I lasted almost exactly one year doing my monthly food photo reviews before I missed one. To be honest it lasted a lot longer than I would have guessed from the beginning. 

Since December it’s felt like either my apartment just isn’t set up right to shoot or I don’t have time to plate and get everything in order. In addition to that, because I’m shooting without lights, I need to set up during the day. When work gets busy that presents a problem. It kept some effort to keep it going as long as I did and I think I’m happy with the result. 

My cooking has improved immensely and, oddly enough, that’s part of the reason I’ve found it hard to keep up with my image-making. I’m doing a lot of cooking on the go when the light isn’t right or making dishes that taste good but don’t necessarily warrant a photo. How many pictures of a basic salad or pasta where the secret is really in the dressing or sauce does a person need?

I also felt like I’d hit a plateau in my photographs. The baseline was about there, but I saw a need to take the next step. Again, how many photos of a plate slightly askew in a frame does a person need? I think I’m at a point where I’ll either need to step up my plating or start expanding the frame and doing more table / scene setting to improve. Of course, I haven’t done that in any of these recent shots, but that’s all down the road. Right now I’m just starting to get back on track.

Charred Cabbage with Creamy Miso Sauce

Top Chef 20’s Danny Garcia had a couple of recipes featured in the December issue of Food and Wine including a charred cabbage with anchovies and parmesan. It looked really good, but I just never been able to eat anchovies. My usual go-to is to substitute with fish sauce where possible, but I ended up going in a different direction and just kind of winging it for this one. I remember first making this miso sauce for a mushroom flatbread recipe a while back. There’s something I enjoy so much about watching the consistency of cream change as you whisk miso into it.

Asparagus Bibimbap

Recently I’ve been cooking recipes from Jang written by Mingoo Kang, Joshua David Stein, and Nadia Cho. Over the last year, I haven’t done a ton of blanching but some of my favorite recipes from this book involve the process. The clean feeling of simple vegetables with a dressing is such a welcome change after I dipped too hard into the buttery and creamy recently. 

When I saw the picture of the shaved white asparagus in the cookbook I knew I had to try this one. It’s such a nice visual effect.

Frisee and Tofu

Honestly, this was supposed to be another recipe out of Jang but it calls for Endive and I had none. I had some frisee that fit from a taste perspective but was never going to work the way they wanted it plated.

The tofu starts with a simple vegetable broth. You crisp the tofu in a pan before marinating it in the broth. Crispy tofu has such a nice texture to it and I was surprised at how well it held up in the broth.

Marinated Zucchini

Ok, I’m not going to lie, this one didn’t quite come out quite right on the flavor side, but I liked the pictures, so here we are.

Pappardelle with Mustard Greens and Beans

When I first made this recipe, it came out too bitter for my liking and honestly wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing. One of my go tos lately has been zesting citrus and I had an extra lemon lying around, so I used that and the brightness helped out immensely. Last, I wanted to add some color and had this squeeze bottle of gochugaru chili oil from Algae Cooking Club lying around. It really helped round things out.