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July 31, 2007
Sweet Shots
There are few things that get me going more than food on film (except of course, food itself). In fact, it is through photography that I came to food, years ago while working as an assistant photo editor at O, the Oprah Magazine (but that's another story....). Lately Mory (food stylist extraordinaire) and I have been documenting our recipes with beautiful still-life and how-to photographs that we hope will inspire you to get reaquainted with your kitchen (and give you the tangible skills to back you up). It's is an incredibly collaborative process, with me behind the lens and Mory behind the tweezers. We change lenses, angles, bowls and spoons until we both agree on the shot. Then we often get carried away, documenting every drip, smudge and smear before we accidentally slip a spoon into our steaming nectarine cobbler, ending our photo frenzy in a feast.
Since we had such a hard time editing our last shoot down to just six photos for our Summer Fruit Desserts, here are a few of my favorite outtakes.
Sarah Copeland, Food Photographer, Food Network Kitchens
Posted by Food Network at 6:59 PM | Comments (1)
Respect Your Elders
In England, it is said that summer has not begun until the elder plant is in bloom. When they're ripe, the elder's deep purple berries are turned into elderberry wine, syrups and preserves all over Europe (and were once used as hair dye by the Romans). It's the white blossoms, elderflowers, that really get me going. They are used to make everything from liquor to vinegars, but I love their heady flavor best in elderflower syrup. Last month, I came across a bottle of elderflower syrup left over from Iron Chef and casually begin tipping it into everything from iced tea to seven minute icing to great success.
A week later, on a stroll through peak season at the farmer's market, the bite-sized bright red local strawberries seemed to jump out at me. I was reminded that in Northern Illinois, where I grew up, the tiny strawberries that grew wild in my family's backyard were the ultimate symbol that summer had begun. They began popping up around my birthday, and were gone by summer solstice a week later. So it seemed fitting to marry them in a sweet summer trifle made with elderflower cream, in honor of summer, and the Brits (who gave us the trifle). The result is an ethereal treat that draws crowds and commands the center of any summer table (and doesn't even require you to turn on the oven!)
The season is fast fleeting, but we've got you covered with five other delicious summer fruit desserts that will carry you all the way through pear season this fall.
Sweet of us, don't you think?
You can order elderflower syrup online, but don’t worry if you can't find it. Lychee syrup, strained from canned lychees, makes a wonderful substitute.
Sarah Copeland, Elderflower Aficionado, Food Network Kitchens
Posted by Food Network at 5:47 PM
July 19, 2007
The Big Chill
Sometimes when we are in a studio shooting beautiful food all day long, the most compelling shot of the day is what’s leftover. And since I love the process, I am always begging for ways and excuses to share the process with you.
As we developed our recipes for our annual 12 Days of Cookies, I couldn’t resist the idea of sandwiching my favorite chocolate cookie with the iconically holiday peppermint ice cream my mother always served us in little holly dishes on New Year’s Eve. But when we shot the photographs of our cookies last week, we were hard pressed to find peppermint ice cream in the stores. I guess no one else celebrates Christmas in July. So, I decided to make my own, Cold-Stone Creamery style, using premium vanilla ice cream and starlight mints, all crushed up. I worked the mints into the ice cream until I had enough for a sweet little stack of chocolate and peppermint ice-cream sandwiches, and a melted, minty mess all over my board. We shot the sandwiches, and then I asked photographer Robert Jacobs to shoot this photo of my work station, which I love because it admits to a total lack of control over food photography’s most spirited and stubborn subject—Ice Cream! You’ll have to wait until the holidays for the recipe, but you can find out more about the process on Feeding Frenzy.
Sarah Copeland, Ice Cream Artist, Food Network Kitchens
Posted by Food Network at 8:00 AM | Comments (4)
July 18, 2007
In The Bag
It's not easy being green (so Kermie says). But it's time we all take being green a little more seriously, especially in the kitchen, where simple changes, like using fewer paper towels, can have big impacts. And if you want to make a really big impact, put down that plastic bag you brought your groceries home in and keep reading. Years ago grocery stores got on the environmental bandwagon, offering customers "paper or plastic," but somehow retailers and consumers everywhere have succumbed to the cheap ease of hundreds of millions of plastic sacks. More like 100 billion plastic sacks, to be exact, which is the number of plastic bags today's New York Times food section reported goes into America’s landfills every day, drifting into water sources and killing birds and sea mammals who try to consume them. Multiply that by the 500 years they take to biodegrade and we’re talking about centuries of trouble and thousands of dead birds.
Luckily for the birds and all you fashionistas, going green is quite chic these days. Last month Vogue magazine encouraged readers to use stylish, reusable sacks for carrying to the farmer's market and the grocery in hopes of replacing thousands of plastic grocery sacks. They featured a canvas tote, designed by London designer Anya Hindmarch, with the logo "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" . While that particular bag may not be the perfect solution, since it seems to ignore fair trade practices, the idea still stands strong--canvas beats plastic in the battle for a cleaner country.
Fashion designers aren't the only ones that are in vogue, though. For years, Whole Foods has offered a 10-cent discount for people who bring their own bags to carry their groceries home. So it's not surprising that they were the designated host of an event today in New York City that had environmentalists and fashionistas lined up in a downpour around their Union Square store (just steps from the Greenmarket) to get one of the limited-edition Hindmarch totes.
Read more about it in today's Times, then run out and get yourself whatever stylish tote you can get your hands on, so you too can be fashionable and environmentally friendly at the same time. I call that killing two flies with one swat (since, after all, the goal is to NOT kill birds).
Sarah Copeland, Canvas Bag Advocate, Food Network Kitchens
P.S. Check out this great story about an eight-year-old girl from Kansas who cleverly started a reusable grocery bag program in her neighborhood!
Posted by Food Network at 10:45 AM | Comments (5)
July 16, 2007
Wood Cakes
Around the test kitchen, we've been testing a lot of cooking gear for a little secret project we're brewing up, so after having my hands on every top of the line electronic (toasters that also poach eggs, and rice cookers that know the difference between washed and unwashed rice), I couldn't wait to get out into the wild and cook over a live fire. So there I was last weekend in October Mountain State Forest in the Berkshires, hungry as a bear, when the sky unleashed a downpour of firewood dampening proportions. Wet firewood is never a good thing, but it's especially bad when you’ve promised your trusty former Boy Scout (actually, former-Pioneer) that you'll cook a beautiful campfire dinner while he set up the tent. Yes, I’d foolishly bragged about my extreme cooking skills, hoping to draw upon what I’d learned from Peter Hoffman, my first chef and mentor, who famously cooks many a meal over the live fire at his restaurant Savoy (and once asked me to assist him in teaching a class on the subject). So, refusing to drive into town for a dry dinner, I had stubbornly settled on the idea of tummy full of beer and stale marshmallows when my trusty scout produced a miniature Jet Boil gas stove from his pack.
Hoffman, who is also famous biking to the farmer’s market to buy fresh vegetables even in the dead of winter, is uncompromising in his food values (witness his dedication to Chefs Collaborative), and I pride myself on having the same standards. But most chefs hate to miss a meal, so I’m sure he would forgive me for bowing slightly to more conventional cooking methods to make good on my promised menus of paella, Irish oatmeal and buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup.
It turns out the jet boil is faster than the speed of light. Well, almost. And in no time we were savoring platefuls of forest paella (vegetarian paella, which relies heavily on smoky pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika) and lots of onions and tomatoes for flavor). And who would have thought that our environmentally friendly bamboo plates would make such incredible kindling? We got that fire going (just in time for toasted marshmallows), and avoided filling up the local landfill with paper waste.
We fell asleep with full bellies to the crackle of rain on the forest floor and the fire sputtering away, as determined as I to show it wouldn’t let a little rain stop our fun. I had a blast cooking al fresco all weekend, but my favorite meal of the weekend was the buckwheat and banana pancakes, topped with a fried egg and maple syrup, a little trick I learned from my Dad, which we dubbed wood cakes. Get it, wood cakes? Because they’d probably keep a lumberjack going all day long. Or because ironically, with the help of our Jet-Boil, they don’t take any of the forest’s valuable resources (wood) to make! Or maybe it’s just because we made them in the woods. Here’s my recipe, for all you happy campers out there!
Wood Cakes
Serves 2
1 hearty knob of butter (about 4 tablespoons)
1 cup Buckwheat Pancake Mix
1 egg, plus two more for frying
3/4 cup milk
2 bananas, sliced
Melt half the butter in skillet over flame or fire. Combine pancake mix, egg, milk and melted butter into a bowl or paper cup and stir together with a sturdy fork.
Heat a little more butter in the skillet over medium heat, and pour about 1/4 cup of pancake batter into the hot skillet. When the batter bubbles on top, drop a few slices of banana onto the batter and let set slightly. Flip and cook until set through. Repeat, with remaining butter and pancake batter until you have two hearty stacks. With the remaining butter, fry eggs over easy, and top each stack of pancakes with a fried egg and maple syrup.
Sarah Copeland, Jet-Boil Enthusiast, Food Network Kitchens
Posted by Food Network at 7:02 PM | Comments (2)
July 6, 2007
Piece of Cake
Sorry I’ve been away---I got locked in the walk-in for the last few weeks (er, months). Truthfully, we’ve just been very busy around here, but I’ll try to catch you up. For starters, our Great American Bake Sale was a huge success. We had a blast turning a little nook in the Chelsea Market into our own Food Network Kitchens bakery. And boy did I get a taste of what it’s like to run a bakery. With the help of my incredible colleagues, who volunteered dozens of hours, and lots of generous donations from suppliers and local bakeries, we spent a week baking, wrapping and labeling cookies, cupcakes, breads and tarts.
On the day of the bake sale, my trusted intern Morgan and I started before sunrise, baking off the final muffins and breads to make sure everything was uber fresh. We had a brief interruption for a spot on the morning news (NY1), and once again, our whoopee pies stole the show. We opened just in time for breakfast and with the support of lots of hungry New Yorkers, we raised over $7,000 for Share our Strength by the end of the day. Not bad for a bunch of banana nut breads, right? Hey, who are you calling a nut bread?
We’re pretty proud of our delicious triumph--and this success has special meaning for me because the proceeds help support Operation Frontline, a national nutrition campaign that I’m passionately involved in. The kids I’m working with are amazing, and I can’t wait to tell you more about them next time.
For now---I hope you’ll consider having your own bake sale in your community and becoming a part of this imperative movement. After all, if we don’t feed the 12 million hungry kids in our own country, who will? Here’s some tips to help make your bake sale a piece of cake. And, if feeding our nation’s hungry kids isn’t reason enough, the Food Network has offered an exclusive tour of the Food Network Kitchens in New York as a prize for the person who raises the most money (which means you’d also get to meet little ole’ me). So put down those Oreos and register your bake sale today.
P.S. If your dog ate your spatula and you can’t have your own bake sale, you can still contribute to ours (and watch our donation grow) here. Thanks for your support!
Sarah Copeland, Baking Ambassador, Food Network Kitchens
Posted by Food Network at 3:19 PM | Comments (2)