Still Life Sunday: The Poetic Food Photography of Florent Tanet
“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
These quietly beautiful food photos are by French photographer, Florent Tanet. The last four are from a series called “A Colorful Winter” and were exhibited at the Grande Epicerie of the Bon Marché this winter. Aren’t they delightful?
See more of his work here, read an interview with Fine Dining Lovers here.
Istanbul
I was surprised when we arrived in Istanbul. So many people, so friendly, so smoky smelling from the roasted chestnut stands decked out in red and white stripes.
There were chandeliers in kebap shops! And pastry shop workers wore bow ties while they poured sweet sticky syrup over feathery pastry stuffed with chopped nuts. Thin clinking sounds filled the air as everyone, everywhere, stirred tiny glass cups of tea. The ladies in the Turkish Bath shouted as everyone received a vigorous scrub on the hot marble slab.
To a certain extent, I expected the colourful fabrics, jewels cascading from glass jewel boxes, piles of aromatic spices and an endless supply of grilled meat. But I was delighted by an unexpected Turkish feast on a riverside terrace following an exhibition opening. I was amazed to hear a shoemaker offer to make me a custom pair of shoes when the pair I wanted had sold out in my size. It wasn’t difficult to be enchanted by Istanbul’s loud voice and exotic charms.
Grey skies and warm spices
It snowed last weekend. A swirly snow that alternated between tiny flakes and big wet clusters. The neighbourhood cats cut narrow grassy paths through the courtyard. It’s mostly turned to slush now and has left us craving warmly spiced, comforting foods.
One of our favourite programs here melds travel and food, tackling one spice per episode and creating a variety of recipes that explore the history of the spice within its local and global context. We’re traveling to Turkey next month so naturally, our attention was especially captured by an episode based in Istanbul learning about cumin.
The episode is no longer available for viewing online, however, there is good news! The travellers/chefs/hosts of the show, Stevie Parle and Emma Grazette, have released a book called Spice Trip: The Simple Way to Make Food Exciting.
This is one of the recipes from the book and television show, and one we have been enjoying as an exciting alternative to our normal pizza toppings. It’s perfect for a grey winter’s meal: crisp and healthy thanks to fresh herbs and lemon with plenty of warmth from the cumin and chillies.
Turkish Pizza (aka Lahmacun, meaning “meat with dough”)
Adapted from Spice Trip, on Channel 4
For this recipe, use your favourite pizza dough recipe, making sure to stretch the crust nice and thin before applying the topping. We adjust amounts according to availability and our moods each time we make this. In the photo we used a pre-made crust and I forgot the mint! It’s a pretty easy going recipe, and delicious every time.
300 g beef mince (or lamb, as the show suggests)
1/2 onion, diced
1 large handful of cherry tomatoes, chopped (or equivalent amount of another kind of tomato)
1 fresh chilli, diced
2-3 garlic cloves (depending on size) diced
Large handful of parsley leaves, chopped
2 heaped tsp ground cumin
1 heaped tsp ground coriander
salt to taste
1-2 tsp ground sumac (optional, and to taste)
dried chilli flakes
squeeze of lemon juice
large handful of mint leaves
Preheat your oven to the temperature required by your dough (for our pre-made crust we heated our oven to 400 degrees Fehrenheit/Gas 6/204 degrees Celcius).
Mix the lamb/beef, onion, tomatoes, parsley, fresh chilli, garlic, cumin, coriander and salt together in a bowl. Spread this topping thinly over your pizza crusts. Bake for about 10 minutes, until the edges of your crust brown and the topping is cooked through.
Before serving, sprinkle with chilli flakes, dried sumac, lemon juice and mint leaves.
Christmas Baking Day
We pile into the family van, blinking sleep from our eyes and brushing the want of more to tomorrow. During the short drive to my Aunt’s apartment, excitement builds. Today is Christmas Baking Day.
Upon arrival we lay out our tools. In addition to my Grandma’s mixer, my Mom lugs hers up the stairs as well- to double our output. We stack slabs of pre-made dough like bricks and line up the rolling pins. Aprons come out and are tied on tight. And then out march the specialty items: pink and brown dough for mint chocolate checkerboard cookies, bags of nuts, dried apricots, prunes and sultanas for sugar plum pies and dark and white chocolate for the biscotti.
You see, each year there is a specific to-do list. There are the staple cookies that simply must be made: kuffels, butter tarts, biscotti and sugar cookies. And on top of that, everyone brings a new recipe to try.
We break only for lunch: salami and cheese buns, pickles and maybe a warm cookie or two to stave off further temptation. The windows are now fogged with sweetly scented steam and Mannheim Steamroller is playing, as usual. When we leave, in time for dinner at home, we are tired, rosy cheeked and laden with endless cookie filled tins and Tupperware containers.
* * * * * *
We do this every year, my Mom, Grandma, Aunt, sisters and I. It’s a finger burning, dough rolling, sugar sprinkling, mixer-wearing-out day that results in hundreds of neatly stacked cookies. A tray will be passed around at every gathering in our home from that day until they run out, which is usually well into the New Year.
My sisters and I were only invited to attend as we reached the age of 10. This was no time for sisterly bickering or sudden attacks of boredom. My brother came once, but was disappointed to discover this magical day he had heard so much about was spent entirely in the kitchen. He retired to the couch with comics for the afternoon, and from then on spent this day hanging Christmas lights with my father while we baked.
All this changed as we grew older; my parents and aunt moved to new towns, and I would sometimes only arrive home from university a few days before Christmas. My mother always saved a few things for she and I and my sisters to make together. The tradition continued, but it shifted.
It changed again when my husband and I married and decided to alternate our Christmases as our families live in different provinces. Our first as a married couple was spent with my husband’s family. I could hardly wait to share in their rituals: his Nana’s homemade perogies and farmer’s sausage on Christmas Eve, the train in Stanley Park, and hugs after every gift on Christmas Day.
However, I couldn’t give up the baking day. So my mother-in-law, Nana and sisters-in-law got together for a couple of hours one afternoon. We baked shortbread (one of their family’s special holiday treats) and sugar cookies. I felt grounded as my Christmas changed and grew to include new people and new traditions.
Last year, we moved to Scotland. I was apprehensive about holidays and birthdays and other days that have great anticipation attached to the rituals that later fill daydreams with gold hazed memories. I needn’t have worried.
I baked alone this year and last, but it wasn’t sad. It was wonderful.
As I baked, I could almost hear my Mom whispering tips in my ear as I carefully followed her recipes. I smiled remembering the sugar cookie fiasco one year and my Grandma’s declaration that we would never make that recipe again (we still do). I cooled a burn at the tap and watched a young family across the shared garden hanging a giant homemade snowflake in their window and felt as though my sisters were in the next room waiting for me to do the same.
This year, we will visit both of our families for Christmas and baking days are already on the calendar. Moving far away made me realise that traditions are tied to the people you love, not the precise details, and since you carry those people with you, the traditions travel as well.
As I bake here, I feel all of our traditions humming deep inside of me, waiting to be released and sometimes reinterpreted, and because of these simple rituals, these once a year occurrences, I feel anchored.
There are many treats to be had in the city of Edinburgh and walking to work via Prince’s Street Gardens and the sea of red, yellow and orange leaves is one of the biggest treats that comes with living in this city. There’s enough chill in the air now to make our noses turn pink. We are deep into Autumn. (This is the perfect time of year for afternoons of fairy tales, blankets and crunchy apples.)
While I obviously haven’t been blogging on a regular basis, I have been finding time here and there to do lots of other important things like attempting to clean out the pantry (except that no one wants to eat that long forgotten dusty looking bag of lentils). And adding blankets to the bed. And most importantly, remembering. Autumn is so good at inviting forgotten memories out for a little chat.
Occasionally I like to buy cookbooks to help preserve a special memory (or at least, that’s one of the ways I justify a toppling stack of books) and I have one in particular from our honeymoon that I love to look through and cook from. It’s called Breakfast, Lunch, Tea and is from Rose Bakery in Paris.
We had lunch at the bakery on one of those hot Paris summer days and I desperately wanted to buy myself the beautiful Phaidon cookbook while there, but they only had copies in French. I bought it later from Books to Cooks, and every time I make something from it, I remember that golden afternoon. We ate crunchy greens and potato courgette pesto salad (which was so good we recreated it in our flat for dinner that night as well), followed by the infamous carrot cake and then sipped our afternoon coffee from the green pottery mugs made especially for the Bakery.
And now that it’s getting cold enough to make us (or me anyways) want to eat some form of potatoes for every meal, I’ve been looking through my books for cosy meal inspiration. I’d never made risotto before making this Roasted Tomato, Aubergine and Mint version, and now I can’t get enough. It feels like the right thing to be eating after walking home, crunching leaves or as tiny raindrops hit our windows. It feels like it might turn into a memory of a Scottish autumn.
Tomato, Aubergine and Mint Risotto
Adapted from Breakfast, Lunch, Tea by Rose Carrarini
In her book, Carrarini suggests that you could replace the vegetables with any others of your choosing, listing porcini and tomato and softened leek and chestnut as a couple of her favourites. I’ve added courgette (zucchini) in addition to the others and it was a good choice. Another tip from her is to add a teaspoon of sugar just before serving if your tomatoes are too acidic, but I’ve never needed to.
8 tomatoes, halved (I’ve also used cherry tomatoes, usually going for about triple as many, but you could do more or less if you were so inclined.)
3 aubergines, chopped into 3 cm chunks
4 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra for roasting the vegetables
1/4 cup butter
2 onions, diced finely
salt and pepper
1 3/4 cups risotto rice
6 cups hot vegetable or chicken stock
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 large handfuls of fresh mint, chopped
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius (400 Fahrenheit, Gas Mark 6). Roast the tomatoes skin side up for about 30 minutes (less for cherry tomatoes, I would start checking them after 10-15 minutes) until the liquid has evaporated and the skins can be easily slipped off. At the same time, roast the aubergine chunks, coated with oil. They should take around the same time, but the end goal is for them to be soft, not rubbery.
Put the 4 Tbsp of oil and butter into a saucepan and add the onions and a pinch of salt. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally until the onions are soft but not yet starting to brown.
Pour in the rice and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously until the grains become translucent. Add the stock a ladleful at a time, stirring until the rice has absorbed all the liquid before adding more. After about 5-10 minutes, add the roasted tomatoes and aubergines. Continue adding the stock until you have a creamy consistency. Risotto rice should be slightly ‘al dente’ when cooked and the mixture should hold together.
Remove from the heat and stir in the Parmesan and mint. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.
If you plan on having leftovers for another day, serve with the mint to be added at the table to each individual bowl. Then when you reheat the risotto, you will still have the fresh mint flavour.
