Farmer's Salad

This is the last post for Tomato Month, and fittingly (given that it's the end of summer), it's a salad. And actually, the tomatoes, as delicious as they've been, aren't really the star of this dish - it's more of an ensemble.

Jhan and I both love farmer's salad; it's a great, fresh and refreshing dish. 

The Food (Jhan)

This is one of my favorite salads. I can't wait for summer to come so I will have beautiful ripe tomatoes and fresh from the garden peppers and cucumbers to use for this recipe. The salad is juicy, refreshing and very tasty.

Farmers Salad is a very hearty salad and can easily become a meal if served with a good quality crusty bread. This salad is also perfect for a very hot day since it requires no cooking and the ingredients can be chopped earlier in the day, refrigerated, and then combined before serving. (You may want to combine the ingredients and the dressing about 30 minutes prior to serving and leave all at room temperature so the flavors will marry nicely.)

This recipe comes from a small cookbook called Vegetarian Cooking of the Mediterranean by Cornelia Schinharl. 

Ingredients (4 servings)

• 2 beefsteak tomatoes or 3-4 heirlooms (depending on size) The heirloom varieties add great color and flavor to this salad)
• 1 cucumber
• 1 red or torpedo onion
• 1 bell pepper ( I prefer to use the yellow or orange but red or green are also fine)
• 8 oz. feta cheese (firm block, not pre -crumbled)
• 1/3 cup whole kalamata olives
• handful fresh mint leaves
• 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Wash and dry the vegetables. You can choose to cut the tomatoes and cucumber into bite sized chunks or slice tomatoes and cucumber into wedge or half moon shapes. Slice the onion and pepper into thin slices. Put all into a large bowl. Cut the feta into bite size cubes (not too small, you don't want them to crumble). Wash and dry the mint leaves, tear or cut into pieces and add cheese, olives and mint to bowl of veggies.

In a small bowl mix the lemon juice, olive oil, dried oregano, salt and pepper. Taste for seasonings and add to veggies and cheese, toss lightly and serve.

I like to serve this salad with sliced , untoasted, bread; so tasty when used to sop up the juices from the salad.

Enjoy!

The Plating

I learned a lesson from last week's panzanella salid: rustic dishes need rustic presentations. So for this dish, I went for warm color and rough textures. The simple plate accentuates the simplicity of the dish, the colorful napkin echoes the warm colors of the salad and provides some texture. And the rumpled table cloth adds even more texture. I think this plating was 'mission accomplished'.

The Lighting and Photography

Every week I look at food magazines and blogs and see all the wonderful diffuse window lighting that everyone - everyone but me - uses. I indeed have a window in my studio, but it opens onto the dark space between our house and the neighbor, and with the exception of a few minutes each afternoon, let's in precious little light. I hate that window, and I've been jealous of people with good window light since I started this blog.

The last straw came last week, when my wife and I went to dinner at a local Indian restaurant. When the sun sank below the trees, they opened the window shade at our table, and let in this amazing indirect light that bathed our food in a soft, warm glow.

That was it, I decided. "Goddamn it, I am going to have window light if it kills me." So I bought the biggest piece of foam core I could find (40x60 inches) and cut a nice window in it. Then I stood it up, added another large piece as a 'roof' on the top, stuck a single flash in the window bounced off a sheet, and started shooting.

And you know what? It actually works! I've only used it so far for this one dish, but I'm going to keep experimenting with it until I can consistently get lighting that indistinguishable from natural window lighting.

And yes, I realize that it's kind of a poor man's softbox - in effect if not in appearance. Hey, whatever works. I'm looking forward to a lot of great images shot with this set up!

Lessons Learned

There were a couple of lessons learned here:

1. Match the plating and presentation to the food. Rustic dished should have rustic plating.
2. You, too, can have window light, even without windows!

Panzanella Salad with Heirloom Tomatoes

Welcome to the next installment of Tomato Month here. It's not exactly Shark Week, but you get what you get.  We're continuing to explore the heirloom tomatoes we got from Riperia Farm at the Chico Saturday Farmer's Market. This week, a deconstructed panzanella salad, made using Riperia Farm pink ping pong, jasper, and golden rave tomatoes.

After our communication issues over the plating and presentation of the watermelon salad a few weeks back, Jhan and I decided to carefully plan out and discuss the presentation and plating of this week's panzanella salad. If you do a Google image search for panzanella salad, the first thing you'll discover is how unappetizing most of the images look. Soggy bread chunks and mushy tomato bits may taste great, but they're not appealing to look at, particularly mixed together in a big bowl. We ended up decontructing the dish to make it visually appealing. What we ended up with is, admittedly, more bruschetta than panzanella salad (so sue me - I dare you), but it was a tasty and easy to eat finger food.

The Food (Jhan)

Whatever it looks like, panzanella salad is so delicious, especially with fresh from the garden tomatoes. This salad is healthy, fresh and very filling. (Tony's main request when I mention salad for dinner is always "make sure that it's filling") These heirloom tomatoes were so beautiful, juicy, and sweet!Wow! Such a difference from store bought - go to the farmer's market and get some while they last.

This salad is great for a hot evening because the only cooking involved is toasting the bread, everything else is slicing and dicing. There are a million recipes out there for this salad so I recommend that you use this as a guideline, you could substitute olives or capers for the bacon or add some marinated mushrooms or green beans, replace the basil with fresh mint, etc.

Ingredients (serves 4 - 2 if main dish)

• 1 1/2 - 2 lbs. fresh ripe heirloom tomatoes
• Crusty bread 
• 1/4-1/3 cup olive oil + 2 tbsp.
• 1 tsp. dried basil (divided)
• 2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
• Handful fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cucumber
• 3 slices bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
• 1/2 small torpedo onion or 1 small red onion
• Gray salt
• Pepper
• Parmesan cheese

Bread/croutons

1. Preheat oven to 350 (or use the toaster oven)
2. Slice bread and cut into halves or chunks (traditionally the bread should be in chunks but using slices can make this easy summer dish into "finger food") 
3. Pour 2 tbsp. olive oil into a skillet, add garlic and 1/2 tsp. dried basil (crush in your palm to powder) 
4. Heat oil mix to just cook garlic
5. Add bread, coat with oil mixture, sprinkle with finely grated Parmesan
6. Arrange bread on baking sheet, bake 20-25 minutes until lightly toasted

Vinaigrette

1. Mix olive oil, vinegar, 1/2tsp. dried basil, mustard, pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper until combined, set aside

Salad

1. Cut tomatoes into bite sized chunks, put in bowl 
2. Cut cucumber half length wise and them cut into quarters, add to bowl with tomatoes 
3. Slice torpedo onion into thin 1/2 moon shapes, separate slices and add to bowl with vegetables 
4. Tear basil leaves into small pieces , add to veggie bowl, toss all to combine 
5. Add crumbled bacon pieces to bowl 
6. Add bread chunks (or arrange toasted slices on salad plates) 
7. Pour vinaigrette over all and toss lightly (if using toast, arrange tomato mix between toasts and drizzle dressing over veggie mix and toasts) 
8. Sprinkle gray salt lightly over salad with a few grinds of pepper and serve 
9. Optional: Grate Parmesan over salad

Enjoy!

The Plating

Though I think these photos came out great, my one regret with this shoot was the plating. Not the way we put the dish together, but the plate and background I used. I like black on black because it brings out the color in food, and that's certainly the case here. But the modern plate and the black background really aren't that appropriate for such a simple and rustic (there's that word again) dish. That's my opinion after the fact anyway. But I had just bought this cool black plate at T.J. Maxx ($2.99 or some such), and I was dieing to use it. So I did.

However, I do like the presentation of the dish. When I looked at images of panzanella salad on Google, I was horrified by the mishmash of mushy tomatoes and soggy croutons. Not pretty to look at. My first thought was that - for the camera - we had to deconstruct the dish to make it appealing to look at. Jhan understood that as well, so we spent a lot of time talking about how best to do that. The communication process was good, but what we're learning is that you never really know how a dish is going to look until you start plating it.

The Lighting and Photography

For this shoot, I wanted some highly directional lighting with a soft fill so that I could shoot with the key light behind the dish, but still get a lot of detail in the food. So I put the key light very low and close, and shot through a reflector. I bounced a fill light off the ceiling (since I was standing at the right side of this photo when taking pictures, the fill light was coming from above and behind me). I also added another fill to the right, bounced off a sheet. The key light was 1.5 to 2 stops brighter than the fills.

Overall, I think this worked very well.

Lessons Learned

I think the biggest lesson learned here was how to communicate on coming up with ideas to visually remake a dish. I didn't have any preconceived notions about how panzanella salad should look, other than it needed to look appealing. Jhan was flexible in the preparation so that we got something attractive and tasty. But the biggest lesson was that you just never really know how a dish is going to look until you start plating it.

Margherita Pizza

This is Tomato Month, and for the next few posts we'll be using those wonderful tomatoes we got from Riperia Farm in our dishes. If you don't like tomatoes, then, well, you're out of luck for the next couple of weeks. 

We start off Tomato Month with a margherita pizza made using some incredibly sweet brandywine tomatoes. It was yummy!

The Food (Jhan)

We haven't done any pizzas lately so I thought we should make one with our lovely tomatoes. This is my version of pizza Margherita - one of my favorite pizzas. This one has it all; sweet roasted tomatoes, smooth creamy ricotta, chewy mozzarella, fresh herbs and a crispy crust. Since our summer weather has been cooler than usual, turning on the oven for a few minutes to bake this wasn't a big deal. This pizza is simple, requires only a handful of ingredients, and the results are incredible.

You'll need a good store bought pizza dough (I use Trader Joe's fresh Rosemary dough), about 1/4 cup of tomato paste, some dried basil, garlic salt, a handful of fresh basil, one large beefsteak tomato, ricotta cheese, 1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese, 1/4 cup slivered kalamata olives, kosher salt and olive oil.

Prepare the dough as directed on the package. Spread the tomato paste onto pizza crust and sprinkle with dried basil and garlic salt. Dollop generous spoonfuls of ricotta onto prepared crust, sprinkle with slivered olives, drop mozzarella over all and add tomato slices (seed the tomatoes to prevent a soggy crust). Drizzle pizza with a little olive oil (especially over the tomatoes) and and brush oil over edges of crust. Sprinkle edges with course salt. Bake pizza at 450 degrees until cheese is browned and crust is baked ( about 8-12 minutes). Add fresh basil leaves to finished pizza.

Enjoy!

The Plating

Jhan's first comment when she saw the photos from this shoot was "Don't you ever even think of putting those raggedly old potholders in a photo again. They're disgusting and embarrassing." And I thought they looked 'rustic'.

And that was kind of what I was looking for in the setup. Margherita pizza is a simple, rustic sort of dish. Nothing fancy or haute cuisine, and I wanted to reflect that. So I put the whole pizza on our beat up wooden cutting board with the 'rustic' potholder to add a bit of texture.

The Lighting and Photography

For some reason, I didn't take a photo of the lighting I used for the pizza, but it was very similar to one of the set up I used in the previous post, with the key light bounced off a sheet and a small bit of fill shot through a reflector and another small bit of general fill bounced off the ceiling.

Lessons Learned
There was nothing really challenging in this shoot as far as the lighting. I did, however, learn that fresh basil rapidly turns brown when it gets hot, so I had to replace the basil on the pizza when I started taking pictures to make sure that the leaves were green. As it was, some of the leaves are showing bits of brown on them.

Also, I think Jhan's tip about seeding the tomatoes to prevent the pizza from getting soggy is very important. Tomatoes contain a lot of water in the seedy pulp, and removing that part of the tomato will help prevent a soggy pizza. And nobody likes soggy pizza.

Heirloom Tomatoes from Riperia Farm

We're still having a lot of fun getting to the Chico Farmer's Market every Saturday morning at 8AM. But I'm sure the allure will wear off eventually. But I have to say, we've gotten some delicious stuff there... but it ain't cheap. This weekend, we spent $50 (!!) on heirloom tomatoes, organic peaches, and a grass fed chicken (well, and a bagel too).

Pricey! But worth it. Store bought peaches and tomatoes are nothing but mealy cardboard next to what we get at the farmer's market.

This weekend, we bought a whole variety of heirloom tomatoes from Riparia Farm, located at the south end of Chico. Bruce Balgooyen walked us through the over 40 varieties of heirloom tomatoes he's been growing at Riperia Farm since 1987, but even he couldn't remember every one of the amazing variety of tomatoes at their booth in the farmer's market.

Riperia Farm, located at the south end of Normal Street, specializes in lettuce and heirloom tomatoes, and it was their amazing display of variety upon variety of colorful heirloom tomatoes at their booth at the farmer's market that made me want to highlight them in our blog. Besides, heirloom tomatoes are out of this world flavor-wise!

Lighting and Photography

Before we started butchering these gorgeous tomatoes for various dishes, I wanted to make sure to capture them in their natural beauty, so I set up shop in my studio (which drives me insane to work in if I haven't mentioned it before - it's like working in a telephone booth, it's so small).

Shot 1

Click on the image to see the varieties

I wanted to capture the tomatoes against different backgrounds to see what effect they would have on the color and texture of the tomatoes, so I started with the bare wood of my table, and a wicker basket to create a sort of cornucopia shot of the tomatoes.

This actually worked out amazingly well. I placed the key light, low, close and to the left, with fills to the right (bounced off foam core at 1/4 power of the key, and a distant front fill, also at a 1/4 power. This third light did very little other than to fill in the shadows deep inside the wicker basket. Overall, I rate this set up a success, though the colors might be seen as a bit warm, even after correction.

Shot 2 - On Black

Next, I tried the tomatoes against a black background.

I knew the black would bring out the colors of the tomatoes, so I decided to go with a very diffused, even lighting to eliminate shadows and to pump up the saturation in the image. So, I pointed both flashes at the ceiling, the key light (on the left) 1.5 stops brighter than the fill light (on the right).

I find the soft lighting very pleasing and it does saturate the colors of the tomatoes. I also like how the ripples on the plate come out in this lighting. Overall, I think this was the best set up of the bunch.

Shot 3 - On White

Lastly, I decided to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and put the tomatoes on a white background.

I tried a couple of different plates, but none were really big enough to handle a huge pile of tomatoes. So, they just ended up on a white sheet. The lighting was basically the same as for the previous shot, but I added a third flash, bounced off a reflector, toward the rear to give me a little extra sheen off the tomatoes and to blow out the white sheet. Although this shot is OK, if I were to do it over again, I would have gone for more intense shadows by moving the key light down to the level of the tomatoes and shooting it through a reflector, similar to the first shot.

Lessons Learned

1. Black backgrounds accentuate the color in food, and as a result soft, shadowless lighting can be effective.
2. White backgrounds focus more on the texture of food, and as a result harder lighting with well defined shadows is more effective.

Next week: Panzanella salad made with heirloom tomatoes!

Watermelon Salad

Jhan and I are having a lot of fun going to the Chico Farmer's Market every Saturday morning and picking out an item and a farm to highlight in the blog.

It being summer, I keep pushing for summery, hot weather foods, so this week we picked up an amazingly tasty Mickey Lee watermelon to use in a watermelon salad.

We bought the watermelon from Karen Alexander of Alexander Farms in Capay (just on the other side of the Sacramento River from Chico, in Glenn County). Karen and her husband Tom have been growing melons, berries, cherries, garlic and blueberries for 28 years in Capay, and have been coming to the Chico Farmer's Market for 20 years (I didn't realize that the farmer's market was that old!).

The watermelon we picked was a Mickey Lee, a light-colored, small melon with bright pinkish-red flesh. We picked it mostly because of it's small size - the two of us just can't eat a huge melon - but it turned out to be very tasty as well!

(We only bought one melon, so the image above is actually a composite of two shots of the same melon before and after it was cut open, blended in Photoshop.)

Oh, and as for the watermelon salad? Well, I wasn't too sure about watermelons and kalamata olives in the same dish, but this was a home run! What incredible contrasts of sweet and citrus and salty! And it turns out that mint and watermelon go amazingly well together. No matter how strange it may sound to you, you have to try this. It is seriously that good.

The Food (Jhan)

This salad was soooo good!

I should start out by telling you that I'm not really much of a watermelon fan, so trying this recipe was kind of iffy in my book. However, I love sweet and salty combinations, so the idea of feta cheese, kalamata olives and the sweet juicy watermelon attracted me. I modeled this recipe on one from Nigella Lawson's website (there are hundreds, if not thousands, of watermelon salad recipes out there). I think of Nigella as a food goddess - everything she does is so good. I love her very down to earth demeanor too. If you are not familiar with her recipes and show I recommend that you check them out.

Ingredients (Serves 4):

1 small watermelon (like Mickey Lee, Sugar Baby, etc.), cold
1/4 cup fresh mint
1/4 cup fresh basil
2 limes
1 small red onion
1/4 cup olive oil
Crumbled feta cheese (1/4-1/3 cup)
1/8 -1/4 cup slivered kalamata olives (to your taste - I love olives so for me the more the better)
1/4 tsp course salt - gray or kosher,etc
Arugula (optional)

Instructions:

1. Cut watermelon into several wedges, seed, arrange on salad plates
2. Cut red onion into thin slices and slice those in half, separate slices
3. Juice limes into a bowl and add onion slices to pickle for 10-15 minutes
4. Chiffonade or tear basil and mint, sprinkle some over watermelon wedges, reserve the rest for topping.
5. Pull onions out of lime juice when pickled, reserve lime juice, shake limes to remove excess liquid and arrange 1/2 of slices on top of melon wedges, save the rest for topping.
6. Mix olive oil and salt into lime juice, whisk until thoroughly combined
7. Arrange a spoonful of crumbled feta cheese on top of the watermelon slices, arrange olive slivers on plates/wedges, add reserved onion slices and herbs over wedges.
8. Drizzle each wedge with lime/OO dressing
9. Optionally - for a more full bodied salad - arrange each watermelon wedge on a small bed of arugula

Enjoy!

This salad is not only extremely tasty (summer on a plate!) but makes a pretty presentation.
For a self service buffet you could cut the watermelon into chunks and layer ingredients into a clear glass bowl, pour dressing over all. Salad will mix as it is spooned onto diner's plates.

The Plating

This was another one of those times when Jhan and I didn't communicate that well on the plating. Jhan sees things in her mind and just can't ever understand why I don't see the same thing, and gets very frustrated when I do something other than what she's visualized. In addition, she doesn't always have an eye for what the camera will see, and as a result, I typically do the plating.

I tried to do something like what she described, but I didn't like the result, and it was clear from her expression that I had done it all wrong. So I told her to try plating it herself, and her attempt (above) was much better than mine - simpler and cleaner. My plate had too many pieces of big chunks olive that made it look way too busy. The only way to hide that was to shoot from an angle that hid the chunks. The image below is the best I could do.

The Lighting and Photography

I really wanted to shoot this salad with a high key effect, so set up white table cloth, white background and white plates. And though I used my normal metering, I upped the flash compensation 2 stops to get the near overexposure that I wanted.

I also wanted to have the backlight be the key, so I shot it 2 stops above the front fill, which was shot through a reflector to soften the filled areas. Most of the images have only minor levels adjustments in Photoshop.

Overall, I judge the lighting a success.

Lessons Learned

1. Jhan and I both enjoy incorporating the local producers into the blog, and I'm sure that component of the blog will expand and evolve.
2. Watermelon salad - wow!
3. Communication regarding plating is still an occasional issue, particularly when Jhan has something specific in mind but can't communicate it.

Peach and Pecan Parfait

Jhan and I had quite a conversation about what to do with the organic peaches we bought at the Chico farmer's market. In the end we decided that a nice cold dessert would be appropriate given the spate of hot summer weather we've been having.

We've also decided that we want this blog to focus not just on food and photography, but to focus on local foods. We live in one of the most bountiful agricultural regions in the world, producing hundreds of different crops, and we both feel that highlighting local crops and local farms is a great way to make this blog a bit more challenging and more relevant to where we live.

In this post we highlight organic frost peaches from Berryluscious Farm in Gridley and SunWest California pecans (SunWest is based is Davis and produces rice and nuts).

The Food (Jhan)

These peaches were so pretty, but the weather was so hot that I decided I didn't want to bake a pie, so we decided on a peach parfait with a cinnamon-vanilla sauce, candied pecans and French vanilla ice cream. This recipe was inspired by one that I saw for grilled peaches; I've dressed it up a bit and changed the cooking method. This dessert provides great peach flavor, a sweet, crunchy, praline layer blended with the cool creaminess of a good French vanilla ice cream - definitely summer in a bowl.

For the peaches:

• 4-5 peaches peeled and sliced
• 1/2 lemon ( juiced)
• 1/2 tbsp canola oil
• 1 tbsp brown sugar (packed)
• 1 tsp water
• 1tsp Vanilla
• 1/8 tsp kosher salt
• 1/8 (scant) tsp Saigon Cinnamon (Saigon Cinnamon really adds to the fragrance and spiciness of this recipe)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Mix peach slices and lemon juice in a glass ovenware casserole dish.
In small bowl mix together: water, brown sugar,vanilla, salt, Saigon cinnamon. Dissolve brown sugar and make sure all are well combined.
Pour mixture over peach slices and gently mix to cover all slices.
Bake covered for approx 10-15 min or until peach slices are fragrant and just tender. (Syrup may be a little thin. Remove peaches and cook sauce down if a thicker syrup is desired.)
Cool peaches until just warm.

Candied Pecans

• 1/3 cup pecans shelled and broken into halves or quarters
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp margarine
• 1/2 tsp canola oil
• 1/2 tbsp flour
• dash salt
• dash cinnamon

Mix all ingredients except nuts to form a soft paste. Add in nuts and stir to coat each nut with mixture. Spread nut mix on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes. Watch the nuts - they can burn easily. Take nuts out of oven, leave on paper and cool. (These will harden up as they cool.)

Parfait assembly

Place a layer of peach slices in the bottom of dish/bowl, spoon some syrup over them. Next, break up the candied nuts and place in a layer over the peach slices. Now, add another layer of peaches, a scoop of ice cream and a couple spoonfuls of sauce over the ice cream. Add a few more candied pecans or a sprinkle of brown sugar over the top for added crunch. Enjoy!

The Plating

I bought a couple of glass bowls at the Salvation Army store quite a ways back, when I first started this blog. I thought they were very cool looking, but until now, I've never used them. When we were talking about how to use the peaches and pecans, Jhan suggested a layered dessert and these were the perfect dishes for that.

This dessert is a simple, friendly comfort food, so I wanted the images to be bright, open and colorful. So there was no black background in this shoot. Because peaches are such a bright orange color, I decided to go with a complementary color for the background. The light blue of the place mat really frames and sets off the color of the peaches, without being too strong or overwhelming. I added the yellow napkin to give a bit more dimension to the color relationships. Overall, it's colorful without distracting from the dish.

The Lighting and Photography

I wanted simple lighting for this shot; no dramatic shadows or severe lighting. I wanted the lighting to be open, bright, open and friendly. To accomplish that, I shot the key light high to the left through a reflector to soften the shadows. I also placed the fill light high and to the rear to provide some highlights. Finally, I added a piece of white foam core to the right of the dish to fill in some of the shadows on the right side.

I had a bit of trouble with the lighting ratios on this shot for some reason, and ended up shooting the key light 4 stops brighter than the fill in order to get the ratio I wanted. With the ice cream quickly melting, I didn't have a lot of time to play with the lighting, so though I might have been able to get better lighting with more fiddling, given the time I had to work in, this is good enough.

Lessons Learned

Lighting is still a bit of a mystery at times, but I have a much better set of tools now (read: experience) to be able to problem solve with, particularly in a limited amount of time. And if I didn't already know it, melting ice cream waits for no man.