The Hungry Photographer

Simple Can Be Awesome.

2012-02-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when I begin a project, my initial reaction is to come up with the most complicated way to accomplish it. I can't help myself. I get excited and then get lost in the endless possibilities of my imagination. What I have learned over the years is that most often, the simplest solution is the best one. It's usually the hardest one to arrive at, but in the end it's usually the best.

In honour of beautifully executed simple ideas, I bring you Otherlands Coffee Bar's "Best Cinnamon Toast in the South." When Zac and I were in Memphis, TN., we stopped here for breakfast. I have a weakness for cinnamon sugar on - well - anything. I couldn't have possibly resisted a breakfast item being touted as "the best in the south," and let me tell you, I'm glad I didn't. Thick slices of buttered white bread covered in an almost equally thick layer of raw sugar and cinnamon cooked under the broiler until crisp. If you had this in Montreal, it would likely be called "Toast Brulee."

Try it at home kids, I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Hunka Hunka Burning Love

2012-01-31T19:24:00.000-05:00

I seem to have more images than words floating around in my brain these days, which in the end I suppose is a good thing, since I am a photographer. On the other hand, it's not so fantastic because it's been keeping me from filing the pages of my blog. I've decided that while I work on my voice, I'll share some of the things my eyes have seen.

Here's where I begin to play catch-up....

When Zac and I took our road trip back in November, we drove through Memphis, TN. We're not particularly Elvis fans, but how could we possibly pass through Memphis and pass on Graceland, the home of The King? As we arrived, I immediately put on Paul Simon's Graceland, which I happily played in my mind all day long.

I found myself inexplicably drawn to all the Elvis souvenirs (both in the gift shop and in the displays). I could have spent days looking at all the chatchkas. I was blown away by the kitch factor and the empire that is Elvis.

The house was really something special, and I would highly recommend it to everyone. Elvis fan or not. Graceland is spectacular. It's like walking into a time-warp. A wonderfully gaudy, imaginative, shiny, upholstered time-warp. I wish I could have taken more pictures of the inside of his house, but the tour was crowded and the house is extremely dark. Getting a clear shot with a proper camera was tough. My two favorite rooms were the "Tiki room" complete with indoor waterfall (below left), and the billiards room (below right) where the floor, celling, walls and furniture are all covered in matching fabric. Unreal. I can only imagine that his cleaning lady hated that room.

As the house tour came to an end, a larger than life oil painted Elvis bid us adieu.

Thumbs up to Win!

2012-01-19T10:31:00.000-05:00

Hi there friends, I know I've been a bit slack in the blog department lately and for that I apologize! The good news is that I'm still here, and the better news is that by sticking with me, you've earned the chance to win!

I've recently joined a very talented group of people on the roster at Sparks Photographers and I couldn't be more stoked! What does this news have to do with you, you ask? Sparks is having a contest! Head on over to the Sparks Photographers Facebook page 'like' it and your favorite image. Your name will be entered in a draw to win the image of your choice which will be custom printed and framed just for you! Hurry over to the Sparks page, the draw takes place on February 10th.

Good luck!!

A Lovely Day in Louisville

2011-11-12T22:17:00.001-05:00

After a long drive the previous day, we decided to stop in Louisville, KY for breakfast before hitting the road again. I had heard good things about Lynn's Paradise Cafe, but nothing could have prepared me for the magic that is Lynn's. Giant sparkly letters beckon you to come in from the road while an Elvis bear greets you at the front door. From the moment I sat down, I was in love. When I first saw Lynn's I felt that spark of creativity and pure childish joy that I often have to search for. There was a little bucket of toy animals on the table that I couldn't resist playing with. For me, the food was almost secondary to the atmosphere. Now, I did say almost... I can often be pretty easily wooed by fancy sounding breakfasts items like extravagant French toast options or the 'house's special hash' but amidst Lynn's spectacularly decadent menu I just kept on going back to two little words: homemade biscuits. I'm a bit of a sucker for great baked goods so I just went with my gut on this one and kept breakfast simple. Two eggs, biscuits and fresh fruit. Let me tell you folks, that's how it's done. To my absolute delight the biscuits were light and crumbly, but dense enough to hold together long enough to butter and get to your mouth. Oh, and did I mention that they were cooked in bacon grease? Cuz they were.

Words or even photographs can't accurately describe Lynn's. Next time you're planning a trip to Disney Land - forget it. Go to Lynn's. It's the happiest place on earth.

Road Trippin'

2011-11-10T22:16:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year again! Zac and I are driving to Florida and along the way, we're searching out some really great food. This morning we packed up and headed for sunnier skies.

Today's plan was to get as far south as possible, and south we did get. All the way to Shelbyville, KY. Here's what we saw/learned along the way:

1. Detroit is rich with off the highway strip clubs. "The Landing Strip" wins for best name.

2. I came, I saw and I conquered Denny's.

3. Driving into Kentucky, I saw a sign for "buttermilk park." Unfortunately, we passed by in the dark and didn't get a chance to explore. I'm sure it's a wonderful place where pancakes do the backstroke in lakes of syrup and chickens dive head first into rich, luxurious pools of batter. I'm not sure if I'll ever visit buttermilk park but I'm positive that it's as good as, or even better than I could ever imagine.

Well, tomorrow will officially kick off the food fest part of our trip. Time for bed. May all your dreams be filled with BBQ.

Beans N' Toast

2011-11-02T12:28:00.000-04:00

Recently, Maclean's sent me to shoot their Student's Guide to a Cheap and Delicious Meal. Two Toronto chefs and a Maclean's writer dressed up and re-imagined a cheap and cheerful classic. May I present to you: Beans N' Toast from the Maclean's 2011 University guide. Here are the shots that made it to print, along with a few more of my favorite portraits.

Giovanna Alonzi - Terroni's Executive Chef

Jessica Allen - Maclean's Resident Foodie

Matty Matheson - Parts & Labour's Executive Chef

Oh Summer...

2011-09-19T09:06:00.000-04:00

As the fall weather begins to overtake the summer's heat, I can't help but think about one of my favorite evenings in recent memory. On one of the stickiest nights this summer, Dana and Joel (of the famed Wellpreserved.ca) invited Zac and I to join them for a little al fresco dinner party. This was not your usual backyard BBQ. This was a feast catered by Massimo Bruno, a charming and incredibly talented chef who hosts an Italian Supper Club. Over the course of about four hours, he filled us full of luscious burrata, carmalized figs, zucchini blossoms stuffed with ricotta, multiple handmade pasta dishes, steak grilled over coals and homemade cannoli (just to list a few!). Uh oh, I think my food coma is setting in again just thinking about it...

Here are a few images from that evening:

Not Your Momma's Take-Out Menu

2011-08-09T19:48:00.000-04:00

Recently, Dana Harrison (an uber talented designer and all 'round swell gal) and I collaborated on a take-out menu for Frida Restaurant. Our challenge was to create a menu that stood out from the piles of typical take-out menus that we so often find taking up space in our mailboxes. We needed to create something simple and eye-catching that would instantly have you running for the phone.

I asked Dana about her inspiration for this project, and how she pulled all the elements together. This is what she had to say:

"My inspiration for the menu came from Frida Kahlo's life and work. I decided to take the opportunity to watch the movie Frida (2002) again and found that the art, animation and colour in the film were amazing. The colourful culture and food of Mexico that Chef Jose and Steve have brought into Frida Restaurant, as well as one of the plates we sourced for the photography (shown in the guacamole shot) were also places I drew my inspiration from. Reena and I worked closely to style the images so that they would showcase the family-style nature of the items on the menu. I love Reena's 'deconstructed' way of styling food and wanted to feature one of these on the cover of the menu. The 'before and after' taco shot just makes you feel like running in and grabbing that last one before someone else does! The way she lights everything to create a really intimate, comforting, homey feel inspired the idea to shoot everything from above. That way the images would have the feeling of being laid out on a table, passed around and enjoyed. We wanted to create a menu that really communicated that this is restaurant quality food made with fresh ingredients, the same as you'd enjoy during a night out at Frida Restaurant."

Creatively, the biggest challenge I faced with this job was shooting a take-out menu for a fine-dining restaurant, without making it feel like an entirely different place. The most important elements we used to tie the two faces of Frida together, were colour and plating. We started with colour, which, for me, is essential in setting a tone and conveying mood through photography. We paired Frida's existing colour palette of vibrant oranges and punchy blues with a casual wood surface and mismatched dishware, creating images that felt warm, friendly and inviting without straying too far from the restaurant's fine-dining roots. Most importantly, we wanted the food plated in a more rustic manner but didn't want to lose Chef Jose's artful touch.

As with most of my photography, I'm always itching to tell a story, no matter how simple it may be. I wanted these photographs to draw people in and make them feel like they could pull up a chair and be a part of the meal. For me, when food tells a story, it instantly becomes more inviting and more appetizing. The more inviting a photograph can be, the more people will want to be a part of what you have created. In this case... the more people that want to pull up a chair to these tables, the more take-out orders for Frida, right?

When I asked Dana what her favorite part of the project was she simply said "drawing the sketch of Frida for the cover...and eating the food at the shoot."

Thanks to Steve and Jose for trusting in our vision of your food and for letting us tell your take-out story.

An Epiphany in Burgers

2011-08-05T09:21:00.000-04:00

It's moment's away from the weekend and I'm sure many of you are already psyching yourselves up for the drive to cottage country along good ol' highway 11. Well friends, that drive just got a little juicer and a little more burger-y.

As a child, Webers was always a sign that we were finally getting close to the lake. Webers Burgers is a staple and a tradition for the zillions of cottage goers that flock to the water every summer. With constant lineups, 50-100 people deep, I've never quite understood the draw. Admittedly a bit of a burger snob (but not in a foie gras kind of way.. just a home-made with love kind of way), I've never really understood the appeal of flavorless pre-frozen tasting patties.

Well my friends, I present to you my latest discovery: Burger Pit! Zac and I have been driving past this place for years. Every time we zoom past, we talk about stopping in for a burger. The giant mom-and-pop-vintage-American-style-burger-shoppe-sign advertising charbroiled burgers has been beckoning us to pull over. How come we never stopped before? The Burger Pit is just down the road from the cottage institution, Webers. Chalk it up to crowd-mentality, but we just figured that Webers was better. And sadly, Webers isn't really all that good. Last weekend, we decided to break free from the flock and let that awesome sign lead us. This was not a mistake. The Burger Pit serves up simple, juicy, homemade, perfectly charred patties. My drive to the cottage had been forever changed. Now instead of yelling out WEEEEEEBERS as we hit the three quarter mark to the cottage, I'll be yelling our BUUUUUUURGER PIIIIIIIIT!

The address is listed as 5 Booth Street, but it's right on Highway 11 between Oro-Medonte Line 10 and Line 11, just south of Orillia. Trust me, it's good. Go to there.

Charcutepalooza Challenge #6

2011-07-16T16:59:00.000-04:00

Once again, this month's challenge was down to the wire, but James and I refused to be defeated by our busy schedules. We scrambled to make our Hot Dogs the day before the posting date and here's a quick roundup on how we felt about the challenge this month:

James: H-dogs 2.0. After our epic fail last time (when we weren't suppose to make hotdogs anyway) I was more than a bit nervous that this would all turn pear-shaped for a second time. It didn't! We made delicious, hotdog-tasting hotdogs. The thing about hotdogs is, well, they're just hotdogs. The best hotdog I've ever had? Nearly. Was it worth it? Absolutely not. While I do appreciate the process of making an emulsified sausage, the attention required to make it work and the premium ingredients - I don't think it's worth all the time and cost required to create a gourmet dog. Sure ours were juicier, more tender, had better flavour and weren't the least bit rubbery. Sure they rank right up there with the best. But c'mon, they're just f*cking hotdogs! The lesson is this: While it's nice to use costly beef ribs to make hotdogs, it's not worth it. The reason: With simple slow, low smoke you can turn a rack of beef ribs into something divine instead of a glorified kid's birthday party treat. I'd give ours an 8 out of 10. But what's a 10 out of 10 hotdog really worth? A 6 out of 10 rack of ribs? C'est la vie.

R: Oh, while we were rushing to get everything done, we did somehow manage to squeek in dessert. Giant soft pretzels, that turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to our hotdogs. The recipe we used called for pretzel salt, but we thought this treat would be far superior if we doused the pretzels in salted butter and cinnamon-sugar, and boy were we right! I highly recommend giving these a try! For the recipe, click here.

Some Damn Good BBQ & A Charcutepalooza Retraction

2011-06-16T11:17:00.000-04:00

Last night, James invited Zac and I to be part of an elite rib-taste-testing-squad. Our delicious assignment was to help determine which ribs would be entered in Woodbine Park's BBQ competition this coming weekend. Of course, I can't divulge any of James' secrets but I can tell you that his ribs are killer! I'm sure he'll tell all once the competition is in the bag, so check out his blog to read all about it after the weekend.

Since the grill was already fired up, we figured why not throw on some of our fresh sausages. Now we would be able to experience them as originally intended. Zac dubbed this creation the "club sausage." Turkey and bacon with cranberry-walnut relish all conveniently stuffed in a sausage and served on a bun cut into three sections.

In my last post, I talked about how the sausages were a bit on the salty side and the bacon had overpowered the turkey. Well, here's where the Charcutepalooza retraction comes in: I TAKE IT BACK!! These sausages were not at all overly salty, in fact they had the perfect balance of salt and sweet. The general consensus was that they tasted like thanksgiving dinner all rolled up into one bite. You could distinctly taste each of the ingredients that went into these lovely little delights.

I'd say that the lesson learned here is to let sausage mellow overnight so all the ingredients can become friends and learn to get along in a wonderfully balanced and harmoniously tasty way.

I guess the big question now is: what other full meals can we stuff into a single sausage??

Charcutepalooza Challenge #5

2011-06-15T18:15:00.000-04:00

This months challenge was "stuffing" and stuff-it we did - into our super busy schedules... heh.. This month's sausage-making came dangerously close to unraveling. James and I have been trying to co-ordinate our schedules for weeks now, and yesterday, being the last day before the posting deadline, was looking grim. It seemed like we were going to have to call this month off. Luckily, I have a husband who has been dying to get his hands on the sausage stuffer. He announced to me yesterday morning that he would take over for James and help me get this month's challenge completed. He even took the work out of deciding what kind of sausage to make. He chose turkey, bacon, cranberry, walnut sausage. After an announcement like that, how could I possibly skip this creation? So this month Zac and I tackled the challenge together, while James missed out on all the fun (but don't worry, we saved him some sausage).

This is probably going to come as quite a shock to some of you, but I am terrified of cooking. I LOVE to eat and could spend all day in the kitchen but I don't really like to cook, especially without someone there to guide me. I have a bit of a history of ruining just about anything I attempt to cook. Without fail, I seem to screw it up somehow. I'm a baker, I revel in precision and measurement and rules. I don't really have a very good grasp on 'doing what I feel the food wants' and 'letting the ingredients speak to me' which is probably why Charcuterie appeals to me so much. It's a rather scientific way of preparing food.

Over the last few challenges, I've sort of just deferred to James in the cooking department. I've followed his direction to ensure that I couldn't possibly screw up our meat making. This month, it was my turn to take the lead. Making sausage had seemed easy but I was convinced it only felt that way because James was there to keep me from destroying dinner. Oh well, I was really in it now. The only thing left to do was crack open the bible (Michael Rhulman's Charcuterie) and dive right in.

I found a recipe for turkey and cherry sausage that seemed like a good jumping off point for the sausage that Zac had envisioned. For the most part the directions for making sausage read pretty much like any recipe for baked goods. Of course instead of flour and sugar using meat and fat. Sausage needs to have a specific fat to meat ratio. Our recipe didn't have bacon in it and since bacon is pretty much equal parts fat and meat we decided to consider it 50/50 and adjusted the turkey and back fat accordingly. Once I had the meat to fat ratio figured out, I scaled out all my seasonings just as the recipe called for, substituted cranberries for cherries and added walnuts. All the while mindful of sticking to Rhulman's ratios. I had the meat diced and seasoned and sitting in the freezer ready to go when Zac got home.

By the time Zac finished work and we had ground the meat, it was well past dinner time and we were both starving. We just couldn't muster up the energy needed to actually prepare a meal and knew we couldn't wait for the sausage to be ready, so we sat down to a quick dinner of cereal before we began to stuff our sausages. Fast forward past our embarrassingly sad Charcutepalooza dinner to a lovely coil of sausage sitting on our kitchen counter. The marbling was pronounced and the casings had filled uniformly. We had crossed the finish line. We quickly cooked up one of our little links as a late-night snack. Here's where I re-learned a valuable lesson that I had apparently forgotten: Bacon is salty. While our sausages turned out nearly perfect, they were a bit on the salty side and had a more distinct bacon taste than we had expected. The turkey had been overpowered, but the cranberries gave the sausages a nice sweetness. If I were to attempt putting bacon into sausage again, I would reduce the amount of bacon and leave the salt out until after I had mixed the meat and tasted it, before stuffing the casings. Other than that, I would do everything else the same.

All in all this challenge was a success. While this sausage may be a bit overpowering on it's own, we're thinking it will make a killer addition to a simple pasta with fresh tomato sauce - hold the salt.

The Little Promo That Could

2011-06-09T12:40:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm rather blown away by the level of response I've been getting from my promo. Just as I was beginning to feel like the chatter was tapering off, both the Applied Arts Blog and PDN Online wrote a little something about my bacon-y package this week. I'm pretty stoked, so I thought I'd share.

For the Applied Arts Article go here.
Click here to read what Heather Morton has to say in her PDN interview for the "Promos I Kept" column.
P.S. Thanks Heather for choosing my promo to talk about... again!

Since I couldn't dream of posting without sharing some images with you, here are three snappys to get you through the day:

Behind the scenes from Charcutepalooza

In and Out Burger in LA - ohhh yum!

Seriously THE BEST dessert on the planet! I'm salivating just remembering it. No joke.

Butterscotch Pot de Crème with Salted Caramel & Crème Fraiche from Gjelina in LA. Go There.

Sharing the Bacon-y Love

2011-06-03T16:26:00.000-04:00

I've been holding onto this for some time now and trust me it hasn't been easy. It's a little project I've been dying to share: The promotional piece that would formally introduce me as a "brand" to the world.... Or at least a selected group of Art Directors, Ad Peeps and Magazine Folks.

Over the past few years I've attempted to make my "debut" as a photographer but have put it on hold for numerous reasons. When I left Westside Studio, where I had worked as a producer, the timing was perfect and everything began to fall into place. I suddenly had time on my hands and was compelled to fill every second with my eye to a lens. I spent a year shooting and putting together a portfolio that I could be proud of. I wasn't going to come out without a bang. I needed to create an image that was distinctly me and would showcase my personality before you even knew who "me" was.

When I first found out that my friend James (who you may know as my partner in crime for Charcutepalooza) makes his own bacon, I immediately thought: Make your own bacon??! You can do that? What does that even mean? I had to shoot James in action. Soon after we had booked a shoot date, I came across a recipe for bacon caramels.. yup you read that right. That folks, was the pig-in-the-blanket that began the creative process of designing and executing what I was pretty sure would be a unique promo that would hopefully garner some attention.

Here's how it all came together:
With all the debate going on these days about paper promos (which I won't get into...cuz that's a whole other post in itself) I was hesitant to even put this project together, but it really wasn't the kind of thing that I could e-mail around. Right off the bat, I decided to go small. There were too many images to use on a postcard so a book seemed like the right solution. Sending out a book of images still didn't seem exciting enough to me. I wanted the recipient to have the full experience of the story. I decided that I would make and hand wrap candies to go with each promo (I sent two with bacon and two sans-bacon, for any non-adventurous eaters/vegetarians/non-bacon eaters out there). The next question was how to package the pieces in a fun way. Candy boxes. Through some stroke of pure luck and a lot of leg work I managed to find candy boxes complete with inserts that held four candies and were the exact same size as the books I wanted to send (so you have an idea of scale, the packages are 3.5"x 3.5"). Now I had a box containing four candies with my book neatly tucked inside. How did I wrap and address the packages? Butchers paper with a meat label to bring the entire project full circle.

You can see the story on my website by clicking on the I Heart Bacon gallery.
And if you're so inclined, you too can make bacon caramel.

I have to send some special thanks out into the world to the folks that helped me out of the goodness of their hearts:
Aleks Wallner, an incredibly talented artist who drew the little piggy for the cover of my book.
Dana Harrison, a graphic design guru and all around lovely lady, who designed my logos.
And not to be forgotten, James Kennedy, for letting me invade his kitchen and stick my lens in his face. Oh and for the bacon.

The overall response to this little promo of mine has been rather overwhelming. I went into it assuming that I wouldn't hear a peep. In the first couple of days, I received emails from people thanking me for the afternoon snack, a handful of requests for meetings, an Art Director who Tweeted about the promo, a shout out from Heather Morton (yay!), aaaaannnd a job!

Perhaps the moral of this story is: People like bacon and if you send it, they will call.

Big Mac Challenge

2011-05-25T13:35:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago I received a call from Shelbie Vermette, the photo editor at Toronto's newest and most exciting paper, The Grid. As soon as she told me the concept for an upcoming shoot, I was immediately on board. This was going to be FUN! Four of Toronto's chefs were to be given a Big Mac meal which they were asked to transform, without adding any additional ingredients, into a dish fit for their restaurants. As you probably know by now I am no stranger to the hamburger, so being asked to take part in a burger re-imagination project had me pretty excited. Writer Karon Liu and I literally had no idea what to expect when heading out for our shoot. Each time a dish came out of the kitchen, our minds were truly blown. The creativity, thoughtful care and humor that each of the chefs put into their dishes was absolutely inspiring. The chefs were all such great sports that they even let me snap a few quick portraits of them enjoying their creations.

You can read the full story here and can check out the behind the scenes story here.

Aravind’s Open-Faced Samosas by Chefs Raj and Aravind Kozhikott

Campagnolo’s Big Mac All’Americana by Chefs Craig Harding and Nigel French

Local Kitchen's McLumi Platter by Chef Fabio Bondi

The Drake’s Birthday Surprise by Chef Anthony Rose

Charcutepalooza Challenge #4

2011-05-15T12:23:00.000-04:00

The last few weeks have been crazy busy for me, and we just barely managed to squeek this challenge in. This month was filled with failures and lessons for us both. I've decided to re-dubb this month's theme as the "You can't have a home run every time" challenge. Thankfully, my partner in meat crime, James, was able to take the reigns in the post writing department. This month, I defer to him. Take it away Sir....

James: We might have been cursed from the very beginning, hard to say. But this month's path to Charcuteplaooza was fraught with errors, oversights and utter failures. Shit happens. Sure, we turned it all around and made delicious chorizo sausage links, killer maple candy corn and homemade ketchup but boy it sure wasn't easy this month.

It might be interesting to look at this month's challenge in reverse, so here goes.

We skinned, deboned and ground a fine cut of pork shoulder, spiced it up, grilled up a tester (success) and pumped it into six feet of hog casings. A few of the sausages were 'airy' and burst on the grill but all-in-all I'd say those chorizo, while not quite as good as George's were still pretty great. Topped off with some pickled onions, cilantro and homemade ketchup, our arena dogs were decidedly less Canadian than they were awesome. Oh well, at least the candy corn was made with 100% pure maple syrup!

Our final mistake was not putting that curious little cross-shaped bit in the meat grinder. That curious little bit does the cutting before the cubed meat gets to the die (the part at the end with the holes in it.) Without it you're basically trying to force square meat in round holes, quite literally. Once I found this piece was missing, I returned it to the meat grinder and miraculously it started actually grinding meat!

After dinner last Sunday I decided to start the evidently long process of turning frozen venison into what looked most like sticky baby pablum (I'd yet to replace that cross-shaped bit.) First I cut off all the freezer-burn. This venison came from a deer which had been shot by my father-in-law in November 2009, so it had seen it's fair share of freezer time. Once all the freezer burn was removed, I had a few steaks and a couple of tenderloins. I cut the semi-frozen meat into cubes and fed them into the machine. Without the cutting edge in it was very difficult to get the sinuey venison through the die. I was constantly cleaning out the grinder and what did make it through the small die came out as more a paste than a grind.

I'd forgotten that my father-in-law always marinates his venison in a beer/garlic solution overnight. This turns out to be crucial to getting all the extra blood out of the meat. In a processed, farmed product meat is hung and bled in a controlled setting. When hunted however the procedure is far less exact and bleeding out the animal immediately after death isn't always as quick (or so I understand.) Anyway, I'd unknowingly ground some pretty irony meat.

The first mistake where venison is concerned happened when Reena suggested we use a wild meat as our Canadian twist. Elk, Venison, whatever. Knowing of a good stash of frozen venison harvested in the wilds of Manitoba I thought, perfect! Venison it is. Well, venison makes a lousy hotdog. Actually, it makes a disgusting hotdog. The gamey flavour is intensified ten-fold and the hotdog texture didn't help either.

Hotdogs. So hotdogs were definitely not this months challenge. Taking Reena's word for it, I didn't even check the Charcuteplaooza site this month. Well, not until the venison hotdog failure.

Reena: I take the blame for the broken-telephone decision to make hotdogs. My husband Zac read the actual instructions for this month and suggested to me that a game-y sausage (this month's challenge) was sort of the Canadian equivalent to the American ballpark hotdog. Seeing as how it's NHL playoff time, I thought what better way to celebrate Canadiana and to take it even further than to make Venison hotdogs? And Cracker Jacks!

J: At the end of the day, we met the requirements (just barely) and our chrorizo was really, really good. And the funniest thing? We both agree that we'd rather eat a chorizo sausage anyway!

As a cowboy, name lost to time, once said "When you lose, don't lose the lesson." Next month I promise to check the site myself, double check my equipment and approach the new challenge with this failure in the back of my mind.

Charcutepalooza Challenge #3

2011-04-14T13:42:00.000-04:00

This month's Charcutepalooza challenge was hot smoking. We were to either smoke pork loin that would become Canadian Bacon or smoke pork shoulder which would become Tasso Ham. Since James has been smoking meat successfully for years and Michael Ruhlman's spice blends have proven to be perfectly balanced, it seemed that our biggest challenge this month would be coming up with our recipe. Seeing as James and I have promised a little bit of a Canadian flare with each of our challenges, you would think the choice would be clear with Canadian Bacon on the list. Not so.

James: Canadian bacon is only Canadian in the United States. In Canada it's called Peameal Bacon and most often cured and rolled in cornmeal, but not always smoked. The concept for our blog post was proving to be a bit of a conundrum. Tasso is an important ingredient in Jambalaya, a distinctly Louisianan creation but there was little evidence that it has ever made it's way out of the Bayou and into the Canadian culinary canon. In fact, I don't know anyone else who'd ever heard of it. So Tasso Tourtiere, Pâté chinois (Shepard's pie) or Flipper pie were all kind of out.

And were we really going to make another sandwich? Uh, nope.

Almost stumped, I thought we could justify our Can-con while still taking the low road, or swamp track as it were. When I pulled out the Lonely Planet: New Orleans City Guide in light of my upcoming trip I came across a 'legend' about the humble crawfish...

"When the Acadians were forced to leave Nova Scotia, the local lobsters (very loyal shellfish, indeed) decided to follow their adopted humans to Louisiana. During the arduous marathon swim, the crustaceans lost a lot of weight and most of their size. By the time the lobsters reached the bayous and swamps of southern Louisiana to reunite with their beloved proto-Cajuns, they had transformed into the Acadian's smaller, and now-totemic, crawfish." If the lobster is the forefather of the crawfish, and an undoubtedly Downeast ingredient - well we're bringing it all back home, as Bob Dylan once mumbled.

Bingo! Tasso is in Jambalaya and Lobster could be our Canadian crawfish! One down, one to go. Andouille is a spicy cajun sausage and also an important ingredient in Jambalaya. It is not readily available up here, but all of it's ingredients are. The pork shoulder needed to make Tasso is the very same cut needed to make Andouille. A bit more work but it was certainly worth it. Homemade sausage is easy, delicious and maybe just a bit totally awesome.

R: Seeing as this was my first experience with Cajun cooking, and that James is able to Cajun-ify almost anything with his eyes shut. I quickly fell into the roll of Help-y McHelperson, where I found myself elbow deep in freshly ground meat, feeding the sausage stuffer at a leisurely pace. I'll say this much, while making homemade sausage is not a difficult task, it may potentially have the power to convert any meat eater to a vegetarian. But not us! Finding myself without tonnes to contribute to the preparation of this meal, other than immersing my hands in meat and fighting back tears when it was time to cook our well behaved and photogenic Lobster, who we had affectionately named Jaques, I would tackle dessert.

We decided that I should prepare a Canadian classic. Buttertarts. Growing up, I spent a lot of time in the Muskokas where we basically spent entire summers waterskiing, barbecuing and begging my parents to take us for Buttertarts from Marty's in Bracebridge. Marty's has literally ruined me for all other Buttertarts in the universe. They are the best. Hands down. Flaky, tender, chewy pastry with runny, sticky and sweet insides. A couple of years ago my mom surprised me with a copy of Marty's cookbook and I'm pretty sure that the angels sang when I discovered the recipes for his pastry and filling. But how were we going to give these tarts the Southern flare that they would need to follow our Jambalaya you ask? Pecans. Maple roasted pecans. Oooooh-we!

So, how was the meal? Spicy and smokey with a hint of sweetness each time you discovered a coveted piece of lobster. The Jambalaya was even hot enough to have those of us that hadn't braved James' homemade hot sauce reaching for the Kleenex and wiping away tears. Often, with spice of that magnitude, the flavour can begin to take a back seat. In this case, not so. Each bite was filled with a wonderful and slightly different combination of tastes. The Tasso and the sausage, while at the core were quite similar, brought very distinct yet perfectly married flavours to the table. The buttertarts, that we served with cinnamon ice-cream from Ed's Real Scoop and a snifter of Bourbon were the perfect way to cool our over-heated pallets. All in all, this meal was well worth the effort and Tasso-rific in our books.

After a really fun day in the kitchen and a great meal with friends, it was off to bed with the anticipation of waking up to the lingering smell of that deliciously smokey aroma, that is always left behind in my hair, that would have me re-living our meal the next morning.

Charcutepalooza Challenge #2

2011-03-15T15:25:00.000-04:00

Corned Beef? Yes Please! This month's challenge was Brining. If you had told me just a couple of years ago that we could make corned beef, I would have thought you were crazy - that tender, melt-in-your-mouth-put-it-on-rye-with-nothing-but-mustard-and-a-crunchy-Strubs-pickle-on-the-side corned beef of my childhood! I was shocked by how easy it is.

Buy Brisket. Ours came from NorpacBeef.
Submerge in brine
Refrigerate for 7-10 days
Rinse
Boil for 3ish hours in fresh brine
Eat

James and I have decided that we are going to do our utmost to make sure that each of our challenges receive a tip of the hat to our Canadian heritage. Last month, we smoked meat in a snow storm, so this month we decided to look East.

Our first instinct was to stick to your tried and true corned beef sandwich: something that needn't be improved upon and in our minds was truly the best vehicle for corned beef. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. How do we better the best sandwich? By adding cheese, gravy and fries! How could it be more obvious and Canadian. Corned beef poutine!

We would make stock, which would become our poutine sauce, as well as the squeaky cheese curds which make poutine the wonderfully special dish that it is. We'd rest the whole thing on a bed of homemade fries. Oh yes! We officially had an even more challenging challenge on our hands.

James: After a fair bit of research I found out what 'poutine sauce' is. It's basically a 1/2 reduced velouté. I didn't get around to the research until I'd roasted the meat and made the 12hr. beef stock (from a veal stock recipe). Back to Mr. Rhulman with The Elements of Cooking, which I happen to own, have read and quickly forgot. Jogged by the internet, I went back to my hardcopy for some pointers. He points you to one of Emeril's old recipes on the Food Network site. Beyond the basics, I think the most important bit is "Place the stock pot in the oven and heat it to between 180º and 200ºF… cook for at least 8 hours and up to 12 hours." Genius! Don't boil, gently warm all the flavour out of those tough, cheap chunks of crap.

As for the actual 'poutine sauce', I was sure ol' Martin Picard (The Wild Chef) would have included it in his food-porn fois gras manifesto Au Pied du Cochon: The Album. Nope. This considering it has a recipe for poutine in it! So, where better to get the goods than a website about poutine? There velouté is mentioned, and I remembered that I made it in Culinary I at George Brown. Yes! With the addition of a few more aromatics (thyme, bay), a roux and some salt we had turned a great stock into fine velouté.

R: We found a couple recipes for squeaky cheese curds that seemed simple enough. Suddenly, the mysterious and complicated process of making cheese seemed attainable. We diligently heated our milk to the correct temperature then added our lemon juice. As our milk began to (intentionally) curdle, a mix of excitement and disgust washed over us. A word to the wise: if you are making cheese, close your eyes while it curdles and don't breathe in. Blech. Sadly, our cheese did not turn into the poutine curds that we had been dreaming of. We were however, left with quite a lovely ricotta and since I have a tendency to complicate already complicated matters, I thought that come corned-beef-cooking-poutine-making-day, it would be a great idea to make an even bigger mess of the kitchen by baking a cheesecake with our failed curds. Here are the cheese cake and lemon curd recipes that we used. After two failed attempts at making our own, we had to admit defeat and go buy cheese curds from Chris' Cheesemongers.

I hadn't really anticipated that poutine-making-day would actually be rather torturous. When I arrived at James' place that afternoon, I could literally taste the corned beef that was wafting up the walkway. We had a lot of work ahead of us before we could dig in. Ricotta cheese cake, lemon curd topping, poutine sauce and fries all still needed to be prepared before we could taste our meat... le sigh. We motored through the day, cooking and shooting, shooting and cooking. Finally the time had come when the last, twice fried potato had emerged from the oil a french fry. We were about to discover what all the fuss was about.

J: I don't mind saying that the corned beef we made was the best I'd had, ever. The flavour from the spice blend in Charcuterie is unbelievable. Dear Ginger, thanks for making everything better...again.

R: I can honestly say that it's going to be tough to go back to restaurant made corned beef and poutine after this challenge. James' sauce was flavorful and complex yet subtle enough that it let our hero, the corned beef shine. It was the perfect compliment for our corned beef and crispy fries. I would absolutely recommend that you all run out and buy yourself a brisket to transform into corned beef, and if you are so inclined - poutine-ify it. You'll have no regrets. Trust me.

J: I guess the question still remains: What do you do with 4 1/2 lbs. of perfectly cooked corned beef & poutine? Have a French Canadian 'plaid only' dinner, with all your hungriest friends! Success topped with a curd-fail/ricotta-win cheesecake. The end.

Southern Fried Road Trip (Part 4)

2011-02-22T21:28:00.000-05:00

This next leg of our trip was the most exciting for me. Ever since I had read 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' back in highschool, I have dreamed of visiting Savannah, GA. Romantic, ethereal, mysterious, friendly, beautiful Savannah! A place where you can rely on the kindness of strangers and words flow from peoples mouths as smoothly as silk. After ten years or so of visiting Savannah in my mind, I was finally going for real! From the moment I found out, I immediately began practicing my Southern drawl, (which I might add, is pretty terrible) while promising Zac that I wouldn't use my wonderfully charming accent in public.

After fueling up our car and ourselves, we left Atlanta and were headed for Savannah.

When we arrived at our B&B, Park Avenue Manor, I immediately felt giddy. We were truly staying in an old southern manor. Decorated from top to bottom just the way I had imagined it would be. We were greeted by the owner, with Sherry and homemade brownies, that we were told would be available to us 24 hours a day. Seriously?? If a hankering hit mid night, I could hop out of bed to sip sherry in the salon by the fire? How much better could this get?!

As dinnertime rolled around, the B&B owner sent us off to a great pub, with a fantastic beer list, called the Crystal Beer Parlor. We were on a roll eating only brown things, so why stop now? A hamburger with onion rings and fried shrimp with handmade potato chips and beer it was! Zac alleges that our server offered roasted veggies as one of the sides for my meal but, to this day, I still think he imagined it.

As last call was announced, I started to notice that people seemed to transferring their drinks into plastic cups. Feeling like I was about to ask a pretty stupid question, I shyly asked the bartender if people were actually taking their beer to go. He answered with a laugh, that they were and that it is legal to walk the streets of Savannah with alcohol in hand, "as long as you are within 50 feet of a pub, and in Savannah, you are always 50 feet from a pub!" To go cups of beer in hand, Zac and I made our way back to our B&B for a nightcap of Sherry and brownies.

Flowery sundresses and takeout cups of beer. In my next life, I'm coming back as a Southern Belle.

Charcutepalooza! (A Year of Meat)

2011-02-14T18:33:00.000-05:00

My friend James and I have recently decided to team up and take part in Charcutepalooza: a year dedicated to the art of curing and eating our own meat (twelve recipes in twelve months). Sadly, we were just shy of a week late for the deadline to become "official" participants, but we're hoping that Cathy Barrow, let's call her "the head honcho," of Mrs Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen and co-founder Kim Foster of The Yummy Mummy can find it in their hearts to let us join, once we prove our dedication to the cause, of course. Even if we aren't able to officially join in, we'll be happily plowing, unofficially, through the contest. In the end we'll be winners in our own hearts. That's really all that matters after all is said and done, right?

Since we dropped the ball on beginning alongside the throngs of meat-y fanatics out there, we missed the first cure which was duck prosciutto. We will however, be catching up on that once the temperature begins to rise and we have an appropriately tempered basement to hang our meat in.

Enough chitter-chatter. Let's get down to the business of the first challenge. The Salt Cure - Bacon!

I'm going to let James kick this one off with his two cents:

J: This was not the first time I’d made bacon. In fact, I almost didn’t buy the book (Charcuterie: The Art of Salting, Smoking and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn) because I thought "I’ll just go to Chapters, take a high res picture of the bacon page and bam! – save myself $40." Camera-phone focused and ready, I had a change of heart. The Black Hoof had something to do with this. I’d spent a rainy November night waiting for a table and sat down to a taste explosion, a taste-meat-explosion. If they could do it, and I could (probably) make bacon, then why not buy the whole book? No reason not to.

The first batch of bacon was christened ‘Christmas Bacon’, and became small gifts of porcine appreciation to friends and family. Christmas breakfast had never been so bacon-y. A total success, and not a trace of botulism (I agonized over accidentally poisoning someone for the whole week.) A few rounds of curing and smoking later and here we are, unofficial contestants in Charcutepalooza.

I won’t go into detail about the method, go buy the book. I will add some things though:

Smoking the cured belly to the correct internal temperature is far superior to roasting it off in the oven (no, I haven’t tried the oven method, why would I?)
Don’t fear botulism, especially if you’re using pink salt. (note: pink salt is dyed pink in some places and not in others. It’s just salt mixed with sodium nitrate.)
Your bacon will be the best you’ve ever had, fact!

Now for our requisite bacon photos:

R: After much discussion among friends we decided that our freshly cured bacon would be transformed into the wicked-ist, most awesome-ist Club Sandwich we'd ever had. Ever since that decision was made, we both found ourselves dreaming about our first creation, literally. I dreamed that we made chicken soup from the smoked bones left over from our chicken and James was dreaming about fresh cut french fries to accompany our Club. After some discussion, we decided that it would be best to keep things simple on our first go and just stick to the sandwich. Not to worry, I'm sure we'll quickly complicate things, as we often do.

On Saturday morning, during an impromptu snow squall, James and I were off to the markets (St.Lawrence and Brickworks) to pick out the rest of our ingredients (our bacon was finished curing and ready to be smoked).

Here are the items that were to become our "Best Club Ever" (later to be dubbed "The 12hr Club" due to the time it took us to shop for, create, and shoot it):

Pork Belly, that was at home finishing it's cure and waiting to be smoked, which was, of course, to become our bacon-y hero, from Wayne's Meat (Hagersville, ON)
Chicken, which we would season and smoke, from Clement Poultry (Newcastle, ON).
Hydroponically grown Ontario lettuce and tomatoes.
After tasting a sample, we couldn't resist picking up some Eweda, a semi hard aged sheep cheese, from Best Baa Farm (Fergus, ON).
Homemade aioli made from farm fresh eggs that we picked up from The Sunrise Egg Farm (Wallenstein, ON).
Freshly baked whole wheat bread from Celena's Bakery (Toronto, ON). James had insisted on us needing "bread shaped bread" for our sandwiches, so we hit three bakeries before he dubbed a traditional loaf shaped loaf, from Celena's, to be worthy of our sandwich.
Pickles from Jamie Kennedy's Gilead Cafe (Toronto, ON). Which Zac would arrive with just in time to eat.

It was finally time to dig ourselves a path and fire up the smoker!

J: The chicken was smoked for about 2hrs. at 275ºF in a Webber Smokey Mountain (WSM) over lump charcoal and Jack Daniels whiskey barrel pellets. The rub is my secret recipe, but these Cedar Grilling guys are king in the barbecue ring. Try their rub, it's good too.

After making our aioli, which left us with egg whites that we didn't want to waste, I proposed that we make meringues. I’d always thought about making meringues but never attempted it – I’m not much for baking. Reena taking the reigns of measure made them quite a bit more ‘consistent.’ Our mid-meringue addition consisted of a quick shopping trip to pick up orange and peppermint extract. Add a bit of shaved dark chocolate and we’re talkin’ mint-chocolate chip ice cream and Terry’s Chocolate Orange meringues!

Seeing as our recipe is rather simple, we've decided to spice it up a bit and go with more of an illustrated version:

Our first challenge was a success and we can't wait to get our hands salty with the next one!
All of our challenges will be posted on the 15th of the month, so check in then to follow us on our adventure in Charcutapalooza-land.

We'd like to extend a special thanks to the fine people of Multi-national CONGLOMOCOR for requesting that our sandwich become their "official corporate executive club-style sandwich" – the Conglomoclub. At the President's request, that version will be sans-tomatoes and if desired, the diner may order it ‘with tomatoes.’ No big deal.

Southern Fried Road Trip (Part 3)

2011-02-11T10:08:00.000-05:00

A friend of ours, who had lived in Atlanta, GA for a bit, recommend that we try Fat Matt's Rib Shack. Actually I'm pretty sure he insisted that it was THE place for great BBQ. So we went. And it was delightful. After taking a quick glimpse at the menu board we decided on: one chopped pork sandwich, one rib sandwich, mac and cheese with both and one giant sweet tea for me. Oh and a piece of pecan pie. Oh, that pecan pie.... Yet again, we found ourselves polishing off our plates and licking our fingers clean. The bbq sauce is just too good to waste by wiping it onto a napkin! Fat Matt's definitely did not disappoint.

I've been noticing more and more, that for me, part of what makes food taste so great is the atmosphere. Fat Matt's had lots of it. Big bright signs, a touch of neon, truly friendly staff and a shop filled to the brim with happy customers busy licking sauce from every finger. The clientele consisted of everyone from students to truckers to fancy ladies with their designer bags and their hair freshly did. It was truly fantastic. If we hadn't been on our way to Savannah, I could have stayed all day.

Southern Fried Road Trip (Part 2)

2011-02-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

This is the day we ate four southern-sized meals in twelve hours. As painful on my intestinal tract as these twelve hours were, it was honestly one of the best food days of my life. The day had come for us to finally meet some proper Carolina BBQ, as well as that good 'ol Southern soul food. This was pretty much the only part of our trip that we had actually planned out but it was also bit of a Hail Mary play. We had learned about our two main destinations from Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt series, that had aired back in 2006. He had touted them as the best bbq and fried chicken in the south. It's been a bad couple of years in the states, so we weren't sure if these places would still be around. We decided to take a gamble all in the name of great food discovery and a bit of adventure.

We woke and went down to check out the "continental breakfast" at our hotel. Expecting some packaged croissants and a bad coffee, we were surprised to find a buffet of greasy delights. We enjoyed fresh baked biscuits topped with sausage patties and gravy. The best part of the buffet was the bowl of fruit in the corner that had obviously not been touched since the last Canadians were in town and was slowly rotting.

Next up Carolina Smoke House in Cashiers, North Carolina.
As we drove for hours, up and up and up one of the windiest, most lovely tree-lined roads, deeper and deeper into the middle of nowhere, we were literally giddy with anticipation of our first mouthful. Driving with the windows down we got intermittent whiffs of smokey pits filled with meat. The anticipation was almost too much to bear. When we pulled up in front of the restaurant, we were greeted by the sight of a group of bikers. Thinking that we had pulled into a bit of a backwoods biker hangout, I left my vintage Louis bag in the trunk, so as not to appear too flashy. We walked in and grabbed a table right beside four ladies right out of "The Real Housewives of..." - decked out with Louis bags (I suspect from the actual Louis store) and UGGS... ha! I guess pit-smoked BBQ is the Holt's Cafe of Cashiers, NC.

On to the food... Here is where I fell in looooove with sweet tea, and learned two things:

Beverages only come in one size: gargantuan. I actually needed two hands to lift the glass to my mouth.
Refills are always included (and expected!) and you are always offered a to-go cup, just in case the first 20 litres of liquid wasn't enough to satisfy your thirst. But when in Rome, I say bring on the refills! I probably drank enough sweet tea to drown a horse.

And now, the most important part of our journey. The meat. Zac ordered the chopped pork sandwich and I had ribs. Both of them came with fries, coleslaw and texas toast. The meat was fall-off-the-bone tender (well, the chopped pork didn't have bones, but you get it...) and had the most amazingly smokey flavour. As I raised a rib to my mouth the smell of the smoker filled my nose, and when I bit in, my mouth was filled with a beautifully smokey sweetness, as the meat practically dissolved on my tongue. I was in love.

Now here's the problem with our plan: it turned out that the two places we most desperately wanted to hit were only an hours drive apart. There was no chance of us picking only one, so knowing that we would be having a second lunch in about an hour, we planned on eating enough to just get a solid taste for BBQ and leave room for a second course of soul food. As you can see, we pretty much polished off our plates. Oops.

Second Lunch was Shirley's Sole Food Cafe in Toccoa, Georgia.
Shirley's definitely jumps to the top of my list as far as favorite things we did during our road trip. With to-go cups of sweet tea in hand, we packed ourselves back into the car and headed for Georgia. As I mentioned before, this is one of the two destinations we actually had planned to hit and this was the restaurant we deemed least likely to pan out. At least the Smoke House has a website that seemed to be up to date. Heading to Shirley's was a bigger gamble, but we couldn't resist giving it a go. After an hour's drive, we reached Toccoa, GA. and with baited breath we kept our eyes pealed for Shirley's. As our GPS loudly proclaimed "arriving at destination on right" our hearts quickly sank when Shirley's didn't appear. We continued to drive through the sad and dilapidated downtown, and just as we were about to give up, Shirly's appeared at the bottom of a hill. It looked pretty deserted and the conversation turned to positive sounding banter about how the ride was fun anyway and we'd already had a great meal at the last place, yada yada. We pulled over to take a look inside and when I tried the door, it was locked. Suddenly, I saw someone inside and he was walking towards the door. He was a very soft-spoken, very shy man with an incredibly thick southern accent. From what I could understand, they were closed for the day because they were preparing meals for a fundraiser that was being held that night. I began to walk away but he opened the door and asked if we were hungry and wanted to eat. I excitedly, and somewhat quizzically said "yes?" He went back inside to talk to Shirley, and came back shortly to invite us inside. Over the moon doesn't even describe how thrilled I was. Shirley explained that they were having a fundraiser that evening where people would be able to buy a pre-packed meal for $7 and all the money was being donated to a local shelter. She happily sold us one (we politely declined a second. After all, this was our second lunch in an hour). We thanked her profusely as I exclaimed "we drove all the way from Toronto just to try your chicken!" Takeout containers in hand we headed outside (so they could continue prepping) and plopped ourselves down in the parking lot to break into the goods.

Inside was one half of a roasted chicken, beans, coleslaw, a couple slices of Wonderbread, applesauce and a nice big cup of sweet tea. As thrilled as we were to have been so lucky, when we opened the container, we were disappointed to discover that the chicken was roasted and not fried (we went to Shirley's specifically for the fried chicken), but were still beyond excited that we had an amazing stroke of luck and Shirley had opened her doors to feed us. One taste of that chicken and all of our disappointment disappeared. Here we were, trying to be all classy with our plastic forks in the parking lot, but one bite of that chicken had us quickly ditching our utensils so we could devour the meal as quickly as possible. I'm pretty sure that we didn't even speak until the chicken had been picked clean. BEST chicken of my life! I'm seriously not exaggerating. I still dream about it. So Second Lunch, that we had decided we would just get a taste of, disappeared much like lunch number one. When Zac reached for the wonder bread, I nearly lost it. I couldn't believe that he was even considering eating it. Turns out, he's a pretty clever gent. One thing that was missing from our meal was napkins and it turns out that Wonderbread makes a pretty great substitute.

I wish I had had more time to chat with Shirley but she was really busy preparing all the meals for that evening. I was so grateful that she had let us in and fed us that I didn't dare take up any more of her time. Someday, I'll have to go back to shoot a portrait of Shirley and try her fried chicken.

Dinner that night, which we barely managed to drag ourselves to, was at Greenwood's Restaurant in Roswell, Georgia. Now this was an absolute gem of a find that we literally stumbled across. Everything is made in-house from scratch with local, organic, seasonal ingredients. Everything that touched my tongue was almost too good to be true. The fried chicken is made to order and has the kind of incredibly crunchy and sophisticated batter that I thought only existed in my dreams. Even the sides were beyond words. Zac and I spent the entire evening trying to figure out how they make the sweet potatoes... we're pretty sure one of the tricks is vanilla, but honestly, we'd never tasted sweet potatoes like these! Oh! and the cheese grits... swoon. Sadly, there are two things I regret about this trip and they both came about because of Greenwood's. The first is not having had a piece of pie and the second is forgetting the leftovers in the hotel room fridge the next morning (this I'm pretty sure I'll never forgive myself for).
I would have to say that if you are in the Atlanta, GA area, Greenwoods is an absolute must. A word of advice. Go on an empty stomach. Actually, don't eat for three days prior. Get the fried chicken and share it between at least two people, and for the love of god, at least get the pie and take it home for later!

We rolled ourselves back to our hotel, bloated and over-satisfied, where we swore that we would never eat again. After we brushed our teeth, I sneaked into our little fridge, where we had stowed away our leftovers, ate a mouthful of sweet potato and a piece of the crispy chicken skin, then crawled into bed to dream about the food I would eat the next day.

Southern Fried Road Trip (Part 1)

2011-01-10T19:43:00.000-05:00

Recently, The Hubby and I took a few days off to drive my grandmother's car down to Florida for her. Instead of just heading straight on down the highway we decided to make our trip a little more interesting by creating our very own "Feasting on Asphalt" episode (sadly, minus Alton Brown). Our goal for this trip was simple: eat/experience as much soul food and BBQ as we could possibly fit down our gullets in four days.

Since all great road trips must begin with coffee, we filled up at Dark Horse and were off to the border.

Finding a little mom and pop restaurant is not the easiest task while you're motoring on down the highway, trying to get as far south as you possibly can in one day. As lunch time came and went, we found ourselves aimlessly driving around Princeton, PA in search of a little family owned restaurant. Our hunger finally won out to stubbornness and we started off our trip with a chain. Stop number one: Steak N' Shake, where happy hour means 1/2 price milk shakes. How could we have possibly passed that up? Steak burgers and GIANT $1.50 milkshakes were really the perfect way to kick off our trip.

Overly full and jacked up on grease and milkshakes we buckled up and hit the road again. I hope you'll forgive me sparing you the details of our sing alongs and games of eye spy. I'm guessing, if you're reading this you're here for the food....

As dinner time began to roll around we were determined to stumble upon something worthy of a story. When all the eye could see were Subway's, McDonald's, and Cracker Barrel's the theme of our drive quickly became: 'Just one more exit'. Seeing as we happened to be in the middle of the mountains and exits were becoming few and far between, we sadly succumbed to a Subway sign and pulled off the road. Now this is where the trip really began to get exciting for me. As we turned off the hiway we saw a beacon of light in a sea of corporate restaurants, Sam's Hot Dog Stand. I'm not a particularly big fan of the hot dog, and as I quickly learned, American's eat their dogs boiled, not grilled, which made me even less of a fan. But, as they say: when in Rome... eat boiled hot dogs. The choices for toppings were simple, ketchup, mustard, relish, mayo, chili and cheese... Already craving a vegetable or two I immediately jumped at the chili option. Here I was envisioning my hotdog slathered in chili packed full of beans and peppers (which zac later on had a good laugh at), just to be handed a bun filled with brown, not even a cleverly hidden piece of pepper to be found. Silly girl, what was I thinking?? Well, I skeptically dug into my dog and in all honesty, Sam's made my night. Best Roller-Dog ever! I even grabbed a second one for the road.

Part two is in the works, so check back soon!

Challah, Pt.2

2010-10-19T22:50:00.000-04:00

If you missed my first post about my foray into baking Challah you might want to catch up here. I believe I left off with a bleak-looking prognosis on the bread baking front. To my complete shock, I am thrilled to report that in the end, my Challahs (that's right, I decided to make two) turned out to be quite successful!

Now that I've jumped ahead to the end, I'll take you back to the sponges. My original plan was to keep only one of the two starters I had made. I thought that I would have a better chance of actually making bread if I attempted two, assuming that one would be a complete flop. Of course, having never done this before, I quickly realized that there was no way for me to know which was the better one, so the obvious answer was to make two complete loaves. Go big or go home, I guess. Still feeling pretty nervous about the whole 'making Challah' thing, I peeled back the plastic-wrap from the first starter and was immediately hit with a wonderfully warm and invitingly fresh yeast smell. It was time to begin the dough. To my complete surprise and elation, the dough felt like, and came together exactly as, the book described. Things were beginning to look up. It was time to bake these lovely loaves. I waited impatiently, unable to sit still. BEEP, BEEP! Finally! I slowly peeked under the foil which revealed perfectly browned, steaming hot loves of challah! A mini-success! Why only mini? I still had no idea how they tasted. Here's where my stress level rises again: I had timed my Challah making venture to end just before Friday night dinner at Bubbie's began. I was about to present two, potentially horrible (one of which was a little on the heavy side.. eep), loaves of Challah to my entire family. It was a pretty scary prospect, seeing as we have scoured the city for the best Challah, and eaten it most Friday nights. As you already know, the loaves were a success! The flavor and texture were great, well at least pretty damn good for a first crack at it. Surprisingly, the loaf I had made with my experimental starter was even better than the other.

I really love making bread, it's tactile, it's creative, it's methodical and precise. All the same qualities that draw me towards photography.

Challah, Take One.

2010-10-07T15:53:00.000-04:00

I was watching the Tartine bread baking video a couple days ago (which, might I mention, is stunning and inspiring) and since then I can't seem to focus on anything other than the feel of puffy, yeasty, living dough in my hands. Last night, I pulled out 'The Bread Bible' and decided to attempt a challah. This is an all time favorite for me and I figured it was time to give it a go. Attacking this recipe poses a few substantial challenges for me:

Bread baking puts me in the position of facing the prospect of a serious failure, and we all know how little I like the thought of turning out failed baked goods.
I've never made a sponge starter. Making one successfully, so I'm told, is a difficult task and often a massive flop on your first few tries.
Facing the fact that I will very likely fail at this task but talking myself into attempting the recipe anyway.

After seriously battling every instinct I had to find something (anything!) else to do to avoid attempting making challah, I have taken the leap and decided to dive on in.

Here's how my morning's going so far.... Not too well.
I mixed together my sponge to discover that it was runny and not at all like "a very smooth, very thick batter" as the book describes. After triple checking my measurements, I noticed the date on my recently EXPIRED yeast... blargh! Thinking maybe that could have had something to do with my soupy starter (but doubting it nonetheless), I ran off to the grocery store to purchase some UN-expired yeast. With fresh yeast in hand, I attempted starter numero dose. As I suspected, the yeast had nothing to do with the texture, and once again, I ended up with a very smooth, very thin batter. At this point frustration was seriously setting in. Not sure what I was doing wrong, I ran to the all powerful internet to see if I could come up with some kind of explanation. I found a few fixes for sourdough starters, but this is a sponge and as far as I can tell, a whole other beast. Feeling impatient and on the brink of giving up, yet determined not to fail, I decided to start adding flour to my third starter, trying to emulate what I believed to be the right consistency. Now, those of you that know me, know that I am a stickler for 'the rules' when it comes to baking. Just randomly throwing flour into a recipe is completely against my character and frankly a little stressful. At this point, I am still fighting the lump in my throat that is pushing me to bail on this project. If I bail now, I'll never have to know that my bread was a complete failure. BUT on the flip side, if I bail now I'll also never know if the bread may have turned out to be a success either.

While I wait on my starters, hopefully fermenting away in their bowls, I'll leave you with a list of what I've accomplished up to this point: One incredibly messy kitchen, three attempts at a starter, and managing to look rather cute in my apron. Well, I've got a few hours to go before anything else exciting is supposed to happen, so I'll leave you with this and update you as things begin to progress, or fail miserably...

P.S. If anyone out there has any sage advice, I'd LOVE to hear it!

Adventures in Apple Picking

2010-10-01T16:06:00.000-04:00

Last week, I got to spend the afternoon participating in an apple harvest organized by The Ontario Association of Food Banks for The Salvaton Army. Other than filling about 150 bags, bursting with apples, the most exciting thing for me was getting the chance to collaborate with my sister Robin, who is currently working with the fantastic organization Not Far From the Tree. Instead of rambling on, I'm going to defer to Robin since she's written a lovely summery of the day's events. Check out her blog post here and some of my images from the day, below.

Now, what to do with all those apples... Crumble perhaps? Stay tuned.

Misprint.

2010-09-26T20:18:00.000-04:00

I've been patiently awaiting the first moment when I would see my name in lights (or little black letters, if you will) for a while now. Today was that day. About three months ago, I got a call from The Stop telling me that Food and Drink magazine was writing a piece about 'the slow food movement' and that they would be running one of my photos of Chris Brown (their chef), alongside the article. As I drove to the LCBO, reminding myself not to get my hopes too high and to continue breathing, I couldn't help but be excited about seeing one of my photos in print. Even as small as I knew it would be, I was totally stoked. As tempted as I was to rip into the magazine as soon as it touched my hands, I decided to be patient and wait until I got home so that I could ceremoniously open the magazine. I found the article in the index and then decided that the best thing would be to arrive there page by page. As I quietly turned the pages, I knew I was getting close. Suddenly, there it was on page 148, my photo... with someone else's credit!
Bah humbug. My initial reaction was to put in an angry call to the magazine. Heads would roll! After stewing in my own anger and disappointment for a while, I realized that it wasn't really worth the energy. Honestly, what would come of it? An apology and a possible retraction that I'm sure most readers would skip over anyway? In the end I decided that it was better to put my energy into continuing to work on my photography, and to keep pushing forward onto the next project.
Ah well, C'est La Vie....
Looks like I'll need to continue waiting in quiet anticipation until the day my name is written in lights (instead of blue ink).

I'm still working out why exactly I was so upset to see the credit given to someone else. I'm kind of stuck here... consciously, I'm not sure that it really does matter that much, but emotionally it really stings. Is being credited just a matter of ego? While I think it over a bit more, I thought I would throw this out there: Do credits matter?

Deep Fried Butter

2010-08-22T14:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, my husband and I took a trip to The Ex and I'm sure it won't come as a surprise to anyone that we went for the food. This year, with all the hype surrounding the deep fried butter, how could we possibly resist? The entire time we stood in line I kept contemplating bailing. Deep fried butter??! I'll eat just about anything, but the thought of biting into a ball of butter was borderline too much to handle. Curiosity definitely won out this time, especially when my husband heard the guy ahead of us say that they "taste like heaven." How could I possibly say no to a treat that would make angels sing?
How did they taste? Like Yum. Essentially they're frozen blobs of butter dipped in funnel cake batter and deep fried. These confections are pillow-y masses of fried dough with a melt-y, delightfully-buttery and salty centre. For those of you who would like to replicate this taste in your own kitchen: take a plain doughnut, warm and butter liberally. That's it. In the same way that bread with butter is better than bread without, so are doughnuts. They're not life-changing, but they are very tasty.
As decadent a treat as these were, I can't say that I would wait the 40 mins in line next year. I would however, stand near the front of the line to watch and listen to people's reactions while I snacked on a bag of Tiny Tom's donuts, which are always worth the price of admission.

It's A Jungle Up There!

2010-08-18T10:18:00.000-04:00

Well ladies and gents, it's been a crazy busy summer so far. Most of my time has been taken up by producing shoots for other photographers, but I'm sloooooowly beginning to see my portfolio come together and am patiently trying to find the time to finish my promos. All things exciting and good, BUT, if I was allowed to have just one complaint, it's that I don't have enough time to spend in my lush jungle of a rooftop garden. As I sit at my computer, I often catch myself looking anxiously forward to the next time that I'll be able to lose myself in the mini jungle that is growing on my terrace. I've recently discovered that hunting tomatoes in my garden provides me with a sense of calm that I often find difficult to come by. As a child, it was fun to unearth a carrot or two or sneak raspberries from a bush but for the most part, it seemed like work. I'm not sure what exactly caused the shift in me. Age and wisdom perhaps? Heh... Maybe I'm just desperately in need of slowing myself down once in a while. The careful way that my hands are forced to navigate the tangles of branches without disturbing any of the green tomatoes causes me to focus on something delicate, much like baking and shooting food.
I wonder how the condo board would feel about my building a greenhouse? Perhaps I could bribe them with the promise of beautiful tomatoes all year round.

Cottage Pie

2010-07-07T15:57:00.000-04:00

Well, it's officially cottage season, and with that comes one of my all time favorite foods, as well as one of my favorite ways to spend a weekend. Wild blueberries from a little stand by the side of the road and filling our cottage with friends who cook. This past weekend, I had the privilege of playing in the kitchen with some of my food obsessed friends. For me, the highlights of our weekend's menu were: giant steaks that were butchered on the dock, freshly fried 'Cafe Du Monde' beignets, that were brought in from New Orleans for me (in the form of a mix), Zac's home made burgers, and wild blueberry pie! Here's where you all sigh with disappointment and throw rotten fruit at me. I barely touched my camera all weekend. Booo! Hissss! I guess I was having too much fun working on my beer belly and putting myself into a food coma. Not to worry though, I did come away with a couple photos of our monster of a blueberry pie. I have to thank my pie partner in crime for letting me stuff three pints of blueberries into a 9" pie (the recipe called for an 11" deep dish... oops). I insisted, promising that we could totally fit all those berries in the pie shell then secretly crossed my fingers, toes and eyes and prayed that we wouldn't end up having to eat blueberry mush off the bottom of the stove for dessert. As you can see, our pie held together. Thankfully, it hadn't completely disappeared before I had the chance to kneel on the table and disruptively work on this photograph.

O is for Octopus

2010-05-21T14:07:00.000-04:00

Here is a lovely little octopus from my last trip to The Stop. I named him Fred, then we ate him. He was smokey and delicious.

From Near Disaster to Chocolate Bliss

2010-05-11T19:10:00.000-04:00

I seem to have recently been unofficially dubbed the "maker of desserts for family functions." As you all have figured out by now, I LOVE to bake and any excuse to find a new recipe to add to my repertoire is fun times in Reena land. Usually, I'm asked (or offering) to bake for our weekly Friday night dinner at Bubbie's house, which is relatively stress free. If I were to try something new and have it flop, people would be understanding (although probably sad that there was no yummy dessert). One of my sisters is getting married in June and 'the aunts' were throwing her a tea. I was asked to make a cake as a center piece for the table. Repeat after me: EEP! I was no longer just baking for my immediate family, I was baking for a gaggle of women who appreciate all things lovely and tasty. Here's the kicker - I had never baked a cake before. Ok, that's not completely true. I had made three cakes prior to this one but, I made two of them in my baking arts class where failure was almost an impossibility, and I made the third one with sponge that was leftover from my baking class. P.S. that third cake (that I assembled at home) was lopsided and u.g.l.y.
I immediately recruited my friend and partner in crime, Tammy, to help me with some serious recipe testing. I had decided on a chocolate layer cake with chocolate mousse filling, chocolate glaze on top and chocolate meringue fingers that would surround the cake. Sounds simple, right? heh. The first major obstacle and the one thing that worried me the most, was getting my oven to bake the sponge evenly and thoroughly. If you aren't up to date on the stress my oven was giving me, you can catch up here. I had a new plan for baking a successful cake, and it was about to be put into motion. Tammy and I whipped together the batter for our tester cake, which, by the way, was not going too well from the start, and into the oven it went. Fingers were crossed. This was the first baked good, larger than a cookie, that I had made since I started having oven problems. Fast forward to the timer beeping: insert tester stick and success! An evenly and thoroughly baked cake! (Quick update: I have solved my oven issue by baking everything at 10 degrees higher than the recipe calls for). Now was the time to cut our sponges into layers. First layer cut, and disaster! Giant pockets of unincorporated flour. EEP! Here's Tammy and I and our sad sad cake.

We didn't bother filling or glazing the cake since it was about to meet the inside of a garbage bag. Oh, by the way, our mousse turned out more like pudding and our meringues were uneven heights. All in all, we gave this one a pretty big fail. All this failure had me mildly bummed, but mostly annoyed that I had to find a new sponge recipe, and fast. I was three days away from the tea. Through sheer luck, and the help of a great recipe, my next cake test was a smashing success. Moist, rich, chocolatey devils food cake.

Assembling and glazing the three layer nine inch cake went quite well.

I decided against the meringue fingers since they would all have to be exactly the same height and width, which I am not quite capable of yet. Instead, I opted for some pretty pink flowers for the top.

Well, all in all the cake was a success. Something I could be truly proud of. In the end, for me, this cake was a bit of a reminder to stick to my guns, push for what I want, not to get too discouraged when things don't go as planned the first time, and that a labor of love will always be worth it in the end. In this case I got to have my cake and eat it too.

Dessert at Last!

2010-04-16T13:47:00.000-04:00

The first thing I do when a menu is dropped in front of me is decide what I will be having for dessert. This is a trait that I have happily inherited from my father. I was working on my portfolio a couple days ago and it hit me that I had completely skipped over New Years Eve dessert! How I could have possibly forgotten about my favorite part of any meal is truly beyond me! I think that this may actually qualify as an unforgivable sin, so I quickly rectified the situation and am happily serving you the final course. Baked berries with cake-y biscuits and vanilla ice-cream.
If you missed the meal the first time around, might I suggest having your dessert then going back to join me for the first three courses.
Happy Friday! Enjoy your weekend.

Women Who Eat

2010-04-14T17:42:00.000-04:00

Here's what I think is cool: A room filled with about eighty women all obsessed with food! Today I thought I'd share the one and only shot I took of my fantastic meal last night (which I was, of course, halfway through at the time). Where was I, you ask? At the 'community kitchen and wine tasting' event put on by Women in Food. A little shmoozing, a lot of eating and some Q&A with Sarah Elton about her new book Locavore. A delicious and informative evening, what could be better? I think my favorite part was the cute little piggy cookies ... shocking, I know :)

Chocolate For Your Friday

2010-04-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

I'm feeling a little short on words these days, but luckily I am still full of images. Today, I bring you
chocolate mousse cake with dark chocolate and cherry schnapps ganash. Repeat after me: YUM!

B is for Delicious

2010-04-06T13:06:00.000-04:00

Today's post is brought to you by the letter B.
B is for bacon. In this case, my friend's homemade bacon which is all kinds of awesome.

May All Your Days Be Filled With Pie

2010-03-24T16:42:00.000-04:00

There is something about warm mid morning light that affects me like nothing else. The second I sense it's presence my chin tilts upwards, my eyes start to close and the biggest most satisfied grin you could imagine begins to cross my face. I can't help but feel a calm come over me in these moments. I often have to fight the urge to curl up in a puddle of light and stay there until it fades (except for on weekends when I'm allowed to be a slacker). I find that great food can have the same effect on me. The moment a dish makes its appearance at the table the anticipation of flavor and texture can have the same effect on me as when the light slowly begins to sweep across my face. When I take my first bite, it's like the sun hitting me full in the face with it's gentle, warming rays. Calming, soothing, comforting, pure bliss.
One of the foods that can, without fail, turn any day into a sunny day for me is lemon meringue pie. It's one of my ultimate comfort foods. My Bubbie (which is what I call my grandmother) is the queen of lemon meringue. As a kid, she used to make it for my dad. Once my love of her pie, I think, exceeded his, she began making it for me. Recently, a friend of mine commissioned me to make dessert for her boyfriend's birthday. Now this, in itself, was an exciting moment. My first commission! Completely unprompted and unsolicited. AMAZING! After some chatting and serious convincing on my behalf, that she had not asked for too much and that I would be thrilled to make something for her, we settled on lemon meringue pie. That afternoon, at lunch with my mother, I proudly proclaimed that I had been commissioned to make my first pie. I also may have kinda, sorta made it sound like it was no biggie and I could whip it together in ten minutes. To which my mom replied: "great! then while you're at it you can make a second one for dinner at Bubbie's on friday." Whoops... I had instantly doubled my work load. For those of you who have not delved into the world of scratch pies, FYI, they do not take ten minutes. I had a busy week ahead and two pies to bake. One was for pay and the other would be judged by the high priestess of lemon meringue, my Bubbie. The pressure was on. Pie day finally arrived. I had a few tense moments while working on the cooked sugar stabilizer for my meringue and assembling everything while still piping hot, and to my utter relief all went smoothly. My friends were thrilled and said they loved the pie (thanks again guys!). Then came my proudest moment. After very thoughtfully tasting my pie, and questioning the authenticity of my filling, my Bubbie didn't have a single bit of "constructive criticism" for me. Nothing. Trust me she tried. I had passed the test. SUCCESS!

Here are the photos of my lemon meringue pie doused in some of the most beautiful light I have had the pleasure of playing in recently. I wish I had some shots of the pie's golden insides to share with you, but I'm pretty sure people frown upon receiving a birthday pie that's missing a slice, and the second pie didn't stand a chance once it hit the table.

Little Treasures

2010-03-10T18:27:00.000-05:00

I have to start this blog post off with a BIG thank you to Chef Jason Bangerter, of Auberge du Pommier, for so generously sharing his discovery of finger limes with me. "Finger limes?" you ask. Well, so did I. Let me take you back to mid last week: I am a recently self-diagnosed Twitter-aholic and in this case my addiction has brought me all things new and exciting. I noticed a post about said 'finger limes' beside a note about their caviar-like flesh. Limes that look like caviar!! What?? I was instantly hooked and utterly intrigued. I had to know more and NEEDED to photograph them. Turns out these lovelies are from Australia, are teeny tiny (roughly the size of a small thai chili), and have flesh that looks, feels, and pops in your mouth just like pleasantly mellow, lime-y flavored caviar. After seeing Chef Bangerter's post, I immediately contacted him to find out where I could get my hands on them. As it turned out, he was pretty sure that he had the only ones in Toronto BUT he offered me a couple from his personal stash. I was delighted! and spent the rest of the day skipping around in my head, to avoid the inevitable embarrassment of actually skipping around downtown Toronto, of course. Once in my possession, I put off shooting these little gems for a few days, as I only had a few and was nervous about cutting into them. When I finally gathered up my courage and picked up my knife it turned out that there was nothing to be afraid of. All I had to do was slice them in half and give them a gentle squeeze, they willingly spilled their jewel-like secret for me.

Without further delay, here they are in all their glory:

The Stop

2010-03-04T16:22:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I was lucky enough to join The Stop Community Food Centre to photograph one of their Food For Change Dinner Series' where Chef Chris Brown whips up five stunning courses each accompanied by a selected wine. This is just one of the many fantastic events that The Stop puts on, in order to help support their busy initiative (just to name a few: 'community kitchens and gardens, cooking classes, drop-in meals, peri-natal support, a food bank', and the list goes on). As rewarding and fun as it is for me to shoot and eat at the same time (honestly, no sarcasm here, I really do love it!) I suspect that most of you would prefer to attend as guests and eat your food while it's still hot. I highly recommend giving it a try, I can't imagine anyone being disappointed. While you're at it check out the Stop For Food event taking place right now, from March 1st to 31st. This event is much like winterlicious but instead of being sponsored by a credit card company, a portion of the funds for every meal sold will go directly to The Stop. Eating great food while simultaneously helping to raise money for a phenomenal organization, what could be more rewarding?
Okay, now that we've got the serious stuff out of the way, let's talk food.
On the menu we had (the photos below are in order from left to right):
1. Pan-seared paneer (The Stop's in house cheese) over braised cabbage, mustard greens and topped with a bacon vinaigrette.
2. Soup and Sandwich - Toasted brioche with beef cheek pastrami and a rich mushroom broth. Let me just take a moment to RAVE about this one! Chris' pastrami was so unbelievably tender and flavorful that it literally melted the second it touched my tongue - might I point out that I ate it two weeks ago and I'm still salivating.
3. Poached local turnip with sauteed green house mushrooms and carrot balls, topped with honey and black truffles.
4. Woodfire-roasted halibut with scrambled cauliflower and a white wine parsley sauce.
5. Lemon trio. All three were delicious, but if I had to pick a favorite it would hands down be the lemon meringue with it's pillow-y, almost marshmallow-y top (I have a weak spot for all things lemon-y and meringue-y).

What a fantastic meal!
I think it might be time for lunch.

Still There?

2010-03-01T13:44:00.000-05:00

Hello again... remember me? I'm your friendly neighborhood blogger who is absolutely delinquent when it actually comes to blogging. Turns out that maintaining a blog while keeping up with life is quite the challenge. You read it here first: I pledge to rise to the challenge and not back down... I will catch up on my blogging even if it kills me. (How's that for a touch of drama in your day?)
Anyway... moving on. I have been quite the busy bee lately. I shot some wonderfully tasty food for a fantastic organization, The Stop Community Food Centre. I'm just about done organizing the images, so look for those, and more on The Stop this week. Last week was a great one for baked goods! I made a variety of items that were, in some cases shockingly successful (I'll fill you in on those as the week goes on). Now for some easy monday morning reading. Sit back and enjoy as I walk you through last week's baking class. On Monday, we learned how to make soft rolls. The rolls start off with the most pillow-y, delicate dough that almost feels as if it's breathing when you gently kneed it. Heaven! I found making the actual dough quite simple, but forming the rolls was a whole other ball game. Once the dough is mixed, proofed and cut into even pieces, you must, with brute strength and a delicate touch, begin rapidly moving the the dough in a circular motion between the counter top and the palm of your hand. Once you figure out just the right amount of pressure needed, the balls form quite quickly. You can feel the instant that they come together, almost magically, under the palm of your hand. Forming rolls is a tiring exercise but well worth the exertion. Even the chef was wincing by the end of her batch. Although, she was double fisting them and gave a performance worthy of the Harlem Globe Trotters...impressive. My roll making class yielded one loaf of cheesy monkey bread, one small braided cheese loaf and about eighteen small rolls, some knotted and some left round. My topping of choice - salt and chili flakes. Yum.

Stupid Stove!

2010-02-16T13:06:00.000-05:00

I've been having trouble with my oven lately. It's been refusing to cook the center of cakes. I'm sure you can see how that could be frustrating. I've been forced to throw out perfectly good ingredients, and even worse, I had to pass off, what was supposed to be a flourless chocolate cake as a 'pudding cake.' Luckily, I have a very supportive family, and everyone managed to polish off their slice with compliments to the chef. After the 'pudding incident,' as I've begun to call it, I've decided not to bake anything bigger than a cupcake until I solve the problem. It pains me to throw, what could have been, perfectly good food into the garbage. I decided to use cake mix to test out a few possible solutions to my baking conundrum. (By the end of my testing, I had two batches of 'brownies' sitting in front of me that I couldn't, in good conscience, toss. Thus, the cut-and-paste cake portion of my icing project was borne). I have a thermometer inside my oven that always reads the same temperature as my oven setting, so I know it's not that the temperature is off. I tried moving my cakes to the bottom rack and placing them on a baking tray, this yielded properly baked brownies with a slightly burned taste, but not a visibly burned bottom. The problem is, I suspect that the burned taste is just the actual flavor of inherently crappy boxed-brownie mix. My solution to the burned flavor was putting two baking sheets under my brownies to further insulate the bottom and prevent burning. This turned out to be too much insulation and I was back to an uncooked center, ARGH!, that still had a burned taste which I now wholly attribute to my $1.38 boxed brownie mix. At least that's one problem solved. I guess that makes my next move another test, but with real ingredients this time. Fingers crossed that the single-pan-on-the-bottom-rack theory works. Wish me luck!

Any special requests?

White-On-White

2010-02-11T19:58:00.000-05:00

Here it is. Drum roll please.......the results of my icing project:

Monday night, after I posted to the blog, I sat myself down to have a little chat. 'Enough is enough!' I said. 'No more procrastinating and no more projects until this one is in the bag'. This is one project that I was feeling a little nervous about because it was going to take me outside of my comfort zone. I never really work in such a sterile, stark lighting environment. I'm usually drawn to more natural lighting conditions and a homier atmosphere. I decided to listen to myself, and first thing Tuesday morning I pulled out my lights and whipped up some icing. Once I got down to work, I kept wondering what had possessed me to shoot such a stark, white-on-white project, seeing as this is not usually the kind of look that attracts me. After some thought, I realized that there was just something about the shape, sheen and starkness of white piped icing that made me feel the need to display it on a crisp white background. My original plan for the second shot (the cake slice) was to keep it crisp and clean and as white as the piping. Well, that obviously wasn't my final decision. Two factors played into my reason for smushing the cake:

1. Apparently it's really hard to cleanly mask a single piece of cake that is built out of pieces of box-brownie stacked together to appear as one. (It's a bit of a long story - I'll get into it another time. I do think I deserve some creativity and resourcefulness points for this one though).

2. Everything was looking a bit too 'hospitaly' for me and I just wanted to make a bit of a mess: a well thought out and organized mess, mind you, but a mess none the less. There is just something about imperfection that really interests me.

All in all, I'm happy I tried out this new approach. I may even shoot a 'part 2.'

Geting there....

2010-02-08T13:18:00.000-05:00

Last week kind of got away from me. Between work and family, personal projects sometimes end up taking a back seat. My big plan for the weekend was to start playing around with the little icing project I have in mind. Of course, one thing led to another and BLAMO! It's Monday morning and I have not pulled out a single light.
I know, I know.... Boo! Hiss! Not to worry, I wouldn't dream of leaving you photo-less, especially on a Monday. Here is a quick snap of the burger that had the potential to be the best I have ever had! As I have mentioned before, (and will most likely mention a hundred times again) I am on the search for the perfect burger. I won't keep you wondering for too long. No, this was not the best burger I have ever had, and sadly, it didn't even rank. I was assisting on Thursday and we found ourselves in Scarborough, not being familiar with the area and ready for lunch. We could have hit one of the many corporate joints that line Markham Rd, but then we saw 'The Markham Station." A 24 hr dive of a diner that made both of our eyes light up. Admittedly, a bit of a dicey move on our part just before heading off to shoot a job, but I'm happy to report that we both made it out alive. To my dismay, the burger was far more fabulous looking than it tasted but, I'm ok with that. It's all part of the process. Let the search continue!

mmmm...icing

2010-02-03T20:08:00.000-05:00

Inspiration has struck again! Ok, ok, it struck on monday night, but sometimes these things need a little room to grow. My baking class exercise this week was piping and masking (masking, I have learned, is fancy pastry-chef talk for putting icing on a cake). I was really excited for this class and walked away with a great lesson on technique. I don't usually find icing particularly inspiring, as it's way too sweet and often gives me a toothache. I do, however, find the artistry of delicately piped cakes and pastry items to be an object of beauty and measure of skill. Before this class, I've piped a few cupcakes and masked one cake (not exactly masterfully, I might add) but, until now, I've basically been piping by the seat of my pants. No more! I say. From this day on I will pipe with more skill than ever before (not sure how much skill that means I've acquired, but I can reassure you that's it's more than I had on Sunday). My new found love of icing has led me to a fun little project that will allow me to test out a new lighting look that I have been thinking about lately. I'm not too sure how this project is going to come together. To be honest it could be a total flop (conceptually and visually) but, it could also turn out to be pretty cute. I've been doddling a bit on getting started because, as I've mentioned before, I'm not really a big fan of working on a project where the prospect of failure is looming. I like to have every minute detail planned out before I shoot, whenever possible. The truth about this project is I just won't know until I pipe some frosting, turn on my pack and point my lens. As difficult as it is, I'm coming to grips with the fact that not everything I touch will turn to gold, but If I give up without trying I'll never know and I'll never be able to improve upon it next time. For me, testing is just as important as executing well planned-out projects. It's all a part of the process. Let's just call this one a test and 'giver!

Here is an iphone shot of my beautifully (if I do say so my self) piped and masked cake dummy. I can't wait until there is cake under all that icing (that I will most likely scrape off and put on my husband's plate).

Soft, Soft Light

2010-01-30T13:37:00.000-05:00

While sitting at my desk, hands poised to type, I noticed that I spend a lot of time staring into space... or so I thought at first. Turns out, I just solved the mystery as to why I keep the sheers in my apartment (/office) closed most of the day. I LOVE DIFFUSE LIGHT! Yep, I'll scream it from the roof tops and run through the streets proclaiming my undying devotion to beautiful, wonderful, soft, soft light. There was a time when I thought I loved hard light, sharp edges, uber-saturated colours and fashion photography (I know.. I know... but you photographers out there know you went through that "photography is such a glamorous career to get into" phase too). Now, don't get me wrong, I love light in all it's forms, and there is a place and an image for all kinds (even poorly colour-balanced light), but when I really got down to thinking about it today - I remembered that the soft, gentle blending of light into shadow is what really captured me about photography. I guess what I'm trying to work out here is: how did I move so easily from shooting people, in very staged and controlled environments, to shooting food? Well, it hit me as I sat watching the light coming through my sheers changing oh so subtly. I absolutely adore light and what you can do with it. How you can shape it and control it or how it can surprise you by hitting just the right place and creating a magic moment.
I guess that for me it comes down to the fact that light can really make an image magical. Whether I shoot light spilling in through a window that just barely brushes a subject's face or I shoot a basket of muffins where the light just skims their surfaces, I still attack my subjects and image-making in the same way. At the end of the day it's all about how light enters a space and interacts with the things there.. people or food.. it's all the same..
Here's the main course from our New Years Eve dinner (thanks Scott!) - stay tuned for dessert.

A Promise is a Promise

2010-01-27T20:13:00.000-05:00

I've been a bit under the weather this week so my blog seems to be taking a bit of a hit. I did, however, make a promise to post at least twice a week. And I do believe that a promise is a promise so in lieu of an incoherent blog post I give you cornbread.

Prop Styling by Cheryl Thompson

An Ephiphany in Puff Pastry

2010-01-26T13:16:00.000-05:00

I've fallen a bit behind in updating you about my baking arts class, so let's rewind a week and talk apple pie. I was quite pleased with my first attempt at making a pie. Actually, I was more than pleased. It only took four days for my husband Zac and to I polish off the entire thing with only a single slice going to a friend. Further proof of this pie's yumminess is that I made a fresh one to take to a little dinner party last weekend and Zac and I managed to help out with that one too. (P.S. the second one was even better!) Usually I'm more of a pie filling kind of gal. My crust often gets left behind sad, lonely, dry and uneaten. Not this time and never again! I've seen the light, heard the angels sing, had a flaky pastry epiphany! Never again shall I pine for a firm yet tender, melt in your mouth pastry shell or choke down a dry flavorless one....well, at least not if I'm the one handling the dough.
I planned to save my first pie so I could shoot it whole but it just didn't happen. By the time my lovely pie and I got home, there was no daylight to speak of and the temptation to cut into it was just too high. Luckily, I snapped a quick shot with my iphone as I was packing up the pie for our short trip home.

Dirty Dishes

2010-01-20T16:27:00.000-05:00

I'm beginning to develop a bit of an attraction to empty, actually, almost-empty plates. As my husband said to me a few weeks ago, when I was musing about what it was that was attracting me to dirty dishes, 'good food leaves good looking residue.' I think he hit it somewhat on the nose but I feel like it goes a bit deeper than that. What remains, or doesn't, helps to tell a story. Be it a story about a great meal, or perhaps a not so good one. It might be a small insight into who the dish belonged to. Maybe they like their french toast stacked neatly and doused in honey or maybe they don't like peas or maybe nothing on their plate is allowed to touch. Regardless of what it is, these are all little clues that can hint at someone's personality. Maybe it's not all that important but I find it very intriguing. I guess that's part of why I love being a photographer. It's all in the details for me.

Here's a pair of images from our New Years Eve dinner. A little before and after if you will. (Not to worry, I cleared my plate of every delicious morsel. I just couldn't help but stop to take a shot of this great looking plate.) If you're at all as into the details as I am, I was debating what my last mouthful should be when I shot this frame.

Something Pink

2010-01-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I talked your ear off a bit yesterday so today will be short, sweet and pink.
Enjoy.

Prop Styling by Cheryl Thompson

Shoot Lots and Shoot Often

2010-01-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

For the longest time I was afraid of my camera. Six years ago, (man how time flies!) I achieved a fair bit of attention for my OCAD thesis project. I was published in the Applied Arts Photography and Illustration Annual and was asked to join the roster of a prominent commercial gallery in the city (with the assumption that I would be producing more work). After that I developed a block. A fear of never being able to top my best and most successful work to date. Maybe this was a little too early in my career to mentally crap out but I'm glad it happened then and not now. I spent those six years working closely with and learning from other photographers as an assistant and a producer. In the six years I only picked up my camera a handful of times despite all the support and encouragement I was given by family, friends, photographers I was working/meeting with and even the odd photo editor/art director. I was constantly getting in my own way, finding reasons why I wasn't able to shoot and never bringing my camera with me. I even managed to "forget" my point and shoot when I went to any event that may require me to fire off a few happy snaps. It sounds crazy but I was a photographer who was terrified of shooting. The biggest thing for me was that I was afraid of taking a bad photo and especially afraid that someone might see it and I would 'never work in this town again'.

Fast forward to about three months ago:
As wacky as it sounds my iphone is what has resurrected the prospect of and my drive to have a career as a photographer. The little crappy camera in my iphone has jump started the inspiration center in my brain. By having an iphone I was instantly forced to carry a camera with me at all times. When I started following Chase Jarvis and using his Best Camera app (which I mentioned briefly in a previous post and I'm sure will mention again) I began shooting A LOT. Taking crappy photos (or decent ones that looked like crap) on my phone lessened the stress of having to produce the perfect image every time. After all, how good could a camera phone pic be anyway? The piles of camera phone photos were fun but sometimes I would shoot something that really had potential to be great and the resolution/quality was obviously not enough. This led me to begin carrying my real camera around with me (not every day but a lot). All thanks to my iphone, my passion has been reignited and I am proud to report that I am snap happy again. I've got a notebook filling with ideas faster than I can shoot them.

Even now the fear still lingers but I'm learning to say 'fuck it' and pick up my camera. I'm still not completely comfortable with the prospect of taking shitty photos but I know the more I shoot the better I will become. Not everything I put onto film (well, mostly pixels) is going to be portfolio worthy and I'm learning to be ok with that.

This has become something that is constantly on my mind and it seems as though it's on the mind of others as well. Heather Morton's recent post has generated a great little discussion on her blog. I absolutely agree with her when she says that photographers need to:

'Shoot.
Shoot everyday.
Shoot everything.
Shoot all the time.'

With that I'll leave you with a couple iphone shots of a delicious middle eastern meal my mom and I shared last week.

Happy Shooting!

Hamburgers!

2010-01-13T18:37:00.000-05:00

I am obsessed with hamburgers! Nothing gets me going like a great burger. I think about food 95% of the time and I'd say that about 80% of that is time spent thinking about when I'll be having my next burger and what I'll be having on it. At the moment, I've got two faves:

Pineapple and bacon with smokey BBQ sauce and fresh mozzarella
Just a big 'ol hunk of melty gooey brie.

I am on a never-ending quest for the perfect burger. So I'm pretty sure, that in a backwards kind of way, that's what has spawned a new project for me. Without giving away the details, I'll be putting fast food burgers under my lens. For some reason I'm fascinated by them but can't bring myself to eat them. Maybe I'm a snob, maybe I just like to know what animal I'm eating before I put it in my mouth... In any event, keep your eyes peeled for my burgers.
All this hamburger talk has kicked me into craving mode.... ah well, not tonight. Good thing I have a batch of succulent ribs waiting for me. A friend of mine passed this recipe on to me and I was asked to "pass on the ribby gospel." Not only are these fantastic they are dead easy! You'll find the recipe at the bottom of this post.

My photos today are completely unrelated to burgers but are yummy none the less. These are of the cheese platter at a dinner party I went to on New Years Eve this year. There will be more photos of the meal coming soon.

BBQ Spareribs from Madame Benoit's Cooks at Home

3lbs of spare ribs (back ribs are best -- the ones with a large pocket of meat attached)
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp. bacon fat... See More
3 onions
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp curry
1 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 cup consomme
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of pepper
1/2 tsp dry mustard

Brown the garlic in the bacon fat and cut the spareribs into individual serving-size portions. Remove the garlic from the fat and brown the spareribs quickly. Place both the garlic and the meat in a baking dish. Slice the onions over the meat.

Mix together the remaining ingredients. Pour over the meat and onions. Cover and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 1/2 hours. Serves 6.

Pining for Polaroid

2010-01-12T17:45:00.000-05:00

I'd like to promise that I'll be posting a blog entry every day, but I'm sure that I'd be lying off the bat and I'm thinking that that's not the best way to start off a new relationship. Now, since we're starting off honestly, I will do my best to post something minimum twice a week... even if it's just an iphone shot (I do love my Best Camera app!).
Two things on my mind today: 1. How to ditch my partner in cooking class and 2. Polaroids
I'll get back to #1 in a second...
I've been thinking about pulling out all that expired film from my freezer and putting my beautiful Pentax 645 lenses back onto their rightful body to give them a break from my 5DMKII. Unfortunately, my Pentax doesn't have a polaroid back and can't be fitted for one. Since I've been thinking more about old yellowing polaroids than I have been about film I'm going to begin my search for a polaroid camera that you can still buy film for.
Back to #2. Ditching my partner. Day one of cooking class was great. We got our uniforms, goofy hat and neckerchief included, and we made the pastry for the apple pies we'll be making next week. But I digress... I'm a bit of a lone wolf when it comes to baking. As my friends and family can attest to I can get a bit testy when it comes to people not measuring properly, scaling their ingredients or doing things in the wrong order. Long story short, when baking with me, the 'chat with the chef but don't touch the ingredients' approach usually works best. Seeing as I'm already planning to show up early for class to weigh out our ingredients by myself, we'll see how it goes. Perhaps along with making some killer baked goods this class will teach me to play nice in the kitchen...

Here's a Baked Cannelloni that I have been fighting with for the last week. Subtle tweak after subtle tweak and I think I'm finally satisfied. I'm open to any comments/critique if you're up for giving it. Leave them here or email me at reena [at] reenanewman.com.

Day 1 x 2

2010-01-11T15:30:00.000-05:00

OK, So today is a day of firsts for me. First attempt at my own blog and first day back to school in a looong time. I'm off to George Brown to bump up my baking skills in what I'm sure will be a quick and intense three months. As much as I am consumed by what one could call a food obsession, my one true love is (and always will be) photography. During the last couple of months I have discovered that I am able to marry my love of food and a good prime lens quite easily. I have decided to put my portrait photography on hold for the moment to really allow myself to explore and become immersed in the world of food photography.
I suspect that this blog will be a bit of a mish mash. Lost of food photos, maybe some recipes and I'm sure a few links to photography sites that make me oooh and aaaah. To be honest I'm not quite sure exactly what direction this blog is going to take but I'll chalk that up to sense of adventure and leave it to chance.

I guess the only thing left to say is welcome aboard. Hope you enjoy the ride!
And just to get you salivating, I'll leave you with a chocolate tart.

Prop Styling by Cheryl Thompson