My plate looks fat! - Ricotta and white bean salad

When I read about Donna Hay challenge at JungleFrog-cooking blog I was so excited. About a year ago I found a Flickr group that did the same thing. I tried only once and then the challenge was over. So this time I knew I needed to get myself together and do my best.

How does it work?
Basically a photo is picked every month from Donna Hay magazine (this month's photo is by Chris Court). The challenge is to replicate the photo. So you make a dish, style it and take a picture. Sounds easy, doesn't it? It's great way to learn. Trying to achieve exact output gives you a knowledge what elements of which elements of photography and styling are your Achilles' heel.
I read a few comments by people who feared that this kind of challenge maight teach you copycat, and thought you should find your own style. I don't think there is risk.
For beginners like me, it's a great way to learn the basics and explore the food photography.
The photo and recipe that Simone has chosen looked pretty simple. After some chopping in the beginning, you could focused on taking photos. I knew that working with natural light would be tricky, but I didn't think that it would be such a challenge!
It was a cloudy afternoon. I set up my boyfriend's new tripod. I put a plate (that I bought specially for this photo shot) and a fork on my white cupboard (which I brought in from my bedroom). I took the first photo. And... my plate looked fat! It wasn't oblong; it was almost circle. Did I take the picture from right angle? I don't know, it should probably have been taken from a more overhead angle. But I focused on the light. Surprisingly, there was too much light and shadows were too dark. I put the salad on the plate and decided to fight. I used some white foam to lighten up the shadows, and it worked, but just a little bit. I changed the position of the plate. I changed the position of the fork. The fork reflected the light. It shouldn't! How can you convince a fork not too do it? I took plenty of photos. There wasn't much difference.
In post-processing the light got me one more time. When is white white? Which white is whiter? Donna's photo is slightly blue, but tomatoes still pop up with their red colours. Grrr...

So you see, that wasn't easy. I'm still left with many unanswered questions.
Am I happy with the result? I would say not really. I'm glad I've tried, but I should have tried more angles, and I could have taken pictures at different times to check how light was changing. I should find something to defuse light, I don't even have white sheet! I like  the photo. I wouldn't have chosen this kind of stylisation by myself.
And what do you think about my work? Any tips? 

Ricotta and white bean salad 
Recipe from Donna Hay
Serves 2

• 400 g cannellini beans (or white beans, 1 can)
• 1 red onion (small) 
• 30 g black olives (pitted and halved) 
• 1/4 cup flat leaf parsley (leaves only) 
• 1-2 red chili (small and sliced) 
• 125 g cherry tomatoes (halved) seasalt black pepper (cracked) 
• 100 g ricotta (fresh) 
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 
• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar 

Place the beans, onion, olives, parsley, chilli, tomato, salt and pepper in a bowl and toss gently to combine. Divide between serving plates and top with fresh ricotta.

Combine the oil and vinegar and spoon over the salad to serve.

Courgette, chilli and goat's cheese tart

I love tarts because they are so pretty. I love goat's cheese for its flavour. It was just our Saturday dinner. Nothing fancy. The chilli makes it more colourful and adds just a bit of spiciness.

Recipe from Bea's blog with my small changes.

Courgette, chilli and goat cheese tart
makes 28-cm tart


Crust

• 250 g all purpose flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 125 g cold butter, diced
• 3-4 Tbsp cold water

Filling

• approx. 300 g courgette (a medium one was enough)
• handful black olives, pitted
• a few dried tomatoes
• 1-2 cloves garlic
• a few stems of thyme 
• 150 g soft goat's cheese
• 80 g hard goat's cheese, grated
• 100-120 g yoghurt (depending on the cheese texture of the cheese)
• 2 eggs
• salt
• pepper
• one small chilli

Make the crust


Mix together the flour and salt. Add the butter.
With your hands, rub together the flour mixture with the butter cubes until the mixture forms small breadcrumbs. Alternatively, you can use a food processor for 10-12 second.
Add just enough water to hold the dough together and knead it quickly.
Don't overwork the dough.
Leave the dough in a fridge for at least 30 minutes (you can even prepare it 2-3 days before, or you can freeze it and store it for few months)

Make the filling

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan.

Wash and trim the courgette. Cut it in thin slices (around 2-3 mm).
Fry the courgette on the slightly greased pan for about 5 minutes (you just want to soften it a little). Season it with salt and let it cool down. 
Finely chop olives, tomatoes, garlic and thyme.
Mix both types of goat's cheese with the yoghurt, add the eggs. Add the chopped olives, tomatoes, garlic and thyme. Mix everything together. 
Season it with salt and pepper.

Finely chop the chilli and set it aside: you will use it as garnish (wash your hands after chopping the chilli, you might hurt yourself if you don't. Touching your eye with a chilli hand hurts!)

To assemble and bake the tart

Grease a 24-cm tart case with butter. Dust with flour. Set aside.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface until it covers the tart base and its sides. Transfer it gently into the pan. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pan. Prick the dough with a fork. Line the crust with parchment and fill with beans, and bake blind in the oven for 10 minutes (you can skip the beans, but it makes your crust more even).
Take the pan from the oven and pour the cheese filling onto the crust. At the top arrange the courgette slices. Sprinkle with chilli.
Bake for about 30 minutes until the crust edges are golden and the filling is cooked.
If the tart is turning brown too quickly cover it with tin foil or with parchment paper.
Let it cool for 10 minutes. You can garnish it with the thyme.
Enjoy!

Almond plum cake

You can say it's autumn without a doubt. I haven't seen much summer, but because it's my first summer in Ireland I didn't have high expectations.
Autumn is beautiful when it comes to colours. In Poland you can easily get a lot of different types of plums. I never really cared for the names, I just went to the market and picked the nicest looking ones. There were green, yellow, violet plums. I can probably get some of them here as well, but in shops I saw mostly Spanish plums. After baking they get this marvellous pink colour.

This cake was a surprise, just because you make it like a shortcrust, but it turns out be a soft and delicious treat in the end. I love cakes with crumbles on the top - this doesn't have them, and you know what? I don't care.
PS. My friend checked it and loved it.

From a blog White Plate

Almond plum cake

• 200 g all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt 
• 1 tsp orange zest, shredded  
• 100 g icing sugar
• 200 g cold butter, diced
• 1 egg yolk
• 300-400 g plums, pitted and cut into eights
• 1-2 Tbsp demerara sugar (granulated sugar will work as well and the amount of it depends on the sweetness of the plums)
• 30 g almond flakes (or slivered almonds)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan.
Line a 20x30 cm pan (23-26 cm springform will work as well) with parchment paper or lightly greased aluminium foil.
Mix together flour, baking powder, salt and lemon zest.
Add icing sugar, butter and egg yolk.
Knead the dough quickly. You can use a food processor. But don't overwork the dough, 2-3 minutes will be enough, it just has to hold together.
Press the dough in the pan.
Arrange the plums at the top of the dough (the skin should go at the bottom).
Sprinkle the plums with sugar and almonds.
Bake for 40-50 minutes, until golden.
Remove from the oven and leave it to cool.
You can sprinkle it with icing sugar if you like.

Irish food photography workshop

Ireland is like Wonderland for me, especially when it comes to food blogging. I have been to two bloggers meeting since I moved here and I didn’t attend any in Poland. I wrote about a trip to Eastern Seaboard Bar & Grill, but it a was very small meeting compared to this one. Last Friday Bord Bia (the organisation that promote Irish food in Ireland and worldwide) organised wonderful workshops.

There were about 45 food bloggers. You can imagine what a mess it was for me, I just started reading Irish food blogs, I couldn’t just come and say „I have been reading your blog for ages” rather „I found your blog yesterday, or maybe it was somebody else’s…”. You see, that’s not the best line to start conversation. But happily everybody was really nice and what was even nicer was that almost everybody brought some sweets, so you can imagine this lovely cookies’ heaven. Luckily, a few people had the brilliant idea of putting them into small packages.

The speakers and my notes

Donal Skehan – also known as Irish Jamie Oliverem. He published two books and runs the TV show Kitchen Hero. He is funny and full of energy. In short time, he managed to talk about all the basics about food photography that every blogger should know.

• Get inspired by cookbooks, food magazines, websites like tastespoting, or Polish equivalent wykrywacz smaku. It’s not about copying, more about finding out what you like.
• If you take photos regularly buy DSLR camera. I have one and I can tell you can buy the economic version, which sometimes can be even cheaper than some point and shoot cameras. Donal is using 50mm/1.4 lens, while I have 50mm/1.8, this is one of the cheapest lenses you can get (and only a little bit darker than 1.4), but still takes beautiful photos with that gorgeous blur, and I just love it.
• Props you need for photos you can find everywhere. Charity shops, grandma’s house or a beach, just be creative.
• When you have a DSLR, take photos in RAW files as they keep all the information. If somebody asks you to print your photos, you won’t have a problem with resolution. JPG is good for the web, but not for printing.
• When posting photos on your blog, think how they will look. Maybe they could be bigger? Maybe you could insert a photo of every step? I know it’s a pain, but users will appreciate.
• Don’t post only recipes. Sometimes is good to tell a story about a trip or the food blogger meeting
• When you are taking photos in a restaurant, try to be discrete.

Sharon Hearne Smith is food stylist for the best, such as Neven Maguire or the TV show Barefoot Contessa.
Sharon shown us tricks for food bloggers, but also some for professionals.

• Never eat food in the photo studio. They can put some strange stuff (like window cleaner, stones and other things you don’t want to know about) on food, so just don’t, OK?
• The stylisation process starts at the moment of shopping. So always pick the best looking strawberries if you plan to decorate a cake.
• If our food isn’t perfect, don’t worry, check if there is a part of it that is perfect. The camera doesn’t see everything, so you can cheat, showing only the part that is nice.
• Taking the best photo of perfect pizza can be harder than you expected. Sometimes you need to bake separately two kinds of cheese, salami and the rest of pizza. Then put it all together the way you like it and make this lovely brown dots on a cheese using a tool looking like a big hair dryer. But that’s only for pros.

Jocasta Clarke – from Dada Studios. She was making in-depth remarks when Donal was speaking. The first thing she did was showing us what kind of light isn’t good for your photos. It was beautiful sunny day, but the straight light is a killer. You need to defuse light using defuser foil or just a white bed sheet. Light will be much softer.

Kristin Jensen - writes two blogs Dinner du Jour and Edible Ireland. She is also editor. She told us very briefly about how to write good recipes. You can find her tips here.

Damien Mulley – told us about SEO. If you want your posts and photos to be easily found in google search try to make up a descriptive title and alt tags for images. It helps a lot.

The list of blogger who attended the meeting (thank you Adam for putting it all together)
Caroline Hennessy - Bibliocook
Lily Ramirez - A Mexican Cook in Ireland
Margaret O’Farrell - A Year in Redwood
Hester Casey - Alchemy in the Kitchen
Clare Kleinedler - An American in Ireland
Aoife Ryan - Babaduck
Suzanne Campbell - Basketcase
Paul Callaghan - The Sustainable Larder
Sarah Nicholson - Cake in the Country
Adam - Cook It Yourself Food Blog
Dorcas Barry - DorcasBarry.com
Andrew Carey - no link
Ernie Whalley - Food N Cork
Emily - From China Village
Sheila Kiely - Gimme the Recipe
Yvonne Carty - Hey Pesto
Jonathan Tonge - Jono & Jules Do Food
Rosanne Hewitt - Like Mam Used to Bake
Tracey Nolan - Mammy’s Kitchen
Catherine Hayes-Sparks - Mother of Invention
Lisa McGee - NenghGal
Nessa Robbins - Nessa’s Family Kitchen
Paula Ryan - Paula’s Sweet Treats
Joanna Schaffalitzky - Smorgasblog
Joanne Cronin - Stitch and Bear
Lilly Higgins - Stuff I Make, Bake and Love
Corrinna Hardgrave - Tatler Food writer
Aoife Cox - The Daily Spud
Tara Walker - The Tasty Tart
Margaret Smith & Neil Danton - Live-and-cooking.umnumnum
Megan Young - Veggies and Me (beautiful photos)
Anne Marie Carroll - Warm & Snug & Fat
Caitriona - Wholesome Cook
Mona Wise - Wise Words

Bread with potatoes

I wanted to this bread for ages, but always there was something on my way. We always ate all potatoes or I could wait for them to boil and cool down. This time I made it. The bread is one of quite easy and not too much time consuming. You will get mild bread with small holes. It’s delicious and keep fresh for long time. Lately I bake all bread in cast iron pan, but if you don’t have one like this, you can try any pot with lid (but without plastic elements) or use any pan and put some dish with water at the bottom of the oven. Recipe by Liski.

Ingredients for one loaf of bread 

• 100 g mashed baked potatoes 
• 400 g strong white flour 
• 200-250 ml lukewarm water 
• 1 tsp of salt 
• 1 tsp of sugar 
• 10 g fresh yeast (or 5 g instant yest) 
• 3 Tbsp of olive oil 

Put the yeast into the bowl.
Add sugar, 100 ml of lukewarm water and stir to combine.
Leave for 15 minutes to yeast to „start off”.
In a big bowl whisk together flour, salt and pressed potatoes, add the leaven and then the rest of water and olive oil.
Start kneading the dough adding the gradually the water. Amount of water vary on a flour type. Dough should be elastic, smooth, not sticky.
Put the dough to the lightly oiled bowl and leave to rise for one hour.
Form it into the ball and put into the floured basket or a bowl covered with floured tea towel. Leave it for 45-60 minutes.
Put the cast iron pan into the oven and heat it to 240C. Risen dough put into the heated pan. After 10 minutes lower the temperature to 210C and bake for next 15-25 minutes until the bread will be golden. Cool the baked bread on the cooling rack.

Upside down pear chocolate cake

I have a friend who would do anything for a chocolate. I’m in this stage in my life where I appreciate a chocolate, but I could live without. While I was browsing through the recipes with pears I found this cake. Chocolate and pears make good match. I wanted so bad to show you how delicate, moist and mousse this cake is. The picture doesn’t show that all, but the cake is delicious. Give as much pears as you can From recipe from the blog Raspberries and cream.

Upside down pear chocolate cake 

• 200 g butter (room temperature) 
• 200 g dark chocolate, chopped 
• 150 g granulated sugar 
• 3 eggs beaten 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract 
• 100 g self-raising flour (or plain flour with 1 tsp baking powder) 
• 3 Tbsp soft brown sugar 
• 3 pears (cut in thick slices) 

Line a 23 cm springform pan with parchment paper or lightly greased aluminium foil. Sprinkle the 3 tablespoons of soft brown sugar on the parchment paper. Arrange pear slices over sugar.
Melt the butter, chocolate and granulated sugar in a medium saucepan over low heat (stirring all the time) until smooth. Let it cool completely.
Add the eggs, vanilla extract and flour to the cooled chocolate mixture and stir until smooth (don’t overwork it, flour only need to be incorporated). Pour the mixture over the pears.
Bake for about 25-30 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted in comes out clean) in a preheated oven at 180°C (160°C fan).
Remove from the oven and leave it to cool for 15 minutes, after that time put it upside down on the plate and let it cool completely.

Oatmeal cookies with sunflower seeds

I try not to bake during the week, only on the weekends, but even though there are moments when I need some kind of sweetness just because it’s Monday or it’s raining again, you can always find an excuse. So I want to have a cute cookie jar. I’m still looking for one that would meet my needs and I eat cookies from my everyday, not too pretty, plastic box. They taste good anyway.
I could try to convince you that these cookies are healthy, because they include rolled oats and sunflower seeds, but please don’t look at amount of the butter, it’s totally worth it. The cookies are so crispy and taste nutty. Recipe from Moje wypieki.

Oatmeal cookies with sunflower seeds

• 1 1/3 cup plain flour
• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1 cup sunflower seeds
• 250 g butter (room temperature)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 16 g vanilla sugar (or 1 tsp of vanilla extract)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt

Roast the sunflower seeds on a dry, hot pan until golden. Cream butter with sugar, vanilla sugar and baking powder. Add cooled sunflower seeds, rolled oats, pinch of the salt and mix all together. Add flour and mix together until it is absorbed. The dough will be soft and sticky (but if it’s too sticky and you can’t form it, just add a little bit more flour). Shape dough into walnut size balls and place on a parchment. 

Bake for about 15 minutes in a preheated oven at 175°C (155°C fan). Remove gently (they are very fragile when warm) and let cool on a rack.

Irish Bloggers' Meeting

Drogheda  is small town about 50 km from Dublin. My friend’s boyfriend asked „Why are you going there, there is nothing”. Is it a true or not isn’t for me to judge, you should rather ask Clare, who had lived there for over a year. For me is always great surprise to find out that in Ireland even in small town you can find such a fabulous places like  Eastern Seaboard Bar & Grill and Brown Hound Bakery. They are fantastic and packed with customers. I hope one day in my hometown I will be able to go to really good restaurant or lovely bakery.

But maybe I start from the beginning. Everything started from this that before my move to Ireland I was looking for any interesting information about it and because I love blogs I was looking mostly there and I found the blog wrote by Clare, who moved to Ireland from Los Angeles. It was my first wow, because I would think that people should rather moving in the opposite direction. Thanks to Clare I found about about  IFBA - Irish Food Bloggers Association and I had pleasure to join its meeting in Drogheda.

We started our tour with a visit to Brown Hound Bakery. I felt there like in Paris, but in the other relations you will read that it also reminds Manhattan as well. No wonder, it’s American bakery.  I was rather expecting cosy, home like interior, but this one is classy and still cosy, but a little bit in a different way. You can easily see a care for the every detail. The owners of both restaurant and bakery are Reuven and his wife Jeni. Before opening the bakery helped them Craig Thompson, who came from New York for three months to help with training staff and developing the recipes. Many of them were based on his grandma recipes. And did I mention that the name of the bakery comes from their chocolate labrador. They have it for a year and it stolen their hearts (one day I will have a dog, cat and bakery with their names in it!). In the bakery you will find a lot of the things that Jeni can tell you about lovely stories. She has a great eye for details and you can see she just love this place.

Next to the bakery is Mo’s To Go – take away. Mostly you can find dishes known from the restaurant menu but also classics like Coney Island Corn Dog.

We spent dinner in a very blogger atmosphere, every time there was a new dish on the table all the cameras were taking pictures.

I love simple, delicious food like this warm bread.

Starter – Ploughman’s Plate sharp vintage cheddar, an apple & warm crusty bread. So simple and delicious, I must try it on my friends.

Sea trout with salad from cucumbers and tomatoes.

I love desserts and it was so hard to decide. Just read this mouthwatering names - little pots of warm chocolate heaven with citrus shortbread for dipping, molten macadamia fudge brownie with toffee ice cream, crème brulee w/ pistachio & candied orange biscotti… Monica and I decide to share the two with ones with chocolate. It was so good. But you won’t see brownie on the picture, it just didn’t looked right, but it was so delicious.

We also get some goodies bag. I love goodies bag.

An American in Ireland, The Daily Spud, I Can Has Cook, DinnerduJour, Gunternation,Caryna’s Cakes, Gracie Bakes, Katz Miaow, Smorgasblog, Monica and Grainne thanks for a lovely meeting and I hope to see you again.