Lamb and Cucumber Soup

We already know that "winter time is soup time" and that soup time is yum time. And we already know that Jhan's idea of soup is something that you can stand a knife in, Not that I'm complaining; it's just that I don't use the word 'soup' to describe something that you can serve on a plate. So, having had her idea of a soup, we decided to try something that more fit my idea of a soup: something actually soupy.

This particular soup turned out to be photogenic, delicious and warming - the triple crown for a hungry and cold food photographer. Of course, it didn't hurt that it had lamb in it!

Food (Jhan)


This soup was so beautiful and so tasty. I was actually very surprised at how well the lamb and cucumber went together. This soup is hearty but yet refreshing and is perfect for a blustery, wet day. The original recipe came from The Soup Bible (Debra Mayhew, Ed.). I made some small changes, but overall this recipe produces a flavorful and aromatic broth full of tender chunks of lamb and al dente cucumbers.

Ingredients

8 oz boneless lamb steak (I used some nice loin chops since lamb steaks are not regularly available in our small berg)
1 1/2 TBSPs light soy sauce
3 tsp dry sherry
3/4 tsp sesame oil
1 small cucumber, about 4 inches long
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
salt and cracked pepper

Instructions

1. Trim any fat from the meat. Slice lamb into thin strips. Marinate in the soy sauce, sherry, and sesame oil for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour. Discard any extra marinade when time is up.
2. Do not peel the cucumber. Cut lengthwise and then into thin slices on the diagonal. (half moons).
3. Bring stock to a boil and add meat. Stir well. Bring to a boil again and add the cucumber, vinegar and seasoning. Return to a boil again and serve immediately.

Plating

I'm not the biggest fan of Asian food, as you may know, but I do love the look of Asian food and Asian plates.

These bowls and plates were purchased at TJ Maxx for $3.95 each. I loved the shape of the bowls and the intensity of the red glaze against the black interior of the bowl.

When we decided to make the lamb cucumber soup, I knew the green of the cucumber would be a good counterpoint to the red plate and that the clear broth would go well with the Asian influences in the plate and bowl.

I kept the set up as simple as possible, mostly because I'm tired of busy place settings that end up looking crappy when photographed. Simple is simply harder to screw up. 

Lighting and Photography

This was another dish where I wanted some nice reflections off the surface of the dish. But I'd already learned from the pot roast that too much light coming from the rear would cause overwhelming reflections.

So I placed the key light(s) to the left of the dish and bounced a rear fill light off the wall. I used a piece of black foam core to limit the location and amount of light hitting the dish from the rear. This took a bit of testing and tweaking to get just right, as you can see from the image below.

Lighting test - too many reflections

Once I got the level and angle of rear fill the way I wanted, I added a piece of white foam core to the right of the dish to fill in the shadows on the right front area of the dish. Overall, it was a very simple and successful shoot, and again showcases that I have a lot easier time with dark backgrounds than with light backgrounds. Someday, I'll understand why.

Lessons Learned

I think I said it best above: Simple is simply harder to screw up. 

Sunday Slow Cooker Pot Roast

Mmmmmm.... Pot roast. I love a good pot roast. And this one was honestly one of the best pot roasts I've ever had.

My biggest complaint about pot roast is that it can be dry, dry, dry. But this one was tender and juicy and tasty - about as perfect as a pot roast can be. The other big plus of this pot roast: it filled the house with delicious smells all day.

Food (Jhan)

I made this pot roast in the slow cooker and I just used what I had in the house. This is the easiest recipe ever and the result is a tender moist roast with a great gravy base.

Start with a 3-4 pound chuck roast that has had the fat trimmed from it. Marinate the roast in one bottle of nice red wine (choose something that you would like to drink), 3-4 crushed garlic cloves,and 2-3 bay leaves (use fresh if you can find them). Marinate overnight.

The next day, roughly chop one large onion and drain the roast and pat dry, reserve marinade. Heat some EVOO in a pan, saute onion until tender and just beginning to brown, remove to slow cooker. Add more oil to pan if needed and sear roast well on all sides , about 2-3 minutes each side.

Put roast into the slow cooker on top of the onions. Season roast with kosher salt and cracked pepper. Add about 1/2 cup of the reserved marinade (pull out the garlic and bay leaves) and 2/3 cup water to the the skillet. Bring to a rolling boil, stirring to scrape up the browned bits. Boil until reduced by 1/2 , pour over pot roast. Cook on high in slow cooker for about 3 1/2 to 4 hours.

This can be cooked (covered) in a 300 degree oven until it reaches an internal temperature of about 160 degrees. Drain the onions to serve with the roast and use the remaining juices to make a light gravy.

Plating

Jhan and I discussed the plate to put the pot roast on, and though I initially gravitated toward a fancy plate that I've been itching to use, Jhan's comment was "too fancy". That put the proper perspective on the dish - pot roast is down home cookin', and it don't need no fancy-dancy plates.

So I went with your basic black platter, though I knew that a dark plate might fight with the dark meat. But my real goal was to try to bring our the highlights in the dish, and knew that a dark plate and dark background would help.

The meat had already finished cooking and was cooling on the counter when I started the shoot. As a result, it looked pretty dull and dry. So I basted the meat with some of the juice in the bottom of the slow cooker and added some parsley to the plate for color. Overall, I think it looks quite appetizing.

Lighting and Photography


I wanted to get a lot of juicy reflections off the meat, so I experimented with placing the key light to the rear. That resulted in really overwhelming reflections that didn't work at all (see image below).

So I had to switch the key light to the left side and had to tone down the rear light to only 1/4 or 1/8th power of the key light in order to keep the reflections from being overpowering. I added the white foam core to fill in right-front areas of the dish.

Setting the key light to the rear was overpowering


The key light provided some nice juicy highlights on the front areas of the dish (see the reflections on the meant, onions, and front edge of the plate below), while the rear fill provided some nice, but not overpowering, reflections on the top of the meat, as well as a bit of shine on the knife blade. The reflector on the right helped keep the right side of the dish from being too dark.

Lessons Learned

This dish turn out to be that challenging to photograph, but I did learn that controlling reflections and getting the kinds of reflections you want isn't as simple as you might think. I ended up adjusting light levels dramatically, as well as moving lights, in order to get the effect that I wanted.

Roasted Pepper and Green Bean Salad

We did this shoot months ago and never got around to posting it. The idea of this shoot was to test red/green combinations and to shoot a vegetable-based dish. It was fine overall, though the green beans were a bit underdone and overly crunchy.

The Food (Jhan)

Inspired again by the late season bounty at our local farmers market I sought out side dish recipes that would be both a hearty and healthy accompaniment to a garlic roasted chicken. This salad recipe with the red peppers, mint, shallots and sweet cherry tomatoes hit the spot paired with our juicy, garlicky, chicken. It also really showcased the flavor of the the fresh green beans and the smokey sweetness of the roasted peppers.

Recipe

3/4 lb green beans
2 Red Bell Peppers , roasted, skinned, seeded and cut into strips
1/2 pound cherry or pear tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped toasted almonds
1 shallot, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
1 tbsp mint, chopped
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tbsp sherry vinegar
1/4 cup EVOO
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Roast peppers in usual manner, prepare for salad
2. In small bowl toss - shallot, garlic, vinegars and salt. Set aside for 10 min. then add in EVOO, pepper and salt to taste.
3. Cook green beans in boiling, salted water about 4-6 min - until just tender. Drain and cool to room temp.
4. Combine all veggies and herbs in a salad bowl. Pour shallot mixture over and toss. spread Almonds over top and serve.

Recipe from Food and Wine magazine.

The Plating

I wanted very simple homey plating for this dish, but ended up being attracted to the rather fancy plate that Jhan had bought. I think it works well with the dish, but the blue and brown place mat doesn't really work at all. I'm not sure what I was thinking.

As far as food styling goes, simple dish - simple styling. About the only thing I did was to add some salt and pepper ("too much pepper" says Jhan) to the dish for texture.

The Lighting and Photography

Here's another dish where I decided to go with a single light. Though I have four flashes now, I find that in many cases, a single flash gives the best light.

On this case, I shot a single 580EX through a reflector to the right and slightly behind the dish with a piece of white foam core to the left and behind the dish to act as a fill light.

I think the close up shots, in particular, turned out well (partly because the blue and brown mat is less visible). There are nice highlights on the beans and tomatoes, but the shadows aren't too dark. Overall, I think it looks very appealing.

Chicken Almond Soup

Winter time is soup time. There's nothing better on a cold night than a hot bowl of soup. This chicken almond soup is something we've made before, and its a trusty and tasty dish!

Food (Jhan)


We love books in our house so Tony and I usually end up at our local bookstore every weekend. I have a habit of perusing the bargain section looking for any useful cookbooks, and few years ago I came across The Soup Bible (Debra Mayhew, Ed.). This is now my go-to cookbook on a cold winter day. The book has a great collection of soups from all over the world and every recipe we've tried has been great.

This Chicken Almond soup is quick and easy to make and is very filling when served with some nice crusty bread. This soup, although pureed, does have a thick "texture" thanks to the ground almonds. I've modified the original recipe to cut down on calories and fat without loss of flavor

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp EVOO or EVOO and sweet butter
1 leek, chopped
1/2 tsp grated ginger
2/3 cup lightly toasted blanched almonds, finely ground
1 tsp kosher salt
a few grinds of black pepper
1 med sized fresh jalapeno chile, seeded and chopped
1 medium carrot, grated
1/2 cup frozen peas
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro
1 cup of cubed, raw, skinless, boneless chicken breast
2 cups water
1 cup low fat evaporated milk
chopped cilantro for garnish

1. Heat oil in a deep pan or wok. Add ginger and chopped leeks, saute until soft.
2. Lower heat and add almonds, salt, pepper, chopped fresh jalapeno, carrots, peas and chicken.
3. Cook until veges are tender and chicken is completely cooked. Stir in 2 Tbsp cilantro.
4. Cool mixture off heat until cool enough to go into blender or food processor. Process mixture briefly, add 1 cup water and blend again, add remaining water and pulse 20-30 seconds. (Mixture will not be completely smooth)
5. Pour mix back into a pan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and add milk gradually, stirring until blended. Simmer 2-3 minutes. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

Plating

I have a lot of bowls - white, blue black, red, big, small, deep, shallow, round square and even octagonal. It comes with the territory when your shooting food. But I made up my mind before Jhan even starting cooking that I wanted this soup in a simple white round bowl - so that's what this soup got.

Overall, this was a very simple setup. The only thing I was doubtful about was the table cloth. I knew the soup would be a greenish-brown color, so I went with a green table cloth, but I think a white on white set up would have made the color of the soup stand out more.

The dollop of 'sour cream' in the center of the bowl is actually cream cheese mixed with water to resemble sour cream. I added course ground pepper on top for texture. I also added a couple of slices of Jhan's fresh baked bread to add a different color and textural tone.

The biggest problem I had was that I filled the bowl in the kitchen and then carried it into the studio. In the process, I couldn't help but tilt the bowl a bit and that ended up leaving a ring with this thick soup.

Lighting and Photography


Lighting for this shoot was very similar to the bread shoot (they were done only an hour or so apart), but had very different effects on the food and provided very different results.

Where I loved the lighting for the bread, the lighting for the soup proved problematic. Sure, overall, the images came out OK, but they don't have either the warmth or punch of the bread shots.

The only real difference in lighting in this shoot was that I moved the ceiling bounce light from directly over the dish to directly over the photographer - placing it a bit in front of the dish. Otherwise, the lighting is identical, but the effects aren't. In most of the images, the lighting seems a bit flat and dull - uninspired, I guess.

Lessons Learned

Well, I didn't learn much about lighting in this shoot other than what works great for one subject can fall flat for another.

The main lesson I learned in this shoot was to fill bowls with soup in the studio so that so rings form from the soup sloshing as it's carried from the kitchen to the studio.

No Knead Bread

Bread. Who doesn't love fresh-baked bread? I think it's in our DNA to love fresh bread. It fills our homes with the best possible smell; its warmth and wonderful texture is amazingly comforting.

Well, Jhan has been wanting to make bread for quite a while, but with her damaged wrist, all the kneading is a real challenge. But the new knead-free bread book she got has let her start exploring her inner baker.

Photographically, these loaves were beautiful, but this particular bread-making technique produces crusts that a bit too... well, crusty for me.

Food (Jhan)

I've had Jim Lahey's My Bread on my Amazon wish list since June and even with all of the gift giving of the holidays did not receive it. I gave in and bought it for myself last week and this bread is my first attempt at making Lahey's basic bread recipe.

In my "Hippie" past I used to make 2 loaves of whole wheat bread every week for the family. I loved making bread and the wonderful smell of fresh baked bread in the house... but I hated the kneading, the fussy yeast cakes, and trying to find just the right temperature for the dough to rise. Needless to say I had my share of failures over the few years that I endeavored to provide fresh, homemade bread for my family - so I was delighted to hear about a "foolproof" no knead bread recipe.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the results of my first try. The method is sooo easy, and even in our freezing cold (eds note: 68° F) house the dough rose beautifully. The dough had a wonderful silky quality when it was ready to be shaped, it does remain quite sticky though even with a dusting of cornmeal. I didn't have a large enough pan to bake the entire boule in, so I cut off about I third of the dough and baked the bread in two loaves.

I didn't notice any real difference between the loaf baked in the cast iron casserole and the loaf baked in the ceramic casserole; both of them had a nicely browned crust. The interior of the bread reminds me of sourdough in that it's chewy and "airy" with a nice flavor - great! But the crust was a bit too crunchy for us - next time I'll probably put a small amount of butter on the crust as it cools, not a lot, but just some to soften up the top crust enough to cut or bite into comfortably. This bread is great to eat warm with a little butter, or to sop up soup or stew. And as bruschetta or maybe with cheese, salami, fresh basil and a good mustard, it would be fantastic!

This was a great experience and I can't wait to try more of the recipes in My Bread.

Plating

Plating was simple for this shoot - the loaves were baked in pans, so I just left one loaf in its pan and put the other, smaller, loaf on a wooden cutting board. I wanted warm, homey, earthy tones, so I went with a brown table cloth.

Other than the cutting board and the one pan, there is nothing else in the shots. Because it's a simple subject, a loaf of bread could easily be overshadowed by plates, knives and other objects in the photo. I made sure to keep the images clean and simple by eliminating everything except the bread and whatever was needed to support it. That approach worked well in this particular shoot.

Lighting and Photography


The lighting for this shoot was fairly straightforward: key light to the right of the bread, bounced off white sheet; fill light to rear of bread, shoot through a reflector; second fill bounced off ceiling to provide soft, even fill light.

This light, so similar to that I used an hour later for another shoot, worked wonderfully here, creating warm soft tones in all of the photos. But virtually identical lighting didn't work so well in the following shoot. It's still a mystery why one lighting will work so well with one subject and create such a horrible lighting mess with another subject.

I 'm beginning to think that it has a lot to do with the tonal quality of the background (typically the table cloth) in the images. As usual, I'm still having better results with dark backgrounds than with lighter backgrounds. However, I have started to get smarter about manipulating my exposures than I was before. I'm still relying on the wireless flash transmitter to control the remote flashes, but I'm using a combination of flash ratios and on-camera flash exposure adjustments to better handle overall exposures. However, I need to start paying more attention to histograms in order to make sure that the exposures are correct.

Lessons Learned

Use on-camera flash exposure compensation to assist in obtaining the best exposure, since the best exposure can change dramatically by moving only a few inches.

Cornish Game Hens

We bought a couple of Cornish game hens to use for Thanksgiving dinner (which Jhan and I miraculously had to ourselves this year), but we never got around to using them. Christmas rolled around, and we were on the road, so we didn't get to cook these delicious little birds until the New Year. And boy were they delicious!

The Food (Jhan)

I love Cornish hens (eds. note: I love them too!)! You can prepare them in so many ways and so easily too. These were our New Years day dinner so I decided to stuff them with a cornbread and green apple stuffing and slather the hens in herb butter for roasting. (I actually modified a Bobby Flay recipe for a turkey basting butter.)

This is so simple: a stick of soft butter, chopped parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (sound familiar - how'bout a little Simon and Garfunkel for ambiance while you're cooking?), a tablespoon chopped shallot or one clove minced garlic, grey salt and cracked pepper. You can vary the proportions of the herbs or do 1-2 tablespoons of each herb. For this dish I went with more parsley and sage and less rosemary and thyme.

Put the butter, herbs, shallot or garlic and seasonings into the food processor to blend. Rub the hens all over with the herb butter, making sure to get a good deal up under the skin covering the breast meat. Sprinkle the hens with a bit more salt and pepper and they're ready for the roasting pan.

I put the hens on a bed of sliced onions to cook and toward the end of the cooking time I add some chicken stock to the pan - you'll get a wonderful rich gravy with this method.

A note about tying the legs up: I feel that a stuffed hen will cook faster without the legs tied up but for aesthetic purposes and some might say for juiciness, you will want to tuck the wings under the hen and tie up the legs during cooking.

The Plating

I wanted to keep the plating warm, simple and homey. White plates would have been too sterile for a dish that I wanted to appear warm and inviting. I also knew that I wanted just a touch of something give some contrasting color, so I made Jhan buy some asparagus to have with the hens.

I was a bit frantic when I first saw the hens come out of the oven, because Jhan cooked them without their legs tied, and they looked a little too much like models for some chicken porn magazine. However, Jhan expertly tied their legs after removing them from the oven and we were back to G-rated territory. As a last touch, I placed a bit of sage and thyme leaf stuffed between the two birds on the plate to add some color for the close up shots.

The Lighting and Photography


I'm not sure what it was, but something inspired me to light this shoot as simply as possible. As a result, I shot the hens with only two lights, both to the right of the dish, through a reflector. I placed a piece of white foam core to the left of the dish and another behind the dish, to act as reflectors.

I actually spent a fair amount of time beforehand testing various lighting and plating set ups using pomegranates as stand-ins for the hens, but in the actual shoot, the lighting seemed different. I think that simply changing what's on the plate can dramatically affect how the lighting works for a shot. That makes it very difficult to know ahead of time how a shot is going to come out - and that's a problem.

Lessons Learned

Lighting is part science, but also part voodoo magic. I'm not too good at voodoo magic.

Chicken Mole and Mexican Rice

Well, we've been gone forever. Pretty lame-o, I know. But Jhan's schedule got insane last semester as she started teaching evening classes for the local community college. With her regular day teaching job, along with her afternoon community college class and the teacher trainings she does, she was too exhausted to cook - much less write blog posts about it. So we pretty much suspended the blog for the last half of the semester.

Of course, she's going to go back to pretty much the same schedule this semester, so posts may be few and far between. For the one or two people who read this blog, I apologize.

Anyway, we did make something and shot it! Chicken mole! Of course, as usual, what Jhan made and what I envisioned she was making were two different things. I was thinking of the pollo en mole that I've had many times in Mexican restaurants - basically a piece of chicken covered in dark mole sauce.

Instead, Jhan shredded the chicken and mixed it into the sauce. It was delicious, but a dark brown mass of goo with bits of something in it isn't exactly photogenic. As a result, I ended up kind of ignoring the mole, and focused on the rice and avocado instead.

The Food (Jhan)

Believe it or not there really were chunks of chicken in the mole sauce! True, I was planning on mole to fill soft tacos, not plates of chicken pieces with mole sauce and rice, thus the shredded chicken. In any case it was delicious.

For this dish I used a bottled mole sauce with a few enhancements, but I think the real secret is in cooking the chicken prior to simmering it in the sauce. I have always made a spicy chicken soup first. That way I have great chicken stock to use with the mole paste and I also have very flavorful chicken to soak up the mole once the two are combined.

For the soup I use a variety of dark and light meat, bone-in, chicken, a bay leaf, a couple cloves of smashed garlic, a yellow onion quartered, a rough chopped carrot, a couple stalks of celery with leaves attached, a chopped jalapeno pepper, salt, whole peppercorns, cumin and a little cayenne. I sauted all in the soup pot with a little olive oil and then added water and cooked  until chicken was tender and falling off the bone.

When the chicken was ready, pulled it out of the soup and cooled until it could be handled. At this point it can be de-boned, skinned and shredded or can be used whole (note: if your husband is taking pictures of the food this is a good point to ask about his "vision" of what it will look like :)). Next, strain the stock and pick out any chunks of carrot to use in the mole sauce. For the sauce I chop red onion, a clove of garlic, some fresh jalapeno and cilantro.

I lightly saute these in a deep frying pan or wok and then add the mole paste and chicken stock. Stir all until well blended - you may need more stock or some water to get the sauce to the consistency you desire. I check the seasonings and usually add more spices or salt if needed and any carrot chunks left from the soup. You can also add pumpkin seeds or sesame seeds if you like. I put the chicken in last and then simmer briefly until the flavors have blended. Sprinkle with chopped fresh cilantro when serving.

Mole is best if prepared a day in advance, refrigerated for 24 hours and then gently reheated.

The Plating

As I said, I was expecting a completely different dish than the one Jhan created. As well as we communicate on other things, we both make odd assumptions when it comes to preparing food for the blog. She knows in her mind what she wants to make, but doesn't always have a great appreciation of how photogenic it will be, and thus doesn't always communicate the salient characteristics of the dish. I, on the other hand, often assume that a dish will look one way, when in fact Jhan has something completely different planned. We are still working on this.

Ending up with a big brown blob was not what I had envisioned, so I had to be a bit creative and decided to re-focus the photography on the simple but beautiful Mexican rice Jhan made. I sliced up some avocado to provide a bit of color contrast to the red tones of the rice, and plated the rice and mole into bowls. I used colorful place mats and napkins to highlight the festive colors of the rice and avocado.

The Lighting and Photography

Given that this was Mexican food, I opened a bottle of Tecate beer and placed it next to the bowls for the shoot. The piece of white foam core that I was using as a reflector promptly fell over and knocked over the bottle of beer all over the table, a large reflector, the tablecloth and the carpet.

Great way to start the shoot. After cleaning that yeasty mess up (my studio still smells faintly of a frat party), I was able to do the shoot, but I did forget to take photos of the lighting.

However, the general set up was as follows: Large reflector to the right of the dish, with two flashes (one slighting behind the dish, one slightly in front). The white beer-spilling foam core reflector was to the left of the dish. One flash was aimed at and bounced off the ceiling directly above the dish (1 stop lower power than the lights to the right).

The ceiling bounced fill gave me a pretty even light and filled in the deepest areas in the bowls.

I had to do major Photoshop surgery on the avocados because they were pretty bruised and battered, but they came out looking acceptable. It is very interesting how something can look OK in person but stand out horribly in a photograph. The avocados were like that; though they didn't look perfect in person, they looked almost inedible in the photos before I cleaned them up in Photoshop.

Lessons Learned

This shoot came out pretty good despite the spilled beer and the bowl of brown goo. I like the color combinations and felt that I did a pretty good job of combining appropriate colors.

What I learned on this shoot is that sometimes, when a dish doesn't come out looking photogenic, you have to change course at the last minute and make a secondary dish the 'hero' of the shoot. The rice looked good, but it needed something to turn it into the center of attention - the sliced avocado (bruised as it was) did the job - with a little help from Photoshop.