Food Styling and Photography

"When you look at food you have two eyes, when a camera looks at it, it only has one."

-Delores Custer, food stylist

A couple weeks ago I attended a food styling and photography class.  It was put on by the Portland Culinary Alliance, a professional organization of which I am a student member. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this class, but I knew it sounded exactly like something I should do. 

The Fox Foodie is coming up on our one year anniversary, and wow! have we come a long way from January 30th 2010. My writing has improved, my recipes have improved, I have been trying new places and attending new events, but the most obvious change is that my photographs have improved greatly. 

If you don't believe me check out some of my very early posts such as this one or this one. And then look at the photos I upload now. Hopefully you will notice a dramatic difference. 

I am convinced that good photos are one of the easiest and quickest ways to make your blog look professional. If you look at the very best food blogs, you will notice that they have the very best photos.  Sometimes people can even get away with being so-so writers, if they are excellent photographers.

I do not claim to be an excellent food photographer by any means, but I do enjoy it and I love learning more about it. In fact you would be surprised and perhaps appalled if you saw the camera in which I take all of my photos with. Let's just say it is a small point and shoot and it is nearing its fourth birthday. Yeah, I am in desperate need of a new camera.

But as you can see, it doesn't take a professional and expensive camera to take good food pictures. Of course, as any amateur food photographer would wish, I do hope to get a Canon Rebel in the year 2011...

Elephant Garlic Festival

I have always had a mild obsession with garlic. This was never more apparent to friends and family as it was my Freshman year of college when I wrote a nineteen page research paper solely on garlic. In my foods class I was asked to pick any fruit or vegetable to write about, and of course I had to pick my favorite: garlic!

About two years ago I was made aware of the Elephant Garlic Festival held in North Plains, Oregon every August. Well, it wasn't until this year that I was able to go, and I'm very glad I did!

It was a nice change to be around people who are as excited about garlic as I am. I even surprised a garlic grower when I knew the botanical name for garlic (for those who care, it's Allium sativum).

The festival wasn't very large (and neither is the town of North Plains), but it was the perfect activity for a few hours. There was crafts fair and some family-friendly activities, but I was really there for the food (when am I not?) so I headed straight to the GARLIC!

Several farmers were selling their varieties of garlic and elephant garlic (which is not really garlic, but is actually in the leek family). I really enjoyed browsing at Garlic Gourmet's booth, they were selling over 50 different types of garlic products!

The garlic food options were endless. One could purchase garlic popcorn, garlic bread, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted garlic cloves, garlic ice cream, and even garlic beer! I had some of the best garlic mashed potatoes of my life there and got to try garlic ice cream--which is something I have been wanting to do since I included a garlic ice cream recipe in my nineteen page garlic paper.

Believe it or not, the garlic ice cream was actually pretty good! It was a lot more "garlic-y" than I expected but I did eat the whole bowl, so I would say it was a culinary success. (FYI the garlic ice cream and garlic beer are not sold at any other time of the year, so come to the festival and get your fill!).

Here is a recipe I picked up at the festival for garlic mashed potatoes. I haven't tried this recipe yet, but maybe it's as good as the mashed potatoes I ate there!?
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Mashed Potatoes with Garlic

Prepare potatoes as usual. Peel, quarter and clean 4-6 cloves elephant garlic. Drop in pot with potatoes and bring to a boil. Turn temperature down to medium and cover for 20 minutes. Test the garlic and make sure it is soft. Whip both the potatoes and garlic together. Add butter, milk, salt and pepper to taste. I add a little (1/2 tsp) of baking powder to my whipped potatoes, it makes them lighter and fluffier. Enjoy!

2010 Lavender Festival

If I had to pick one flavor that defined this summer for me I would undoubtedly choose lavender. Many people don't immediately think of food when they hear the word lavender...but I do. Traditionally lavender is used mostly as a scent, for oils, candles, lotions and deodorants. But when I hear the word lavender I think of all the wonderful things I can eat that are flavored with the wonderful floral taste of lavender.

I can pinpoint the day when my fascination with culinary lavender first began. It was the night when my roommate Heather brought home some lavender truffles from the high-end restaurant where she worked at the time, Jory. These truffles were some of the most decadent things I have ever placed in my mouth. The fragrant lavender blended so well with the creamy and rich dark chocolate.

Willakenzie's booth at the Yamhill lavender festival

Since then I have been on the hunt to find all kinds of culinary applications for lavender. I hit what seemed like the jackpot one day at a Portland Farmers Market when I got to taste and eventually purchase two utterly delicious, yet very different lavender products.

The first product was lavender cheddar from the Rogue Creamery located in Medford Oregon, my absolute favorite local creamery. It was really fun getting to taste lavender being used in a savory application, and it was the perfect combination. The second product that day I got to taste was lavender jam from Sundance Lavender Farm located in Salem Oregon. They produce eight different varieties of lavender jams, but my favorite combination was lavender and blueberry.

While I was visiting Sundance's booth at the Farmers Market I picked up a flier for the 2010 lavender festival (July 10-11th) . Initially I had no idea what the lavender festival was about, but regardless, I knew I had to go. Upon reading the brochure I learned that many different lavender farms around Oregon are opening up for visitors. Many have music, food, crafts, and lavender products to purchase.

The first place I visited the day of the Lavender Festival was the small Lavender Festival located in Yamhill Oregon. This was the only destination on the festival tour route that wasn't located at an actual farm. Instead, many local farms had booths here so that visitors could purchase products from many different farms all in one place.

I looked around the festival, testing a few lotions, smelling a few candles and even buying a bouquet of lavender, but the real reason I was here was to learn about different ways to eat lavender. Much to my delight it wasn't long before I found a food stand selling different lavender goodies. I purchased a lavender lemonade and a lavender scone and was in for a real treat! The lemonade was heavenly, and perfectly thirst quenching on an 80 degree day--I have now decided that lavender and lemon is one of my favorite combinations!  The scone had a delicate but present lavender taste, and was such a treat!

Lavender Scone

I then visited two lavender farms, Wild Rain and Willakenzie. Wild Rain had a great location with a beautiful lavender field and access to the river, but Willakenzie had the culinary products I had been looking for! They sold lavender salt, lavender pepper, lavender sugar, a kit to make lavender simple syrup, and culinary lavender. They also were selling lavender sorbet for the festival, it was very sweet but tasted just right on the hot day.

It was an absolutely perfect day and inspired me to start trying recipes with lavender. In fact, just yesterday I was recipe testing to create a lavender cookie, look for that blog post soon! (Here is the recipe for Lavender Lemon Bars!)

Lavender Sorbet

Here is the lavender simple syrup recipe you can use to sweeten lemonade (or any drink!), pour over a cake or fruit, or use in a sorbet recipe.

Lavender Simple Syrup

From ZoeBakes.com

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
 3 tablespoons dried or fresh lavender flowers


In a sauce pot bring the water, sugar and lavender to a simmer.

Allow to simmer until the sugar is completely dissolved. Turn off heat and let sit until cool. Use or store in the refrigerator for up to a month. The longer you let the lavender steep in the simple syrup the stronger the flavor will be. I store it in the refrigerator with the flowers still in the syrup and strain it when I need it in a recipe.

Attention! The bakery where I work, Sweetest Thing Cupcakes, in Newberg is now offering a lavender cupcake during the month of August! Super yummy!

IACP Conference 2010

Guess who I met last weekend?! Shall I give you a hint? Hmmm...let's see, how did Julie Powell put it in the movie Julie and Julia?? "The degree of separation between Julia Child and me is about to shrink by a factor of about a thousand."

If you guessed Judith Jones, you are correct. Yes, I met the Judith Jones. The editor who basically founded Julia Child and helped bring us the cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. Today Judith Jones is senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf. Not only did I meet her, but I also got her autograph on her new memoir The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, and a photograph with her!

Where in the world did I meet Judith Jones, you may be wondering--that is unless you read the title of this blog post. I met her at the annual International Association of Culinary Professionals Conference that was held this year in my hometown, Portland Oregon!

Unfortunately I could not attend the whole four day conference--which was packed full of workshops, tours, meals and speakers, but I was able to attend the culinary expo and cookbook fair.

The culinary expo consisted of a huge room full of booths and tables showing the best and newest things the culinary world has to offer. Kitchen appliance companies were there such as Kitchenaid and Cuisinart, as well as knives like Cutco. But of course the best part was the food samples.

I really enjoyed the Rogue Creamery's table which had samples of many of their artisan cheeses. They are famous for their blue cheese's but my favorite that day was one I had never tried before: lavender cheddar. Right now lavender is my new favorite thing. Whenever I see anything at the store or in a restaurant with lavender in it I immediately must try it. The Rogue Creamery's lavender cheddar is simply amazing. I was told that as of now it is only offered locally at the Portland Farmer's market or by special order. So it seems that I will be making a trip to the Farmers Market soon...

Another amazing woman I got to meet at the IACP Conference was Shirley Corriher, the author of CookWise and BakeWise. She was at the TendaBake booth promoting their self-rising flour. She was up to her elbows in flour making what were the most moist and fluffy biscuits I had ever tasted.

At the cookbook fair Powell's was selling cookbooks, many whose authors were actually at the fair signing autographs. In addition to scoring Judith Jones' autograph, I also got Kathleen Finn's, author of The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry, a fun true story about when Kathleen got fired from her corporate job and decided to go to Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School in Paris.  I also picked up a copy of Mother's Best, by the owner of Mother's Bistro and Mamma Mia Trattoria in Portland.

It was an awesome experience to be a part of the IACP conference this year. I was in a huge building that was completely filled with other foodie-freaks just like me! Next year the conference is in Texas...not quite as close to home as Portland, but maybe you'll see me there, I've always wanted to visit Texas!

 

Panko Baked Alaska Scallops

From Alaska Seafood and Kikkoman

IACP 2010 Conference

16 Alaska scallops, 10/20 count

1 stick butter, melted

6 cloves garlic, minced

3 shallots, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

1 cup kikkoman panko bread crumbs

1/4 cup olive oil

1/3 cup parsley, chopped

Combine scallops, butter and garlic in a large casserole dish, blending together gently. In a separate bowl, combine bread crumbs and olive oil, and then sprinkle on top of scallops. Bake at 425 degrees F for 12 minutes. Top with chopped parsley.

**These scallops were one of my favorite samples of the day! How can you go wrong when something is bathed in butter and garlic!?

Portland ChocolateFest!

 

I attended the Portland ChocolateFest with some friends yesterday, and we had a great time indulging our sweet tooth! I, like most people, am a huge fan of good chocolate--preferably good dark chocolate. Ironically, my friend who went with me  isn't much of a chocolate fan and exclaimed, "I'm just going for the caramels!" 

After each paying an $8 admission fee (which was totally worth it!) and donning our "I love chocolate" stickers, we eagerly went in with the goal of tasting as much chocolate as humanly possible. There were almost 50 booths with everything from fudge, chocolate bars, chocolate truffles, chocolate sauce, drinking chocolate, and chocolate frosting! IKEA was even there with Swedish chocolates! 

The "hot" new thing in the chocolate world today is spicy chocolates. I tried cayenne pepper chocolates and a personal favorite was the Hachez Cocoa D'Arriba Mango & Chili Chocolate Bar. It starts off with a sweet mango flavor and then at the very end a spicy flavor lingers. It is not your little sister's chocolate bar!

One of the most interesting booths at the ChocolateFest was Choffy, which is very similar to coffee but instead of roasting coffee beans, cacao beans are roasted! It is very light like coffee (unlike hot chocolate)  and considering that it is only the "essence" of chocolate it only contains 20 calories per serving and no caffeine (which, hello! is great because caffeine is like a drug to me).  I added cream and sugar to it like I would to a cup of brewed coffee.  When I remarked that it was a totally foreign idea to me and asked the man if anyone else is doing anything like this, he told me that no, they were the only ones. I would have to try it again to know for sure if I really liked it or merely liked the concept of it. 

My friend and I both agree on our favorite booth, Ladybug Chocolates. And it seems that we have excellent taste because the judges all agreed too! Ladybug Chocolates was awarded Best Confection, Most Innovative Ingredient, and Best in Show for the ChocolateFest 2010! The one that we tasted and both loved was the applewood smoked salted caramel (which won the best confection). We were both in heaven because it was a chocolate covered caramel with smoky salt on top! DELICIOUS! The most innovative ingredient award was given to their Vermont Shortstack Truffle (pan fried bacon & pure maple syrup in a milk chocolate ganache coated with handmade buttermilk pancake crumbs). 

I would definitely say my first time visiting the Portland ChocolateFest was a success. After about two hours of stuffing my face with chocolate I was a little buzzed on caffeine and had most likely taken in almost my total daily allotment of calories, but I would do it again in a heartbeat! Long live the chocolate binges!