Photos: 2012 Oregon Truffle Festival

• 

Here are some of the sights from my weekend at the 2012 Oregon Truffle Festival in Eugene. (Click here for a detailed report from the festival.)

Crystal, a trained truffle dog, led us into the woods to find Oregon white truffles

Grilled escarole with Oregon white truffles

Chef Rocky Maselli making polpettone (Italian meatloaf) studded with Oregon black truffles

Slicing polpettone

Chef Maselli's buckwheat crespelle with apples and truffle cream

Recipe contest winner Merry Graham with her truffled parsnip soup

Food writer Molly O'Neill with a Lagatto Romagnolo, the traditional Italian truffle-hunting breed

Chef Jason French's celery root and hazelnut salad with truffled remoulade

Jason French's truffled hen legs with melted and crispy leeks, one of the simplest dishes of the weekend (and, in my opinion, one of the most successful)

Chef Jason French of Portland's Ned Ludd restaurant shaving Oregon black truffles over hen legs

Truffled white bean puree with flatbread crackers

Chef Stephanie Pearl Kimmel's celery root and black truffle panna cotta with crab salad

Chef Chris Czarnecki's truffle-infused filet mignon with white truffle "snow"

Plating the first course for 300+ at the Grand Truffle Dinner

Chef John Newmann's Oregon black cod with black truffle aioli, shaved black truffles, braised greens and polenta

Truffle salt for sale at the Oregon Truffle Festival marketplace

An abundance of truffles and mushrooms at the marketplace

Foragers brought all kinds of truffle products to the market, including truffle-infused cheese (above), butter, salt and oil

2011 Emmy Awards: Photos from the red carpet

• 

Erika on the red carpet!

I'm no celebrity, but spending the day on the red carpet with the wonderful team from Duncan Hines sure made me feel like a star. I'll tell you all about it when I'm rested. Right now it's late, I've spent the last few hours sorting and labeling and editing and uploading photos, and I'm beat. It's time for bed.

Meantime, I got some fabulous photos thanks to my 55-250 zoom lens, with which I am completely in love today. I put together a slideshow over on my LA Cooking Examiner page. Gwyneth Paltrow, Steve Carell, Hugh Laurie, Conan O'Brien, Lea Michele...I got 'em! Oh, and I even got Tom Colicchio (in case you were wondering how all this TV star stuff relates to cooking and food and recipes).

Click here: Photos from the 2011 Emmy Awards at LA Cooking Examiner

A conversation with Eat Pray Love food stylist Susan Spungen

• 

Food stylist Susan Spungen

Things I learned last week from Susan Spungen, food stylist to the stars:

• Central Rome is a difficult place in which to make a food movie. When Spungen was working on the food scenes for Eat Pray Love, the city of Rome limited the number of trucks the production was able to park on the narrow, stone-paved streets. Which meant Spungen was making and plating the food for the shots in a kitchen several blocks away, and production assistants were literally running through the streets with dishes held over their heads.
• When you're cooking on location, be nice to the local chefs. Spungen had to make pizza for one scene, but the only equipment she was assigned was a portable oven. She knew she wouldn't get the blistered crust of a true Italian pizza, "and besides," she said, "we were in a city full of good pizza places. Why should I come to Rome from the U.S. and make the pizza?" She got a local restaurant to deliver the goods on short notice, and everyone was happy.    
• If the food scenes are being shot outside, pray for cool weather. The mercury hit 100 degrees in Rome when they shot the outside cafe scene in Eat Pray Love. It was supposed to be fall, so the cast had to wear sweaters and eat pasta in every take. Keeping plates looking fresh in the heat of a summer day is tough. "We just kept switching them out," said Spungen.
• Don't worry about poisoning the cast. It was hot during the shoot for the Eat Pray Love food scenes, but none of the plates stayed out long. As soon as the take was over, one plate went away and another appeared in its place. Besides, actors only eat as much as they have to - a bite or two, if that. (Julia Roberts "did what she had to do," Spungen said, but her implication was clear: Movie stars don't eat a lot of pasta voluntarily.)
• Play with your pasta. When plating the spaghetti for Eat Pray Love, Spungen used her hands to twist it into a rope, which she coiled around the plate in a spiral. I forgot to ask her whether she had to find a dozen sprigs of basil that looked exactly the same for the sake of continuity. That sounds challenging.
• Sadly, most food used in movie shoots goes to waste. Remember the huge piles of chopped onions in Julie & Julia, another film on which Spungen worked? Every time I watch that scene I dream about onion soup. In reality, those onions went into the trash, as does most other food used on film sets and in magazine photo shoots. The crew does get some, but by the time the filming and photography is done, the food is mostly too far gone to eat.
• Shop 'til you drop. Buy a lot of everything. If you're setting up a close shot of the perfect BLT, for example, you need the perfect tomato, the perfect lettuce, the perfect bread, the perfectly cooked piece of bacon. To find the prince, one must look through and cook and slice a lot of frogs. And, if you're creating the perfect BLT for a magazine shoot (Spungen styles food for still photos, too), you're often doing it completely out of season, making procurement that much more difficult. Spungen says she buys everything she can get her hands on, then sorts through the stacks to find the best specimens.

Thanks to Sony Home Entertainment for arranging the event at Vincenti Ristorante with Spungen and Eat Pray Love producer Dede Gardner. Eat Pray Love is now available on Blu-ray and DVD - a great stocking stuffer for the food fanatics in your life, don't you think?

So nice to see many of my Los Angeles food blogging buddies at this lunch: Daydreamer Desserts, La Fuji Mama, Family Fresh Cooking, Yvonne in LA, Sippity Sup, The Enchanted Cook, Teenie Cakes....

Daydreamer Desserts, La Fuji Mama, Susan Spungen

Dede Gardner and Susan Spungen

Cookies at Vincenti

Family Fresh Cooking and La Fuji Mama in an intense conversation

Amuse bouche: roasted tomato with burrata

Butter lettuce salad with polenta croutons

Winter decorations at Vincenti

Wordless Wednesday: Fish tacos

• 

Wild Alaskan salmon and halibut tacos by Chef Mary Sue Milliken, Foodbuzz Blogger Festival, November 2010

Photos: Dinner at Catch, Santa Monica

• 

Last week, on our 14th wedding anniversary, Michael and I were treated to a lovely dinner at Catch, the restaurant in the Casa del Mar hotel in Santa Monica. Chef Jason Bowlin took over the kitchen in mid-October and has already made his mark on the menu. We left the choices up to the chef and had a wonderful meal.

I don't feel qualified to write restaurant reviews, so I will let the menu and the photos speak for themselves.

Curried cauliflower soup with mussels and parsnip shreds

Griddled Mission figs, burrata and arugula salad with rosemary honey, walnut oil and pink peppercorns

Fried Castelvetrano olives with lemon aioli

Scallop with duck prosciutto, chanterelles and leek fondue

Braised short rib in red wine sauce with roasted root vegetables

Striped bass with olives, fennel, sunchokes, fingerling potatoes and roasted tomatoes

Chef Jason has promised me the recipe for the leek fondue, which he served under the scallops, so look for that in the next few weeks. I'm adding it to my menu for Thanksgiving.

In case I didn't make it clear up front: This meal was provided at no charge by Catch. Yes, they knew I was likely to write about it. Yes, they knew it was our anniversary. And yes, we enjoyed it tremendously. Thank you, Chef Jason.

** ED8RNZT7C9N8 **

Wordless Wednesday: Santa Monica farmers market

• 

Wordless Wednesday: Zucchini salad with Meyer lemon and parmesan

• 

Wordless Wednesday: Open-faced filet mignon and truffled Brie sandwiches

• 

Biscuits with mushroom beef gravy - the photo

• 

Remember the struggles I had photographing blood orange curd a few months ago? Today's challenge was even harder: biscuits with mushroom beef gravy, also known as "cat food" to food stylists and photographers. (Thank master food stylist Denise Vivaldo for that lovely visual, which came up in her presentation at Camp Blogaway this past weekend.)

And I think I nailed it. Well, you tell me:

Denise's advice for photographing cat food: Stay far away from the food, put something recognizable on top, use an interesting vessel. Check, check, check. I also decided on a black background to set off the color and design of the plate. It's a piece of black posterboard from the art store - I have a portfolio in the kitchen with posterboard and foam board in a bunch of different colors. A good $20 investment for those of us who take food pictures.

I also used the photography advice from Art Ramirez, another Camp Blogaway presenter, in this shot. Took the darn camera off auto. Set the white balance to "cloudy," as it was early morning in foggy Santa Monica. Bounced some light with a big piece of white foam board to fill in some of the shadows. I still haven't bought a tripod, but that's next on my list.

I'm going to write about this dish for The Mushroom Channel in a few weeks, so stay tuned for the recipe. But at least now I know I've got the photo in the bag.

Thanks to @rockenwagner for the naming advice - I couldn't call it "Cat food with mushrooms," now could I?

Blood orange curd: Calling all food stylists

• 

I think I've shared with you my acceptance (more or less) of my mediocre photography skills. I have limited time and limited patience. I do the best I can.

But the blood orange curd is really sending me over the edge. It's a pink blob. It didn't look good in a bowl. It didn't look good on a spoon. It looked better on toast, but this was the best I could come up with:

And even I'm not deluded enough to think that this is at all good.

So here's my challenge to all of you. Tell me how you would style this photo. I will try just about anything I have the props and lighting to execute. The method that works best will earn both my undying gratitude and a dozen brownies shipped or delivered to your door. Because seriously, people, I need help.

For those of you not familiar with curd - it's got the consistency of mayonnaise. And it's highly reflective.

HELP.

**********************************

Update: Another try

Based on some of the advice in the comments and from my good friend and master photographer Rachel Kaganoff Stern (visit her blog Inside the Kaganoff Kitchen if you want to see some truly spectacular food photography), I did a second round of photos this morning. Here's what I got:

Better, I think. Still not fabulous. I had trouble getting both the curd and the blood orange slice in focus. I wonder if that's me or my camera?

Tomorrow morning I'll try some of the other suggestions, with fuzzy oranges in the background.