Food Pictures

Filed Under: French Culinary Instituteon January 13th, 2010

Getting good at photographing food is hard. Actually, it’s very difficult for someone such as myself who is VERY bad at technology. Ironic, because I’m the one writing a blog and taking pictures everyday.

Today was interesting because I learned some fun facts about French food that had little to do with the recipes.

1. Traditional French restaurants NEVER pair wine with soup. Say your first course is lobster bisque. Fancy Daniel style lobster bisque, there is no chance the chef will serve wine with it. If dining, you’d probably think the waiter is late or ignoring you and your wine glass, but no no no, this is done purposefully. It’s too much liquid to ingest at once, so just soup, and then your wine glass will be promptly filled after your plate/bowl is cleared.

2. In plated French desserts temperatures don’t mix. No warmed apple pie a la mode. The hot and cold don’t go together, no matter what. Unless the dessert is DESIGNED this way, it doesn’t happen. But no traditional French desserts are designed like that. Only cold dessert and room temperature desserts can have ice cream, whipped cream, or creme anglaise.

A Southern woman must lie within me somewhere, I’m sure of it. Today one of the things we had to make to accompany a dish was “milk marmalade.” In short it was high end Paula Deen done French. Condensed milk, evaporated milk, coconut milk, vanilla bean, and sugar. All over the stove and reduced until the consistency of molasses. Yick (in my opinion).

This concoction was cooled and piped on top of a puff pastry round and accessorized with kiwi frozen yogurt, diced kiwis, and a kiwi stain glass cookie. In my opinion it was a mess on a plate, no focus, no center. Just gross. People loved it but …

We also made a savory mushroom, spinach, and onion puff pastry. It tasted better outside the puff pastry. In addition we made a goat cheese puff pastry topped with figs and a reduced sherry sauce. The figs were out of season … you can see where I’m going with the taste of today’s dishes, but that wasn’t the point.

The technique is the point, and that I had plenty of. I especially love the plating for the fig tart. What do you think?