Quite Sunday and pickled onions!

After the morning tea, the camera lying on the table was calling me to shoot something. I had planned to make pickled onions this weekend and since I had all the ingredients and the quietness, it was time to create.

The ingredients:

- 20-25 small onions

- 1 tablespoon white vinegar

- 1/2 cup water

- Salt to taste

- Pinch of sugar

- 1/4th spoon soy sauce (for the added color)

- A glass or ceramic container that is non-reactive to the vinegar

The hardest part is peeling the onions! But once done, just rinse them in water and add all the ingredients in the glass jar. I added some red chillies too for the color.

And now refrigerate the onions for 2-3 days before you can enjoy them. Shaking them every few hours will help all the onions marinate evenly.

And it is a bonus if the food matches your flowers ;-)

Happy Sunday!

Adventures with food + camera

One of my favourite pass-times is to browse through food photography. T likes it too cause he can ogle at pics of the food while I am awed by food styling.   
So for a while, I have been wanting to try food photography - I got the books, I read all the food photography tips, got some basic equipment as bday and xmas gifts, went hunting with mom to antique shops for props (this was the best part!) and so on....

But, this is so challenging! First, I need to cook something elaborate. Then, I need to get the camera and click while cooking (well, I wanted to blog the process of making a few dishes and include the recipes). And then click the final product.

Most of the times, I start okay and by the end of it, I am too tired and out of ideas to click the final product or I am out of ideas for styling the dish. Here are a few of my failed attempts -

1. Ginger Chutney

Was to a good start with the pic of the ingredients:

But alas, the final product did not look tempting! In fact, I blogged the recipe, but decided to omit the final pic. Here is a pic of the disaster:

See the blog post here.


2. Apple sauce cake

Again, I thought I had started out very well with the pic of the ingredients - I added green apples and green leaves for styling the pic - was off to a good start!



But by the time I was done baking it, the sun had long set and the yellow light to click the finish product ruined it.

Check the full post here.


3. Maharashtran style 'Dal chi aamti' & 'Phodi'

Here, I spent too much time clicking the ingredients.

Then, I managed to take at least some pics of the process.

The final product was okay - but feels like something is missing. The burnt 'phodi' piece, the dal (specially the drumstick) looks a little stale and out of steam, garnishing was a little off - I think I lost my patience at the end...

4. Home-made pecan ice cream

There is so much scope for improvement. I background was a cheesecloth - it would have looked better if I had some of the background in focus to see the texture of the fine cloth. The ice cream had melted and you can see the flat base in the cup - The perfect scoops would have looked better. Pecan pieces looked a little big for garnishment.


Oh well, learning is always a process....