Here’s to a sweet, healthy and safe 2012! Issue #01/2012

Happy New Year 2012, dear readers, and welcome to the Issue #1 of this brand new year! We’ve been busy over the last few weeks – partly due to the work schedule(s), partly because this time of year is always about family reunions and friend visits. Which, of course, does mean cooking and eating in obscene amounts, so if you think we’ve been away from everything related to food these days – we haven’t!

With this said, we do hope that your holidays were as pleasant as ours, and wish you a happy, healthy, delicious and shiny 2012!

We, for our part, are back to daily routines that include cooking, developing new recipes, shooting, styling, marketing, managing etc. And to posting articles in this very blog, which you hopefully still enjoy. Over the holidays we were pleased to celebrate 200th subscriber on Facebook – thank you!

Shooting pomegranades

Shortly before the holidays, we had a special guest on the table, and Ira did a couple of extensive photo shoots with this beautiful model – we’re talking about pomegranates.

This beautiful fruit is a little wonder: did you know that it alone covers more than 15% of daily Vitamin C requirement of an adult? It is amazing how widely it is used in culinary, and even in medicine. We really encourage you to spend 5 minutes on this website courtesy of Wikipedia to read about pomegranates. What’s eve more important to us, this fruit is simply perfect for shooting food classic style. And soon we will show you in this blog, how gorgeous the result of such shooting can be in real life. Until then, here are   some shots with pomegranates for your amusement. If you are into food photography, and wish to improve your skills or enrich your style, try shooting pomegranates like on these pictures. The fruit itself is sophisticated enough to be shot either with beautifully arranged solid interiors or in vintage, “dirty”, rough environments.  Pomegranates are rich on contrast and have a unique shape, which makes them look absolutely gorgeous in a frame. Try and see for yourself – this is by far the best fruit to work with.

Oh, and if you follow our advice and get busy with shooting pomegranates, feel free to share links to your results in the comments below!

Mediterranean style potatoes

We also have a couple of recipes in stock that we would like to share today. First off, here is a nice one that you might want to add to your arsenal, if you like potatoes (we do!).

You will need:

1 1/3 pounds (600 grams) red potatoes
half cup of black olives
1 lemon
coriander, tarragon, mint
olive oil
pinch of cumin
sea ​​salt

Mash olives with a knife and remove the pits. Crush several cloves of garlic with a knife. Cut potatoes in medium-sized pieces without peeling them. Put them in a bowl and mix with olives, garlic, oil, cumin and herbs. Season with salt sea salt. Grate the zest of 1 lemon and pour lemon juice atop. Stir well and cook on high heat fr a few minutes, until potatoes are “golden”. Then add 3 tablespoons of water and simmer over medium heat until its ready.

A winter fruit salad

If you used to read our blog for a while now, you might have noticed that we are fans of salads of different kinds. Ira has discovered the recipe for this one below on wholeliving.com.

Here’s what the recipe says there: “Serve dishes with both adult and kid appeal, like this simple and refreshing fruit salad of Asian pears, grapefruit, and pomegranate seeds.” (c)

Well said. Let’s get it on then:

3 pink grapefruits, peel and pith removed, cut into segments
1 pomegranate, seeded
2 asian pears, quartered, cored, cut into thin wedges
1 1/2 tablespoons raw honey
6 to 8 fresh mint leaves
flaky sea salt

The process goes like this:

In a medium bowl, toss grapefruit, pomegranate seeds,
pears, and honey. Top with mint and salt.

A little addition from us: adding apples also does the trick (since Asian pears are not everyone’s fruit of choice).

Ok, this should do it for the first issue of the year. It isn’t a huge one, but we’re already working on the next issue and new projects :)
Next up, we’ll be sharing some real life food photography impressions, and maybe even share some insights into our future projects. Stay tuned and have a great weekend all!

P.S. : We really appreciate your comments, so don’t hesitate to share what you thing about FTAL and the issues in particular!