef Becky Selengut arrived to cook a bunch of beautiful dishes for us to photograph.
To be honest, the photography conditions could have been better - we were in Dish It Up’s demonstration kitchen which is wonderful for chefs but not so wonderful for photographers, with flat overhead lighting, no natural light, no dedicated photography lights and a very shiny reflective granite surface. No different from photographing in most restaurants though, I wouldn’t have thought.
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And that, my dears, was the very great thing about this course - the opportunity to take plenty of pictures of a chef in action. And the dishes Chef Becky produced were literally pretty as a picture – photography skills hardly required. If Jackie does another course, make sure you’re on it. (Also the opportunity to sample the dishes later is, shall we say, an added attraction).
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Here are Chef Becky and Photographer Jackie doing their thang.
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Just back from San Francisco y’all (<— how American am I?). Love that place.
Or peppers and aubergines (I’m sorry but I really cannot bring myself to say ‘eggplants’) preserved in oil the Italian way.
I’ve been following ace Seattle foodie Salty Seattle, whom I first met at the Ice Cream Social, on Twitter where she’s recently been having a lot of fun with the #foodninja hashtag. So much so that she, Salty Ninja, and her foodie friends Fujimama (Fuji Ninja) and Bell’Alimento (Bella Ninja) have recently set up a Food Ninja competition with some quite fabulous prizes.
Unfortunately it is not entirely clear to me what a ‘food ninja’ actually is, although it appears to involve badass cooking skills (or indeed ‘skillz’), doing death-defying things with knives, high kicks and possibly flying through the air, all while wearing stiletto heels.
So what’s a girl to do when her knife skills are pedestrian, she can’t wear stilettos due to acute plantar fasciitis and she looks ridiculous in a bandanna? After much thought, I decided to do death-defying things with red hot peppers instead. The good news is that this recipe doesn’t even require badass cooking skills or even skillz, just a bit of care and patience (though don’t mention this to the ninja ladies).
I’ve been wanting to write this post for quite literally years. When I was living in Europe and after my parents died, I would often spend Christmas with my Italian relatives in Piemonte. And let me tell you, Italy is a very good place to be at Christmas. The cuisine of Piemonte is rightly famous for its antipasti or appetisers. On the night of Christmas Eve my aunt (a true food ninja if ever I met one) would serve a twenty course feast – a parade of seventeen varied and delicious antipasti which would leave you groaning on the floor before the pasta, meat and dessert courses even made an appearance.
Of these, my very favourites were the piquant ‘sott’olio’ vegetable preserves she would bring up from her cellar – zucchini, artichokes, aubergines and teensy hot peppers stuffed with tuna, all silky smooth and dripping with flavoured oil, just begging to be mopped up with some good crusty bread.
She gave me her recipe but I’ve never made them before – I even added ‘Make Italian Sott’Olio Preserves’ to my list of 101 Things – so it seemed like a sign when I was casting around for something ninja-like to make and I saw precisely the right tiny round bottomed peppers I needed at the farmers’ market (does anyone happen to know what variety these are by the way?)
| Peperoncini Ripieni Sott’Olio (Stuffed Peppers in Oil) Makes 2 jars 20-30 little round bottomed hot peppers 1 cup (8fl oz) water 1 cup (8fl oz) white wine vinegar 1 can good quality tuna packed in oil 3-4 anchovies packed in oil, rinsed and patted dry 1 tbsp capers packed in vinegar or salt, rinsed and patted dry 2-3 cloves garlic (optional) Extra virgin olive oil |
Melanzane Sott’Olio (Aubergines in Oil) Makes 2 jars Some beautiful firm aubergines (I used three) Salt 1 cup (8fl oz) water 1 cup (8fl oz) white wine vinegar 6-7 cloves garlic, thinly sliced dried oregano dried chili flakes/crushed dried chili Extra virgin olive oil |
First up prepare your vegetables.
Peppers: Cut out the tops of the peppers and scoop out all the seeds with a knife and small spoon. This is pretty time-consuming which is why I only ended up making 28 peppers. I shall regret this later.
Aubergines: Thinly slice your aubergines lengthwise. If you were a true ninja you’d probably use a ninja star for this, but I used a knife.
Layer the aubergines in a colander with plenty of salt. Put a plate on top and add a heavy weight such as a big bag of flour to squish out all the bitter brown juices. Leave the aubergines for at least one hour and preferably several.
When the aubergines are ready, rinse off the salt and brown juices and pat off as much excess moisture as you can. Cut the aubergine slices into strips about an inch or so wide with kitchen scissors.
Aubergines and Peppers: Heat the water and vinegar together until boiling. This recip e is easily scalable so just use as much water and vinegar as you need, remembering to keep a ratio of 1/2 water and 1/2 vinegar. Two cups of liquid is fine for the quantities of vegetables I have here.
Scald the vegetables in the boiling vinegar solution for 2-3 minutes. I did my peppers and aubergines in separate batches so as not to mix the flavours.
When the vegetables are blanched, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and leave them to dry – the aubergines pressed between clean dry teatowels or kitchen towel, and the peppers placed upside down with their bottoms in the air on kitchen towel.
It is very important at this stage to dry the vegetables as much a possible as wet vegetables will go mouldy. Leave them for several hours – my aunt suggests putting them outside in the sunshine, but then she lives in Italy.
Aubergines: Sterilise your jars in boiling water. When the aubergines are very dry, add a layer of oil to the jar, then a layer of aubergine and then a few slices of garlic, a pinch of chili flakes and some sprinkles of oregano. Continue layering the jar in this way until you’ve reached the top, making sure that the aubergine is completely covered with oil. This is again important for the preserving process.
Peppers: Sterilise your jars in boiling water. Prepare your stuffing by breaking up the anchovies with your fingers and stirring them and the capers into the tuna. If possible, gently pulse the mix in food processor until thoroughly amalgamated but stop before it becomes a sloppy puree. Filled the dry, hollow peppers with the mix.
Layer the stuffed peppers, slices of garlic and oil in your prepared jars as before, again covering the peppers completely with oil.
Store everything for several months in a dark, cool, dry place. It’s important to leave them for a little time if you can so that flavours meld and the oil becomes especially delicious. This is easier said than done.
Serve with good bread, some prosciutto, some delicious tomatoes and a glass of chilled white wine for a taste of the Italian summer all year round.
And so, it was not what I was planning, but the first thing I can fully cross off my 101 Things list is ‘Prepare Italian Sott’Olio Preserves’. Only another 100 things to go. I’ll do an update post when we finally get to open them, probably around Christmas time.
And if you want to me help me cross ‘Win Something, Anything’ off my list too, then I’ll be posting details of how to vote for this post in the next few days.
Oh and apologies for light posting recently. I managed to lose a bunch of posts I’d prepared, so I’m now having a ton of fun recreating posts I’ve already written up once. So much my favourite thing to do as I’m sure you can imagine.
I did another photography workshop at the weekend. They seem to be one if the easiest things to tick off my list of 101 Things – getting all the fun things out of the way before I start tackling the hard stuff I suppose.
I’ve noticed that I don’t very often photograph people – I prefer the still-life composition of food or interiors shots, or the drama of landscapes. Portraiture, particularly of strangers, doesn’t do much for me, which is weird, because I’d consider myself to be quite an extrovert ‘people’ person.
There is of course one notable exception and that is the Minx and she is horribly difficult to photograph – usually in perpetual motion and either pulling funny faces or smiling in a horrendously false and sickly way every time she sees the camera pointing in her direction.
So it seemed a good idea to take a workshop in Photographing Kids – both to take me out of my comfort zone and to improve my photography of the Minx. This time I was working with the wonderful Clare Barboza, who is both an astonishing food photographer and does amazing portraiture. She shares the gorgeous and inspiring Spare Room studio with Lara Ferroni.
We talked about appropriate shutter speeds, using a bounce to soften the light, focusing on the eyes, composition, capturing details and using props, with the help of two beautiful models, just-turned-four Meilee and three-month old Kate.
One of the things I love about doing workshops with different photographers is that each one focuses on different things to create their pictures and has different compositional and lighting tricks they prefer, so I always learn a ton of stuff about photography in general whatever the subject. If you’re in Seattle I can’t recommend Clare’s workshops highly enough.
Here are a few of my favourite shots from the day. They’re not the usual stuff I post about on this blog, but what the heck, enjoy the cute.
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It does make me a little sad that I didn’t have the skills to take photos like these of the Minx when she was a baby and toddler, though I suppose it’s better late than never. Must schedule a photo shoot with her soon.
I’ve been looking at a lot of food photography recently, but, sometimes, dare I say it, it can get a little same-y – put your food in a pretty dish, lay it on a cunningly folded napkin, place everything on a textured table and play with depth of field until the background is artfully blurred.
Rinse and repeat. (And yes, I know I do this too.)
So it’s wonderful to see food photography that is completely out of left field and so very beautiful, for, of all things, an Ikea cookbook.
Photographer Carl Kleiner worked with stylist Evelina Bratell to create fabulous still-life patterns out of the raw ingredients for each dish.
The photos of the finished articles are witty, pretty and original too.
Unfortunately I think the cookbook is only available in Swedish and from Ikea in Sweden at the moment, though hopefully an international edition will be available shortly.
And wouldn’t those prints look wonderful as kitchen artwork?
And maybe I was onto something when I took a picture of my pot roast ingredients back in February? I should have held that thought.
As part of my 101 Things list, I’ve challenged myself to complete at least six photography workshops or classes in the next three years.
First up was a Seattle Shuttertour with the amazing Valentina Vitols.
This is such a cool concept – you are taken on walking tour of some of the most photogenic spots in Seattle, while ace photographer Valentina tells you a little about the history of what you’re seeing, stops every so often to give the group photography tips and is always available to share her knowledge on an individual basis.
She also talks a bit about using urban backdrops for portraiture, making sure to pick up your camera and take plenty of pictures of you as well, so you end up with some nice portraits by a professional portrait photographer. And she took us to corners of Seattle that I had never been to before.
I knew most of the tips, but it’s one thing to know these things in the abstract and another to be able to put them into practice straightaway afterwards. And in fact just walking round the city for the sole purpose of taking photos was so unusual for me and just so much fun. I must do it more often.
I think the Shuttertours are finished for the year now, but if you’re a photographer either living in Seattle or visiting as a tourist, I can’t recommend them highly enough. Go and do one next season!
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Or ice cream as health food. Kinda.
A week or three ago I was honoured to be invited to an ‘Ice Cream Social’ at the home of Seattle Bon Vivant. ‘Viv’ doesn’t blog much anymore but she is a huge presence on the Seattle foodie scene and I knew I was going to be in exalted foodie company.
So which ice cream to make? I wanted something that would be unusual enough to intrigue an American foodie crowd; something either very English or very Italian to reflect my heritage, and of course something utterly delicious. And that’s when I remembered Brown Bread Ice Cream.
This ice cream is as British as it comes, apparently made by the Victorians, and still served today in British restaurants and gastropubs, though you won’t find it in a British supermarket (why on earth not? – Ed)
It’s also pretty quick and simple to make. I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe here as my base but made several changes.
Ingredients
Olive oil, for greasing
75g (2 1/2 ozs) brown bread (I used 3 large thick slices of a well made wholemeal or whole grain loaf without too many nuts or seeds)
75g (2 1/2ozs) soft brown sugar
250ml (1 cup) milk
250ml (1 cup) double/heavy cream (American heavy cream is not as rich as British double cream but still works)
1 tsp vanilla extract (Gordon uses a vanilla pod, if you have one refer to his recipe above)
6 free-range egg yolks
50g (1/4 cup) caster sugar
Method
– Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6
– Make brown breadcrumbs by slicing thick slices of your wholemeal loaf, removing the crusts, letting them go stale over a day or two and then whizzing them in a food processor. If you’ve forgotten to let them go stale, just bake them for 30 minutes or so in a very cool oven before whizzing.
– Add the same weight in light brown sugar to the crumbs. I forgot to make precise cup measures., sorry. Suffice to say that you should make LOTS of the caramel breadcrumbs as they are delicious stirred into any shop-bought vanilla; so just make loads, keeping the weight of bread and sugar the same.
– Grease a baking tray with a little olive oil using a pastry brush or spray. Spread out the breadcrumbs and sugar and cook for 10-15 minutes or until the sugar caramelises. I burnt my first batch, so for the second batch I stirred the bread crumbs with a wooden spoon every 3 minutes until they were crunchy and caramelly – about 10 minutes in my oven. I highly recommend doing this. Watch the crumbs like a hawk anyway.
– Leave the crumbs to cool. When they’re cool, bash them with a rolling pin or meat tenderiser or similar, so that they’re crumby and not all clumped together.
– Whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar together in a bowl until thick, pale and creamy and then whisk in the cream, milk and vanilla extract. Transfer to a thick-based pan and cook gently over a low heat until the mixture coats the back of the spoon. Pass through a sieve if you’re feeling fancy.
– Cool in the fridge overnight. Gordon forgets to mention this, but it’s imperative for my ice cream maker (the Kitchen Aid ice cream attachment)
– Pour the custard into your ice-cream churn and, just as it starts to set, add the breadcrumbs and churn until they’re stirred through. Then put in the freezer to freeze completely. This ice cream benefits hugely from twenty minutes ‘ripening’ in the fridge before serving.
– I served mine with strawberries marinaded in sugar and lemon juice.
– If I were you, and if you were going to serve this to adults only, I’d definitely experiment with adding a splash of Baileys or Irish whiskey to the mix instead of vanilla.
If I say so myself this ice cream was super good – dense and rich, with a sweet chewy nuttiness – and it was fab to see the change come over some initially highly sceptical faces at the Ice Cream Social.
Do you want the bad news or the good news?
On the downside the Minx’s interminable summer vacation continues, so you’re just going to have to make do with holiday snaps and maybe the off it of flybynight blogging for the time being.
The good news is that she goes back to school NEXT WEDNESDAY (be still my beating heart!). Not only will it be business as usual, but I’m hoping to unveil a bit of blog re-launch then as well. I’ve no idea how y’all can cope with the excitement.
In the meantime though, here are some pictures from the next stage of our French adventure (which seems so long ago now).
After five very pleasant days in Menton we drove north and east to spend a few days in a gite near the beautiful town of Aix en Provence.
As you can see, we indulged in a lot of shopping, sitting in cafes, drinking wine, eating patisserie and general loafing about a la francaise.
We stayed in some very sweet and well-equipped gites, in beautiful old stone buildings set in a vineyard close to St Maximin and Aix. The Minx managed to swim her very first length in the huge pool, which accounts for the enormous cheese-eating grin below.
Not surprisingly the Minx has decided that she likes France very much. This was all part of my cunning plan to ensure that she continues to enjoy going to a French immersion school. I have not yet revealed to her that not every corner of France is quite like this.
Apologies for the light posting of late – the Minx is only doing morning camp this week, so I don’t have so much free time. The good news is that the interminable summer holidays are coming to an end in less than two weeks, may the Lord and all the angels be praised. Call me a bad mother but I am counting the seconds. America, is ELEVEN weeks of summer vacation REALLY necessary?
But I digress.
For a brief moment at the end of the cherry season in the UK, the market in Portobello Road was full of deep, dark, rich, ridiculously expensive cherries, the colour of the very best red wine, marked ‘USA”. I used to look forward to those cherries all year.
Little did I know then that the chances were that those cherries came from Washington state and that I would one day be living in a place where the farmers’ markets would be heaving with them. Apparently it’s something to do with the climate and the volcanic soil, but they truly are the best cherries I’ve ever tasted.
Last week was pretty much the end of this year’s Washington cherry season, so I seized the opportunity to make a clafoutis. I first ate (an awful lot of) clafoutis in the South of France when I was teaching there as part of my university degree and every year since then I’ve made it religiously when cherry season comes around.
The recipe I’ve found which seems to me to be the most authentic comes from my ancient battered copy of Paula Wolfert’s the Cooking of South West France which has apparently been recently reissued.
I’ve doubled the quantities she gives to make enough to fit my 34 cm x 20 cm ( 13ins x 8ins). You don’t need to get too precious about the quantities – you just need enough batter to almost cover the cherries.
Ingredients
– Enough cherries to completely cover the bottom of your dish. Many people in France don’t stone their cherries which makes it much easier to prepare but a bit of a pain to eat. I stone my cherries if I’m feeling posh. You could also use apricots or pears – any fruit that doesn’t get too soft in cooking.
– Enough butter to grease your dish
– 5 tbsps plain/all-purpose flour
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 4 tbps granulated sugar
– 5 large eggs
16 fl oz /500 ml/ 2 cups single cream or half and half or creamy milk or a mixture of milk and heavy/double cream, depending on how decadent/slim you’re feeling
– 1 1/2 tsps vanilla extract
– 2 tbsps dark rum, kirsch, Armagnac (optional, I prefer it without)
– enough granulated sugar to dredge thickly when cooked
Method
– Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/180degrees C/Gas Mark 4
– Remove stems and pit fruit if necessary, if using apricots or larger fruits instead of cherries, slice them in half.
– Slather your dish with butter and add the fruit in a single layer
– In a mixing bowl combine the dry ingredients.
– Warm the milk or cream until barely simmering
– Whisk the eggs into the cream
– Whisk in the dry ingredients mixture until well-blended.
– Add the vanilla and rum etc. if using.
– Strain the batter over the fruit (very often I can’t be bothered to strain it).
– Bake for 40 minutes or until firm and golden
– When it’s cooked, take it out of the oven and dredge thickly with granulated sugar while still warm. Serve either lukewarm or cold.
The best accompaniment to this is the sort of extra-thick spoonable double cream that you can buy in the UK and which is unheard of in the US (which I have verifired via a heated Facebook and Twitter discussion). If you can’t get thick spoonable cream, then creme fraiche would do at a pinch or just pourable heavy cream. Or else, it’s really so delicious that you don’t need any cream at all.
