Flavor alchemy

I want to improve my photography as much as my cooking. Nika, from Nikas Culinaria and Curt from Bucky’s Barbecue and Bread have teamed up to develop an on-line course on food photography. The first lesson is up and it starts from the basics.

Something apparently simple, as adding light to a scene with a flash can be tricky. A pile of almonds may be well lit, but the crannies and the background may be dark. Our brain is not fooled by the mostly well lit image and associates the image with what it would see at night with a good flashlight. The brain then thinks of the situation as dark.

I often admire the well lit images on the web and wonder if they are produced with multiple artificial light sources or a light tent. I need to take twenty to thirty shots before I get a reasonable (forget good) shot. I need the course.

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To glimpse at dinners past look into the The Deipnosophists. Written in the second century during Roman times, Athenaeus, the author, used a dinner among friends as a setting to discuss matters literary, philosophical and culinary. At one point one of his guests challenges:

My friend, a great deal has been said already
By many men on the art of cookery
So either tell me something new yourself
Unknown to former cooks, or spare my ears

The Ideas in Food blog from chefs Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa would meet the challenge from Deipnosophists. They are prolific (the site image is half a month of postings) and there is novelty in every post. The cooking is cutting edge, adopting techniques from molecular gastronomy and the food industry. Occasionally there is a recipe, more often inspiration. My first experience with molecular gastronomy (before I even knew the label) was at Clio in Boston, where Alex and Aki once worked. The food at Clio was wonderful, and so are the posts (and I am sure the food) from Ideas in Food.

There are over 12 billion web pages. And that excludes the deep web. Finding cool pages is hard, and there are web sites that help you out by aggregating other pages. Find a site with tastes like yours (or better, cooler than yours) and you have a great bookmark.

Cool hunting started out in 2003 as a collection design related web pages and posts and has grown into a well visited site with postings on fashion, art, and design. And threr are also posts on food. At Cool hunting art and design are seen as essential in food preparation and consumption and in communicating recipes. Recent posts include a well produced video, on how to make your own tofu or a contest for tickets to chef Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations TV show.

Josh Rubin (the founder), Evan Orensten (definitely a foodie), and Ami Kealoha (foodie by birth) have a site that’s easy hunting for foodies.