Inspiration or imitation - The Donna Hay Ricotta and White Bean Salad Challenge

 There's a fine line between 'in the style of' and imitation and between inspiration and imitation. Meeta over at What's For Lunch Honey? has already posted about the imitation question and I agree with what she has to say. Personally I never tried to imitate someone's style but that is probably because of my obnoxious nature and not really being able to adhere to sets and groups but I see it all over the blogosphere. I know that there are people who advice aspiring food photographers to imitate the style of photographers they admire to achieve their own style but that just doesn't make sense to me-how the hell are you ging to develop your own style by imitating someone else?? My advice is to look at loads and loads of photos, examining each and every one of them by picking out what you do like about them or what you don't like about them. Look at how light is used, what colours, props, angles,  components and composition and then put the images aside and let it all mature in your mind. I am a great fan of the subconscious working for you, maybe because I am lazy but I think that it is a great way to develop your own style: ingest, digest and then create out of subconscious inspiration - in this way your own personality will shine through, I am sure of it. On the other hand, you can find inspiration in a single thing, right now I have a very special spoon that is inspiring me, I just need to find the right recipe for it...

 Back to what this is all about. My photographer friend and Weimar Plate To Page participant Simone of Junglefrog Cooking has started a monthly challenge called Donna Hay Styling and Photography Challenge and I decided to participate because I think it can be a very interesting exercise for me, not only because it's always good to get outside your own little comfort patch (yes I know it should be zone but patch sounds more comforty) and also because of the incredible high class of the photographs and styling that you associate Donna Hay with, my instinctive feeling is that it can only be good for me to think in her/their terms. In Simone's own words: "You have to cook and STYLE the recipe trying to replicate the photo as best as you can." So I have but instead of imitating I tried to interpret the photo and the styling my way and still make it in the famous Donna Hay style. The challenge of this month is this and here is the original photo:

The original photo is from issue 42 of Donna Hay Magazine and the photo is from Chris Court.

To get that light blue tinge that is so characteristic of many of Donna Hay's photos is not easy, you need to have the same kind of white that reflects in the same hue and that means serious prop and background collecting with lots of storage space. I wonder if they buy it with a grey card at hand or some kind of metering instrument. Anyway, on the eastern side of our house the light has a blue tinge when I shoot in the afternoons so that was the place of my choice. My Swedishness made me choose white wooden boards as background that rather absorbs light than reflects the blueish tinge but that is part of my interpretation. Though I didn't have a strong direct source of light as in the original photo, the main light shoots in from the same direction, top right. For those of you interested in the technical aspects I used a Canon Mark5D II with a Canon 100mm macro objective, aperture f/8. 

RICOTTA AND WHITE BEAN SALAD
from Donna Hay


400g cannellini beans ((or white beans, 1 can))
1 red onion (small)
30g black olived (pitted and halved)
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley (leaves only)
1-2 red chili (small and sliced)
125g cherry tomatoes (halved)
sea salt
black pepper (cracked)
100g ricotta (fresh)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

 Place the beans, onion, olives, parsley, chilli, tomato, salt and pepper in a bowl and toss gently to combine. Divide between serving plates and top with fresh ricotta. Combine the oil and vinegar and spoon over the salad to serve.

Report from a photo shoot and as dessert a Sweet Tuscan Grape Bread With A Twist or Schiacciata con l'uva con un tocco in piú

This is going to be a long post because not only do I want to make Merisi happy and post the schiacciata con l'uva (Tuscan Grape Bread) that I made yesterday but I also want to post about the big food job I am working on right now so sit down and prepare yourself for many photos.

As usual we are shooting in the best of photo studios in Milan, Cantiere Bovisa, I really like the people there, they are fantastic and always ready to help. I have been there so much that they somehow have become a second family for me and that tells it all I think. And the owner´s wife who is japanese makes the most fantastic food for us-well can I ask for more?

This summer I have been doing the first Christmas catalogue which is dealing with gifts and such so now I am shooting the food catalogue with around 100 photos to do, some are simple and some are more complex so you can imagine how much creativity and inspiration you need to put into it to find different settings, milieus and props all the time. I have to confess that after a day of work, usually around 9-10 hours, I feel quite tired and usually just go home to my wonderful parents in law who put me up when I'm in Milan to eat and then I go to bed. That's my life in Milan, the city of shopping, restaurants and lots of people I know and would love to meet but no, I just take my taxi and crash into bed.

The most important photo is obviously the one for the cover and we make several versions so that there is a wide variety for the client to choose from. It also needs to sum up the mood of the whole catalogue, to prepare for what the readers will find once they start turning the pages so you can immagine the work that is put into the making of these photos. 

I work with a really good team from Armando Testa, one of the biggest ad agencies in Italy, and with jobs as big as these it feels good to be able to share the workload with and to have great people to bounce ideas with.

I have now been wading in Christmas props since the beginning of July and despite the fact that there are loads of them, far more than what you see in the photos, there are as usual never enough. I don't know what it is about props but you always need more than you have, it doesn't matter how many you have around, you still always need something else or different. Quite amazing really.

We have sets standing around all the time, waiting for the approval of the client so we need many tables. Most of the time we build up the sets on wooden boards that we can lift and move around so we can create new ones to shoot while we wait, there's not much time to waste. Some photos are quick to shoot, we find the right props, the right mood and the right angle straight away but some take ages to get right. I shoot and shoot again, move the props and the plate, change angles and move closer or further away and then in the end I get it. Often it is the ones you think will be easy that are the most difficult ones, maybe it is because you put more thought into the difficult ones beforehand so you need to work less when it is time to shoot it. 

I work with a really talented food stylist and her talented assistant on this job, it is incredible to work with them, not only are they nice people but also very good at what they are doing and as I will be working with them a lot next month (I will hardly be at home!) I thought I will try to follow them with my camera to get some photos when they work and then post it here later on as I think that it might be interesting for you (?) to see food stylists in action on a commercial shoot.

But now it is time to get down to today's recipe, Sweet Tuscan Grape Bread or schiacciata con l'uva as it is called here. It is a typical autumn treat here that I rarely miss to make because it is a really delicious bread or cake, I really don't know how define it. Traditionally it is made with bread dough that is sweetened by the addition of grapes and a bit of sugar but I use a recipe from one of my favourite Italian cookbooks, Paolo Petroni’s excellent Il libro della vera cucina fiorentina. My copy is old and tattered but who cares when you know that every recipe in it is great and never fails to deliver delicious food. It was my first real cookbook in Italian and the first I dared to cook from when my Italian wasn't that good. This version is my take on it, I added cinnamon and almonds to the sugar and I must say that it combines nicely with the grapes. I use small, blue, sweet and succulent wine grapes so if you can find these you will get a great bread but if you can't find them, try to find the sweetest and smallest blue grapes you lay your hands on.

SWEET TUSCAN GRAPE BREAD WITH A TWIST or SCHIACCIATA CON L’UVA CON UN TOCCO IN PIÙ
based on a recipe in Paolo Petroni’s Il libro della vera cucina fiorentina

750 g/  1,6 lb small, blue wine grapes,
350 g/ 12, 2 oz flour
200 ml/ 0,85 cup tepid water
25 g/ 0,88 oz fresh yeast
8 tblsp sugar
100 g/ 3,5 oz blanched almonds, chopped
1-1,5 tsp ground cinnamon
8 tblsp extra virgin olive oil
salt

 Dissolve the yeast in 4 tblsp sugar, add the tepid water and 4 tblsp olive oil. Add the flour and a pinch of salt and work the dough well. Put it to rest and let it rise for about an hour.

 Rinse the grapes, pick them off one by one and pat them dry. Mix the sugar with the cinnamon and the chopped almonds

 Grease an oven-proof form then put the dough the table, remember to sprinkle it with flour beforehand. Roll out the dough into a thin oval or rectangle shape, it depends on the shape of your form.

 Transfer the dough into the dish, let a fair amount of dough hang over the rims so they can be folded over the grapes later. Put 2/3 of the grapes in the dish, sprinkle 2 tblsp of the sugar mix and drizzle 2 tblsp of olive oil over them.

 Fold the dough over the grapes so it covers it all. Put the rest of the grapes on top, sprinkle the rest of the sugar mix and pour the rest of the olive oil over it.

 Bake in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for about 1 hour.

 Let it get cold or at least tepid before you eat. If you can resist that long...

Intervallo

Holding on to summer - Savoury Zucchini, Grilled Pepper and Chickpea Flour Clafoutis With Thyme (Gluten-free)

 With autumn in arrival (maybe it has even arrived for some of you) it is nice to keep the summer here for a little longer, an extra ray of sunshine so to speak and this is one way of doing it. I like the zucchini and grilled pepper combination but you can obviously try other combinations as well. The reasons to why I choose to use chickpea flour instead of normal flour are two: I love farinata (I can eat tons of it!) and I wanted to make a gluten-free dish that everyone can love. If you don't want to use chickpea flour, I suggest you try it with normal flour, I think the same measures would work well but do try chickpea flour because it does add a wonderful flavour to the dish.

I'm short again because I still don't feel well so I let my photos speak for me instead.

 Savoury Zucchini, Grilled Pepper and Chickpea Flour Clafoutis With Thyme (Gluten-free)

2 servings

3 eggs

100 ml/ 0,43 cup fresh cream

40 g/  oz chickpea flour

50-100 ml / 0,21-0, 43 cup grated fresh parmesan cheese

fresh thyme

black pepper

4 zucchini, medium ones

chili pepper or peperoncini (optional)

grilled pepper in oil, half a jar

salt

extra virgin olive oil

 Slice the zucchini and fry them gently in olive oil with peperoncini and salt until golden. Cut the grilled pepper into slices.

 While the zucchini cooks, whisk together the ingredients for the batter until it is smooth.

 Put the vegetables in a greased oven-proof form and then pour the batter over then so that it spreads evenly.

 Bake in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for around 20 minutes or until the clafoutis is golden. Best served tepid or cold in my opinion.

I'm a Babe again! Soft Pretzels- Salt or Sweet

 I know, my pretzels don't look as good as they should or could but I had great fun baking them which on the other hand probably is the reason to why the look so bad and sad. You see, we had a Bread Baking Babe baking hangout on Google+ the other night, baking pretzels live between different continents, and never has it been so fun to bake a BBB challenge. I was planning to bake them again yesterday or today but I'm not feeling too well so that didn't happen. Fortunately I had two left so I could photograph them for you. I'm a bit short here, I haven't even converted cups and other measures but I am sure you are perfectly able to do that on your own for once. I need a bed.

It is the wonderful Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms who has decided what to bake this month and she made a great choice, they are easy to make and very easy to eat so get baking and be a Bread Baking Buddy, you get the details over at Elle's when she has woken up and posted about the pretzels!  I know that some Babes have made sweet one while I stuck the the salt version so check here to get the links to the BBBs.

Soft Pretzels
Found at MyRecipes: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/soft-pretzels
 YIELD: 12 servings (serving size: 1 pretzel)

 Ingredients
1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup warm water (100° to 110°)
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided (about 14 1/2 ounces)
1 teaspoon salt
Cooking spray
6 cups water
2 tablespoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cornmeal
1 teaspoon water
1 large egg
2 teaspoons kosher salt

 Preparation
 Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water in a large bowl, and let stand for 5 minutes.

 Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Add 3 cups flour and 1 teaspoon salt to yeast mixture; stir until a soft dough forms. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic (about 8 minutes). Add enough of remaining flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands (dough will feel slightly sticky).

 Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray, turning to coat top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85°), free from drafts, 40 minutes or until doubled in size. (Gently press two fingers into dough. If indentation remains, the dough has risen enough.) Punch dough down; cover and let rest 5 minutes.

 Preheat oven to 425°.

 Divide dough into 12 equal portions. Working with one portion at a time (cover remaining dough to prevent drying), roll each portion into an 18-inch-long rope with tapered ends. Cross one end of rope over the other to form a circle, leaving about 4 inches at end of each rope.

 Twist the rope at the base of the circle. Fold the ends over the circle and into a traditional pretzel shape, pinching gently to seal. Place pretzels on a baking sheet lightly coated with cooking spray. Cover and let rise 10 minutes (pretzels will rise only slightly).

 Combine 6 cups water and baking soda in a nonaluminum Dutch oven. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer. Gently lower 1 pretzel into simmering water mixture; cook 15 seconds. Turn pretzel with a slotted spatula; cook an additional 15 seconds. Transfer pretzel to a wire rack coated with cooking spray. Repeat procedure with remaining pretzels.

 Place pretzels on a baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Combine 1 teaspoon water and egg in a small bowl, stirring with a fork until smooth.

 Brush a thin layer of egg mixture over pretzels; sprinkle with kosher salt.

 Bake at 425° for 12 minutes or until pretzels are deep golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. 

To make Cinnamon Sugar Soft Pretzels: When you put on the egg glaze in the above recipe, don't add any toppings. When the pretzels are baked and still a little warm, dip them in melted butter and then into a cinnamon-sugar mixture. from Cooking Light OCTOBER 2005

 

A bake and a review - Tuscan Rice Cake

If you want to eat well in Italy, get invited to eat in an Italian kitchen. Or if you don't know any Italians, go to a small restaurant where you can see an old lady working in the kitchen. This is obviously just my opinion but I stand by it in case you want to discuss it. If I need advice when I'm food shopping, I always always ask an older lady, the older the better, because I know they know whatever it is I need to know and if they don't, they somehow come up with a solution for me. So when I saw that my fellow Tuscan food blogger Giulia's (Jul's Kitchen) cookbook My Grandma's Recipes finally was out, I was very happy and I just had to ask her if she would let me review a copy which she obviously did as I am writing this today. A cookbook with recipes from a Nonna (grandmother), what can be better? 

To be honest I got the book in July but I haven't had the time to cook and blog about it until this week, on the other hand I have had a lot of time to look and read in it because I have kept it next to the sofa I consider mine (but no one else seem to understand that) and many evenings have been spent reading on it. Giulia is what  in Italian is called solare and in English sunny, radiant, she is a person who radiates positive energy and she is truly passionate about food and cooking, something that is clearly seen in her cookbook. There are recipes from her nonna Marcella (obviously a wonderful cook), from her family and then she also added her own interpretations and fusions from various corners of her world, all of them divided by seasons. And with every recipe (printed both in Italian and in English), she tells us a little story and I, who always loved that kind of cookbooks, have enjoyed each and everyone of them. But not only are the recipes and words her own, all the photos are her own as well so this is the work of a one talented woman. You can buy it here. (and no, she didn't pay me to do this)

I have chosen to do a Tuscan Rice cake for two reasons, the first is that I like them and the second is reason is that it brings back memories from when we first moved to Italy and lived in Florence. We stayed there for the first 9 months in the lovely quartiers of San Frediano where normal people are living despite it being very central indeed. On Sunday mornings when the whole place appeared to be completely abandoned, if you followed your nose and the scent trail of pastry making, you could buy the most wonderful budini di riso (rice pastries) in a place that was completely anonymous, no signs, no indications (except the scent trail) and only open on Sunday mornings. They were the famous ur-rice pastry, the ones that set the standard for me and the ones I been searching for since then. Now a rice cake is a bit different but despite this, Giulia's rice cake is definitely a decisive step on the arduous road of mine towards that budino di riso of perfection.

 TUSCAN RICE CAKE
from My Grandma's Recipes by Giulia Scarpaleggia

300 g/10,6 oz rice (use soft sticky cooking rice to make puddings and desserts)
1 l/ 4,22 cups milk
1 tblsp liqueur (use the one you prefer)
peel of one lemon
2 eggs
6 tblsp sugar (ilva's comment: if you like your cake sweet, use more)

shortcrust pastry:
300 g/ 10,6 oz plain flour
150 g/ 5,3 oz sugar
150 g /5,3 oz softened butter
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
grated peel of one orange
1 pinch salt

 First thing first, let's make the shortcrust pastry. Put the flour on a working surface, make a well in the middle and add sugar, salt, baking powder, grated orange peel and softened butter, diced. Rub all the ingredients with your fingertips and make crumbles. You must be light and quick!

 Beat the egg in a bowl, then add it to the crumbles and keep rubbing the ingredients with your fingertips until you have a nice and smooth ball of dough. Wrap it in a plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

 While the shortcrust is resting in the refrigerator, pour milk milk in a large pot and bring to a simmer with a lemon peel. When it starts simmering, add rice and let it cook completely (it will depend on the kind of rice you chose: it must be thoroughly cooked, soft and sticky). Remove from the heat and stir in 3 tablespoons of sugar. Let it cool down completely.

 When the rice is cold, add 2 egg yolks and 3 tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon of liqueur as well. Stir well with a wooden spoon until it is well blended. Whip egg whites and fold them gently into the rice mixture.

 Roll the pastry out and line a round baking tin (26-28 cm/ 10,2-11 in wide) with it: roll out the pastry to 5mm thickness and line bottom and sides of the mold, leaving some extra pastry on the sides. Pour in the rice mixture. Bake for about 40 minutes in a preheated oven (170°C)

 Let it cool down completely and dust it with icing sugar before serving.

Not the same old cabbage - Fresh Cabbage Salad With Red Bell Pepper, Olives, Green Chili and Basil

 Although the summer isn't officially over here in Italy, I can feel a slight whiff of Autumn in the air. It makes me feel both sad and good because summer has passed far to quickly for my taste, did it really happen? Or maybe it is just my own fault, being a person who lives very much in the present, I tend to forget or rather not re-live moments of the past and though it is good to live in the nowness of things, it sadly makes the past evaporate far too quickly. The usual positive and negative aspects of things.

 Anyway, to me cabbage is an autumn and winter vegetable but I really prefer it in late summer/early autumn while it is fresh and has a certain crispy smoothness to it if that is a possible combination. Slicing cabbage very thin while it is still fresh rally makes a change to the usual cabbage salad or coleslaw where the cabbage usually is a bit stiff and unfriendly unless it has been dropped into boiling water for a short while. But why work more than necessary when you don't have too, it is far easier to slice it threadlike.

And before I forget it, Paper Chef is on this weekend and the ingredients are quite normal this time so do take a look and cook up a dish for us, check out dates and what to do here.

 FRESH CABBAGE SALAD WITH RED BELL PEPPER, OLIVES, GREEN CHILI AND BASIL

cabbage, if it is fresh it's better

a sweet red bell pepper

green chili, not to hot but with a certain bite

olives, I prefer black ones

fresh basil, finely ripped or chopped

salt

lemon juice

extra virgin olive oil

 Slice the cabbage really thin, preferably with a mandolin. Take out the core and the seeds from the bell pepper and do the same with it. Repeat that with the green chili pepper and you have finished with the slicing part.

 Add as many olives and as much basil you feel like. Salt it and then after a squeeze of lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil you mix the whole salad throughly and serve it.

Children's food for grownups - Chocolate Semolina Dessert With Cinnamon and Honey-glazed Walnuts

I sneaked this little dish into my photo schedule the other day because I felt that I needed to do something for me, my own stuff and not only dishes created by others and following the visual wishes of others. So now when I am having a short break before the madness starts again, I will try to do my own work here. It is great having lots of work obviously but as I discussed with my friend Bron Marshall (who is busy working on a new issue of her online magazine), you do need time to do your own things in order to get back at least some trace of creativity in your mind. Right now I am looking through food magazines, tearing or cutting out the photos I like to then put them in my image collector. Yesterday I was looking through all the images I have collected that somehow has struck me in one way or another and I felt very small indeed, there are certain food photographers that have that genius streak that makes them create images that I can look and look at without getting tired.  

 Two of my children don't like milk while the third drinks it for them all. But that obviously doesn't help the unwilling ones, they still need to get the goodness that is contained in the milk so I have learnt to disguise it as well as it goes. Semolina with chocolate and milk has been very successful with the son and not long ago I realized that with a little help it could be transformed in a little comfort dessert!

 CHOCOLATE SEMOLINA DESSERT WITH CINNAMON AND HONEY-GLAZED WALNUTS

4 servings

200 ml/ 0,85 cup semolina flours, the coarser type 

900 ml/ 3,8 cups milk, I use whole fat but you can use other kinds

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3-4 tblsp sugar. Or more. Or less.

200 g / 7 oz good quality dark chocolate broken into pieces

honey-glazed walnuts, roughly chopped. I glaze mine the easiest way (drizzle walnuts with honey and put them in medium warm oven to dry/glaze) but there are lots of recipes out there if you want to do it the proper way.

a small pinch of salt

 Mix semolina, sugar, cinnamon and milk in a pan and heat it up stirring all the time. After a few minutes cooking, add the chocolate and mix until completely melted. Don't cook too long or it gets too stodgy, go for a more fluid feel.

 Put the chocolate semolina in small bowls and top with the walnuts. I also added some chocolate flakes