doctorandchef

Spicy thai mango salad with wasabi nuts, lemon and pepper grilled shrimp.

Cook's illustrated: They tell me how to do it the wrong way, so even if I don't follow the recipe exactly I know what NOT to do. I find it a very educational read as it really furthers my knowledge, and allows me to follow other recipes and spotting obvious "failures". You're right about the "blandness", but I think they give you a good fundamental recipe for you to improvise on. And you know what things you shouldn't do. Saves a lot of failed self-experimentation. I know most of the big magazines test out their recipes, but a lot of times they turn out to be stinkers.

Regardless of the result, and without the benefit of tasting the dishes in person, just by judging from the technique and the respect of the theme ingredient, I think most people would agree on who won, so I guess the "official" result is of no consequence. Nobody said the show could not be rigged, I mean it's not the Olympics or anything... oh wait, figure skating was rigged.... Alex Lee was (IMHO)quite a well known chef during his stint as Daniel Boulud's right hand man for years. I met him way back during the time restaurant Daniel was at the present location of Cafe Boulud. I still remember that meal as one of the best French meals I've had in my life. I had assumed he was still with Daniel at the time of competition. BTW, I encourage people to try taro ice cream if they haven't. Look in your local asian supermarket.

Taro ice cream is actually quite an orthodox type of food in south east asian countries (phillipines, malaysia etc.) Knock some points off CC for "originality" because it's not at all original!!!!! e.g. would you call green tea ice cream original? It sounds weird but it tastes great. And it does come out purple. The texture is the tricky part. The good ones I've had did not have any grit or starchy feel to it.

If you don't have a lightbox, you could use some type of translucent white cloth with a really strong light. With my light box I had to use really strong 500w halogen lights which are ultra bright and ultra hot, so safety is a big concern. I used to have some fluorescent lighting and I diffused it with some opaque panelling, you know the stuff you see in office ceilings with flourescent lighting? The whole point is to create a large light source. I think a pro like Ellen Shapiro would be way more qualified to explain this properly... it has something to do with harsh bright spots and sharp shadows. You may notice that on my salmon "crostini" photo the shadows are very soft and subtle yet present. IF one were more technically sophisticated I think the effect is acheivable using photoshop. Then again, I'm a computer idiot......

Hi, Thanks for the comments. The white backgrounds are actually just the plate. As you may have noticed most of the items are quite small and all I did was put them in the centre of a round plate. I haven't learned how to photoshop things out yet, but that sounds like a good idea. For restaurant picture taking, flashes are somewhat of a social faux-pas, but it gets quite impossible to take photos in some dimly lit restaurants. I guess what was said before, using a really long exposure time, might help, but your hands must be ultra steady. You must rest the camera on some prop.... I've seen those tiny desktop tripods on sale at camera shops, but I guess it might look weird at a nice restaurant. Another tip someone else mentioned was using a shutter delay i.e. the shutter doesn't go off until 1-2 seconds after you depress the button, eliminating the inevitable motion cause by the act of pressing. That might help. As well, try turning up the ISO setting, from 50 to 200 or 400. This really depends on your camera (if it has that setting). Be aware of increased grain when you jack up the ISO. Lighting food is an artform to itself, so there is no one "right" answer but plenty of wrong answers. Look at cookbooks with high quality photos and note where the shadows and highlights lie in the photos. My personal favs: French Laundry (of course!), any of the Donna Hay cookbooks (she was a photog after all!), Tetsuya Wakuda's book, and all of the Alfred Portale's cookbooks. Personally I think the Charlie Trotter photos have nice color but they are mostly shot at 90 degrees overhead, hence I don't learn much from them. But if you're taking 90 degree overhead shots they have by far the best photos I've seen. I'll post a photo of my lighting set up later.... that set-up has been 2 years in the making and I'm giving away my "secret"!!! hope everyone benefits with better photos. Reward me by buying my cookbook when it comes out. hahah.... Cheers

My Webpage After reading through the 11 pages of posts, here are my 2 cents. I am a total amateur, but have been trying to get my food photos to look right for the past 2 years, with varying degrees of success. I guess the only way of learning is by taking lots and lots of pictures. There's no substitute for learning the old fashioned way of trial and error. Having said that, I think there are certain caveats. 1. Lighting: never use the camera-mounted flash. It will just flatten everything. I find different lights from different angles (i.e. from the side, from the back) will bring out the contours and textures better in some dishes than others. Experiment. 2. Tripod: since most food photographs are shot in a macro mode, hand-shaking is magnified, and unless you're using a high shutter speed, any shaking will be obvious. 3. Bracket: Shoot each picture using one f-stop above and below. You'll never know how a camera handles a certain composition under different lighting conditions. Post-production editing can't always correct exposure "mistakes" without looking overly artificial. 4. Use natural lighting if possible: well, pretty hard to do if you shoot your dinner shots and the sun has already set! I find natural light gives a good "pre-set" lighting setup which you can in fact duplicate with experimenting with light placements, but it takes a whole LOT of experimenting. 5. White balance: If available on your camera, try to calibrate things using a white sheet of paper. I usually re-calibrate before every shot. For example things shot under fluorescent lights will have a blue hue to it, light bulbs might be yellow etc. I think this was covered in a very early post. 6. Photoshop it!- Why not do some correcting afterwards? Experiment, and stay away from the "auto-correct" buttons. Currently I'm working on a book and I'm trying to get some Donna Hay-style of photographs. Took me almost a year to get somewhat decent pictures in terms of the lighting, but it's still hard to predict how to get good photos consistently. It usually takes 15-25 shots to get a decent photo that is semi-usable. I have a Canon Powershot G5. I use a mini tripod. I have a light-box used by people taking pictures of objects for ebay, that has been a godsend in terms to getting glare and reflection free photos. I use 2 500W halogen spotlamps located above and behind-and-to-the side through the lightbox. Check out my modest blog which I started a month ago: http://doctorandchef.blogspot.com Check out this website I found years ago: www.bostonchefs.com www.capecodchefs.com Now those are NICE photos. Any feedback on the photos of mine would be much appreciated!!!

Pork tenderloin with red wine apple star anise sauce.

Ya, I cooked, plated, photographed, and ate it! Thanks for the encouraging comments!! It's actually not too hard to plate this dish, as the potatoes provide a solid base to put everything around. I wasn't going for the vertical thing but it was the only way of keeping the bones clean. I mirror what previous posters have said, I totally avoid all garnishes that are non-functional, hence I omitted the almost ubiquitous rosemary sprig...

My Webpage Any thoughts on this? Pistachio and panko crusted Ontario Rack of Lamb, rosemary jus, Maple-Soy Asparagus, and truffled mash potato.