On Not Styling and Photography

I said in my last post that I would write a manifesto about how I don't style food, so here it is, and I thought it might be helpful to someone out there since I get emails about my setups (or as you'll see, lack thereof):
I don't style food: I don't know how to do it, and to be honest it's not something for which I feel I have either a knack or an inclination/interest. Yes I love beautiful ceramics and nice fabrics, but no I don't want to collect them for the sole purpose of styling food to take pictures of it. You'll read why just below.
What interests me is photography. Taking photographs of food is necessary for a food blog and while I was incredibly lazy about it before my little girl was born, for whatever reason, her coming into the world motivated me to actually put some effort into the act of taking pictures for the blog. Don't ask, I don't know why this was the catalyst.

I've mentioned here and there before that we don't live in our own house so to speak, and by that I don't mean that it's not our house because we rent it, I mean that it's not our house because we've been made to live in it for reasons that are too complicated to describe here; think of it as a corporate house with corporate furniture that we are neither allowed to discard nor even move out. This means that I don't have a separate table nor the room for a separate table, however small, to set up by the windows with the best light here. On top of that, we've been living in and out of boxes for more than a year as our moving plans keep changing. This significantly affects my desire to collect props for food pictures, as in I'd rather not collect things for which I mostly have little practical purpose other than to style food, especially when I might have to pack a lot more breakable things to transport somewhere else that way (and with the baby who takes great delight in opening up boxes and taking as many things out of them as possible before I can stop her).
Moreover, I believe in the food being the thing of greatest interest in the shot so I tend to photograph the food as I see it when I'm going to eat it or sometimes completely abstractly if that is the way it strikes me, e.g. pictures of matcha macarons.

So, an average setup in my world -actually this is quite a neat and simple setup, nothing like some other setups I've done which were totally guerilla compared to this- means something like this:

What you're looking at is a notepad upside down on a serving tray flipped upside down onto a moving box which is shoved up against the TV table, with the background being whatever I could find at the time so the lid of a gift box for the baby's birthday. The usual back of a white baby floor mat that I use as a reflector being unfindable at that moment in time, I grabbed the first thing I could find to reflect some light, that being the bottom of a box that had been mailed to me which, in spite of the airmail tape on it, reflected enough light to be of use to me. Why the quick and dirty setup you ask? Because I take pictures when my baby naps which is not often and not for long and I want to be done with it as fast as possible, so I set up the most basic thing that will get me the result I'm after. With this setup I'm on my knees on the floor taking pictures. I have a good tripod which I mostly don't use for lack of room and setup time.

Obviously it's not an ideal setup but it gets me where I want to go. On the left the picture just out of camera and on the right, the picture after adding a touch of contrast (+.05) and adjusting the exposure (+.20) a little bit.

Why am I showing you this? Because I think it's a shame that people think you need anything fancy to get a decent picture and because you don't have to have a lot of props (or any props in my case) to get a decent picture; If I can do it by cobbling a few things together that have no apparent relation to photography, there's no reason for anyone out there to get a bunch of equipment to do it. On the contrary, having very few things forces you to have to think as creatively as possible.

One thing I haven't shown is that I make sure that no direct light fell on the chocolate. It was actually a slightly cloudy day here and my diffusion paper having been packed away a long time ago in the far reaches of the boxes in the back of the garage, I just left the Roman blind down and let that filter the occasional bursts of sunlight coming in. It's thicker than what you'd probably want to filter your light but shows that you can use anything, even a white bed sheet for example. On overcast days I simply pull the blind up and use the light as is, for example in the pictures in the brioche post.

Basic info on this shot is my Nikon D200 with the 17-55mm/f2.8 lens, the Aperture set at f8, shutter speed of 1/40 with an ISO setting of 250.
Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
I've got something exciting to share with you all in an upcoming post. Not sure if it's going to be the next one but working relentlessly to make it as soon as possible, so stay tuned.

To Blog: Why? What? and Pumpkin Coconut Sour Cherry Bread

So here I am again a few days later than I thought I would post this because I've been thinking about many things relative to this blog, the most salient being: why blog? Or more precisely, why blog about food in my case.

There are many posts out there about why blog. Some of them make a lot more sense to me than others but they're all valid to their own authors, and in the end I have to find the reason for myself. A while back I had whole new plans for this blog which all revolved around food, and of course as things are wont to do, things changed. Then I decided that I would post photographs and other things and write fewer recipes and that it would become a more general blog, and that got under way, but somehow I was driven back to more recipes and fewer other things than food, basically only food.
The thing is, dear readers, that I really love food, but I'm not sure I love blogging about it anymore.

When I started blogging about food almost three years ago, I'd been blogging for a year on another platform and was a bit frustrated with my blog because it was general and I felt the lack of focus meant that it was more of a journal than anything else, and between you and me, I've never been much of a journaler. At all. Then one day while doing a recipe search, for a cupcake recipe of all things, I discovered food blogs and started perusing them and loving them, because I love food, and after a while I thought to myself that the simplest way to create focus in my blogging would be to blog about food. Thus Saffron & Blueberry was born.

keep reading >>

Let them eat Coconut Sour Cherry Brioche

Seemingly, when the internet is "broken" so is my ability to think of anything to say in a blog post. For a long time I tried to think of what angle I would take on these brioches; I think I was also blocked from the effort of writing the post about my grandfather and feeling pressured to say something equally meaningful when writing subsequent posts. The truth is I don't know if I can ever replicate the depth of feeling in that post, and I probably shouldn't try since few things elicit such depth of feeling in me anyway. So instead of trying to emote all over the place, I'll tell you about brioche.

Why did I make brioche? That's like asking me why I have sudden cravings for things. Do you know why you (if you cook or bake) have sudden cravings to make things? It's only this week that it's truly starting to warm up here, though if you're not directly in the sun it's still quite chilly, and all the mucky weather we'd been having previously made me really want brioche. Brioche is comforting, of course how could it not be with all that butter. Here, you can't just pop down to the bakery around the corner and get a beautiful brioche with a little head poking out of its rotund body, so after much hemming and hawing, it became clear that to enjoy some I would have to make my own.

Actually, I'd been meaning to make brioche for a long time, I just was never motivated enough to actually do it. And then I got on this brioche kick and that's all I was making for about three weeks, not every day of course, but just trying out different recipes, and in particular testing to see if I could substitute coconut milk in various brioche recipes. Why? The truth is that I had a can of coconut milk, which I don't often use, and I didn't want to make pudding or curry; I just wanted to add a bit of coconut flavor to something in which you don't usually see coconut. So, mild obsession with brioche + can of coconut milk that needed to be used = some sort of coconut brioche.

keep reading >>

Connection Nightmare

In the 2 minutes that my internet works before it goes out again for the next 10 minutes, I just wanted to let you all know that I'm not dead, or taking a break, I just can't get on for more than a couple of minutes at a time and this makes it impossible to post right now. Thanks Virgin Broadband.
Please standby while we sort out our technical difficulties.

Madeleines for Bâbâ Hassan

I sat at the end of the kitchen table, eating a late makeshift lunch. My grandfather stood by me, leaning on the table with one hand, on the counter with the other. He preferred to stand like that rather than sit sometimes, the effort of ensconcing himself in any chair, other than his beloved deep leather one in the living room, and then having to get out of it not much later a great strain on his now frail body. He seemed to be looking at his feet but I knew otherwise.
"What are you thinking about?"
Without looking up he said "your sister loves chocolate and I love your sister... therefore I love chocolate." He looked at me sideways and, with a twinkle in his light gray-green eyes and a little smile added, "that's a sophism."
It was the last time I would see that twinkle in his eye.

When A. mentioned a long time ago that he liked madeleines and would I make him some one day, I immediately thought of my paternal grandfather, Bâbâ Hassan. It probably sounds silly and Proustian, especially coming from a French girl, but it's really nothing like that at all.
Bâbâ, as we simply called him (and which means father in Farsi) was a man of simple pleasures. He didn't eat many sweets or fancy pastries -this was Paris after all- but he loved madeleines and crêpes. As far back as I can remember, when he would take us grocery shopping or send us out to get something around the corner, he would always buy some madeleines or ask us to get some crêpes; one ought to be sure one's stash wasn't going to run out you see.

I'm thinking of a picture I have of him (that is in storage unfortunately) which captured him in the prime of his life and embodies many of the things he was to me. It's black and white and shows him sitting at the Iranian delegation's desk at UNESCO; he looks quite dapper in a three-piece suit, wearing big headphones for simultaneous translation and leaning back in his chair, head cocked to the side and smoking a pipe.
In it I see the intent listener I knew, the scholar and professor of mathematics, the avid and erudite reader with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, the reciter of classical poems by Hafez, the author, the translator, the bookstore owner, and his myriad other personas. Above all, though, I see my adored grandfather who taught me to play backgammon, who would take me to the Albert Kahn Garden to feed the ducks, who would ask me when I was going to have children because, he said, "you were such a delightful child," who was the kindest and gentlest person I knew. Thinking of him and of the stories I can tell Baby Saffron of being a child with him makes me feel like a child again.

We walked together, my hand in his.
It was a Saturday afternoon and I'd been dropped off with my grandparents by myself. My grandmother was out and about so, left to our own devices, my grandfather and I chose our preferred activity together. We went out armed with a small bag of stale baguette bits. After passing a few people, he turned to me and asked the usual question:
"What will people think when they see us?"
I looked up at him, already smiling at what I knew would come next.
"Will they think I am your grandfather, and you are my granddaughter? Will they think I am your father and you are my daughter? Will they think that you are my mother and I am your son?" -at this point I invariably started giggling- "Will they think that you are my grandmother and I am your grandson?" and so on the possibilities were listed; I contributed the ones I could think of. We reached the gardens this way and spent the next hour walking around, tossing the bread to the ducks, taking a break on a bench and enjoying the afternoon sun.

He was born in 1916 on the shores of the Caspian sea. He remembered riding in a horse-drawn carriage at the age of three with his nanny for two days straight to Tehran as the White Army, hotly pursued by the Red Army, rode through Northern Iran destroying everything in its path. Through hard work and sheer determination, he moved his little family to France in the 50s and started all over again, learning French, teaching math, giving his children and later grandchildren a henceforth immutably multicultural, multilingual vision of the world. He witnessed technological changes in his lifetime that would be akin to an inhabitable city being built on the moon in mine. He refused to recall the girlfriends he'd had before meeting my grandmother at the tender age of 21. He loved his family above all other things. He saw war. occupation. revolution. By the end he was tired, his body betraying him slowly over the years, though his mind was sound and youthful to the last.

A man was browsing the vintage comics in the back of the store. There were few of them as this was primarily an antique bookstore, but my grandfather had a great eye for worthwhile printed material of any kind. The man was dressed in ripped, dirty jeans and an old, battered, white T-shirt. His ratty clothes and the unstudied stubble on his chin indicated not careful hipsterism but rather a complete lack of concern for his appearance.
My grandfather did not budge from the book he was reading behind his desk. In his experience you could tell absolutely nothing from a man's outward appearance. He spent most of his days reading while waiting for customers to choose and purchase books, as that is perhaps the most wonderful perk of having one's own bookstore, being able to read all day.
It was only when the man finally grabbed about half the stack of comics, valued at about $100 each (in old Francs), and walked toward him that my grandfather wondered if the man could actually afford them, still he said nothing. The man put the stack down in front of my grandfather and, reaching into his jean pocket, pulled out a wad of one thousand (old) Franc bills. He paid for the comic books, which my grandfather put into a bag for him, and walked out the door.
We watched him cross the narrow street, get into a white Maserati, and drive away.

I wish I could describe his smile, his laugh, in a way that would do them justice; the depths of his voice; the purr in the back of his throat when he spoke that may have been a result of his smoking for years (though I never even knew he was a smoker until, as a teenager, I discovered old pipes in one of his closets) or just a result of his being closely related to cats; his passion for felines, inherited from his grandfather and passed on to his children and grandchildren, resulted in his being called The Cat (Pishoo), and they too recognized one of their own in him, the most unfriendly of cats shunning all other humans but gladly jumping uninvited into his lap.

He passed away in 2002, soon after his 86th birthday.
I miss him every day.
My father ended his eulogy with this quote, which encapsulated him perfectly:
"Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend; concerning whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best." - from Plato's Phaedo

Have some madeleines for him, preferably with a large cup of tea. He'd like that.  
من شما را دوست دارم بابا

Note: I wrote a post at Expat Harem which mentions my grandfather and is a more in-depth snapshot of who I am and what this gift of multiculturalism is that he gave us. It is linked above and here.

Madeleines 
adapted from David Lebovitz's recipe

Butter, melted for the madeleine mold
Flour to coat the mold
3 eggs, at room temperature
120g (2/3 cup - 2tsp) granulated sugar
1/8 tsp salt - I use Maldon salt which I grind
175g (1/4 cup) flour
1 tsp baking powder
125g (9 Tbsp) unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

- Brush the madeleine mold with melted butter. Then dust with flour, making sure to remove any excess by tapping the mold, and place in the freezer.
- Whisk the eggs, sugar and salt together until they've doubled in volume and the batter flows off the whisk like a ribbon. The simplest way to do this is with an electric hand or stand mixer.
- Mix the flour and baking powder together.
- Sift the flour and baking powder mixture into the egg, sugar and salt batter while you progressively fold it in with a spatula. Do not skip the sifting part or you will invariably end up with lumps of flour in your batter.
- Gently fold the butter into the batter a few spoonfuls at a time. Fold just until all the butter is incorporated.
- Cover the bowl and refrigerate the batter for at least 1 hour. (I prefer to chill mine overnight)

Once chilled:
- Heat the oven to 210˚C (425˚F).
- Using a small or large spoon (I used mini madeleine molds so a small spoon worked for me) put enough batter into each mold to fill it if the batter spreads out. Don't spend time shaping it or spreading it as you may warm the dough which would negatively affect the result.
- Bake for about 7-9mn or until the madeleines look done to your liking (I like them slightly brown on the bottom).
- As soon as you remove the pan from the oven, flip out the madeleines onto a wire rack to cool.
Madeleines are usually best the day they are made, but can be kept in an airtight container for up to three days, or frozen well-wrapped.