So I became a food stylist..
An email arrived at 7pm last night from a newspaper called La Prensa in Panama, asking for a photo for the Tod Mun fish cake I did for our Menu for Hope. The story, as I was told, would run this Saturday, so she needed a high resolution photo by the morning!
I haven't got any photo(!), the files were corrupted, so I had to make the dish in a hurry. Drove out to May Wah on Clement to find the ingredients, only to find the market closing down and couldn't really get what I needed. So I ended up scrounging around the fridge to see what I could do to at least make the dish look good, never mind how it tastes.
So I got a piece of fish, mashed it up. Found a bit of leftover curry paste from a couple weeks back, never mind that it's a wrong sort, it's red enough! Mixed them together. Had no long beans, so I used a few snow peas. Found some lime leaves in the freezer, so cut a few in chiffonade, and in they went in the paste.
The ajaad salad also got made in a hurry, didn't even bother to taste anything.
The oil got heated up, fried three lumps of fish cakes, looked good enough, so the rest went into the dump.
Set up some light, snapped a few shots, off to Photoshop to check the quality, back to the light to adjust a couple things, snappy snap some more. This time they looked fine, well as good as it was gonna get anyhow. So off they went to Panama in an email attachment. Look, ma, I'm a food stylist!!
Honestly, they were the most disgusting Tod Mun I've ever tasted! ick...yuck....
Pim, in case you never received the maga on the mail, I can send you scanned images of the article pages (because I only kept 1 magazine!), so let me know.
Posted by: Melissa | Sep 4, 2005 2:50:59 PM
Hi Pim, you know, I never saw this posting until now!!! cant believe I missed it :) Did you ever received the copy of the ELLAS maga I sent by snail mail?
Posted by: Melissa | Sep 4, 2005 12:54:10 PM
Pim, your recipe was posted in the Ellas magazine of La Prensa as part of the article from Menu for Hope. It isn't dated.
http://www.ellasvirtual.com/columna/cocina.htm
Posted by: andrew | Feb 27, 2005 7:31:09 AM
Referring to the Observer article of course. Scrounging stuff out of the fridge and freezer is a regular occurrence and the height of improv at ours.
Posted by: anthony | Feb 22, 2005 6:07:43 AM
Actually I wrote off being able to take food photos without a large degree of artifice and that's crap. It's designed to let food sit around all day, look better than it actually is, and compensate for somebody's idea of what constitutes perfection. Not unlike fashion shoots really.
Posted by: anthony | Feb 22, 2005 6:03:48 AM
don't worry about what is tastes like Pim. The Observer article shows that tricks are used all the time: like PVC glue instead of milk and asprin added to champagne to make it fizz more..!
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1340193,00.html
Posted by: charlene | Feb 21, 2005 7:01:36 AM
Ha ha ha. That is so funny. No one will ever ask me to become a food stylist. Do you think there is a career in it ?. At least with the curry paste you can always get more from ebay !!!!.
Posted by: Matthew | Feb 21, 2005 2:17:28 AM
Whatever works, Pim, whatever works.
Posted by: Barbara | Feb 19, 2005 5:18:10 AM
Ciao Pim,
I think the photos look great. Very cool experience. Did you get a copy of the story from Panama in return??
Posted by: Ore | Feb 19, 2005 1:40:47 AM
They do look lovely, though! Great job. How exciting!
Posted by: lisa | Feb 18, 2005 12:30:36 PM
Hey, what's going on in Panama? I crossed tracks with Melissa from CookingDiva food blog based out of Panama. She asked me to do a writeup of an image I sent her. Supposed to be up today some time, maybe. Panama is sneaky.
Biggles
Posted by: Dr. Biggles | Feb 18, 2005 12:23:46 PM