Food Photography

Before I started this blog, I was taking photos of our dinners. I posted a few of them to my personal journal, and got some good feedback. My husband took some of the photos to work to show his co-workers (and sometimes to help illustrate a particular recipe they were talking about), and the common reaction was: “Why are you taking pictures of your dinner?”

Well, I was doing it because it was fun, and it gave me a chance to practice my new photography skills. I continue to do it for the challenge. I know I’m a rank amatuer when it comes to this sort of thing, and I have the links to prove it! :)

* Simply Breakfast is, quite simple, breakfast. Jen of Simply Photo has taken a photo of her breakfast almost every day. Toast with marmalade, omlette with slices of tomato, or banana pancakes, she makes every single breakfast a work of art.

* Tastespotting is the metablog for all things food porn. Photos and links are submitted, and the results are displayed on the page. It’s a fairly high traffic blog, so you’re almost always guaranteed to see something new every time you visit.

* Finally, for some how-to there is the food photography page of professional food photographer Michael Ray. He has tips on taking your own photos, lots of great information on lighting, and basics about the profession and general photograpy tips. (He also has a page on food stylists… How do I get that job?)

Meat recalled from Winnipeg stores

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has expanded the recall of meats originating from Ranchers Beef Ltd. in Alberta. Earlier, the meat producer was fingered for the E. coli outbreak which ultimately forced Topps Meat Co. out of business.

Now, the expanded recall list includes meat products that were sold in several stores in Winnipeg, including Food Fare and Harry’s Foods. Most of the meat products were sold during July and August of this year, so check your freezers!

The Forks Market on Foodtv.ca

My newest article for Food for Thought has been posted, featuring the Forks Market.

We love visiting the Forks, no matter what time of year it is. I think most Winnipeggers feel the same way, and it was nice to be able to (virtually) share the place with people who might not be familiar with it.

Oooh! That reminds me… I bought a little “drink box” of Three Thieves pinot grigio while we were down at Fenton’s last week. I’m curious to see how it’ll be. (And a small part of me wishes that it came with a straw glued to the side….)

The Velvet Glove ripped by reviewer

Wow.

My husband and I have a list of places we’d like to try in Winnipeg. Restaurant Dubrovnik, 529 Wellington and Hy’s are all on the list. One of the restaurants that we’ve been noodling over for a while is The Velvet Glove. They boast a CAA Four Diamond Award, and frequently appear on “must-eat” lists of Winnipeg restaurants.

I’ve always been an admirer of Marion Warhaft’s reviews, especially since she doesn’t just review the hoity-toity places… She’s just as apt to review the mom & pop place that just opened. (That also may be due to her contractual obligations, but it’s nice all the same.) She doesn’t lay into a place very often, as you can see by browsing through the reviews that are available online. Even when she does dislike a place (for example, see her review of Moxie’s, a contemporary-style generica restaurant) her reviews still show that she’s trying to find something good to say.

So I was surprised to read her review of The Velvet Glove, which detailed the poor food and annoying service she received on her visits there. (She always makes multiple trips to a restaurant before writing a review, in order to save the establishments from what might just be a bad night.) The seafood seemed particularly bad, according to the meals she reviewed:

The halibut, for instance — “tea-poached,” according to the menu — was also too fishy, partnered by a blah of stir-fried noodles with no seasoning other than a final moistening of miso broth ($32). The seafood grill comprised two small lobster tails, a few scallops, a slice of salmon, four mussels and a single clam ($39) — all acceptable, but topped by a blob of tasteless white sauce that was described by the waiter as Bearnaise, but wasn’t. The menu does mention a “rich butter sauce” or a “light fennel foam,” but I hadn’t been offered a choice, and I assume the foam was what I got.

I have noticed that she tends to grade the more expensive restaurants more harshly than the mom & pop places, which is proper: if you are paying more, then the food and service should be held to a higher standard. Since The Velvet Glove is one of the most expensive restaurants in town, the fact that they received the same rating as Moxie’s (2.5 out of 5 stars) is… well, bad.

We’re still interested in going to The Velvet Glove, but it’s been pushed down our priority list a bit. I’m also interested to see if there’ll be a follow-up review.

Chocolate Chip Cookies a la Anna Olson

I loooooooove chocolate chip cookies. The problem is that baking… Well, I like baking, but baking doesn’t like me. I always find a way to mess things up a bit.

So while I was intrigued by this month’s Foodtv.ca Recipe Challenge, I was leery to actually attempt the recipe. But a boring afternoon finally prompted me to give it a try.

One of my peeves are chocolate chip cookies that start out chewy when they’re fresh from the oven, but which turn into little bricks after they’ve cooled and been stored for a few days. This recipe, which calls for corn starch, promised chewy centered cookies. Another peeve/issue I have is burning. Usually my cookies either end up burned on the bottom no matter how I adjust racks and baking times. I think it might be our cookie sheets, but even new sheets didn’t solve that problem. I’ve started using a silicone baking mat, which has almost eliminated the burning problem, but cookies that were meant to “spread” - like chocolate chip - don’t. I can live with that.

As I usually do when baking, I followed the recipe to a “t.” The only change I made was to the chocolate. Rather than chopping up a bar of bittersweet chocolate, I used 60% cacao dark chocolate chips instead. As a lot of other people trying the recipe found, I needed to bake them for a bit longer than the recipe called for: I left them in for about 12-14 minutes, rather than the 8-10 that the recipe called for. And, because I used the silocone baking mat, they didn’t spread out at all. It was only once they were on the baking rack cooling that they slowly turned from rounded dough-shapes into cookies. Odd. But I decided to turn that into a plus, since I was able to stick toothpicks into them to test if they were done.

The result: chewy delicious cookies. Even after they’ve been stored for almost a week in a cookie tin, they are still chewy and not crumbly at all. Success! I’ll be putting this recipe into my cookie cookbook for reference when Christmas rolls around. My one complaint - which probably shouldn’t even be a complaint at all - is that I can only have one or two at a time. These are heavy cookies. One fills me up in a way that a handful of my old cookies wouldn’t. I’m going to mark that up as a success, too… These cookies have built-in portion control. You can only have one!

Don’t Cook Down to Yourself

Sorry for the lack of post-age recently. We’re slowly gearing up for our yearly vacation, and that has taken up a lot of my brain cells.

I read an interesting post a while ago (Oct 12?! good grief) on Tigers & Strawberries. Barbara wrote about the phenomona of “picky eaters” when it comes to kids. A recent study out of University College in London claims that genetics plays a role in creating picky eaters. Barbara disputes that, arguing that picky eaters are made, not born.

We don’t have children, so I can’t speak from direct experience, but I know that if we did have kids we would try to show them a world relatively free of “junk” food. If we didn’t want them eating Cheesy Poofs, we wouldn’t have Cheesy Poofs in the house. Simple. Once the kid was older, we’d have discussions about why some foods are treats, only to be eaten on occasion. I know that with marketing and outside influences, it’s getting harder and harder to control exactly what foods a kid will eat, but at least those first few years will be totally in your control.

My mother likes telling the story about me from when I was very young - one or two years old. (I don’t remmeber this at all, but who argues with mom?) My parents were your typical 70’s hippies, and my diet consisted of lots of vegetables and grains purchased from the local food co-op. Sweet was fruit, and chocolate meant carob. My parents left me in the care of a friend one night, and they said that I could have a cookie if I was good. When the babysitter tried to give me a cookie, I refused, and demanded that I get an apple instead. (I’m not sure I would do the same thing today, but at least I started off on the right foot.)

Anyway… Enough with the tangent. Barbara linked to another post on a blog written by Hugh Garvey. In it, Hugh advocates not cooking down to your kids, because you never know what they’ll end up loving (like his kids liking anchovies). This was further illustrated a few entries later, where Barbara posted photos of her baby happilly devouring pasta with eggplant, kale and carmelized onion. (That recipe looks fabulous, by the way.)

Eggplant, kale and onion? Ten years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed about eating somthing like that. I would have made a face and walked away, choosing something much more pedestrian. It wasn’t until I got married to a man with very adventurous tastes in food that I learned to at least try something before writing it off, and give it a chance - you never know what you’re going to like. I see people doing that all the time, especially at work. For potlucks, some people will bring in some absolutely yummy ethinic dishes: curries, cabbage rolls, or soups laden with strange meats and herbs… And they’ll sit mostly untouched. People will dive into the chili and ham & cheese wraps, but they won’t even think about trying something new. It’s sad, really.

So, next week, when North America is consumed with candy (and the aquisition thereof), take a night to try something new: a meat, vegetable, fruit or a spice that you never would have considered eating before. Even if it’s just something simple that you’ve never had before, like the dragonfruit pictured above, give it a whirl. I’ll try the same thing and post what I had and how I liked it.

(Mostly) 100 Mile Thanksgiving on Foodtv.ca

Due to my work schedule and a few other concerns, we had our Thanksgiving dinner last weekend. We decided to do a 100 mile Thanksgiving dinner, and I wrote about the experience for Foodtv.ca.

It was a huge amount of work putting this dinner together, mostly through planning out what to have and where to get the ingredients. We learned a few things, too:

1. There’s no such thing as “one-stop shopping” with eating local. While we did pick up all of the produce for the dinner from the farmers’ market, we had to go to the Forks for bread, a grocery store for butter and milk, and a different grocery store for honey (which we eventually found at the market anyway, but - oh well.) The chicken was brought to me at work by my coworker who hunts, but if I had to purchase it myself that would have been yet another stop. I was amazed at the amount of running around we had to do.
2. This is the main reason why I believe local eating will not really catch on in the mainstream until major grocery stores start making a point of carrying local produce and meats. People want to stop at the grocery store on their way home from work and pick up dinner - not traipse all over town picking up one thing here and one thing there. Visiting several different stores is fine for one special meal, but not for everyday eating. This is why it’s so important if you’re interested in supporting local agriculture to buy local products at the grocery store whenever possible. The more people buy them, the more the stores will realize that there is a demand for local products, and the more local products they will carry.
3. It’s a good idea to test run recipes before the main event. I knew this before, of course, but there were a few things we had at the dinner - specifically the whipped cream - that would have benefitted from trying out ahead of time, especially since we were cooking by the seat of our pants.
4. The little garlic heads we got from the farmers’ market were the sweetest, tastiest garlic I’ve ever had. Those big California-grown heads at the grocery store are going to be a poor substitute now.
5. One moment of forgetfulness… We always cover unattended food in our house, especially if it’s poultry or fish, since our cats (all three of them) have been known to steal food when we’re not looking. I’m irritated with myself that I forgot this once, and one of the chicken breasts vanished as a result.

All in all, I’d say it was a successful dinner. It was fun putting it all together, and most of the dishes turned out great. And to finish, here’s a photo of the suspected chicken thief, Belladonna: keep an eye on your food!

Egg Yolk Colours

Below is an illustration of the difference you can get between two similar eggs:

Both are large, grade A chicken eggs. Both are organic. Both are free-range. Both were purchased at local grocery stores.

The egg on the left had a white shell, and was grown by a local egg producer for (what I believe to be) national distribution. The egg on the right had a brown shell, and was produced for a national chain.

I was taken by the colour difference. The breed of the chicken determines the colour of the shell, but the chicken’s diet is the main determining factor in the colour of the yolk.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting and wanted to share what I found in my frying pan this morning. :)

Ranch Chicken Casserole Experiment

With the husband away on business, I tend to fall into my single-me mode of eating: a box of Stove-Top stuffing, or a bag of popcorn for dinner. “This is silly,” I thought while at work one day. “This is my chance to truly experiment with a recipe, try it out, and then I’m the only one affected if it turns out to be inedible.” So I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and picked up a few things.

The random idea bouncing around in my head was to create a casserole version of one of my favorite easy dishes, ranch chicken and tri-color pasta. I had found a stash of old Alton Brown Good Eats episodes on YouTube recently, and had watched an episode where he goes into what makes up a good old-fashioned casserole: 1-2 main ingredients, a starch, aromatics, seasoning and a binder.

So, arriving back at home, I unpacked my casserole ingredients and sorted them out. I had chicken and frozen vegetables for main ingredients, tri-color pasta for a starch, italian seasoning for seasoning, and a packet of ranch dressing mix for my aromatic and binder. I would also be using eggs to help bind everything, and breadcrumbs on the top to give it a nice crust.

I started out by cooking the pasta until it was just al dente. I chopped the chicken into cubes and browned it in some olive oil until there was no pink inside the pieces. I mixed the ranch dressing up as per the instructions (1 cup milk, 1 cup mayo), and whisked in two eggs. Once the pasta was drained, I mixed it with the chicken in the casserole dish, and added about a teaspoon of italian seasoning. Then I poured in the ranch dressing/egg mixture and stirred everything up well. It looked sort of watery, as though the dressing didn’t have enough stuff to cover. I was a little concerned, but figured it would all work out. I sprinkled the top generously with breadcrumbs, and put the casserole into a 350° F oven and washed up the dishes.

I had intended to leave the casserole in the oven for about 50 minutes, but just as I was sitting down after doing the dishes I was struck by the horrible realization that I had forgotten all about the frozen vegetables! I had put them in the freezer to make more room on my work surface, and they had completely slipped my mind. Only about 10 minutes had elapsed since putting the casserole into the oven; surely there was still time! I rushed back to the kitchen and pulled out the casserole.

After puzzling for a moment about what the best way was to fix this, I stirred in the breadcrumbs that had been sprinkled on top, and mixed in about a cup of frozen vegetables. (I was using a California mix: cauliflour, broccoli and carrots.) Now it wasn’t watery at all. I sprinkled more breadcrumbs on top, covered the casserole and placed it back into the oven, crossing my fingers.

I let the casserole cook for an extra 10 minutes to make up for the time it had been out of the oven, and then set it sit for 10 minutes before trying it. I had a serving for dinner, and tried it again the next day warmed up for lunch.

It was… well, it was ok. It was not a pretty casserole, but it was passable. The ranch dressing did not provide enough flavour, though; if I try this again I’ll need to try something else. Perhaps sautee some onions and celery with the chicken? Maybe a few teaspoons of garlic powder? And to be honest, it didn’t seem to need the chicken, which surprised me. Perhaps if the chicken had been marinated in something flavourful it would have been better, but I actually preferred the bites that didn’t contain any chicken. And, as an interesting side-note, it was far better the next day.

So, overall I’d say it was a success. It was edible! Now, I just need another week alone to try tweaking the recipe…

Oven-Dried Tomatoes

What to do with a surplus of little sweet tomatoes from the garden?

Our daytime temperature is falling fast, but we’re still getting large handfuls of sweet grape tomatoes from the garden every day. After seeing the price of sun-dried tomatoes at the grocery store ($4.00 for a small bag? and look at the preservatives!) I decided to try my hand at making my own.

I researched a few recipes, but all of the “good” ones seemed to start with “Fire up the dehydrator….” Not being in possession of such a device (and not wanting to spend days babysitting tomatoes sitting out in the sun), I went with the oven method. It was amazingly painless and easy.