Food Photography

Though this is not a recipe, I thought that those of you who are interested in taking pictures of food (don't we all? I'm usually the first to whip out a camera at a restaurant when my meal arrives) might enjoy this post by The Pioneer Woman about how to take better photos of food.

In it, she gives 8 great tips on how to improve your food photography. Here is my take on it.

Her tip: Don't use flash
My take: Sometimes when you're in a dark restaurant or eating dinner outdoors when it's getting dark, there's only so much you can do. This was taken with flash, and it's not terrible. But yes, on the whole, i agree that using natural light is WAY better than the dinky flash.
Like this one :)

Her tip: Use Natural Light
My take: Of course! Sometimes i bring my dishes out onto the patio just to get a good shot of it.

Her tip: Use a Wide Aperture
My take: mm, why do you think i just bought my new lens? hehe, because it allows you to open up that aperture to f1.8 (=super big aperture) so you get in a lot of light AND allows of shallow depth of field. Though yes, using wide aperture does get you that nice blur in the background, but if you have your aperture too wide, you're only gonna get focused on a very tiny part of your food. Like this one.

The only part that's really in focus is the tip of that middle left strawberry. haha.

Her tip: Lighten the picture afterwards
My take: If you use photoshop, this is very easy to do. But i am poor and i don't have photoshop. So i use iPhoto cuz that's where i store all my photos. To do what I do, click on a picture you wanna brighten, selected Edit, then open Adjust, then under the sliding bar that says Exposure, move it a little to the right. Yay! That's it.

Her tip: Correct overly yellow photos
My take: Ch'ya, this happens like every time i take any pictures in dim lighting with high ISO. To correct for it in iPhoto, go to Edit, Adjust, then find the sliding bar that says Temperature, and move it a little to the left.

Her tip: Get close to the food
My take: No worries, i already do. I love taking detailed photos of the food because it allows for the textures to come out and then you can start smelling the food though the photo. Mm. But sometimes my camera has a hard time focusing on something that close. I often end up cropping the pictures later.

Her tip: Cut into the food
My take: I think by the time the food is done, i'm so hungry and eager to eat it that i forget to take pictures of me slicing into the food or serving it. This is the only photo i can think of that has a utensil in it.
It's worth thinking about though.

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Sorry about the non-food jibberish! I'll return to recipes again soon. :)

Salad Dressing 101

Suppose you run out of your favorite salad dressing but you wanna make a salad. Nothing is as easy as making salad dressing. Seriously.

All you need is:
-an acid (vinegar is classic, but a citrus fruit works perfectly as well)
-some oil (olive oil is the best)
-various spices (but at least some salt and pepper)

Step 1:
Pour a little bit of vinegar (like, 4 tbsps) directly into the bottom of your salad bowl OR squeeze a citrus fruit till you get some juice in there.

Step 2:
Add salt and pepper. At the very least, you probably have salt and pepper in your cabinet. You can add anything else--garlic powder, red pepper flakes, grill seasoning, italian seasoning, or even as fancy as mustard seed--whatever. Dash, pinch, shake, whatever.


Step 3:
Stream in your oil with one hand while you beat with the other. The streaming helps the dressing to get all nice and homogenous.


Then throw your salad straight into the bowl, toss, and serve! That's it!


Review:
1. Add your base acid.
2. Season it however you want (S&P is fine)
3. Stream and beat in the oil.

Simple. You don't need any fancy food processors or even a mixing bowl for this one. Unless your salad bowl is your mixing bowl (as is mine...).

Chili Cheese Dip

This is something that my friend Caitlin would make for gimble potlucks and other parties. I would always look forward to going to the same parties with her because chances are, she's making this dip.

It's real easy.

1-2 cans chili (whatever kind you want)
a block of cream cheese
a 2-cup bag of shredded cheese (i use the "fiesta blend")

In a square casserole baking pan, pour in the chili


Add goops of cream cheese here and there


Top with cheese


Ta-da! Here's the side view


Put in oven at 350 for about 10-15 minutes or until the cheese has melted down. That's it! Hope you enjoy!

p.s. if you like things a little deeper in flavor and you don't trust your chili to do that on its own, sprinkle some cumin after the first layer. or last layer. or both :)

Sunshine Guacamole

This is called Sunshine Guacamole because this is a recipe I have been working to perfect for many years, and I am just that vain. And it is just that good. It's the kind of recipe that is so good that, even though you made it for a potluck that night, you kinda wanna sit and eat the entire bowl of it then and there.


Ingredients:
-3 avocados, ripe
-1/4 cup onion, chopped
-4-6 cloves of garlic, pressed or finely chopped
-1/4 cup salsa
-1 heaping spoonful of cream cheese, softened
-1 tsp salt
-1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
-1 lime

1. Chop garlic and onion and let it kinda sit for a while to get all aromatic.
2. All ingredients except lime into small mixing bowl.


3. Take a hand beater (or potato masher) and take out all your frustrations. Mash mash mash. You will find the mixture a bit thick. Don't worry.



4. Behold your lime. Make sure the lime is at room temperature. If not, microwave it for 10 seconds. Roll it around, cut in half, and squeeze the juice out into the mix. (Random Tip: You can grind up the used lime carcasses in the garbage disposal, and your sink will smell citrusy fresh)
5. For best results, let it sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving.


It's so tasty and creamy. I think the little bit of cream cheese goes a long way to make this happen. The creaminess of the avocado and cream cheese cut by the heat of the onion and garlic and refreshed with fresh tomato and cilantro...absolute perfection. Make it now! It tastes fantastic spread on a turkey sandwich or as a dip for pretzels. Or eat it with chips, if you're traditional.

Servings: 3 avocados yields about 4 cups of guac.

Tropical Fruits in Hong Kong

I can't believe it's been almost 3 weeks since I've left Hong Kong. For a while when i got back, I felt like I was just taking a short vacation in the U.S. and I'll be going back there soon. Huh. Last week I finally got back to Purdue and completely unpacked everything from the past 2 months. At the very end, I found my little minibus toy that had been wrapped in a sock to keep from breaking. I pulled out the little green and yellow minibus and seriously got misty-eyed. I miss it a lot.

Okay, but this was not supposed to be a post on sadness. It is to show you some of the bizarro fruits I ate while i was in Hong Kong, and give you my commentary on them.
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The Pomelo

It's like, a giant grapefruit married a sweet orange and had a really overweight kid. errr. But come on, look at this thing.
The peel itself is about an inch thick, no joke.
So after a very satisfactory peeling process, you get this:
It's like, a dinosaur hatching. But the dinosaur is actually a delicious citrus fruit.
See how big each section is? It's twice as long as my thumb!

Taste: incredibly juicy and satisfying in the 100 degree weather. it's so big, you share it with family/friends and still have some left over for later. the little pulps kinda pull apart and pop in your mouth (or into your eye, if you're not careful). It's an enjoyable texture experience.
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The Lychee

I know i've always liked lychee flavored candies and jellies, but to have it in its actual fruit format was a blissful experience. Like many tropic fruits, they don a hazardous-looking exterior with warty bumps. But you peel it, and you get a lovely translucent flesh underneath.
Taste: sweet and lovely, like a apple + berry hybrid. Though according to my HK friends, you shouldn't eat more than three, as it will cause you to have too much heat/fire. So i always ate just three, cuz you always trust the locals. That's just how it's done.
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The Mangostein

This was the one I had been waiting for. You break it open with your hands, and you see little white pods surrounded by red flesh. You pop out the white pods and eat those. Mmm. Unfortunately, i was so busy cracking them open, i didn't get a picture of it myself, so here's one from this site: Taste: Oh my goodness, so heavenly good. It's so sweet it's like eating candy or little juice pods. The seed inside the pod is somewhat annoying, but it's worth it.
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The Rambatan

This is what we have renamed the "Muppet Fruit", as its shape, color, and texture reminded us of just that. The, uh, fur on the outside is actually kinda tickley.
To eat it, you cut its head open and extract the white flesh from the inside.
Taste: It was good, but unlike the Mangostein, the seed in the Rambatan was just way too annoying to make it worth eating a lot of these. The seed or pit is covered in a woody exterior, and that woody exterior kinda comes off and onto the fruit when you try to eat it.

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The Durian

Oh my. Words cannot describe the experience that is the Durian. Hm. It's just very complex. If I had to think of three words to describe it, it would be these.

1) stinky
2) creamy
3) garlic

From the minute you enter the vicinity of a Durian, (and yes, it deserves to be capitalized) you are suddenly hit with the overwhelming smell of roast garlic and poo. When it gets cut open, you wonder whether you might be sick. But you are intrigued at the same time. It's like, a very dangerous man on a motorcycle. Your instincts tell you to stay the hell away, but you kinda wanna go for a ride anyway. Oh and then you extract a piece from the inside of the fearful fruit.
And you stick it in your mouth despite your urge to run....

And you find that, hm, despite the strong garlicky smell and the odd creamy texture that makes you feel like you're eating a stick of butter...

it's actually kinda sweet. it's a fruit, after all.
It's a group experience. I could only really eat one piece. And I'm glad i did, it was not nearly as bad as i thought it was gonna be. I think that by the time i left, i kinda enjoyed the smell of it when i walked into the grocery store.
Yeah, i'd go for another ride, if given the chance to go back.