The colourful up-close photography and whimsical line drawings of book number two are reassuringly familiar – the same team is behind both publications -  but there’s new territory here too.

The recipes are no longer grouped according to season but by chapters that follow the internal workings and food categories of Ripe, the delicatessen. I’ve never stepped inside the store but I now know that Friday is Pie Day and once a month Ripe has a Mexican Day. I’m not sure if this is the best way to organise a cook book but once you get used to what’s where, the recipes themselves are fabulous.

They are eclectic in true deli style. A chapter headed Deli Dinners takes care of the take-home favourites such as osso bucco and shepherd’s pie; three recipes for cheesecake give the retro nod to a dessert of the 70s and there’s plenty of the Mexican and Middle Eastern inspired dishes that are currently trending.

Best of all are the salads. Ripe number one’s stunning collection was a hard act to follow but the Fresh Batch of salads is every bit as good as the last – colourful, crunchy, tasty and loaded with a healthy variety of grains. The emphasis is on nutrition with lots of tofu, sprouts, seaweed and so forth, but for me that’s of secondary importance. I’m guided by taste, texture and presentation; the rest will naturally follow. How could Fattoush Salad with Chicken, Pistachio and Pomegranate not be good for you?

The Green Queen

Last night I made The Green Queen Salad. I gather it’s a deli favourite, which makes me sympathise with the kitchen hand whose job it is to carefully pull the leaves off the brussel sprouts that complete this arangement. I lost patience and tore at mine so they didn’t look great, but the green-on-green vege and buckwheat salad was otherwise magnificent (recipe follows). I served it with fresh snapper fillets fried in butter. It would go equally well with Ripe’s Cured Fennel Salmon.

The method for the salmon is unusual in that the fish is both cured and cooked. I’ve only ever done one or the other so I bought a side of salmon to test it out. I found it combined the best of both methods – my salmon had a sweetly glazed exterior with meltingly soft flesh beneath. I meant to follow instructions and use the leftovers for Salmon Hash Cakes – the picture looks very moorish – but when I went to the fridge, the salmon was gone. No leftovers. A sure sign of success in anyone’s book.

Ripe Recipes: A Fresh Batch, by Angela Redfern. Photography Sally Greer. Illustrations by Michelle Ineson. Beatnik Publishing RRP $59.99

THE GREEN QUEEN 

This is a great salad by Gawain Cowley. It is bound to bring out the superhuman strength in all of us! A dear customer voted it the best salad she had ever had at Ripe.

Serves 6 to 8

1¼ cups (250g) BUCKWHEAT, reserve ¼ cup for toasting
2 cups (80g) KALE, finely sliced
2 cups (80g) BABY SPINACH
5 BRUSSEL SPROUTS, stem removed, leaves separated
200g GREEN BEANS, tops & tails removed, julienned
50g SNOW PEAS, thinly sliced
2 SPRING ONIONS, white and green parts, finely sliced
180g CRUNCHY BEAN SPROUT MIX
1 cup (250ml) GREEN QUEEN DRESSING (see pg 85)
SALT and freshly GROUND BLACK PEPPER

To prepare the buckwheat: place a medium saucepan of water over a high heat and bring to the boil. Add one cup of the buckwheat and boil for 10 minutes or until tender. Remove from the heat and strain. Set aside to cool.

In a dry frying pan over a medium heat, place the reserved buckwheat. Toast for 2-3 minutes stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and set aside in a
small bowl.

To prepare the salad: place a large saucepan of water over a high heat and bring to the boil.

Add all the vegetables (except for the spring onions and crunchy bean sprouts) and blanch for 30 seconds. Strain, refresh under cold running water and drain well again.

In a large bowl, place the blanched salad greens, spring onions, crunchy bean sprouts and boiled buckwheat. Pour the dressing over the salad, season to taste with salt and pepper, and toss well to combine.

Transfer the salad to a serving dish and sprinkle with the toasted buckwheat.

GREEN QUEEN DRESSING

This dressing is packed full of goodness. We use it in the Green Queen Salad on page 81. This recipe makes a generous quantity. Add it to any salad that needs a good boost of flavour.

Makes 1¾ cups

1 whole bulb GARLIC
1½ cups (60g) BABY SPINACH, roughly chopped
½ cup (20g) FRESH BASIL LEAVES, roughly chopped
½ cup (20g) FRESH MINT, roughly chopped
½ cup (20g) FRESH CURLY PARSLEY, roughly chopped
JUICE of 1 LEMON
2 tbsp APPLE CIDER VINEGAR
1 tbsp soft BROWN SUGAR
1 cup (250ml) OLIVE OIL
1 tsp SALT

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Slice through the very top of the garlic bulb, exposing the cloves. Drizzle over one tablespoon of the olive oil, wrap in foil and bake for 30 minutes or until garlic is caramelised. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. When cool, squeeze the garlic from the bulb into a small bowl.

In a food processor bowl, place all of the dressing ingredients including the roasted garlic and process
until smooth.

Doctoring an egg white

The problem lies in getting a nicely set white with a runny yolk. So here’s what you do. In a heavy pan, on a very low heat, heat oil to a depth of 1 cm. Separate white from yolk and slide the egg white into the oil. It should cook very gently with no sputtering. The egg should be fresh so it stays compact and doesn’t spread too far. When fully set, remove from pan and using a cookie cutter remove a yolk sized disk from the middle of the white and pop the raw yolk into the gap.

Almost perfect. The next bit is more challenging. Inevitably there will be some unwanted craters in the white which need to be filled with – wait for it – denture fixing glue. The glue is just the right colour and consistency to smooth over the holes; vaseline is a second best.

So there you have it. For years I’ve wondered why my eggs don’t look as good as the pictures in magazines. Now I know. But I’m comforted by the thought that the eggs I’ve cooked for the camera have always been scoffed after the shoot and they’ve never got stuck to people’s teeth. However, I do like the picture-book look of my workshopped egg, especially the yolk – notwithstanding the fact that it’s raw.

My styled egg

Not Real Ice Cream

The weeekend workshop was run by Denise Vivaldo, an American/Italian based in Los Angeles. She was in Sydney at the recommendation of my friend Harriet Harcourt, a cook and a food-stylist who lives in Perth. Harriet helped organise the course and told me I should sign up – you’ll love it, this woman is brilliant.

And she is. She is warm, funny and hugely entertaining. More to the point, she has written the bible of food styling based on 25 years of experience tricking up food for televison, film, cookbooks and multi-national food companies. And she is so good at it that during her Sydney course I found myself salivating over food that may well have killed me.

It’s true. The crushed ice in a refreshingly cool looking cocktail came from a jar marked poison. Nearly as bad, I licked some delicious looking caramelised chicken juice off my hand before realising it was the brown stuff I’d been using to paint a raw chicken. The thought of salmonella had me sluicing my mouth out with what I hoped was fresh water.

‘Roasting’ a Raw Chicken

Painting raw chickens to make them look roasted was just one of the mind-bending exercises I worked my way through on this eye-opening course. My chicken was only so-so but I did quite a good job of making a pre-prepared Weight Watchers risotto look reasonably appealing. This is not something I’d ever have to do in my professional life but big food companies pay big money for this sort of thing and I suspect my fellow students had ambitions in this area.

The ‘Pizza Pull’

I was more interested in making food look attractive for my blog or the occasional magazine recipe and I’m happy to say I now have quite a few tricks up my sleeve. I know how to do a “pizza pull” so you get those yummy strands of mozzarella looking just right, I can present a perfect fried egg and I know how to get great-looking grill marks on a hamburger bun – an eyebrow pencil fills in the gaps. I’ve discovered how to fake ice cream and cappuccino froth, and I have zillions of uses for Scotch Guard.

The problem is, I’m not sure if I can actually bring myself to use all these tricks. I had my doubts during the chicken painting lesson but by day number two I was having a full on ethical attack. Was it honest? I hit Denise up about this. Honey, she said, would you want to be photographed without makeup? Or words to that effect. Well, I rarely leave the house without lipstick at least, so I can see where she’s coming from.

We had an interesting discussion – she’d obviously given it some thought – and the upshot is, it depends. It depends on the context and the degree: is it enhancement or falsification?  Foundation or facelift? The comparison with makeup and fashion photography is a good one. We know the clothes have been altered for a perfect fit on the model and we know the cosmetic pics have been airbrushed – we accept it because it makes for a great looking photograph and even ‘though we know we won’t look as good if we wear that dress or that lipstick, it gives us something to aspire to.

Food photography works the same way – it has to look better than it does in real life. That’s why we learned how to paint a ‘roast’ chicken. A real roast chicken doesn’t look half as good when it’s photographed: partly because it collapses and looks tired and wrinkly before the photographer has set up the shot, and partly because we can’t smell a photograph so it has to work twice as hard to make us want to eat it. So we stuff it with paper towels to plump it up, give it ten minutes at 180°C to stretch the skin, then paint it with a mixture of gravy browning and food dye. A sprinkle of paprika and and a spritz of oil finishes it off and it will stay looking good for hours. I would also challenge anyone to tell the difference if it had been styled by a pro.

Denise Vivaldo with assistant food stylists Harriet Harcourt (left) and Kirsty Bryson (right)

Since I got back from Sydney I’ve been examining food photographs in quite a different way, especially the ones you see in advertisements. I now know if I was to bite into one of those high rise hamburgers, the beef would be raw, the buns would be sprayed with scotchguard to make them sauce resistant, the mustard would shine with glycerine and I would be rewarded with a mouthful of pins and make-up pads. However, I also know that if the picture on the poster was a real hamburger I would never even open the box. Ditto for the Weight Watchers’ Risotto.

Weight Watchers’ Risotto Inside and Out: the reason why we have food stylists.

…or pouring the beer we brewed for the occasion.

At any rate it was a great party, a perfect night in early January, and the culmination of many months of hard work – the building I mean, not the brewing. We invited about forty guests – anyone we knew within sailing distance of our bay in the Marlborough Sounds – and we welcomed them with ice cold beer and punchy margaritas.

The evening rocked on with an opening ceremony, speeches, a Mexican feast and a concert from the hastily assembled Marlborough Sounds Ukelele Orchestra.

James, Jimmy and Dan Tait-Jamieson

The food was a labour of love. Four of us had spent the previous day hand-pressing 125 tortillas which we presented with bowls of spicy pork, chicken, beef, chilli, avocado, coriander, tomatillos and anything else we could rustle up. I’m now sold on tortillas as a way of feeding the troops. (The proper maize flour and the requisite cast iron tortilla press can be bought from Ontrays in Wellington).

Tortillas toasting on the barbecue

I’m also sold on our Boatshed Brew as the perfect drinking partner for a chilli-based meal.

My son Jimmy and I brewed it back in October (see previous posts), an IPA with an extra dose of cascade hops. I think it was the hops that gave it such a fabulous nose – refreshingly citrus with a touch of blackberry. To be honest, it under-delivered on the taste. I found it a bit lean and short but Jimmy reckons it’s a great ‘session beer’ so we’ve tweaked the recipe and made another batch for late summer drinking.

The label, by the way, was designed and drawn by daughter Maddie. The black blob at the end of the jetty is a fair rendition of Jeb, the dog.

So when I got sent a review copy of Annie Bell’s Baking Bible I thought the publishers had got me mixed up with another food writer – a domestic goddess who knows her sponges from her pound cakes, perhaps. I could have sent it back but instead I found myself flicking through the pages admiring the photography and the next thing I knew I was marking it with post it notes.

 There are a huge number of baking books out there but this is the best I’ve seen. It really is a bible. Not only that, it’s a lovely looking book; a hefty hardback, nicely set out and easy to follow, in line with the writer’s pared back philosophy to baking. The ingredient lists finish with ‘little extras’ should you wish to dress things up but what I like is the emphasis on the cake/biscuit/tart itself. I have no doubt these recipes will work; Annie Bell is noted for the care she takes designing recipes. She has written for Vogue and the Independent and has been, for many years, the food writer for the Mail on Sunday’s magazine.

I’m sure I’ll bake lots of the recipes in this, her latest book. I’ve bookmarked the New York cheesecake, salted caramel flapjacks, saffron lemon crisps and cannelés Bordelais. The latter are my favourite and I’m delighted to discover Annie thinks cannelé’s are no harder to produce than clafoutis. I have a set of silicone cannelé moulds that I’ve been too intimidated to use until now.

For the purposes of this review I decided to test the Ginger, Almond and Fig Meringue Cake.  I was encouraged by the photograph showing a lovely broken crust, which I was sure I could emulate, and the notes that said it was “endlessly adaptable”.

Ginger, almond and fig meringue cake. Baked by me.

In order to give it a fair trial I promised self-restraint and followed the recipe to the letter. It was really easy and turned out just like the picture in the book. I took it to a fireworks party the same night, where it was wolfed down so fast I had to beg a spoonful from someone else’s plate. It’s a cake I plan to make often, only next time I will revert to type and make a few adjustments – pistachio nuts, figs and a dash of rose water will ring the changes for Christmas.

Annie Bell’s Baking Bible is published by Kyle Books and distributed in NZ by New Holland. RRP 59.99

The Boatshed Brew was supposed to be a collaborative effort but my son Jimmy has departed for a fortnight, leaving me to check the ferment, record the hydrometer readings, add the finings and clean and fill the bottles. Also, daughter Maddie hasn’t even started to design the label so I’m thinking of re-naming my brew after the Little Red Hen in the children’s fable. (‘Who will help me bake the bread?’ said the little red hen. ‘Not I’, said the dog/cat/pig etc.) Like the lazy farmyard animals in the story, I expect my family will suddenly reappear when it’s time to drink the beer. And like the little red hen I might just drink it ‘all by myself’.

I have tasted it already and although it has a fabulous aroma I think it’s a bit too hoppy. It’s also quite cloudy, despite the fining powder that was supposed to clarify it. I’m hoping it will develop in the bottle. My instructions say it will be ready to drink in three weeks.

We’ve been talking about doing this for some time. Jimmy has developed a taste for craft beer while apparently studying at Otago University and I’ve been interested ever since I made a radio feature with Paul Croucher in the summer of 2004. Paul had just won a prize for the home brew he made in his garage and as he took me through the process I was thoroughly seduced by his enthusiasm. Unsurprisingly he went professional soon after and his beer regularly takes out top awards in the annual beer awards.

More recently I’ve been writing a feature about Wellington’s micro brewery, the Garage Project (to be published in the Nov/Dec issue of NZ Life & Leisure). Brewer Pete Gillespie re-inspired me to give it a go. He makes beers with interesting combinations of malts and hops, playing about with the various processes and producing some fantastic beers. He has years of experience to draw on and quite wisely advises me to keep it simple. Start with a kit, get some experience and then when you’re ready, pull out all the stops.

So Jimmy and I have been down at the Brew House supply store in Newtown, Wellington. Having decided we wanted to make an IPA with a flavour reminiscent of our favourite Epic Pale Ale, we’ve  bought a kit with a fermenter barrel and various bits and pieces, together with a pouch of ready-to-go malt (Mangrove Jack’s IPA) and some Cascade hops to give it a bit of a boost.

It was very easy to make. Like cheese making, most of the work is in the cleaning and sterilising of the equipment. We made a guess with the hops and threw in a handful, otherwise it’s dependent upon the quality of the malt kit and the yeast that came with it.

Boat Shed under construction

Our brew is currently fizzing away in the garage. We’ve timed it be ready for the launch of our boatshed in the Marlborough Sounds. This project, several years in the making, has almost come to fruition. The boatshed and jetty have been built by father Dan, with the help of extended family and sons Jimmy and William. We hope the last nail will be hammered into place at about the same time our brew reaches perfection in the bottle.

We’re calling it the Boatshed Brew. Daughter Maddie is currently designing the label and we plan to pop the caps early in the New Year. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. And If anyone else is interested in home brewing from a kit, I can recommend Mangrove Jack’s short YouTube videos Part One and Part Two.

Milk Curd, Pistachio Sponge Cake and Honey at the White House

Paul’s soap was a gloriously rich chilled down, dense version of crème anglaise, tasty because it was made with his own cultured crème fraiche. The bubble foam was somehow infused with honey and the loofah was pistachio. It was the most difficult part to create but it made the dish with its contrasting texture and undeniable wit. It’s on the degustation menu.

I’ve worked with some professionals who manage to do just that: photographers who make me want to eat the images they create. I’ve always wondered how they do it, so when food photographer Murray Lloyd and food writer Ruth Pretty offered a food photography workshop as part of Wellington on a Plate, I was one of the first to sign up.

Food photography workshop with Murray Lloyd (right).

Ruth and Murray have collaborated on five cookbooks over the past few years and created hundreds of photographs. Each one takes several hours to produce, beginning with a brainstorming session to define the sort of look they want to achieve. The workshop took us through the process from concept to shoot. We learnt how each dish is styled, what props are used, how it’s lit and how it’s composed in the frame. Murray prefers to work with natural light and the only trickery Ruth uses is a paintbrush and a little oil to make the food glow.

Chicken and Cranberry Pies

Our first assignment was pastry. We had half an hour to style and photograph a group of small pies using a choice of plates, fabrics, cutlery and coloured card backdrops. We had to consider light, composition, texture, colour etc. It was quite a lot to think about. We were also advised that an uneven number of pies would look best on the plate, which meant I had to eat one of mine. It was really nice: chicken and cranberry. Anyway, after much rearranging of props I managed to get everything in frame. This is my picture of Ruth’s chicken pies.

Notice how I have used an S shaped composition and also repeated the circular forms of the pies in my choice of material. I was rather pleased with my effort but the pies still look flat  and lifeless – I blame the natural light, which naturally hid behind a cloud just as I was ready to shoot.

Next up was poached salmon with pesto and micro greens. The dishes were plated by Ruth’s sous chef Kirk and they were supposed to be photographed as if in a restaurant, which was good practice for me because this is the sort of situation where I do sometimes have to get a shot that’s fit for publication.

I’m not sure that my salmon photo cuts it but I did like the artful positioning of the fork in my salad closeup (below).

The main course was slow braised pork shoulder with apricots, prunes, lima beans and cavalo nero. It tasted fabulous but it was really tricky to photograph on account of the cavalo nero which looked limp, wet and much too black.

Braised Pork Shoulder

Interestingly, Murray picked this shot out, kindly illustrating the clever way in which I had positioned the orange chair in the background to echo the orange of the carrot on the plate. I could see how this did make the colours “sing” but I hadn’t planned it that way. And therein lies the difference: a real food photographer would have left nothing to chance; my success was entirely accidental.

And unlike a professional shoot, where you really don’t want to eat the food that’s been fiddled with for hours, we polished off the lot. In fact, it all looked so good that by lunchtime my creativity lost the battle with my appetite; after a cursory effort I swapped my camera for knife, fork and napkin.

So what did I learn? If in doubt, zoom in close; and if the food looks lifeless, toss in a few flowers. But seriously, I have a new appreciation of  just how much work goes into making food look so good on the page. A slide show of some of the photographs from Ruth’s new book – one or two of which were the same dishes we’d struggled to compose earlier in the day – served to illustrate the point: we really do eat with our eyes. Here’s a sneak preview of the front cover. Ruth Pretty Cooks at Home is due out in October, RRP $65, published by Penguin. Photos by Murray Lloyd.

My friend Mary Biggs is of the same mind. She’s a great cook (Cordon Bleu trained) and she loves lemons so much she’s created an entire range of products around that one essential ingredient. Her brand Lavender’s Green includes lemon cordials, lemon jelly, preserves pickles, mustard, chutneys and curds. My favourite is the roasted lemon chutney. I’ve recently written it into a recipe for Moroccan lamb sliders – my little burgers would be nothing without it.

I’ve just eaten that same chutney with Mark Limacher’s potted rabbit. It was part of a five-course Wellington on a Plate lunch in which Mary’s products added depth or zing to every dish on the menu at the Ortega Fish Shack.

Roast Duck and Smoked Warehou Salad

A beetroot and feta combination was spiked with a lively lemon pickle and the lemon mustard was a great addition to the salsa that accompanied the beef. My favourite course combined duck and softly smoked warehou on a crunchy juliened salad with tamarind and preserved lemon dressing.

We finished with lemon tarts that were good because they were simple – just fresh lemon curd spooned into individual pastry cases. Unfortunately they were accompanied by the only thing I really don’t like – liquorice. It looked great – whipped into ice cream and served with mini allsorts – but taste is such a personal thing. I’ve tried but I can’t do it. I know I’ll never learn to like liquorice, not even when it’s partnered with lemons.