David A. Goldfarb
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Posts posted by David A. Goldfarb
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Short DOF without Photoshop isn't actually that difficult with the subject distances used in food photography, even with APS format (small sensor) cameras, and it tends to look more natural than Gaussian blur. Just select a wide aperture (low f:stop number), and you will narrow the focus range of the image.
Depth of field is generally a function of the f:stop (wider aperture, less DOF), subject distance (closer for less DOF), and the focal length of the lens (longer for less DOF), and sensor/film size. In the macro range (magnification of 1:10, image size on the sensor:actual size of the subject), DOF is effectively a function of aperture and magnification alone, regardless of focal length, setting aside the issue of format size for the moment.
(You don't have to worry about the role of the format size too much, but it's one of the things that most people who think they understand DOF tend not to get. DOF is always understood with respect to an average size print at a normal viewing distance for that size, not with respect to the image projected on the sensor/film, so if you wanted to calculate the DOF range for a given subject distance and aperture, you would have to plug in a somewhat subjective value for the "acceptable circle of confusion" for the sensor/film format, and sometimes the usually accepted value is inadequate for a given task--i.e., you might need more DOF than the calculated aperture gives you, so you might stop down a little more for more DOF.)
Here are some photos from my flickr stream made with an APS-C format camera (Canon 40D). Most food photos, most using selective focus (short DOF), no Photoshop blur or tilt/shift lens tricks on these--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidagoldfarb/tags/canoneos40d/
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There is a chain of local bbq house (Memphis Blues) that has a paper towel holder on each table of it's restaurants in lieu of napkins. Cute, and probably cheaper..
I just saw this a couple of days ago for the first time at Gilley's in Vegas.
I sometimes filter liquids like the fat from the deep fryer through paper towels when I'm out of cheesecloth.
I also use them for draining fried foods, but lately I'm tending to toss them in a basket, which seems to keep things crispier.
My wife likes Bounty, because it is soft enough for cleaning her eyeglasses (mine too), so we tend to get that.
I have lots of cloth barmops, so I don't use many paper towels. I suspect that the amount of water and energy needed to produce as many sheets of paper towel as one would need to do the work of one clean cloth towel is greater than what it takes to wash a towel.
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I never peel celery or asparagus, nor do I peel bell peppers of any color.
Do people really peel celery? I guess that's one that I don't do.
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For those complicated mini-bundt molds, I just brush on melted butter or oil and dust with flour or superfine sugar as appropriate. Seems to get into all the nooks and crannies.
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Lye or an oven cleaner containing lye will remove polymerized oil from those enameled baking sheets.
Pam has some kind of weird flavor, and it seems excessive to buy oil in an aerosol can. I've never taken to it.
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Good ingredients are an inspiration to cook rather than going out, so I can justify just about anything that way.
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I like doing things the long way, and have a freezer full of homemade stock to prove it, but I've never taken the trouble to acquire a trussing needle. I have a way of tying up a bird that doesn't require a needle and haven't felt motivated to do it a different way.
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I'll vouch for Lindo Michoacan, which is in my mom's neighborhood, so it's kind of our local spot. Fresh-made tortillas, and many dishes beyond the standard Mexican fare.
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My wife gave me The Family Meal by Ferran Adria.
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I also agree with Dave the Cook. Lots of people are doing exactly what you describe in enameled cast iron, so it sounds like it may be more a question of technique than equipment. Part of the attraction of enamel is that it's sticky and makes a good fond. If you're not getting a crisp enough sear, it could be that you don't have enough fat in the pan (you can pour off the excess later, if you don't want the fat in the finished dish), you're not letting it sear long enough, or it isn't hot enough.
Personally, I use either a Le Creuset dutch oven or a heavy, tin-lined copper rondeau for braising usually, but which I choose is usually a question of how much I'm making, since the rondeau is larger. The copper gives nice even heat for stovetop braising, but in the oven it doesn't really matter. The Le Creuset has a heavier, tighter fitting cover, which is an attraction.
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This link posted in another thread may offer a hint to explain the longevity of my copper/teflon pan--
http://www.meyergroup.co.uk/cookware/MeyerCookwareGuide2.html?Lang=1
Beyond my own obsessiveness about such things, it could be that the even heat distribution of copper is protecting the teflon coating. Presumably, if one is diligent about avoiding metal utensils and abrasives, the coating deteriorates fastest around hotspots, so reducing hotspots should be prevent peeling and general heat degradation of the teflon surface.
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Likewise, "pierogi" (pyeh-ROH-ghee) is already the plural form for the Polish dumplings (not "pierogies"), and if you ever have occasion to talk about one of them, the singular is "pieróg" (PYEH-roog).
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Filleting fish. Also a lot of slicing/dicing/julienne tasks that others might do with a mandoline or the slicing disks of a food processor, I enjoy doing with a knife. Making clean, neat cuts feels like the reward for maintaining sharp knives.
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It would be worth checking the places in Italian neighborhoods and seeing what they are doing. In Maspeth, Queens, where I live now, it's Iavarone's. In Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, there used to be a few places--Caputo's, Mastellone's, and Esposito's Pork Store claiming to make fresh mozzarella several times a day.
Tedone's in Williamsburg is closed, but here's a great story that appeared on the NYT website a year or two ago--
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html#/georgiana_depalma_tedone
--I get the impression from the story that she made it from milk.
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Eh. I think its not such a big deal if a proper Italian says "prosciutto" and my deli guy says "proshute". I think Giada's exaggerated Italian pronunciations are comical and past the point of proper diction eg her "maaas-car-pon-aay".
I'll take an honest "proshute" over a pretentious "maaas-car-pon-aaay" any day.
I think (with some support from my friend who comes from a Calabrian immigrant family) that dropping the final vowel is southern Italian regionalism. I used to live in a neighborhood with a large immigrant population from Bari, and all the delis could make you a nice sub with prahshoot, mootzarel, gobbagool, and provolon, and you could wash it down with a nice glass of Barol, and one deli could claim that their mootzarel was better than the next one, because they made it fresh five times a day instead of just three.
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I think I know how to pronounce all the words and expressions listed in FG's first post, but I'm a firm adherent of carml, erbs, and kyewpons. I remember thinking growing up that people who said "koopon" were effete whitebread types, likely to refer to pop as "soda."
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Great stuff. The Museum of the Moving Image is a great resource and very much worth visiting when in New York.
My favorite film food scenes, though, are from Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (dir. Chantal Akerman, 2006):
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I don't know yet. I think it's over stainless, but I don't know what kind of surface the stainless has. If the teflon is directly on the copper, then yes, I could have it tinned. If it's stainless, the options would be recoating with teflon, or probably removing the teflon and having the stainless surface buffed out. One way or the other, I'll still have a nice pan at the end of it.
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My teflon copper skillet is still making fine omelets. Care for it properly, and it does what it's supposed to, not that there aren't other methods. It may just require a kind of obsessive personality to keep such a pan in good condition. If you use a 10000 grit or finer Japanese waterstone for your knives, a copper teflon pan may be for you!
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I've had this one for around two years now. Usage goes up and down, depending on the demands of my day job. When I'm making bread regularly, it might be twice a week. Less regularly every couple of weeks. Meat grinding less often--maybe every few months. I've had no problems with bagel or pasta doughs, which are pretty heavy. When I had the lighter model, the auto cutoff switch would kick in occasionally with a heavier task.
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There were a number of KA models made with nylon gearing, and those are the ones to avoid. As I understand it, they've ended that practice, because they had too many service problems. The HD series used metal gearing (and note that not all of the 5-qt bowl lift models were HD series).
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I lean toward fluffy potatoes for mashing and waxy potatoes for boiling or steaming, but bear in mind that people mash other things like turnips, yams, celeriac, and carrots, sometimes together with potatoes, and I just wouldn't get too hung up about it. Potatoes of different types will cook for about the same length of time, if they are cut into similar sized pieces, but if you're concerned about it, it's easy enough to cook them separately in two separate pots.
I kind of like potatoes mashed by hand, preferably a little lumpy.
I've done the stand mixer approach, and I've found that if I want to go for ultra-light, I make a puree of mashed potatoes with heavy cream, butter, and salt and whip them in the Thermo-whip. This gives the flavor of mashed potatoes without the heaviness of mashed potatoes.
Heavy and lumpy for a beef stew or bigos or sauerbraten, but airy and weightless, say, for a delicate fish.
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If you are looking at the price of new mixers, I'd consider a refurbed 5-quart HD series for $200--
Which is a 5-qt bowl-lift mixer with a 475-watt motor that has 10 real distinct speeds and slow start, so you don't get sprayed with flour when you turn it on. I bought exactly this model, and I've been very pleased with it over my previous KitchenAid, which was a 5-qt bowl lift model with a 350 or 375-watt motor that would complain about heavier tasks like sausage making or larger batches of bread. No question, I'd take a factory refurbished HD model over a new tilt-head model.
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Save the fat drippings, and render any fatty trimmings. A goose can put out more than 2-3 cups of goosefat. I roast a goose occasionally mainly to collect the fat for other purposes. Eating the goose is a bonus.
Food Shutter Bug Club (Part 2)
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Actually, there are more perspective control (tilt/shift) lenses available for SLRs now than there have ever been. Canon used to make only the 35mm TS, and now they make them in 17mm, 24mm, 45mm, and 90mm, and there are offerings from Nikon and Schneider, and you can even get Hasselblad medium format lenses on tilt/shift mounts for 35mm and smaller format cameras. I have two of the Canon T/S lenses, mostly for architectural photography, but occasionally I use them for food, and I also have a sliding mount that lets me put my Canon DSLR on the back of a view camera with very extensive camera movements, or I can just use film in a view camera and scan the result. This adds a lot of complexity to the process, and there are many ways of making good food photographs without perspective control.
These lenses let you control the shape of objects in the frame and to control the plane of focus. So if you have to photograph a tall building that you want to appear square in the photograph instead of trapezoidal, you can level the camera so the building appears square and raise the lens so the whole building fits into the frame, within limits. Or if you are photographing a plate of food and you want the whole thing in focus, but you don't want to do an overhead shot, and you can't get it all in focus by stopping down to a smaller aperture, you can tilt the lens to get the whole plate in focus. You can do this, because of the Scheimpflug rule--the film/sensor plane, the lens plane, and the plane of focus all meet in a line, unless they are parallel (which would normally be the case with a lens that doesn't tilt).
Tilt/shift lenses are more expensive, larger, heavier, and slower (smaller maximum aperture), than lenses that don't have movements. Most people don't need them for most kinds of photography.