I love looking at other people’s food photos but I am the most rubbish person at taking photos in the world. The more I study tutorials and learn about my camera, the worse I get. I have learned recently how to remove red eye, crop pictures etc, but that’s not terribly useful when what you want to do is make a fuzzy, cloudy, steamy picture that looks like sick look like a gourmet offering. Sometimes I point and click and the food looks delicious, sometimes I point and click and it looks woeful.
Tonight I made a new recipe (from Veganomicon) -escarole with white beans and capers. It was a totally delicious meal served with creamy mashed potatoes and I wanted to show it off. It was doubly important since I have never seen escarole here and had lugged one back from France especially to make this recipe! I tried a macro setting (several times), I tried a normal auto shot with the flash off, I found the best light I could (though it is getting dark very early now), I turned the dish round, tried to zoom in, zoomed out, and generally gave it my best shot. But all of the pictures are steamy and fuzzy and look like cat sick. So I’ve got no picture for you. If this wasn’t VeganMoFo I’d probably just ignore it, leave it off the blog and move on. But since this was my plan for todays post as you can see I’m pressing on regardless.
It was such a simple recipe – mashed potatoes couldn’t be easier and are so comforting whatever you serve with them. Then all I did was fry some garlic and chilli flakes in olive oil, add the chopped escarole and wilt then add some white beans and capers. The escarole wilted admirably – still crisp in parts but nice and soggy in others. If I could get escarole here I’d be eating it weekly. Anyone tried it with other types of lettuce?
Cooking the Vegan Books 
I totally love having some mashed spuds with garlic and kale…it is my new comfort food and it goes perfectly along with Chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon and easy breezy cheesy sauce from ‘How it all Vegan’ by Sarah Kramer and Tanya Bernard (also I think the mashed spud and kale dish is in there too). Now I am feeling a little hungry 🙂
oh and brocoli too!!! I forgot the broc. just pour the cheesy sauce over the broc. and the cutlet and it is just soooo good!
Good post, photo or not! I am not a good photographer, and sometimes I don’t feel like taking pictures (or I am hungry and want to eat more than I want to play with trying to get a good photo.) I may be strange in that I rarely look at photos in cookbooks unless I need guidance on how to construct the dish.
I’m with you! One of my goals for VeganMoFo was to learn more about camera and take better pictures. Learning more is making my pictures worse!
We’ll get it sooner or later!
my food photos are over all pretty lame. Sometimes I get lucky (one time and counting). If I ever wrote a cookbook I would definitely need some photo and food styling assistance.
Only guessing, but maybe the heat and the steam of your food touches your lens. I happens to me al the time. Most of the tie my first shoot is the best one. I think because the lens was still ok then.
Ps do you know when people try to write a comment here, half of their letters dissapear behind your green bars. So, excuse me if wrote some mistakes. I can’t read it anymore now.
And I’m curious about the escarole?
Have you checked out the food photo post on VeganYumYum?
veganyumyum.com/2008/09/food-photography-for-bloggers/
The Veganyumyum post really intimidates me. She’s really talented and if her book ever comes out I’ll certainly buy it, but I don’t think I’ll ever have her patience. What time does she eat, anyway??? 🙂
I’ll look at the green bar thing. I don’t get that here.
Escarole is a big lettuce that is slightly bitter – not as crunchy as iceberg but crunchier than floppy lettuce. I really enjoyed it.
I’m not much good at taking photos, but I find the ‘auto’ setting, turning the flash off, and setting it to macro works the best for me.
As for the steaming… well… you gotta let it cool down! Not easy when you’re hungry.