Last year, in a top secret studio setting, I photographed the winner of MasterChef Season 5, Courtney Lapresi. Her cookbook, Everyday Fancy, will be published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang in May 2015. Courtney was such fun to photograph. She truly shines and the camera loves her. I can’t wait to see the rest of the book, for now, here is the cover.
I am excited to announce the publication of Against the Grain: extraordinary gluten-free recipes made from real, all-natural ingredients. The book was written by Nancy Cain and is published by Clarkson Potter. I will be adding interior shots to my main website soon, but for now, here is the cover… a gluten-free breakfast pizza. Even a gluten-lover like me loved this!
It’s really this simple: eggs, flour, elbow grease and there is fresh pasta for lunch. The most comforting of comfort food.
Maya Kaimal produces the most delicious jarred and prepared Indian foods. Simmer cubes of chicken in her Tikka Masala or Madras Curry, add some chopped shallot and maybe some cashew nuts, and you have a fast, healthy, and yummy dinner.
Maya wanted to do a step-by-step to show all of the ingredients that go into her prepared sauces, so she, Jessica Bard, and I photographed her making Coconut Goan, from scratch, using those components. The mustard seeds & curry leaves popped, the onions caramelized, and the spices infused the tomato and coconut. I was so inspired to watch the process that I found myself cooking her recipes all week.
A portrait I did of Zak Pelaccio of Fish & Game Restaurant in Hudson, NY, for the New York Times. The story – about several chefs’ fantasy Thanksgiving Dinners – is here.
From my edible garden: Ornamental squash I planted as seedlings and unripe tomatoes that will ripen on my window ledge. Goodbye summer.
This October I photographed the second half of the Broccoli Rabe social media campaign. Check their website for recipes. Truly, broccoli rabe has changed my regular dinner routine at home. Something I now cook regularly: parboiled broccoli rabe, sausage, parm, orecchiette pasta. So, so good.
For the better part of October, I have been working on shooting a cookbook for The Hot Bread Kitchen. This not-for-profit bakery trains low-income, foreign-born women in the culinary art of artisan baking. Many of the breads these women bake are hard-to find regional specialties: buttery, flaky Moroccan m’smen; sesame topped Persian nan-e qandi; Armenian lavash crackers; and all kinds of challah. I could eat their heritage corn tortillas every day. I watched two women bake batch after batch from soaked whole corn kernels, and the flavor is unparallelled. The Hot Bread Kitchen cookbook will be published by Clarkson Potter in 2015. For now, you can sample their breads at these markets.
Recently, I photographed the menu at The Guggenheim Museum’s Wright Restaurant, for CXRA. At this point I have been all over the city photographing food, events, chefs, and menus for Restaurant Associates. I will be at two new locations for them this month, I look forward, as it’s always a fabulous experience.
This summer I photographed a social media campaign for a vegetable. What an exciting project! We photographed all kinds of recipes for Andy Boy’s Broccoli Rabe. From ingredients, to process shots, to complete recipes, we photographed: pesto, citrus salad, pizza and a stir fry. Stay tuned, part two of the social media campaign is coming up. And meanwhile, eat your beautiful, healthful, bitter greens!
I spent three weeks in my homeland, the West Coast of Canada, this summer. We cooked, ate, swam, took pictures. Most of the time we were with friends and family on the remote Cortes Island, British Columbia – surely one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Friends, fishing.
A friend took us on his boat to the grocery store to buy eggs & beer. On the way home we caught some crabs.
A friend caught a salmon, and grilled it. I adapted a recipe from Alana Chernila’s upcoming book for slow roasted tomatoes & garlic.
Boats. dock.
My sister explored the beach with my daughter.
This summer I photographed about 30 sandwiches and some impressive meat hunks for the online launch of Arby’s We Have the Meats campaign. The shoot lasted a week, with a broadcast shoot happening simultaneously. I was lucky to work with a killer production team from Wonderful Machine and with some of the brilliant minds at the Fallon agency.
When I’m not photographing food, I can often be found in my garden. This garden is only two years old, and half of it is terraced onto a south facing hillside recently overrun with barberry bushes and wisteria vines.
We grow: blueberries, black currants, raspberries, kiwi berry vine, gooseberry, tiny Alpine strawberries, and trees of pear, persimmon and native paw paw. We have flowers to attract pollinators.
I’m not serious about growing vegetables. We get more than we can eat from our local CSA, Hearty Roots, but we grow what is entertaining for a toddler to pick: pole beans, peas, and cherry tomatoes. An ornamental squash climbs a teepee.
This garden follows Lee Reich‘s weedless technique, and for about $200 I installed an automatic watering system. We turn the timer on in the spring, and off in the fall. I want my daughter to experience growing and picking food, as I did…minus the tedious hours of weeding & watering.
Black currants draped in bridal tulle to protect the berries from the birds.
Study in blue: blueberries, black currants, beans.
Picking peas at Hearty Roots Farm.
Ripening heirloom cherry tomatoes and PJ hydrangeas.
Random flowers: from rose to last year’s unharvested leek bulb (right)
Growing up: beans and ornamental squash trained onto poles.
I was at Silvercup Studios all last week working on a rebranding campaign. What a whirlwind: With the broadcast shoot on top of our stills shoot, we were a team of about 50 – including the food stylist, below, working the steamer. Updates to come when the campaign goes live.
It’s been a long wait, but we are close now… I shot this book for chef Rahm Fama about two years ago. It will be published this July 1, by Clarkson Potter, and may much eating of meat, potatoes, and amazing side dishes commence.
This book is different than a lot of cookbooks out there. It is heavy on the food & recipes, and light on the dishware, meaning…. most of the book was shot almost from above, using just a few different plates, on a few different tables. The food is truly the star. I will post example shots after the pub date.
I just wrapped a 6-day cookbook shoot in Westchester for Nicole Hunn and Gluten-Free on a Shoestring. This cookbook will bring back the classic snacks gluten-free people miss out on: think Twinkies, Twizzlers, and Hostess Cupcakes. Gluten-free or not, these were delicious treats, and I tasted almost every one of them.
Our team consisted of Nicole & Erin McDowell in the kitchen and me on the camera & computer. Nicole’s children and husband were on the scene, the dogs were eventually banished to the prop room (dining room), and the cat hung out until she tried to climb my lighting tools to get to a vase of freshly picked lilies-of-the-valley.
Here are a few behind-the-scenes photos of the shoot.
The James Beard Awards were held last night and I am thrilled to announce Amy Thielen’s New Midwestern Table won in the category of American Cooking! I am so glad she chose me to photograph her book.
Big thanks to our fantasic stylists Kendra McKnight and Alison Hoekstra.
Amy is a fantastic writer, and now also a television host of her own show. Congratulations, Amy! Well deserved.
Below are a few of my favorite shots from our book.
