Food Photographer

I've recently been doing food shots for a couple of hotels and restaurants and it's been really cool. So yesterday morning and then today at lunch time I got a bee in my bonnet and just felt like shooting some of the things that Dan and I have been cooking. It's been a seriously lazy weekend - one of my last free weekends before the wedding season hits in earnest and apart from going to a friend's birthday on Friday I've done as little as humanly possible . . . except eat, cook and watch movies. And take the occasional food photo.

So yesterday I woke early and decided to make flapjacks. First I made coffee and then I did flapjacks. Dan normally does the flapjacks in our household. While I'm a pretty good cook I absolutley suck at baking, or baking type cooking . . . it scares me and flapjacks scare me. It was a moment of bravery that led to the scaling of the flapjack mountain. Though, I did have help. Half way through preparations Dan woke from his deep slumber and slumped downstairs. Soon as I saw him I asked if he'd do the actual cooking and flipping of the flapjacks. And when they were done . . . they were just beautiful.

And the recipe comes from a cook book for children so I figured that even I should be able to get somewhere with it. 

At lunch time(ish) Dan's mom popped through. My mom-in-law rocks. She's the type of mom-in-law who pops round and brings food and goodies with her - which is especially fabulous if you're having a lazy as possible weekend and you don't want to leave the house more than what's absolutely, utterly necessary. She brought with her bread, chocolate (yumm), doughnuts and fillet.

There's a tradition in Dan's household that on your birthday you get fillet steak. Specifically, you get old man steak. Which is flambed in brandy and served with a cream, mushroom and rosemary sauce that's had the fillety flambed juices added to it. I once got the recipe for it from Pegs (mom-in-law) but I've subsequently lost it. It was Dan's dad's birthday and anniversary of his death recently (he died ten days after his birthday) and I wondered if that's why Pegs didn't bring us fillet steak (even on a subconscious level). So this afternoon I made my homage to old man steak. You'll see the pics for it aren't great . . . but I wasn't going to stuff about getting the shot right when that was waiting for me to tuck in.

The fillet was magnificent (done just over rare) and the mash was gorgeous: while the potatoes were boiling I added two teaspoons of Dijon mustard and a table spoon of honey. The sauce was loosely based on the old man steak sauce and also loosely based on a sauce my Dad made last weekend. I fried button mushrooms in butter with garlic and rosemary sprigs. Once the mushrooms had released their liquid I added Nomu's liquid beef stock (Nomu stock absolutely rocks) and then I put in about 2/3s of a tub of cream and just let it boil away. It probably could've boiled down for longer but I was hungry and Dan was hungry so I started the steaks and oh my god they were good!!

 You can see more pics from my lazy weekend in this blog post on my site, and there are more food pics that I've shot here. Enjoy :) .