Author: mariablackstone

Lentil Curry

Food, Photography

This is the first image in a growing series for one of my third year university briefs. Following on from my Borough Market images, I decided to develop this project further and add more of a concept behind my images as this what my initial images were lacking. I decided to take my love and passion for researching food, and creating recipes and deconstruct them and photograph its ingredients. This first image was inspired by a lentil curry I made. I still need to test this recipe so will post it up once I have done so. (I was slightly tired of curry after I cooked it and then dealt with more ingredients the next day, ha ha!)

Here is the final image, I plan on producing more, and taking this concept further, I really enjoyed creating it, although it took a long time.

I hope you like it, let me know what you think.

This and my other photographic work is up on my new website , and I am happy to sell prints, just get in touch.

www.mariablackstone.co.uk

Lentil Curry

Stay tuned for the next image.

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,
Maria x

Caramelled Oranges

Food, Recipes

This dish is a bit of a family tradition that we serve after Christmas lunch, every year without fail. It’s sweet, but is something refreshing to cut through all the lovely rich food we are all guilty of eating around the festive period. Oranges are so lovely in winter time, so sweet and juicy making it a perfect dish to serve to your loved ones after Christmas lunch.

Ingredients

225g Granulated Sugar

500ml Water

6 Oranges and their zest (I used Navel)

Method

1. Zest the 6 oranges

2. Place the sugar, water, and zest in a pan. Boil on a medium heat until the sugar is dissolved and you have a syrup consistency. (Not too thick though, as this forms the ‘sauce’)

3. Freeze the 6 tested oranges for a little wile to make them easier to peel and slice. This stops all of the lovely juice from escaping. We want to keep as much of the juice as we can. They do not need to be frozen solid, just firm.

4. Using a knife, cut the outer skin off, removing the white, bitter pith. and slice thinly making sure to save any juice. I usually use a plate, rather than a chopping board as this saves the juice from running everywhere and creating a mess.

Beware … you’ll get cold fingers! Have a glass of mulled wine, or something hot at the ready!

5. Add the juice, oranges, and syrup into your serving dish. You can discard the zest, or use it to decorate your dish. I placed some of it on a baking tray and dried out in the oven. You can keep this in a sterilised jar and use this to decorate cupcakes.

Oranges

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,
Maria x

Cranberry and Clementine Sauce

Food, Recipes

It’s an absolute must to have cranberry sauce with turkey on Christmas day. Ditch the jar, and try this out because homemade is so much better! This makes enough for all your cold meat sandwiches on boxing day. It also freezes well. I added clementine into this recipe – always lovely at Christmas time.

Ingredients

450g Fresh Cranberries

Zest and Juice of 1 Clementine

100 ml of Water

3/4 Cup of Sugar (you can simply add sugar to your taste, start with less and add more)

Method

1. Place the cranberries, clementine zest and water in a pan.

2. Place on a low heat and cook until the cranberries have broken down into a pulp.

3. Add sugar whilst warm, and the clementine juice. The reason I always add sugar at the end is because you can taste it, and simply add enough sugar to your own tastes. The residual heat dissolves this.

4. Serve the jewel studded sauce in a nice serving dish.

A very simple recipe, no excuse to buy a jar!

Cranberry

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,
Maria x

Sticky honey, soy & sesame glazed sausages

Food, Recipes

Forget the shop bought cocktail sausages, these sausages are sweet and sticky, and are always a hit at my family’s dinner parties. They are easy to make, and use store cupboard ingredients. If you try these, you will never want to buy a shop bought cocktail sausage again!

I used a foil tray to save on washing up, as when baked the sauce gets sticky and caramelised. Alternatively, you could line a tin with foil, or just use some elbow grease when it comes to the washing up!

Ingredients

Approximately 20 good quality chipolata sausages or 40 cocktail sausages, I used my local butcher. This amount is good for a dinner party – they’ll be gone in minutes.

1/3 cup of dark soy sauce

1/4 cup of honey

3tbps sesame seeds, plus a pinch extra for garnish.

Drizzle of oil, I used sesame but vegetable oil, or olive oil will be fine too.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, or 180 fan.

2. Place the sausages, soy sauce, honey, sesame seeds and a drizzle of oil. I used sesame oil – use this sparingly as its quite strong but enhances the sesame taste. Other oils will work fine here too.

3. Mix together well to ensure everything is well coated.

4. Cook in the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the sausages are cooked, and everything is caramelised and sticky. This may take longer if using full sized sausages.

5. Pour into a serving dish, and sprinkle with a few more sesame seeds, and watch them disappear in minutes!

Sticky Sausages

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Apple & Thyme Sauce

Food, Recipes

Here is a twist on a classic sauce to accompany rich meats such as pork. Apple and thyme is a classic combination.

I made this as an accompaniment to go with a pulled pork dish we served at our Christmas party. We served the pork alongside freshly baked homemade rolls, homemade barbecue sauce, mini roast potatoes, soy honey and sesame sausages  and salad. Of course a party at our house wouldn’t be complete with out a large spread of homemade dessert!

Ingredients

1 large cooking apple, chopped

1tsp dried thyme

1 cup of water

1/4 cup of sugar/ or to taste

Method

1. Chop a large cooking apple into a rough dice. Don’t worry too much if your knife skills aren’t up to scratch, just make sure the pieces are roughly the same size to ensure even cooking.

2. Place the apple, thyme and water in a saucepan and place on a low heat.

3. Cook for about 15 minutes or until the fruit is soft and has broken down, stir it to break down any bigger lumps. Add more water here if needed.

4. Add the sugar, whilst still warm. The reason I add it at the end, rather than before cooking is so you can add sugar to taste. I’m used to using less sugar in my diet so don’t use too much, so likewise you can add less if you like it more tart, and more if you like it sweeter.

5. Serve warm or cold, and garnish with fresh thyme. This also freezes well, so if you have the apples, make extra and defrost ready for when you have a delicious Sunday pork roast.

Hope you like it!

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Happy Birthday To Me

Baking, Food

Despite feeling terribly poorly for my birthday, I had a lovely time. Yesterday, I went up to London with my mum, dad and sister. We walked from Victoria to Trafalgar Square and had a coffee before meeting up with two family friends. We headed to The National Portrait Gallery, where we saw the Grayson Perry Who Are You? exhibition, I also saw the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition. Both were extremely good.

We then walked to Oxford Street and then went to Covent Garden to have dinner, in Gourmet Burger Kitchen and we then stopped into Paul’s Patisserie and bought an apricot tart to eat for dessert when we all got home. I also popped to the Moomin shop. (unhealthy obsession) and bought some goodies!

It was a lovely, but tiring day.

Today, despite feeling poorly, I had a lovely day at my work experience with Good Food, I then came home to presents and a homemade Chinese and chocolate mousse for dessert made by my lovely mum, and then birthday cake which was made by me and inspired by the Meringue Girls. It was a lovely chilled out evening.

Here is my cake, Chocolate Fudge Cake, with white chocolate ganache icing, meringue kisses and hazelnut praline. Delicious.

Thanks for reading,

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Culinary Canvas

Food, Inspiration

Lauren Purnell, is an artist I stumbled upon after reading an email from Zizzi’s. She created and shot some promotional images for their new autumn menu. See below.

Lauren Purnell has been creating images out of food over the past year for her project ‘Culinary Canvas’. You can follow her work on her tumblr here. Her work exhibits the beauty of using fresh ingredients, which inspired me to start looking into food markets and fresh produce. Her work is absolutely beautiful and she has worked for clients such as Zizzi’s, Randall Beans, The Juicery Co. , Wildberries Marketplace, a local grocer in Arcata, California and many others. To me eating well is important, and with current emphasis on fair-trade, and eating local produce to support farmers and producers this reflects in her work, and gives out an important message in a creative way. As well as photographing in markets, I also want to take produce into the studio and photograph it.

Some of my favourites.

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Emily Blincoe

Food, Inspiration, Photography

I stumbled across this photographer on one of my favourite sites This Is Colossal. I use this site when looking for inspiration to create work etc. Born in Austin, Texas Blincoe finds “inspiration in faces, shapes, colors, light and quiet little moments. most days you can find me wandering in the tall grass somewhere between austin and nashville with my dog, eleanor. ”

I love all of her work, but particularly her arrangements that she creates with food. She selects her food types and meticulously arranges them by colour. “Blincoe collects every color permutation of tomatoes, oranges, eggs, and even candy and then sorts them into groups and gradients for each image.” This inspired me to take my own images of singular food types in Borough Market, and I hope to take this into the studio, and perhaps do some similar arrangements as Blincoe. The images I have taken in Borough Market, try and capture one singlular food item in each frame, and I feel a series of these would be really successful, and I could experiment in the studio also with these same food types and compare them.

See more of Emily Blincoe’s work here.

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Fireworks Night

Baking, Food, Recipes

On the 8th November, we had our local firework display. I hadn’t been to this in a few years as I was always at university, but luckily I was home this weekend. So I asked mum if we could do what we used to always do, and have a dinner party after the display with close friends. On the Friday, I got up and made homemade chilli con carne, two huge pots of it. As always we do too much. I also made some chocolate pastry for a tart I wanted to make which was a recipe from Tom Kerridge’s series ‘Best Ever Dishes’. Click here to view and make the recipe yourself. I used the pastry recipe, and the chocolate filling recipe, but changed up the decoration, as I wanted to keep it to an autumnal theme bearing in mind the occasion. This, for me is the great thing about cooking. You can take a recipe and use it as a base and experiment and change up the decoration to give it your own personal creative flare, make it your own.

Using the spare egg whites, left over from the pastry I decided to make some meringue mushrooms. I had an idea influenced by the Meringue Girls, and also Rachel Khoo’s recipe to make a ‘forest floor’. So I piped out mushrooms and dusted the tops with cocoa powder. I then assembled the bases and tops using a bit of left over ganache, once they were baked. I assembled the tart the next day.

The Saturday afternoon after our trip to London, we prepared some mini roast potatoes with rosemary, homemade guacamole, homemade salsa, and served all this with a salad, green beans, rice and sour cream with some fresh bread from Bread Ahead that we bought at the market earlier in the day. I then assembled my tart, by pouring the ganache in the case, adding the mushrooms, and added some crushed up pastry (trimmings) and some crushed amaretti biscuits to look like soil, and added some tiny mint leaves. Because of the amaretto liquor, this would go great as a dessert or a slice with coffee. It is rich and indulgent. Mum also made her signature lemon meringue pie, which always goes down a treat. After a few bottles of wine, some lovely food and lots of conversation with dear friends, they left and we headed to bed after clearing up.

Below is my tart.

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Borough Market 8th November 2014

Food, Photography

I revisited Borough Market on the 8th November, after reflecting on the images I took on my previous trip. I figured I wanted to continue with my theme of photographing singular ingredients and displaying these for an exhibition project for my third year degree show. I took some more successful images to add to my portfolio, and will continue to visit and shoot here to extend the collection.

Again the sights, smells and atmosphere was incredible, and it reminded me of my love of food, and cooking and the feeling it gives me.

I ate some bread and another doughnut, from Bread Ahead, and have considered booking myself on to one of there cooking schools. Got in to the christmas spirit with a warm mulled apple juice and headed to Tower of London to see the poppies for Remembrance Sunday. This too was incredible and ended a lovely day out in London.

In the evening, I went to my local firework display and had family friends over in the evening for food and drink, which is a regular occurrence in our house. You can read about this here.

Below are some of the images shot from this day at the market.

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x