dcarch

patrickamory - Very dramatic lighting, from a single light source? Mm84321 – A very elegant Ratatouille . Baselerd – very nice plating. Ann_t – You are going to put all sous vide cooker manufacturer out of business with steak cooked so perfectly. Anna N – I love the plate you use for the steak and potato dish and how you arrange the ingredients. I am not sure why. Ashen – Your lamb dish reminds of some famous painting. Paul Bacino – restaurant ready salmon dish. Dejah – Great turkey fryer made dinner. Steve Irby – you plated the salmon dish pleasingly. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Some one asked what to do with zucchini skin. Sous vide crispy chicken, on sautéed zucchini skin, with Fairytale eggplants and pickled whatermelon rind. dcarch

Could you possibly post a picture of your setup (light, diffusor, etc) the next time you're photographing a dish? My point is, you don't need a "setup" to take excellent pictures. My "setup"? a single CFL bulb with a kitchen plastic container, a tripod and a camera. dcarch

Whatever cheap software to allow me to crop and center the food and to eliminate distracting background. That's why all my photos are perfectly centered and no background. I think you are beginning to see how lack of creativity in my photos. dcarch

I hope I am not beating a dead horse. Good photos, bad photos, the more you do, the better you get. I remember when mm first started posting his work here, not that long ago, he was criticized that he had no skills in cutting fish. dcarch

I posted my photo tips here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php? dcarch

It will take many years to go to school and practice to be a great food photographer, a ton of money to buy equipment, a lot of room to set up a studio, and a lot of cold food and angry hungry family waiting for you to finish fussing with the food, that's the bad news. But here is the good news, you can produce very good pictures, even magazine quality pictures with very little investment in any of the above, even all you have is just a cell phone camera. I have a good single lens camera, not a great expensive camera. Here is basically what I do: Tips 1 - Don't use the flash. 2 - use a tripod and the camera's self-timer to avoid any vibration, especially if you don't have a lot of light. 3 - Get a daylight CFL bulb, the highest wattage you can get, less than $20.00. 4 - A large kitchen plastic container makes a wonderful light diffusor. 5 - don't fuss with composition, unless you really feel inspired, do the same shots every time. Every picture I have taken is done this way. BTW, an un-related tip; try to go as light as possible with your pictures if you intend to print them. A black or very dark background will cost you a fortune in printer ink. dcarch A cell phone picture

That's interesting. There is no purer water than distilled water. I used distilled water and the ice cubes were still cloudy. Ice is always crystal clear. The cloudiness are caused by tiny air bubbles, not so much impurities. dcarch actually there are ultrapure waters used in scientific applications purer than distilled.. google type 1 water or milli Q ... From what I understand there are processes now that produce ultra pure water that even surpasses those standards. That is true. Distill water may have dissolved compounds which have lower boiling points than water. dcarch

I agree with you! I dont even post my meals anymore. they never warrant praise or comment and pale by comparison. Actually a very interesting topic, and a very important food topic, for anyone who is interested in food and cooking. There was a time when there were certain ways you had to follow and practice if you wanted to be considered an artist. But no more. Art is no long definable, it is in the eye of the beholder, it’s in the heart of the creator. Just go to a museum, what do you see? From Leonardo da Vinci to Jackson Pollock, from Sandro Botticelli, to Andy Warhol, from Albrecht Dürer to Josef Albers. Is Norman Rockwell a better artist than Wassily Kandinsky? Is Picasso a better artist than Grandma Moses? If you don’t like Claes Oldenburg, does that mean he is not an artist? Is Keith Haring an artist? Plating is playing, food for fun, and it is free fun. Go to town with it. Let your kitchen be your art studio, let your seasonings be the oils on the painter's palette to create what you feel are masterpieces, for no one else’s but your own palate. There is no good or bad plating, just like there is no good or bad art style, to each his/her own. The more you try, share, copy, and steal from others, the more you will come to a style of your own that will please you and may be a few others, and if some of them don’t like what you cook, tell them to shove their spatula up their you-know-whats. dcarch

I did come up with a little gadget for the home refrigerator. It worked much better. I was almost there. Then the thing broke. I have not had the time to continue the project yet. dcarch

That's interesting. There is no purer water than distilled water. I used distilled water and the ice cubes were still cloudy. Ice is always crystal clear. The cloudiness are caused by tiny air bubbles, not so much impurities. dcarch

Now many supermarkets (in NYC) have sanitary wipes for shoppers to sanitize their push carts. I wonder how many people have died before that. I have been to office buildings with those wipes for elevator button users. dcarch

Did a few not too complicated dishes for Labor Day. dcarch Boiled lobster, glazed carrots, sauteed water melon radishes Squid stuffed with wild rice, Peter Pan squash Rigatoni with meat sauce

No such machine for the home refrigerator, as far as I know. Boiled water, filtered water, distilled water, cloudy just the same. There are dedicated clear ice cube machines for the home, however. I think. dcarch

They are here! They are here! A shame to cook them. Plain salads, sometimes not even dressing is needed. dcarch

I think you are mixing up two entirely unrelated areas of food photography. There is food art, and there is food photography. Most great food artists, they are sculptors, they are chefs who can plate incredible dishes, but they are lousy photographers. Many who can't cook, or plate, but who can understand lighting, depth of field, cropping, etc, and who has an expensive camera to take sexy pictures of lousy food for magazine covers. dcarch

They do make a soldering iron with a screw on plastic cutting tip. dcarch

Put the eggs in a small open basket. dcarch can you just put the eggsi in a bag using water displacement? or put a basket over them, like a cage? I don't think so. Cooking eggs is very temperature and timing critical. Water should be making very good contact with all surfaces of the eggs for evenness. dcarch

Put the eggs in a small open basket. dcarch

You made?? I'm fascinated ... would you be able to start another thread on making knives?That would be a very boring thread. You see, I am not an aesthetic knife maker, I am a functional knife maker. Get it done quick, get it done cheap and get it done very sharp. I am not making show-off knives at this point. I make them because I hate to have to spend a few thousand dollars for a set of real sharp knives. Sushi making is all about sharpest knives, otherwise you are just making raw fish. Cold smoked salmon gets messed up without a long sharp blade. And cutting prosciutto !!! dcarch

Come on - how hard do you have to smack a clove of garlic to crush it? I had a 12” Sujihiki I made from 1095 high carbon steel. I guess I must had been too aggressive in heat treating and hardening and did not anneal/temper properly, one day as I was filleting salmon, I heard a “pop”. A ½” crack happened a few inches from the tip. So I bent the damaged tip off and made the knife into kind of like a santoku. I still need a long knife for sushi, so I am making a 13” blade Yanagi. I am using D-2 steel. This time I am not going to take a chance. I sent the blade to a place to have it professionally hardened and cryo tempered. As I said, any knife maker can tell you how metal can crack, even spontaneously. dcarch

It should a very easy and simple mod. Get a hose clamp from Home Depot ($2.00?) and bend a piece of metal to an upside down "U" shape, clamp it on and you are in business. dcarch

First, I assume you are not talking about ceramic knives. In rare situations, damage can happen to high carbon steel or high carbon stainless steel knives. Good quality knives tend to be hardened to the maximum which creates a great deal of internal metal stress, some even can crack and warp at this stage. A knife maker can tell you that this is not unusual. After hardening the knives are tempered to relief some the the stresses, but some of the stress will remain, especially specific tempering temperature and time are not followed based on the particular metal. In another food forum I have seen members' posts of their knives cracking after strong impact. dcarch .

Is there a cooling fan or did you mean the impeller? I don't think any one of these similar devices have cooling fans that you can hear. Some motors have turbine blades integral with the rotor for ventilation, but these motors are running at low RPMs and you should not hear "fan" noise. There are brushless micro fans, which are also very quiet. The noise you hear possible is water turbulence. The other possible source of the noise is the motor mounted to the body without rubber vibration isolators. dcarch

"----The electric range in my new apartment seems to put out quite a bit of heat, and I was wondering if there's a way to even out the heat that gets transferred to the cookware. ----" Can you explain a little more? I am not sure what is that you want. Too much heat and uneven heating are two different situations. dcarch

I would like to see UL approvals on all these water related appliances. dcarch