Confit

By shendy1 Comment
We've spent the last couple of weeks making duck and goose confit. Aldi has been selling frozen ducks and geese at pretty reasonable prices, and Asda have taken to selling duck legs for £2.70 a pair. Makes a change from chutney - on which subject, SWMBO cooked up a huge vat of green bean chutney using our entire green bean crop from this summer. And then threw it all away as it wasn't at all nice... First up, dissect your bird - separate the legs and breast, and perhaps the wings if there's a bit of meat on them. Marinade in salt, oil, pepper, thyme, bay leaves and juniper berries. After a couple of days stewing in the marinade, clear off the salt and vegetation and sear the meat. Put it in a casserole dish, cover with goose fat and cook at 150 degrees C for a couple of hours. Yes, all that liquid is goose fat. Then put it in jars and cover with lashings of...
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Concorde

By shendyNo Comments
On Friday we went to have a look at Concorde at Filton - hurry if you want to go and see it, as it closes at the end of the month and there is no guarantee that it will ever re-open. A fantastic looking aircraft, and a friend of our neighbour designed bits of it - he worked on the air intakes (surprisingly important) and the wings. He was in a BBC documentary a few years ago, and they showed him stood underneath pointing at bits going "I did that bit, and that, and that..."...
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More Flinty Red

By shendyNo Comments
Flinty Red asked me in recently to take some shots in the kitchen for them to use to publicise their Outside Catering service. Some Creme Brulees (or should that be Cremes Brulee?) in the foreground, with Max the (temporary) chef in the background. Crostini, ready to be loaded up with Marsala-cooked onions on Ricotta. This was actually the (really nice) staff dinner - pork, beans, herbs and some of the Marsala onions. Onglet with courgettes. I think the yellow ones came from Matt the chef's own garden. Fresh haloumi cheese I had an email yesterday from someone at the BBC (yes, that BBC), asking for photos of Flinty Red to use in one of their food magazines. Coo!...
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Flinty Red

By shendyNo Comments
Forgot to post this lot. I've been developing the website for Flinty Red, the restaurant opened by wine merchants Dominic and Rachel from Corks of Cotham and chefs Matt and Claire (formerly of the Lido and QV), and went along in January to take photos for it. I started with an exterior, based on the shot of the Corks frontage that the late Pete Chinn did for them - you can see the final cropped version on the "how to find us" page of the website. It was an ideal opportunity to take the photo as the Indian restaurant over the road was closed for refurbishment, and the neon lights in their window reflected in Flinty Red's - it was impossible to get a shot without a garish purple reflection somewhere. We then moved on to an interior shot, which took several goes to get the waitress blurred but still visible. Really pleased with this one, which appears on the front page of the...
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Getting creative

By shendyNo Comments
A bit of experimentation following a chat with a friend - try and photograph water drops. Pretty easy to do - poke a small hole in the lid of a plastic bottle and an even smaller one in the bottom of it - that provides the drips. Gaffer tape it to a tripod that's sat over a bowl of water. A single flash off to the side works pretty well, and then a bit of colour from some card/paper under and behind the bowl. It worked pretty well, but looked a little bland. The stroke of genius was adding orange squash into the water! Another way to do it is apparently to drip milk into ordinary water. Setting it all up is pretty easy - the hard bits are first of all focusing correctly and then getting the timing right. But, once you work out the timing, you can get really good results......
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