How to style food for a magazine

Recently Vanessa and I were commissioned to style and take some photo's for a fabulous magazine called NZ Life & Leisure. Each year they put out a special title and this year it was The Insiders Guide to New Zealand showcasing NZ's top spots to visit for food, where to stay, people to meet and things to do . I thought it would interesting to share our experience and also one of the recipes from the day, that we tucked into with gusto.

  

THE BRIEF: To photograph four recipes (Kingfish Tartare, Kedgeree, Chargrilled Lamb Steaks with Smoky Capsicum Salsa and Avocado Salad) in a relaxed casual style making sure it was a good fit with the other recipes in the magazine (which were stock images from a variety of photographers and stylists) and also to compliment the colours used in each section of the magazine.

Words used were: Country style : relaxed : natural light : a little bit of depth of field (background blur): unstaged : unfussy

We were given pdf proofs of mockups of the magazine from the Art Director (which is virtually unheard of!) which gave us a great overview of the style and feel of the mag, and also the colours of each section (which were segmented by different places to visit in NZ)

What plates, cutlery and props to use? Our setups before the food arrived.

THE SHOOT:

We decided to keep it very simple, with muted colour and let the food be the focal point. We choose to shoot above if the food was quite flat, and we choose a 3/4 front on angle if the food could be piled high.

PROPS USED: Muslin cloth (great for creating a relaxed style, as the edges of the muslin roll up which create a nice subtle effect, old enamel plates - different sizes stacked on top of each other, old wooden boards, white painted wooden boards create a marine/ seaside feel to the shot especially good if your photographing seafood, red fry pan to compliment the capsicum salsa and to add colour as meat (Lamb steaks) can sometimes be quite dull. Lemons cut in different ways always add a freshness to a dish.

The recipes were supplied to us, so make sure you double check you have all the right ingredients showing in the photo. An avocado salad ain't an Avo salad if you forget the AVO!

CAMERA USED: Canon 550D - shooting in RAW and JPG - As the photos are retouched in house we supplied both RAW and JPEG files on disk to the Art Director with minimal retouching, only a bit of contrast. No sharpening.

SHOOTING FROM ABOVE: Used the standard kit lens 18-55mm. ISO: 100 f:11 We always had an aperture of 11 as this is the best aperture to have everything in focus.

SHOOTING FROM THE FRONT: Lens Used: 100m 2.8 ISO: 100 f:3.2 plus tripod

Kingfish Tartare: Old enamel plates and boards painted white add to the seaside theme.

THE PROCESS:
We choose two dishes each and shopped and prepared each one at our own house - cutting up chillies or chives, cooking rice - anything that could be made ahead of the shoot. We decided to shoot at Vanessa's house, on her front porch as it was a bright but overcast day - perfect for photographing food.

As Vanessa is definitely the better cook out of the two of us -  she took over the cooking, and styling of the food whilst I went ahead and set up the different props and table settings, set up the camera, reflector board and tripod. It was a very simple setup, as the light was perfect. I did a white balance using a white card and holding it in frame and setting it in my camera, which I did at various times throughout the day as the light changed.

Mistakes made, lesson learned
We had some very 'blonde' experiences, and the wine wasn't even opened yet! We forgot the Avocado in the Avocado salad, we kept saying, 'what a weird looking salad', 'how bland', 'only broad beans?', 'not very appealing' and shot a few frames before it dawned on us what we had omitted. We also didn't realise that broad beans needed to be popped out of their shells - and again took a lot of frames with them looking grey and lifeless.


TIPS

• Prepare your table settings prior to any food being cooked, set up your plate/ dish/ cutlery etc
• Re read any recipe you are commissioned to style or photograph - if you forget anything important, your shoot is ruined!
• keep it simple, less is more, always try to remove one item from your table setting and see if it improves the shot
• Always refer back to your brief - there is a reason why you've been given it
• Be decisive. Don't take truckloads of photos of the same setup. Take three at different apertures, and move on. You will appreciate it at editing stage.
• Get it right in camera. Make sure your lighting is right and no random crumbs, spots or dribbles are showing. Again, you will appreciate at editing stage, not having to clone out horrible fingermarks you didn't remove when you could.

Best dish of the day: Thumbs up to Anna Tait - Jamieson (Life & Leisure's Food Editor) for creating this very exciting dish - a great blend of flavours and textures. We hope we did it justice in our photographs.

Kedgeree
Recipe extracted from The Insiders Guide to New Zealand

Serves 4
What you need:
milk to poach (about 2 cups)
500g smoked fish
2 tablespoons of butter
1 onion, diced
2 celery sticks, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup cream
2 cups cooked rice (1 cup raw)
1 tablespoon chopped chives
4 eggs
juice of 1 lemon

How to make
Bring milk to the boil in a large fry pan, reduce heat then add fish and poach gently for 3-4 min. Discard milk and when fish has cooled sufficiently, break into large flakes.
Clean out fry pan then saute onion, celery and garlic in butter until softened. Add ginger and spices, stir and cook for 1 minute then add cream.
Simmer for another minute before adding cooked rice and fish.
Heat through then add chives. Remove from heat and keep warm while poaching the eggs. Squeeze lemon juice over each serving and top with a poached egg.

Quick and easy lasagna

What a great feeling to have healthy and delicious meals waiting in your freezer

After 7 wet days camping with a super organised friend, my mission for 2012 is to attempt to have nutritious and delicious meals in my freezer for my son. We are both working mums and find the 5pm kids dinner hour a bit of a challenge. Over the holiday break there has been a lot of snacking going on, chips and dips, fish and chips, easy camp meals and of course ice creams and ice blocks. The kids have loved it, such a change from their regular healthy daycare lunches and snacks.

Both Ingrid and I are due to have second babies and be on maternity leave in about 10 weeks so the thought of life with two kids is quite daunting. An even better reason to get organised!

I have been reading a book called “Economy Gastonomy” by Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merret. I bought it cheap somewhere and about a year later saw their show on TV. It’s a great read and a fabulous introduction in to being organised and stretching your dollar. It motivated me to start with basics like mince and tinned fish. My first creation was Lasagna, kids love pasta and adults can spice it up with a bit of Tabasco and crisp salad. A few things I discovered along the way…

• Add a tin of beans (baked beans, chili beans, butter beans) , it makes the mince go further.
• Ensure the lasagna has a far bit of liquid/wetness in the sauces, the pasta really does soak it up.
• Add vegetables such as carrots, aubergines, courgettes, mushrooms, peas even a puree of vegetables – the kids will never know.  

Make it fun for the kids! 

The recipe I am giving you is not exact, its very forgiving and with a bit of planning is pretty easy to create an impressive dish.

What you need

Meat sauce

Mince 500g-1kg

Tinned chopped tomatoes x2

1 tub/tube tomato puree/concentrate/paste

Olive oil

Salt/pepper

1 onion

6 cloves of garlic (its really mild cooked)

1 tin beans

Vegetables – anything goes really

Cheese sauce

Butter

Milk

Flour

Tasty cheese or what ever leftovers you have in the fridge

Lasagna sheets OR any other pasta you have in your cupboard

Add cherry tomatoes for a splash of colour and vitamin hit

Firstly make the meat sauce.

Saute the onions and garlic in olive oil until soft, add the mince and brown it. Then add the chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper and about a tin of water. Simmer uncovered for a while and you should notice the water evaporating and the sauce thickening. Add the vegetables and paste and simmer until they are soft. Finally add the beans. You will have to monitor the sauce by adding more water if needed or simmering for longer if not thick enough. Also watch the meat doesn’t catch the bottom of the pot. (keep tasting it and adding more salt if needed, you can even add a teaspoon of sugar to sweeten the tomatoes)

Whilst the sauce is simmering get stuck in and make the cheese sauce.

Now you need to make a roux, this is a mixture of flour and butter that acts a thickening agent. Melt about 2 large tablespoons of butter in a pot, add a similar amount of flour and mix to a paste. You may have to take off the heat if its cooking a bit fast. Add milk ½ cup at a time, only adding more when its thick. When you have the sauce to the consistency you need add the cheese – grated, cubes, chunks or leftover pieces. Set aside.  

In an oven proof deep dish add a layer of lasagna sheets or dried pasta shapes. Add a thick layer of meat sauce, cheese sauce and more pasta. Keep repeating the process until you have nothing left. Basically you need to make sure the pasta has moisture to cook in from either sauces. It doesn’t really matter what you finish with as long as the pasta is covered with meat or cheese sauce. I also added some tomato slices on top at the end for a bit of colour.

Bake for about 30-40 minutes at about 200 degrees, you can usually tell if its cooked by putting a knife into it and it should pierce the pasta easily.  

Let it cool down before you slice it and portion it up and put in to freezer suitable containers or tin foil. I used tin foil and the only disadvantage is you can’t defrost in the microwave if the tin foil sticks to the frozen lasagna.

Sit back, relax and enjoy knowing you have family dinner or kids portions waiting to impress. 

Vanessa 

Extras

I also made a fish pie, check out previous post, add a mash and cheese top, cool and chuck it in the freezer. 

http://foodopera.blogspot.com/2011/02/smoked-fish-ans-greens-pie.html

Rice - yes you can freeze it, cook it and cool it fast by laying it our on to a baking tray. when cool bag it or put into containers and place in the coldest part of your freezer. Not the door or by the front. 

Heat in the microwave ensuring its HOT! 

Chicken and Asparagus Rolls

Ok, so the weather has been pretty unpredictable, ok it's been absolute pants and summer ain't been showing it's face around here enough, but it's still hot (ok, muggy) and we have flys and ants taking over our house, so it got me thinking about picnic food, and bits of this and bits of that - all thrown together, food designed to mesh quite happily together. So this is the result of what I found in my cupboard one unpredictable wet summers day, when a picnic was made in the backyard just as a glimpse of sun broke through.

ALSO TRY: Lemon juice and ground peppercorns make a great rub on roast chicken

QUICK IDEA: If you don't have tortillas, just roll one asparagus spear and spread the chicken mix in a slice of fresh sandwich bread, and bake in the oven for a twist on asparagus rolls.

Lemon Pepper picnic tortillas
Serves 4

What you need:
Bunch of asparagus (4 per tortilla approx)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 x lemon
cracked peppercorns
2 tbsp butter
1 x onion (chopped finely)
2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups of milk
1/2 Leftover roast chicken (ripped apart and chopped roughly)
4 x tortillas

How to make:
Prepare chicken

On a medium heat, add butter to a frypan, fry onion until soft, add flour to make a paste then add milk slowly, allowing to thicken. Add leftover chicken to heat through. Squeeze half the lemon and cracked peppercorns.


Prepare asparagus
Chop hard stalks off asparagus. Lay on a baking dish, drizzle olive oil, squeeze half the lemon and cracked peppercorns. Grill both sides. Remove from oven.

Assemble:
Set oven to bake 200 C. Bake tortillas for 3 mins, lay on a plate and spread chicken sauce mix down the middle. Add asparagus. Fold the bottom up then fold each side of the tortilla inwards and tie with a piece of string.