In a former life, this glass bottle did once hold a chocolaty and refreshing yoo-hoo. Now it has been re purposed for something far better (yes better than chocolate). Nope, those aren’t green beans. This bottle of filled with chilli peppers and inside is Hot Pepper Vinegar.

The Monday after Food Blog South, I headed with my agent, Mac, down to Mobile, AL, for a press conference he had with one of his other clients.  After the press conference we drove from Mobile back home to Charlotte. Like every road trip, you have top stop for gas. If you are like me and spend A LOT  of time in the car, you grow fond of stopping. I blame all the hours driving to college towns for tailgates, but I have developed a fondness for certain Truck Stops. Truck Stops are awesome! They are almost always open, have plenty of drinks and candy to eat while you drive, and can be a nice break from the road. I have developed my favorites on I-85 and I-77, but had never been on this part of I-65 before. Whether it was fate or coincidence, I will never know, but I couldn’t have been happier with Mac’s decision to stop and get gas in Greenville, AL. There we stopped at the coolest gas station I have ever been to. The Smokehouse. Part BBQ restaurant, part general store, and of course a place to get gas, I could have spent hours looking at all the treasures this place had inside. In the back of the store, past the wall of hanging autographed portraits of former Auburn and Alabama coaches, was a room lined with rows of canned goods. There was everything from home made hot sauce to pickled corn and carrots. After picking up a jar of Sweet Potato Butter, I came across an interesting array of vinegars. There were a dozen or so jars that in former lives had all contained something else. Now they contained a wide variety of hot pepper vinegar. If you have never had hot pepper vinegar, you are missing out. It is the perfect addition to anything that you need to add a little tang and spice. Most commonly seen with BBQ, it is also perfect for greens of all varieties, cornbread, and even fried chicken. The hotness and flavor will very depending on the bottle’s contents, so it is easy to make one that fits your taste buds.

Making the vinegar is quite easy. All you need are clean and sanitized glass containers, spices, chili peppers, and white distilled vinegar.

I don’t have an official recipe for you yet, more of guidelines of how you can experiment. You will need

- Clean glass containers with tops. I re purposed a soy sauce bottle, maple syrup bottle, and an empty bottle I had sitting around

- an assortment of chili peppers. Use whatever you like, for example Serranos, jalapenos or habaneros ( if you like it very hot)

- whole garlic cloves

- whole peppercorns

- white vinegar heated to just under boiling

How many peppers you will need and the amount of vinegar you be able to make depends on the size of your container. For my 3 containers, I used about 2 cups. To make your jars, add a teaspoon of peppercorns and a whole peeled garlic clove. Then add the combination of peppers you like. Cut the tops off of the peppers and stuff the jar full of them. If your jar’s opening is too small, you may have to cut the peppers into strips. Just remember, the more you cut the peppers, the more surface area you create for the vinegar to absorb the flavor. If you like your vinegar really hot, then include the pepper seeds. Otherwise cut the seeds out before putting the pepper in the jar.

Once your peppers and seasonings are in, its time to add the vinegar that has been brought to just under a boil. Using a funnel, carefully pour the vinegar into  the bottle. Pour slowly so the contents don’t overflow. Stop pouring just before the top. You want to leave a little bit of head space.

Now your vinegar is ready! Over the next couple days/weeks, the flavor will intensify. You can store it in your pantry or in the refrigerator. Here are the 3 that I made.

In a few weeks, I will tell you which I like best and show you some uses for the vinegar. Enjoy!

2 years ago today, I started Taylor Takes a Taste! Wow the last 2 years have flown by! Here is a recap from year one, and now for a recap of year 2.

Year 1 was amazing, I thought it wasn’t possible, but year 2 was even better! Here are some of my favorite posts from the last 12 months.

January

In January, this double chocolate pie , experiments with beer bread, and my first Food Blog Conference!

In February, I celebrated a lot of National Food Days, gave my first food photography tutorial, and was ready for spring!

In March, I made funnel cakes, deep fried cookie dough, and had a little March Madness tournament of my own.

In April, I continued to celebrate National Food Days, went to a soft shell crab festival and shot and shot a book promo !

In May, I went Strawberry picking with the Charlotte Food Bloggers, had a crawfish boil, and checked out the Charlotte Food Truck scene.

June brought a month filled with cream pies, food photography tutorials, and National Food Day celebrations!

In July, I celebrated the 4th, taught my first food photography class, and did more food photography tutorials!

In August, I counted down towards tailgating season and celebrated a few more national food days.

September, October, November, and December, brought with it 15 weeks of traveling, tailgating, and 2 food photography workshops.

For this season’s tailgating tour, I moved the tailgating posts to a new site Taylor Tailgates, so if you haven’t seen them all please check it out. In the fall, I traveled to another 15 games, putting my total at 29 tailgates in the last two seasons.What I am doing with all this tailgating content is something that I can’t quite reveal yet. Hopefully in the next week, I will be able to tell you about a project that I spent all of 2011 working on and will spend a good part of 2012 working on as well.

This year has been amazing! I have eaten a lot, traveled a lot, and taken thousands of great pictures. In the Spring of 2011, Julie and I started the Charlotte Food Bloggers group. We are working on redoing our website now, and have a whole lot planned for 2012! If you live in Charlotte and have a food blog, of are interested in recipe writing, food photography, WordPress, and talking about/eating great food we would love to have you join us! We have a whole lot of great things planned for 2012, so I will be sure to share with you what we are up to.

So what should you expect in 2012? Right now, I am lining up several food photography workshops that will take place late spring/early summer, if you want me to come to your city send me an email! I would love to see if we can work something out.

At the end of this month, I will be going to Food Blog South in Birmingham, AL. I had a blast last year, so I am very excited to see old friends and meet new ones! Let me know if you will be there, I would love to meet you!

As far as other posts you will see,  I have a few more food photography tutorials, I will be finishing the largest project I have ever undertaken ( will be revealed soon), and will encounter a whole lot of other things that I haven’t even imagined yet!

2011 was an even better year than 2010! I can’t wait to see what 2012 holds!

Welcome to my last post of 2011.  This is not a summary of everything that I did in 2011 (that will come January 16th on Taylor Takes a Taste’s second Birthday) but more a post that combines almost everything I am passionate about.

In deciding to start a food blog, one makes it pretty obvious to the world that they are passionate about food. So my love for food should be a no brainer. Another one of my passions is photography. Making pictures, learning about new techniques, and experimenting with different lighting setups are all things that happen in my apartment. In the past year, I have started to teach about food photography. I have taught a few classes and hosted my own set of workshops. These weekends and afternoons have been some of the most rewarding days of the past year. In 2011, I have discovered my passion for sharing what I have learned with others.

This being said, it only makes sense to share with you a tutorial I think you will find very useful. With New Year’s Day being tomorrow, it only makes sense to have a post with black eyed peas as the subject. (those of you who are just here for the food, scroll down for the second half of the post an explanation and recipe for Texas Caviar)

For good or bad, we live in a world where your food is first judged by its picture. Whether it be in a book, on a restaurant’s website or any other two dimensional object, your dish will be judged by its picture. If you can’t be there to smell and taste the dish, a picture is all you have to go off of. Because of this fact, anyone who deals with food and the internet has to become a semi professional food photographer.

As many of you have realized, that is not an easy task. Yes nice cameras and expensive lenses can produce amazing images in the hands of someone who knows how to use them, but LIGHTING is the MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT of your food photography. This same unfortunate world is a world where one’s food photography schedule doesn’t line up with natural light’s schedule.

What does this leave you with? Well you have to try your best and take pictures in your kitchen or other parts of your house using artificial light. Do pictures in your dining room turn out like this?

Or maybe you have found your kitchen works a little bit better? (my kitchen is too messy to take pictures of, Thankfully my girlfriend has an immaculate kitchen complete with pink tea kettle).

That is a little better, but still not what it could be.

A new year is all about setting new goals. I have a new goal for you. If you have found that your schedule only allows you to take pictures when there is no daylight available, make your goal to MAKE GREAT PICTURES WITH ARTIFICIAL LIGHT!

You may be saying, sure you can take great pictures with expensive lighting gear. Yes, this is true, but what if I told you that you could make a photo studio for around $15 ?

Yes, it is true. All you need is….

A 500 watt Halogen worklamp that you can get at Lowe’s or Home Depot. I got mine for $6 when I was tailgating in Birmingham. It might be a little more, but all you need is one that is at least 500 watts (the power is important, don’t get a florescent one, THEY AREN’T bright enough)

WARNINGS

Halogen lights get extremely hot. I mean it. DO NOT use these with animals or small children around. This little $5 light has no on or off switch, so you will need to plug it into a power strip that has a switch. Also, you must use it on a flat level surface. AGAIN, I can’t stress this enough. The light gets very hot so be very careful and let it cool down before moving and use caution. I am not trying to scare you. They are safe, just pay attention when using and do not leave them on when unattended.

The second item that you need is a diffusion panel. This consists of a PVC pipe square frame. Take 4 equal lengths of PVC pipe and connect them in a square shape using 4 elbow joints of the same diameter as the pipe. To do this, you will need to tape a diffusion material to the PVC pipe square. I used Paper Vellum. It is sold in large rolls and in sheets. Price will vary depending on where and what size you buy, I bought a 5 yard roll. Cut your vellum to the size of your frame and then tape it to the vellum to the frame. You want to pull the vellum so it is tight and makes a flat panel.  You could also use parchment paper. Really, any translucent material that you can make a flat panel out of will work. Different materials will have different effects on the light so play around and see what works best for you.

All you have to do is shine your light through your diffusion frame and use a piece of foam board as a fill card. You can use a box or anything else you like to prop up the panel and your foam board.

This set up works with backlighting, as well!

A Halogen worklight is a Tungsten light source, so you will need to change your camera white balance to Tungsten.

While this light and set up does have some drawbacks ( I won’t get into those here) and is by no means perfect, for those of you who want to have a great lighting set up for around $15 it is hard to beat!

If one of your goals for 2012 is to improve your food photography, I hope that this set up can help!

On a related your note, if you really want to improve or learn from the beginning about food photography, I want to help!

I have received a lot of emails and questions from people about the December workshops that I did in Charlotte, asking if I would do a workshop closer to where they live. Well, the answer is YES! I would love to meet you and spend a day exploring the world of food photography.

So let me announce….. (drum roll please)

I am working on the site now, I will let you know when it is ready, but here is the general concept.

If you would like me to come do a workshop in your town, shoot me an email taylor at taylortakesataste.com and let me know:

1) where you want the workshop to be

2) how many people do you know that would be interested in attending

3) what are you interested in learning (for example artificial lighting, taking pictures of food outside, flash photography and food, travel.. ) Or a little bit of everything!

In a week or two, I will have a page where you can see what cities I have had requests from (right now I am working on NYC area, Boston, and Raleigh, NC) If I can get enough people interested, then I will book a plane ticket or load up my car and come to your city for a weekend filled of food photography and fun! Ideally there would be a Saturday and Sunday workshop that would last the whole day and each day would have at most 8 people.

The workshops would take place anytime in April, May, June and July!

This is in its preliminary stages, but if you are interested send me a message and lets see what we can organize!

Here is to a great 2012 !

- Taylor

TEXAS CAVIAR

For those of you interested in the food, let us talk about Texas Caviar. No, there are no fish eggs here. Texas Caviar is a dish made of black-eyed peas!

I adapted my recipe from one in Saveur

Ingredients

2  15-oz. cans black-eyed peas, drained and rinsed

1⁄4 cup  chopped cilantro

1 diced jalapeno pepper

1 chopped red bell pepper

1/2 cup  thinly sliced red onion

1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1⁄4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper

juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt to taste

In a large bowl, combine the black-eyed peas, cilantro, jalapeno, red bell pepper, and onion. In a separate bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, pepper, lemon juice and salt. Pour mixture into larger bowl and toss to cover evenly. Store in the refrigerator until serving.

2011 it was great. 2012 it will be even better!

Ending one year and welcoming in another is a tradition that we all can celebrate. On Saturday evening, the whole world will be saying goodbye to 2011 and welcoming in 2012. For those of you who choose to celebrate with a drink in hand, why not make it one of these New Year’s Champagne cocktails!

I am not sure where the tradition began, but ending one year and transitioning into the next isn’t complete without a glass of champagne (or some other type of sparkling wine) in hand. There is nothing wrong with a nice simple glass of champagne. If you are sipping on a nice Dom Perignon then just leave it at that. On the other hand, if your price range is more that of the Andre variety, there are a few simple and easy ways to improve your drinking experience.

To start how about  a sophisticated classic The   “Champagne Cocktail”

This simple recipe hails from 1935 and was created at New York City’s Metropolitan Hotel. To make this cocktail: Pour one glass of champagne. Add a lemon twist followed by a sugar cube that has been coated with Angostura bitters. Wait a few seconds for the bubbles to stop and enjoy! This cocktail if perfect for a more formal New Year’s Eve party.

On New Year’s Day, there is nothing like a hearty brunch and a Mimosa. Orange juice and champagne make a perfect pair to help tackle any lingering hangover from last year.

A mimosa is simple to make. Start with a champagne flute.

Add an orange twirl and  fill the flute halfway with champagne.

Fill the rest of the glass with fresh squeezed orange juice.

For a more potent concoction, you may add some Gran Marnier to the drink.

Looking for something a little different than a mimosa? Try the Poinsettia.

This cranberry champagne cocktail has a beautiful reddish pink color that will impress any New Year’s Day brunch guests you may have.

To make the Poinsettia.

Add a lime slice to a champagne flute. Fill the glass halfway with champagne.

Fill the remainder of the glass with cranberry juice and a splash of triple sec.

If you are more of a beer drinker, don’t worry,. I have a cocktail for you. May I interest you in a Black Velvet?

This cocktail is made with 1/2 stout beer ( I used a Double Chocolate Stout) and 1/2 champagne.

Like the beermosa, this may sound like a strange combination. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have my reservations, but the combination of light and bubbly champagne with a thick stout, is a delicious drink!

However you decide to celebrate your New Year, I am sure that having one of these champagne cocktails at midnight would be a welcomed addition.

If you are interested in how I shot these champagne pours, I will tell you about that in a future post.

Tomorrow, I will bring you a delicious New Years recipe and My New Year’s resolutions, the recap of 2011 will be on January 16th when Taylor Takes a Taste turns 2 years old!

Is it a cookie or is it a cupacake? Really, that is a trick question. It is both! Half cookie, half cupcake, and all delicious. Let me introduce you to the Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcake.

Like a mad scientist splicing DNA, I have combined two delicious desserts into one amazing combination. From the top it may look like a cookie, but once you take a bite, you will taste both the cookie and cupcake! Making these cupcakes is pretty easy. You simply make your favorite cookie batter, and add it to your favorite cake batter before baking. I instagramed this before baking.

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes

Makes about 24 cupcakes

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

(Adapted from Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe)

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 fluid oz Peppermint Extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) chocolate chips
• a handful of red,green, and white sprinkles

In a large bowl combine the flour, baking soda and salt (this will be referred to as your dry ingredients). Sift together so all dry ingredients are incorporated evenly. In a separate bowl (or using a stand mixer) cream together the butter, sugars, vanilla and peppermint extract, until they are a light creamy color. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the dry goods in thirds, mixing after each addition. Stir in Chocolate Chips.

Cake Batter

Use your favorite boxed white cake mix, or your favorite white cake mix recipe. To this, add 1/4 cup of red, green, and white sprinkles.

To assemble your cookie cupcakes, fill greased muffin cups half way with cake batter. Place a tablespoon sized ball of cookie dough on top of each cake batter filled cup. (you can look at the instagramed picture to see what should look like) You DO NOT need to press the cookie dough into the cake mix.

Bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

These Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies are a welcomed treat as a gift, for college students looking to procrastinate during exams, or for a Holiday baked good swap!

Mine were for the latter. Yesterday, The Charlotte Food Bloggers had a Holiday Baked Good Swap. Here is a visual recap of what we swapped ate.  Yes, I did make my lovely holiday sweater.

If you live in Charlotte,NC, and blog about food or are interested in starting a food blog then I highly highly suggest joining the Charlotte Food Bloggers! We are currently redoing our website/branding/ and planning an amazing list of events and activities for 2012, so if you want to join shoot as a tweet @CLTfoodbloggers or an email charlottefoodbloggers@gmail.com and we would love to have you join in all the fun!

I realize that I have been MIA recently. I apologize for that. When I noticed that this is the first post of December and I it is now December 13th, I realize that I owe you all an apology.

If you have followed Taylor Takes a Taste for a while, you probably have noticed that I have a slight obsession with College Football. More specifically College Football Tailgating. Last season, I ventured out on a 14 game tour all over the country. Well this season,  I did the same. Only this time it was 15 weeks and 15 different games! Every weekend since labor day, I have been away from my home in Charlotte. I have been to Atlanta,GA,  Madison, WI, Clemson, SC, Morgantown, WV, Gainesville, FL, Raleigh,NC, Emory, VA, Boone, NC, Lexington, KY, Back to Madison for a Cheese Festival, Athens, GA, Greenville, NC, Columbia, SC, Back to Boone, and finally Birmingham, AL. That is a lot of traveling in the last 15 weeks. This season all my tailgating posts have been on Taylor Tailgates. If you haven’t seen them it check out the amazing food and tailgaters I have met this past fall!

In the midst of all this traveling, my editorial and commercial work with Taylor Mathis Photography and working on something that I can hopefully reveal to you soon. I have severely neglected Taylor Takes a Taste. I apologize for that. But the good news is. I’M BACK!

Today, I bring you an experiment that I attempted last week. With it being December, it is hard not to notice a very peculiar fruit sitting near the citrus section of your grocery store. This red grapefruit sized thing kind of looks like an apple with a very strange top. If you haven’t guessed what I am talking about, its  a Pomegranate!

Inside are hundreds of little capsules filled with a dark red and delicious juice. If you have ever wondered why Pomegranate juice is so expensive, I suggest you try extracting the juice for yourself. It takes a while. This might not be the best way, but to harvest my pomegranate juice I removed the capsules from the pomegranate flesh and then mashed them against a mesh strainer.

After a little work and 2 pomegranates later, I was left with this.

1 cup of pomegranate juice. That beautiful rich deep red color is as delicious as it is beautiful. I contemplated adding some club soda and vodka and calling it a day, but I resisted. Instead, I tried a little experiment. I have had lemon curd, I have had orange curd, but I pomegranate curd? I figured it could work out well! I envisioned giving it as a Christmas present or using it in a filling of a ginger cake. To make my curd I adapted a recipe for orange curd from the Joy of Cooking.

Pomegranate Orange Curd

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking Orange Curd Recipe

Ingredients

2 large eggs

4 large egg yolks

2/3 cup sugar

finely grated zest of 1 orange

1/2 cup fresh pomegranate juice (1 large pomegranate should be enough)

10 tbsp unsalted butter cut into small cubes.

In a medium sized sauce pan, whisk the eggs, sugar, and orange zest together until they are a light yellow color. Add the pomegranate juice and butter. Over medium heat, whisk the contents of the sauce pan until the butter is melted.

once the butter has melted, continuously whisk until the contents thicken and the mixture begins to gently simmer. Remove from heat and let cool. Place in a storage container of your choosing and let the curd  thicken in the refrigerator overnight.

Here is the finished product. I know what you are thinking. The color isn’t quite as stunning as the juice. With this being an experiment, I had not factored in what the effect of the yellow egg yolks. It turns out that the rich yellow of the egg yolks mixing with the deep red pomegranate creates a tannish brown looking curd. Visually this may not be what I had imagined, but the taste didn’t disappoint. I found that eating the pomegranate curd with gingersnaps was a pretty great route to go.

While this experiment with pomegranate juice didn’t quite turn out the way I had intended, fortunately I still have 1/2 a cup of juice remaining. I have another idea that will hopefully yield more visually pleasing results.

I had originally intended to post this a few days ago, but the weather and traveling toll of tailgating caught up to me. I have had pretty bad cold for the last few days that has left me sleeping more than working. I don’t really have much of a voice right now, but luckily this is a written blog and not a video blog. Anyway, here is a little piece from my Thanksgiving.

I am sure you and your family have their own traditions for Thanksgiving. In my family, we do a do Thanksgiving twice. We have lunch with my Dad’s side of the family and then dinner with my Mom’s side. There was no shortage of great food and I decided that I would eat rather than take pictures of what I was eating this year. What I do have is something that I left the farm with.

These are my grandparents. Daddy Don and Grandmama (I have no idea how we started calling them that, but that is what I have referred to them as my whole life). They live on a farm in North Wilkesboro, NC. I have showed your their farm and garden in the spring and in the summer. In the fall/winter there are still vegetables growing. It wouldn’t be a trip to the farm with out Daddy Don giving me some produce to take back with me. On this Thanksgiving trip, I returned with cabbage, broccoli, and…

a very very large turnip. I am sure I have probably had turnips in other dishes at some point in my life, but a turnip is not a vegetable that I usually pick out. I had never cooked one before, so I went with my go to strategy for root vegetables. ROAST THEM! I roast potatoes, carrots, onions, and beets, so I figured that a turnip would be pretty tasty roasted as well! Like all my roasted vegetables, I like to bathe them in olive oil and balsamic vinegar before putting into the oven.

Roasted Turnips

1 large or 2 medium sized turnips (peeled)

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 415F. Cut your peeled turnip(s) into about 1 inch or bite sized rectangles. Place cut turnips into a large bowl. Pour olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a dash of salt and several turns of a pepper mill into the bowl. Mix turnips with other ingredients, so they are well coated. Spread turnips onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Roast in the over for 25-30 minutes until fork tender.

Enjoy!

While at my grandparents, I also did some of my Christmas shopping. (Mom and Dad, this is a spoiler alert to what you are getting for Christmas)  Being a photographer, I have found that pictures of me and my siblings are what my parents and grandparents like best!

I am the oldest child in my family and for a while I was the tallest. I have a sister who is 2 years younger than me, and I didn’t have to worry about her passing me in height.  A few years ago, my middle brother surpassed me. I am four years older than him, so I saw that one coming.

I never wanted to admit it, but I secretly new that one day my baby brother would be taller than me. In 2009, when he was 13, I started taking a picture of me, my middle brother and I. I took one as well in 2010m but couldn’t find a copy of that one to show you.

In the last year though, my youngest brother has now surpassed me. We were pretty close for a while, and being around him made me stand up straight, but now I am waving the white flag. Clifton, I admit it, you are taller than me.

But keep in mind, Harrison and I will always be older (I am 26 Harrison is 22, Clifton is 15)…

The 4th of July is never complete with out fireworks! For the first part of the long weekend, I was in Virginia with my girlfriend’s family where there were plenty of fireworks and great food.

I made the Red, White and Blue, Macaroni and cheese as my contribution to the meal. After eating, it was time for fireworks.

As the sun went down, the lightning bugs came out! Which of course means you have to catch a few and let them fly away!

Finally it was dark enough for the fireworks show to begin! Here is a picture summary of the show!

I had an assignment to shoot on the 3rd, so I returned to Charlotte for the rest of the weekend. On July 4th, I continued celebrating, but without the fireworks. Instead it was just a lot of great food! My Mom made burgers and I brought a few side dishes. One was this delicious Cucumber Salad that I saw on Saveur.

It only requires a few ingredients and almost no time to create!

You will need

From Saveur

Instead of cookies for the sandwich, I used chocolate graham crackers! Let the ice cream soften a little and use a knife to spread it between two graham crackers. Put sandwiches immediately back into the freezer. Once they have set up, enjoy!

This is a Mac and Cheese Recipe I did for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board over at their 30 days 30 ways mac and cheese blog, and is a perfect side dish for your 4th of July get together this weekend!

When the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board asked me to create a themed macaroni and cheese, I was delighted. After spending four years in Madison as a student at UW, Wisconsin Cheese developed a special place in my heart, or stomach I should say. One of my favorite Wisconsin cheeses is the Blue variety. This tangy cheese is delicious on a wide variety of foods including in a macaroni and cheese!

Red White and Blue Mac and Cheese
Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 cup half and half
2 cloves garlic, finely grated
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon salt and pepper (more or less to taste)
1 3/4 cups grated Wisconsin White Cheddar Cheese(reserve 1/2 cup)
1 3/4 cups grated Wisconsin Monterey Jack Cheese (reserve 1/2 cup)
1 1/2 cups crumbled Wisconsin Blue Cheese (reserve 1/2 cup)
1 8-ounce jar (1 cup) sun dried tomato slivers, drained
1 pound cavatappi pasta, cooked al dente, drained, cooled
Paprika, optional

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F

In a medium sized pot over medium heat, melt butter. Add flour and whisk for 3 minutes until lightly browned. Add heavy whipping cream, half and half, garlic, cayenne, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Stir for about 3 minutes over medium heat until slightly thick. Remove from heat and add cheeses (except for reserved ½ cup White Cheddar, ½ cup Monterey Jack and ½ cup Blue Cheese) and sun dried tomatoes. Stir until cheese is melted into the sauce.

Butter a 13×9 baking dish. In a large pot (the one you cooked the pasta in), add sauce to the pasta. Stir until pasta is evenly coated. Pour into 13×9 baking dish and level out the top. Sprinkle the reserved cheese over top. Sprinkle with paprika if desired. Bake  until bubbly, about 25-30 minutes. Let sit 5-10 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Full Disclosure. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board did compensate me for ingredient costs and my time.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the point of this series is to take a recipe from a cook book that is from before I was born (1985), make it, and give it a cook book picture! I feel this is the best way for me to explain what I was thinking when it comes to styling and composition. For today’s food we have Cole Slaw. I will share the recipe later, first up the photo.

When I read this recipe, I immediately thought summer outdoor BBQ or picnic.

To convey this theme, I chose a background and serving vessel that made sense. The table is covered in a red vinyl gingham print that I bought at a fabric store. I chose this for several reasons. One, it is a print that is traditionally associated with outdoor cooking or picnicking. Two, its vinyl surface would have a nice highlight when back lit, and three the red and white would go nicely with the colors of the slaw.

I continued the backyard/picnic theme with a glass pyrex bowl to hold the slaw. Pyrex looks like something you would take to an outdoor picnic and I liked how the clear bowl showed all of the slaw in it. I used two fill cards on either side to illuminate the inside of the bowl.

With props, sometime less is more. Just because you have a cool prop, you DON’T have to use it. Ask yourself if it is essential to conveying the message you are trying to communicate with the picture.

I envisioned a 3/4 camera angle and wanted to be rather close in on the cole slaw. For the lighting, I wanted to use back lighting (more on that in this post). I chose this because it would add a nice reflection to the liquid on the slaw and would give a nice highlight to the glass bowl.

Word of caution, when working with a striped or checkered print, MAKE SURE YOUR LINES ARE STRAIGHT. Lines at an angle can be distracting to viewers. Depending on the angle that you shoot at , you will get some distortion in your lines, so pay attention to  that. In Lightroom, there is a way to straighten you image, but it will be cropped and you will lose some of the image so be careful.

Here is the final cookbook shot…

Here is the recipe. Once again it is from Charleston Receipts published by the Junior League of Charleston in 1950.

John Dent’s Cole Slaw

For a small head of cabbage:

1 tbsp butter

3 tbsp vinegar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp celery seed

1 or 2 eggs

1 tsp dry mustard

Black and red pepper to taste

Put butter, vinegar, and seasoning in same pan on fire. Beat up eggs until light. Add boiling vinegar. Stir until thick. Add celery seed when off fire. Serves 6.

Mrs. John Bennett (Susan Smythe)

Once again this recipe is well over 60 years old, so it needs some updating, but it is a very good base to a Cole Slaw.