The beauty is always before the plate……

Posted: 28/09/2011 4:46:40 p.m.

 If you pick up any food magazine these days and flick through, you will find that generally 90% of the photos are of perfectly placed food. Of course this makes sense in the fact that the readers of the recipes want to see how the finished plate looks and the creator of the recipe wants to show each dish off in its most perfect form possible, be it in a white table clothed candelabra situation or a picture perfect campfire scene complete with cyrstal clear stream and snow capped mountains in the back ground.

I am the first to admit I have been there (for many years) and done that. I am not sure if it’s just that I’m getting cynical in my older cooking years, but I am just so tired of these perfect photos, of perfect food, surounded by perfect people, in a perfect situation, in a perfect world!

Anyone who has worked in food photography will know that as soon as the food is arranged on the plate it has to be shot immediately, as with every second passing the dish is literally dying right in front of your eyes. It’s getting cold on the slab so to speak.

So we brush it with oil, we replace the wilting piece of chervil, we add a few more drops of warm gravy, all to make it look alive for a moment more.

I have for over a decade been fortunate enough to shoot all my photography with the extraordinarily talented Kieran Scott. We work well together, due to the fact that we share very similar views on the beauty of food, especially in its most natural unadulterated form. In the 12 years or more of working together, he has yet to artifically light any photo he has taken with me. As Kieran will attest to, I shy away from plating the food, often leaving it up to him to arrange the cooked product in the manner he sees fit. For some reason I always feel a little uncomfortable tampering with the food to get the perfect look, as I guess for me, I feel that every plated dish is different, some more beautiful, some less, but most importantly it’s always been all about how they eat.

Kerian will also tell you that the time that I pester and bother him to take pictures of food is always in the handling, the preparation, and the actual cooking of the products. To me this where the real beauty lies, when the food is still alive through the lens…… a whisp of smoke drifting over lamb chops, the bubbling of butter in a skillet carressing a piece of fish or cracked soil-laden hands holding freshly dug bright orange carrots.

My new book ‘Stoked’ is due to hit the shelves in a couple of weeks. I am extremely proud of what we have achieved. I say ‘we’, as to produce a great book, is always a collaboration of many talented people. We stuck with the tried and true ‘Go Fish’ team. Myself on the pen, Gary Stewart on design, Kieran taking the pics, Haydo testing the recipes, and Cath Cordwell and Toni Mason on editing duties. It truly is a beautiful book with so many evocative images of people, places and of course food — much of it alive, some dead — but all of it telling a culinary story in one way or another.

‘Stoked’ celebrates slowing down, taking time to light a fire and enjoy the process of cooking without a heat control knob or temperature gauge. This in stark contrast to a world where everything seems to be instant, everyone wants everything now….. instant messaging, faster internet, immediate results. It is the same with cooking: 30 minute meals, 10 minute meals, 4 ingredients meals. Everything is about speed but the sad thing with that is that with speed you miss the love, preparation, care and probably the enjoyment when eating — if it takes two minutes to cook them it will only take two minutes to eat.

Embrace the slowness, enjoy the wait, take pleasure in the anticipation and remember, it’s from the plate back where the real beauty lies!