A Smorgasbord of Dancers...

Apologies to the readers who want more recipes - there WILL be more in future, don't worry - but here's some more of the rich fare that has lately lured my eye away from the kitchen.

I consider it 'food for the soul'...!





















My long-time friends Dr Richard James Allen and Dr Karen Pearlman of the Physical TV Company invited me to witness the next stage of their creative process, a documentary film about Dance called: Doesn't Fit into a Box, inviting me to take stills photographs during the filming.

Over the last few years, Karen has been doing some Post-Doctoral Research in the Dance-Film area through a Fellowship with an organisation called Critical Path, based in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney. Through that research she says she didn't so much come up with answers, but rather - as is often the way when delving deeper into things - discovered still more questions.

So in this stage of the documentary-making, Karen was posing her questions to a diverse range of professional dancers and choreographers, asking:

"Where does Dance come from?"

"Where does Dance go when it leaves you?"

- and the ultimate existential question - "What is Dance for?"

It was fascinating to listen to the varied responses of the professional dancers and choreographers who were being interviewed. Their expertise ranged from classically trained ballet, to flamenco, to indigenous performance, to Japanese Butoh, to yoga and martial-arts, to contemporary experimental cross-media arts that weave movement and text and light and voice together into dance.

Sitting very still for 20 minutes at a time - not a pin may drop during filming! - over a twelve-hour day and focusing intently on the responses of these professional artists was an intense meditation that made me reflect on my own creative practice.

And I found myself coming up with my own responses to Karen's Questions:

"Creativity comes from the air;
through the crackling impulse of the thoughts and experiences we share with each other;
though the moments of inspiration that we scatter like seeds from our flowering;
through the enlightenment that the burning of our flame sheds around us...

When it passes through us, creativity continues -
in the lives we have touched, in the minds we have changed - it goes back into the air.

And 'what is creativity for?'

- well, you might as well ask:

'what is breathing for?'..."

Here is the view out the window of the dance studio as dusk fell. It had rained heavily throughout the day, but as you can see, all clouds have a silver - or in this case golden - lining.













Yum-oh!

Out & About...

I've been a bit slack in the Food Photography department lately... not because I haven't been eating - there's still been plenty of yum-oh in the tum-oh - just no time to photograph it!

For the last few weekends my camera's gaze has lifted from the dinner table and my mind has been occupied elsewhere, captivated by learning a host of new technical skills, as well as embracing new photographic opportunities outside the kitchen.

Shooting in RAW has been one of the technical things I've been exploring, bringing an appreciable difference (I think?!) to the quality of my finished images.

Another has been getting hold of a new lens - the Zuiko 12-60mm wide-angle zoom, which has opened a whole new window on my photographic world.

I've also been shooting in a whole variety of fascinating and (gasp!) 'non-food' areas, such as: weekend travel, stills for a contemporary dance documentary, a Buddhist garden centre, a Catholic christening and promo shots for a pregnant yoga-teacher colleague... (you can see I'm a pluralist at heart!)

For now, here's a collage of some pics from a wintry day-trip to Shell Harbour, down near Wollongong on the South Coast of NSW, about an hour-and-a-half from Sydney.






















And a cup of hot soy-milk with chocolate stripes on top - just to show I haven't entirely abandoned Food Photography!

Yum-oh!

Apple Pie for the Gluten-Free Gourmet

Yummy, scrummy, sweet & juicy, this is one is a winner.

Yesterday's winter rain made it a perfect day for baking, warm and cosy in the kitchen, the smells of crispy apples and tart limes melding with spicy cinnamon and the mellow caramel sweetness of the palm-sugar. Ah...

The recipe below uses a lovely gluten-free shortcrust pastry, but you can use your own favourite pastry recipe, or even use pre-made pastry sheets.






















Apple Pie Ingredients:
6 Granny Smith cooking apples
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1 teaspoon mixed spice
2 tablespoons palm sugar
1/2 a lime, juiced and zested
melted butter to glaze
extra sugar to sprinkle on top
shortcrust pastry - see Gluten-Free recipe below, or use your own favourite pastry recipe.

Method:
Prepare the pastry - see recipe below - making both a top and bottom sheet. Grease a pie dish or individual ramekins with melted butter and press a rolled pastry sheet into the dish to line it.

Peel, core and slice the apples into a mixing bowl and sprinkle with the spices, the palm sugar and the lime juice and zest, stirring to coat. Tip the apples into the lined pie dish, piling them up a little, as they will melt down during cooking.

Cover the apples with the second pastry disc and pinch off the excess around the edges. Press all around the edges with a greased fork or a spoon handle, to seal and make a decorative edge. Slice an 'x' in the centre of the pie to let the steam out during cooking.

Brush the top of the pie with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a hot oven for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Serve hot with creamy goats yoghurt.

Yum-oh!

Gluten-Free Shortcrust Pastry.

1 cup glutinous rice flour
2 cups brown-rice flour (or use white)
75g butter
1 egg

water

extra rice-flour for kneading

Method:

Sift the flours together and cut the cold butter into the mix in small chunks. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flours until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Take care not to over-rub, as the heat of your hands may melt the butter - any larger pieces left will incorporate later when the pastry dough is kneaded.

Stir in the lightly beaten eggs and add just enough water to make the dough come together in a ball. At this stage, the dough will still be quite crumbly, so kneading is essential. This may seem very strange if you are used to making conventional pastry where the golden rule is to handle lightly, but gluten-free pastry differs in that it actually benefits from being handled.

Lightly dust a cold surface with extra rice-flour & knead the dough for 1-2 minutes, adding as much extra flour as needed to prevent the dough sticking to the board. The pastry will change in texture, becoming much smoother and more pliable.

To roll out, divide the dough into two portions – one for the top and one for the bottom – and roll into two spheres. Lightly dust the surface and the rolling pin with rice-flour and roll out using smooth short strokes. When you are ready to place the pastry in the pie dish, use your rolling pin for pick-up and transfer.

Another method is to roll the dough between two sheets of baking paper for ease of handling.

Market Day #1: Winter Seasonal Eating

The 1st of June marks the Australian calendar’s official start of winter, so this post is dedicated to seasonal produce, with a list below of what’s in season now.

Eating in-season ensures we consume vegetables and fruits at their peak, when their nutritional stores are at their richest. Winter especially is the time to focus on ‘the foods of storage’ – the roots, nuts, grains and seeds, where plants store their densest nutrients. Winter-greens are also vital for providing nourishment and invigoration.

Cooking methods such as: baking, steaming, simmering and stewing are winter specialties, using warming spices such as: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger.

I can feel an Apple Pie coming on…! (will blog that tomorrow.)

This week, I tried to do a “Rick Lee” with my grocery shopping… I’ve a long way to go before I reach his level of mastery, but I'm planning to practice and practice each time I go shopping and hopefully time will bring improvement. You can see my efforts below. I had a bit of hassle at a couple of supermarkets, where they won’t allow photography of the produce – heaven’s WHATEVER might I do with my humble pictures of vegetables – industrial espionage??? But the lovely people at Hong Phuoc Vietnamese Grocery on Illawarra Rd in Marrickville were very happy for me to immortalise their beautiful, fresh vegetables. So I know where I will be doing most of my shopping in my future lunch-time forays… (get the hint, mean multinationals…?!)

Think Globally, Act Locally!!

SEASONAL PRODUCE for JUNE – EARLY WINTER:
(Sourced from Campion and Curtis,
Melbourne Food and Wine Specialists)

June - Early Winter Vegetables
Asian greens (bok-choi, choi-sum, gai-lan, wong-bok)
brassicas (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, turnip), avocados, beetroot, carrots, celeriac, celery, fennel, garlic, ginger, horseradish, jerusalem artichokes, leeks, okra, olives, onions, parsnip, peas, potato, pumpkin, rhubarb, shallot, silverbeet, spinach, swede, sweet potato, witlof.

June - Early Winter Fruit.
apples (Bonza, Braeburn, Cox's Orange Pippins, Fuji, Gala, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Jonagold, Jonathan, Lady Williams, Mutso, Pink Lady, Red Delicious, Snow, Sundowner) Citrus (grapefruit, lemons, limes, mandarins, Navel oranges), custard apple, champagne-melon, kiwifruit, nuts (chestnut - hazelnut – walnut), pears (Beurre Bosc - Josephine – Nashi - Packham), persimmon, pomelo, quince.















Grapefruit #1.















Grapefruit #2.















A Pear that sat too long in the sun?













Sweet sweet-potatoes.















Garlic Stalks.






















Asian Greens: Kang Kung - tasty stirfried in salty-bean-curd sauce.

















Lemongrass stalks.



















The back-end of some beautiful Bok Choi.

Thank you again to the beautiful people at Hong Phuoc Grocery on Illawarra Rd in Marrickville for letting me photograph in your shop - your kindness and patience is always much appreciated.

Yum-oh!

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Celestial Black-Turtle Beans

Always-better-the-next-day...

A warning to the fast-food enthusiast: this recipe is not fast!
In fact, it is the classic slow-food recipe, best left simmering gently on the back burner all afternoon. Perfect for the colder winter days and packed full of nourishment, these Celestial Black Turtle Beans create a warm feeling throughout the whole house as they bubble gently, releasing their goodness and aroma.

Based on a recipe by Celestina Swanson of Swansisters Fine Teas. http://www.swansisters.com/blog

Celestial Black Turtle Beans Ingredients:
2 cups black turtle beans
10 cm piece of wakame seaweed
1 onion finely chopped
3 anchovies (optional)
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups pumpkin, chopped
1 small carrot, sliced (or optional: stamped into celestial star-shapes)
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon Mexican red chilli powder
2 tablespoons salt, added to taste
water, lots of water.

Method:
Soak beans over-night in fresh water with broken pieces of wakame seaweed. Beans cook faster, are more digestible and have a creamier texture when pre-soaked and the seaweed neutralises the enzyme that causes the gas that beans have a reputation for. Rinse the beans a couple of times during soaking and discard the purple soaking water.

When ready to cook, generously cover beans with fresh water and cook on low heat for 2-3 hours, adding extra water if necessary. When the beans begin to soften, add all other ingredients and continue to cook until creamy inside but still unbroken. The cumin especially improves the digestibility and enhances the flavour of the beans. Add more water as necessary as older beans tend to need longer cooking times and all beans vary in size.

This is the prefect recipe for a slow cooker, where you can 'set and forget' for a whole afternoon of simmering. And like many of these kinds of recipes, these beans are even better the next day.

When beans are ready to serve, garnish with fresh Avocado and Coriander Salsa and enjoy.












Avocado Salsa Ingredients:
1 avocado, diced
1 small red onion, sliced finely
1 small tomato, diced finely
1 cup fresh coriander, chopped roughly
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon of carob molasses or brown sugar

Gently scatter the avocado, onion and tomato together in a serving bowl. Combine garlic, lemon juice and carob molasses into a dressing and drizzle over the avocado mix. Serve immediately with the Celestial Black-Turtle Beans.

Yum-oh!

Rising Sun Miso Soup

Something Vital to Greet the Day.

The morning sun streaming in through the kitchen window was so glorious, I just HAD to photograph something... And it had to be something quick, as la luz del sol (the light of the sun) wasn't waiting around.

A quick look in the cupboard produced a bag of dried seaweed that I'd gotten at Alfalfa House, the Wholefoods Co-Op in Enmore.
A rustle through the fridge found a block of Earth Star Organic Tofu and a jar of Shiro Miso. Perfect: Japan - The Land Of The Rising Sun - is synonymous with Miso soup and this accompaniment forms an essential part of almost every Japanese meal, almost as ubiquitous as green tea. The picture of solar goodness would be completed with the pot of sunny yellow chrysanthemums I'd bought yesterday, when out shopping with Kaitlyn, from the Vietnamese grocer in Marrickville.





















Miso Soup Ingredients:
(Serves 1 - multiply accordingly)

1 tablespoon of miso paste
1 teaspoon powdered Dashi (Bonito flakes)
1 soup-bowl of boiling water
2 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked & sliced
a few pieces of dried seaweed, soaked
silken tofu, sliced in 'Rising Sun' circles
green shallots, finely sliced
a splash of tamari, to taste

Method:

Mix Miso & Dashi with a little water to make a smooth, runny paste in the bottom of each serving bowl. Assemble other ingredients in the bowl and top with boiling water.

Serve immediately, with Temaki-Nori Hand-roll.
(Recipe to follow in a future Blog...)


A Note about Miso:

Miso pastes are made from grains & pulses that have been fermented with a live pro-biotic culture that assists digestion. To preserve the health benefits of the live culture, miso paste should never be boiled.

Miso pastes range from the palest blond Shiro-Miso made from white rice, to the red Aka-Miso made from barley, through to a dark & chunky black-soybean Hatcho-Miso.

Eggs For Breakfast

And a Visit to the PhotoShop Beauty Parlour...

It’s the terrible irony of the food photographer in-the-making: I woke up all excited about exploring my new camera and lenses, but was so hungry I didn’t feel like I could wait hours fiddling around with ingredients. That’s what a food-stylist is for, hey. But the fresh organic eggs I had picked up from the market, along with the Organic Rye loaf from the local IGA agreed to collaborate: I could have my cake (or eggs-on-toast-for-breakfast in this case) and eat it too. Or so it seemed…

You will understand my disappointment then, when my eggs didn’t exactly turn out looking like Marie Claire… They did in fact look pretty awful, full of bubbles and pock-marks and a bit green around the gills from where I had improperly set the white-balance in my camera. Not something you'd want to take home to meet your mother.

I surmised that this happened because:

a) I’m not a regular maker or consumer of fried eggs on toast,
(I like Omelets better, or Fried Rice With Egg)
and
b) because I didn’t manage the temperature of the frying pan very well – still getting to know the stove in the new studio kitchen.

Suffice it to say, they looked like they didn’t egg-xactly get out of bed sunny-side up…

















I wept quietly into my cup of tea:
“I’ll never become a food photographer, what was I thinking??”

Nevertheless, it dawned slowly on me that perhaps the food one sees pictures of in magazines may arrive at the studio in a less-than perfectly groomed state. So I decided, after eating my poor benighted eggs – at least they tasted good: the free-range chickens had held up their end of the bargain – that a trip to the Photoshop Beauty Parlour might be just the trick for my two googies.

Ten minutes on the Cloning Tool, a bit of tweaking with the Colour-Balance and voila! Behold, gorgeous eggs, sunny-side up, smiling for the camera.

Pumpkin Soup

Visiting the Orange Grove Organic Markets in Rozelle, the Autumn pumpkins looked just so perfect, so seasonal... dusky skins and just the right rap-rap tone when we knocked our knuckles against their sides...


Pumpkin Soup Recipe:
(100% Vegetarian / Vegan)


1 onion
2 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons of Stones Green Ginger wine
1 pumpkin
water
salt & pepper
parsley


Chop onion coarsely and fry lightly in vegetable oil in a large saucepan. When onion begins to turn slightly golden and the bottom of the pot is browning slightly, add the Stones Green Ginger wine and stir to deglaze the flavours from the bottom of the pot, cooking until the wine is almost evaporated off.


Peel the pumpkin and chop into chunks, then add to the onions, with enough water to just cover. Bring to boil and then simmer until the pumpkin is tender. Blend with a stick-mixer until smooth.


Serve hot with crusty rye-bread. Garnish with chopped parsley and season with Maldon sea-salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.


Non-vegans could add a dollop of goat’s yogurt.


Enjoy. Yum-oh!

Zucchini Muffins with Date & Almond cream

The first weekend's Adventures in Food Photography.

Deciding what to make for the
inaugural photo-shoot with the new camera was quite a decision. In the end, I chose to go 'back in time', settling on some baking - making these yummy little afternoon-tea cup-cakes. They were first made for us by my friend Phillip's mum when we were about eight years old - she wouldn't tell us what was in them until after we ate them - picky eaters that we were, we couldn't believe something so delicious had vegetables in it!

In starting out on this project, the ethical considerations seem equally important as the aesthetic, so I decided that we should
"Go Green" from go to whoa, leaving Petroleum out of the equation as much as possible. Riding my bicycle to the shops seemed a good start - and cycling up the hill to the Norton Street Grocer in Leichhardt was a good way to ground my excitement over the possibilities of the project in the here and now. I had already had more than one restless night, dreaming of the wonders of the Olympus E510 and the lenses that I eventually settled on...


- one-pedal stroke at a time -
- one recipe at a time -

that could become
my new Mantra.



The ethic and aesthetic pleasures continue at the green-grocers - selecting the most vibrant looking zucchinis, the freshest organic eggs, picking up a selection of paper muffin-cases from the Italian catering store, before pedalling the ingredients back to the studio to whiz together...

So now I present to you:

Zucchini Muffins






















Zucchini Muffins Ingredients:
(Wheat-free / Gluten-free / Dairy free)
3 eggs
1 cup rice-bran oil
1/2 cup rapidura
(dehydrated sugar-cane juice; ordinary sugar will do)
3 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
2 cups rice flour
1 cup sticky-rice flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons bicarbonate soda
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts


Method:

Beat eggs until foamy. Add rice-bran oil, rapidura sugar and vanilla and beat until thick and mousse-like.

Stir in the grated zucchini and fold in the sifted flours, baking powder, bicarbonate soda, cinnamon and walnuts.

Pour into muffin tins 2/3 full - they rise well - and bake at 250 degrees for approx 10 - 15 Min's, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack and ice with Date and Almond Cream.


Date and Almond Cream
(sugar-free & deliciously sweet)

1 cup raw blanched almonds
5 Turkish dates, seeds and skins removed
juice of 1 lime
water

Blend on high speed in food processor until smooth and creamy, adding just enough water to make a smooth paste. Ice the cakes with a palate knife, or decorate using a piping bag.

The Results:

I tried out a few different presentation styles, in paper cases / without paper-casing - not sure which one would make the best photo. And for sure I would put the CWA to shame with my dodgy piping technique... oh well, always good to have room for improvement!

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Welcome to Yumoh

Adventures in Food & Photography - the journey begins!

Hello Fellow Foodies,
Welcome to Yumoh...!
We decided to create this blog
to document our ongoing Adventures in Food,
Photography & Creativity.

After much excitement researching cameras and equipment and techniques and styles - I took the plunge and upgraded to DSLR, which is a journey in itself - and we are finally ready to throw our hat in the ring and blog the results of our creative efforts.

When I say 'we', it's me and my friends - mostly me taking the pictures, in collaboration with my sweet and clever friends acting as 'guest stylists', muses, kind critics and general sharers in the milieu of all kinds of creative endeavour and expertise.

We have a loosely defined aim to work towards a cook-book for publication, but as with life, it is the Journey that matters as much as the final outcome. So what you will find in the e-pages on this site is a document of the creative development of our style of recipes and image-making. Besides recipes, there will also be occasional posts regarding creative practice, documenting the technical and artistic discoveries we make a long the way, as well as sharing pictures of the things that inspire our vision.

Our Philosophy?
Food is primal; along with shelter it is a basic need for survival and is an inalienable human right. But beyond survival, cooking and eating with the 'tribe' - our friends and family from around the world - is fun, creative, pleasurable, joyful and life-affirming - that's basically the idea behind this blog: sharing really good food is what it's all about.

The recipes you will find here arise from the kitchens of friends and family, day-to-day in our houses and apartments in Sydney Australia and from around the world when we venture further a-field on journeys and adventures. No fancy studios and no trickery with the styling: just passionate people who love cooking and creativity and getting together to share the fun.

The recipes are gathered from diverse sources, from the many different cultures that our friends arise from. What unites these recipes however, are the universal values of cooking really good food. By the notion of “Really Good”, we mean not only food that looks and tastes good, but food that is truly good for us: good for our bodies and good for the planet.

One of my favourite books from the 80's furnished this quote:

There are two Mantras:

Yum & Yuck

- Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker. 1980

Eating well and enjoying the good health that follows really does depend on being able to distinguish between what's good for us and what is not - knowing the difference between Yum and Yuck.

But as Michael Pollan wrote in The Omnivore's Dilemma, this is not always obvious with modern pre-packaged food and mass-marketing of junk "foods".

So we think it is doubly important to share ideas for producing, cooking and eating real food with each other, to pass on the wisdom that has been shared with us by our families and friends from diverse and long-standing cultures around the world. We like to 'walk-the-talk' and really put into these principles of sustainability into practice – using organic ingredients and seasonal produce, sourced locally wherever possible and processed without artificial chemical additives, cooking and eating food that is really, truly Good.

We hope you enjoy the journey as much as we do in making these meals to share and we welcome your comments and contributions.

kindest regards, Kyle