Tagliatelle with Asparagus and Clams

A huge problem I encounter every time I take a walk in the old market in bologna is that I'm pretty vulnerable to the charme exhaling from some food ingredients: "Look how wonderful green and purple colors those asparagus" or "These clams has been just fished up, they're still breathing in the water". And then I figure out how to shoot them, with wich kind of lightning and in which set.
But since I was learnt that one should not waste any food then I have the problem how to cook them, considering I'm also on diet (yep... unfortunately).
All this rambling speech just to say that I had to find a way to cook asparagus and clams, possibly together, so I could have a single course compatible with my diet, but also something not too much untasteful.


Ingredients for approximately 4 persons: 2.2 lb. fresh clams, 14 oz. asparagus, just a bit more than half cup of fresh cream, 1 oz. butter, 1 oz. flour, 2 tablespoons of broth, parsley, garlic, olive oil, salt.

Preparation: put the clams in cold, salted water for about 5 hours to let them purge, strain them to remove all the sand and cook them in a large, covered pan together with some oil, parsley and a couple of garlic cloves until their shells will be all opened up. Shells them except about 10 that you will use later as a garnishment. In the meanwhile boil the asparagus, remove their hardest part, cut away their heads and put them apart and make a mash out of the remaining part. Brown the flour with the butter, add the mashed asparagus, the cream and the broth and let cook for about 5 minutes. Apart from this fry lightly the asparagus heads in some butter. When both the clams and the asparagus sauce will be ready, cook the tagliatelle in some salted water and strain them when "al dente". Put then the tagliatelle in a pan together with the shelled clams and the asparagus sauce and let cook for a bout 1 minute to flavour all up. Put the tagliatelle in the dishes and garnish with the asparagus heads and the clams still with their shells.

Meyer Görlitz Trioplan 50/2.9

Meyer Görlitz Trioplan 50/2.9

I have an insane passion for the glasses of the past. Beside the fact that many of them are still technologically and result-wise very effective nowadays, some others that cannot compete in sharpness own anyway a very strong "personality" which lack to the extra-sharp and ultra-contrasted zooms that are today's photographic hip.

For example I tried today tp use an old glass form the '50 made in East German that equipped the EXA cameras in their most economical set. Consequently it has an Exakta bayonet mount but it could be mounted on some digital cameras (like my Olympus e410) with an adapter.



This glass has been made with a triplet optical scheme (alas with three lenses) and its main feature is a crazy bokeh when used wide open, especially if there asre lights or reflections in the scene. It becomes a lot sharper, but also boring, once one starts to close the diaphgram.

If the optical quality is not very top-notch for sure, one can't say it lacks of personality and some shots could be made just with this poor, mistreated glass grand-pa.

Fresh Garlic Cream

Today I use again for this recipe a seasonal vegetable that it starts to appear fresh on the stalls of the farmer markets: the garlic.
Hey! Stop here! I already imagine your objections and fears. I also had fear to use garlic as the main ingredient for a recipe. But this fresh garlic was so nice looking and enticing that it forced me to find a recipe that could be not too much "demanding" for our taste. At the end I found this one that comes from the Viennese cuisine. I can assure you that you won't suffer any nasty effect, instead you'll just have some pleasant sensations when you'll taste some croûtones dipped into this warm cream.


Ingredients for approximately 4 persons: 12 garlic heads, 11 oz. of greek yogurt, 6 pt. of fresh cream, chives, lemon juice, clear broth, salt, pepper.

Preparation: boil the garlic for some minutes to soften it. Mince it finely and mix it together with the greek yogurt, the cream, some drops of lemon juice (you can also use some crème fraîche instead than yogurt,cream and lemon, it's practically the same) and some chopped chives. Cook the cream on a low heat continuing to mix and adding little by little the clear broth for about half an hour. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve it hot with some warm croûtones.

Lemon Curd

Since I posted two days ago the recipe for the scottish shortbreads I couldn't avoid to introduce to you their natural "companion": the lemon curd. It is a typical english food and it should be spread over those biscuits during the "fateful" teatime. I already tested it in some "commercial" versions, but the homemade one is a completely different matter, just like it happens with jams.




Ingredients for approximately 4 jars: 4 lemons, 4 eggs, 4 oz. butter, 1 lb. sugar.




Preparation: grate the lemons and put aside the zest, then squeeze out the juice from them. Let the butter become soft at ambient temperature, then add the sugar and start to mix. When the sugar will be absorbed by the butter add 2 yolks and 2 whole eggs and continue to mix until you'll have a soft cream. At this point add the zest and the limon juice. Don't worry if the result will look ugly, it'll become better once the butter will melt. Put the curd in a pan on a very low heat (or in a basin on the top of a pan of simmering water) and continue to stir with a wooden sppon. Continue to cook until the curd will coat the spoon, then pour into into warm jars.

Scottish Shortbreads with Mascobado Sugar

I'm not a great cook but I try to find the better ingredients. So I always was impressed in a negative way by the use in cakes and desserts of the beet sugar, which I consider pretty tin-pot both taste than nutritional wise.
Instead I like a lot cane sugars, the more unrefined, the better. Particularly I like the sugar called "mascobado", which is produced in the Philippines trough the old process consisting in just evaporating the molasses. It's a dark brown unrefined sugar, granular and with an adorable, in my opinion, aftertaste of liquorice.
It also contains various nutritional principles, like mineral salts and iron.
The forthcoming recipe is a very traditional scottish one, but using this kind of sugar the result will be a bit different in taste and aspect than the one you're accostumed to.


Ingredients for approximately 12 biscuits: 1½ cups of all-purpose flour, ¾ cup cornstarch, 8 ozs. butter, 3,5 ozs. mascobado cane sugar, salt, vanilla extract.

Preparation: heat the oven to 300°F and let the butter soften at ambient temperature. When the butter will be soft enough blend into the sugar and work it until it'll become creamy. Then pour into slowly the flour and the cornstarch, continuing to mix, and at the end a pinch of salt and some drops of vanilla extract. Continue to mix until the dough won't have any huge lumps. Spread out the dough into a pan making it the most even possible using the back of a spoon. It has to be at max less than 1 inch high.
Put into the oven for about an hour until the surface of the dough will become well browned, then take the pan out, cut the dough in 12 parts, sprinke it with some sugar and put it in the over for another additional 10 minutes. At that time let cool the pan completely before removing delicately the biscuits from it (they're fragile!).

Rimini - Tempio Malatestiano

The sepulchre of Isotta degli Atti, third wife of Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini.

Bologna - piazza Santo Stefano

The End of a Love Affair.

Parma Prosciutto and Asparagus Rolls

The season of asparagus is started and since the ones growing in my region are some of the best in whole Italy, the famous asparagus from Altedo, I think it's time to dedicate some of the next recipes to this vegetable.


Ingredients for approximately 6 persons: 3.3 lbs. of fresh asparagus, 7 ozs. of sliced parma prosciutto, 5 ozs. of parmesan cheese, 0.6 pts. of fresh cream, 1.5 ozs. flour, 1.5 ozs. butter, 0.9 pts. of milk, salt.

Preparation: first thing to do is to prepare the béchamel sauce. Amalgamate the flour into the melted butter, paying attention not to create lumps, then pour into slowly the hot milk. Add then some finely grated parmesan cheese. Make the sauce thicken on a low heat until it becomes a bit solid.
In the meanwhile boil the asparagus in salted water untile they'll be cooked "al dente", strain them and cut away their tough part. Spread the ham slices and put on each of them 3-4 asparagus and a spoon of béchamel sauce. Close up the ham to create a roll and fix it with a toothpick. Butter a baking tin and put the roll inside of it, wetting them with the cream. Put the tin into a hot oven for about 10-15 minutes then serve to table.

Ensign Ranger - Folder Love!

I must confess.

I have a soft spot for old cameras. In particular I can't resist the charm of old folders, the "pocket point & click" cameras of the old times.

Each time I see one of them cheaply priced on eBay or in a fair, left in a corner like a poor relative one is ashamed of, I always try to negotiate its release. I know I'll use it...



This time I tested "on the road" a Ensign Ranger 6x9 (I guess it's the mark II), an english folder of the '50 equipped with a Ensar 100/4.5 lens (probably a triplet scheme) mounted on a german shutter Gauthier Prontor II.

Loaded with a roll of Fuji Reala 100 I brought it to a trip on the Appenino mountains behind Bologna and, in spite of the not so sunny weather, it behaved a lot bettar than I could imagine, thanks also to its minimum focus distance of 3½ feets.
The only problem I had was some film wrinkling, maybe because it wrapped upon the old wooden spool, a relic of the last time it was used, probably really in the '50!



If also you own a folder in your grandpa trunk, don't throw it away, but don't put it as an ornament on your cupboard either. It's really funny how many people go crazy trying to give their digital shots an "old style" look and at the same time despise the instruments that create it without working for hours in post production.

Love your folders, they will love you back!

Rimini - Waiting for the Sun

Rimini - Tempio Malatestiano

Light is the first thing that affect the visitor when he enters inside this building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti and commissioned by the Lord of the city, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, as an almost pagan temple (he was fighting against the Pope and he didn't want any cristian symbol inside it) to celebrate his fastes and his lineage.
Light that comes down from the high gothic windows and flows in the lateral chapels and on the little angels that decorate their balustrades.
Little angels who smile, play, become sad while they're keeping eternal company with the man who wanted them, one of the bravest and most ruthless "condottiero" of rinascimental Italy.

In depth
Tempio Malatestiano
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta

Anatomy of a Food Shot

As I promised in this post I'll analyze one of the shot I made for one of the latest recipes I posted in this blog. I'll try also to explain what was my workflow in devising and realizing the shot, which tecniques and instruments I used, in a hopefully clear language.

Composition and Styling
First time I did was to prepare the set. I already have thought to make a shot in some "rustic looking" style of the recipe ingredients, that could convey a sensation of fresheness and genuineness: the parsley stems were just plucked so I didn't have to fake things too much.
With these concept well fixed I searched through my cooking propos an old wooden chopping board upon which place the various ingredients. I went crazy to keep together the peppercorns and the salt crystals, because they were attracted by the gravity to the concave center of the board. It was essential to use a pair of tweezers, the ones also used by the philatelists to hold stamps (they have flat ends so they don't ruin what they hold).
The garlic instead should be showed both as a whole, both with one clove, just the clove would make identification difficult and anyway the shape of the whole garlic balanced with its circular shape the straight lines of the parsely stems on the opposite side of the shot.

Lighting
For this shot I wanted a soft but directional light that highlighted the details, textures and shapes of the various objects of the set. I choosed then for a continuos light which is less "cold" and "crisp" than flashes and in my humble opinion provides a natural quality similar to sunlight, at least with food.
To exalt details and textures I placed the light (a fluorescent head inside a 60x60 cm softbox) behind the chopping board, angled at about twenty degrees down, so it could light all the whole board but also to let some shadow so to give a tridimensional effect to the shot. Some carefully placed white foam panels helped me then to open up some of the darkest shadows.

Shooting Time!
Completed the set and the lighting now I had to find a proper framing for the shot, so i started to move around the set with the camera to find a good spot from where to shoot. At the end I settled for a frontal shot, pretty closed up but that could set the viewer the impression that the board would be right in front of him, but from a lower perspective, just like he would have seen it when he was a child.
I think that playing with perspective, stepping aside from the one we're accostumed to in everyday life, helps to make an image interesting for its slightly "unexpected" feeling.
The focal length I decided for was a classic 50mm, exactly because I wanted to keep the perspective close to the normal field of vision.
Then I have to choose one glass from the many I own (and I own too many of them, I confess), a glass that could give me warm colors and a great bokeh, the latter because I wanted to have a very limited depth of field.
After some quick tests I settled for the Schneider Kreuznach Xenon 50/1.9 (in m42 mount) that always impressed me for its bokeh that looks like a "painting": it would have worked beautifully to achieve the mood I searched for this shot.
Shooting against the main light I also needed a hood, to avoid flare, and a polarizer filter to control reflections from the wooden table, over whose the chopping board lied, and also help me to increase color saturation: the result is evident especially in the green of the parsley.

Post Production
When a shot is good from start postproduction is a breeze and just fun. In this case I had to increase a bit the sharpness (only in the small in focus zone), set the white point to correct some color cast given by the lighting (fluorescent "daylight" lights aren't neutral 5000k anyway) and setting a little the levels to increase contrast to have an image ready to be printed. The reason being I lately print almost every shot before publishing it on the web or elsewhere. It's very useful to find out any problem the computer screen, even the best calibrated one, could conceal.
And photos are to be touched and not just watched on screen anyway.

Spaghetti with Artichokes and Botargo

This recipe came to my mind while I was visiting the Eataly restaurant in Bologna, where it was in the dishes of the day, and I thought it was a great idea to mix the taste of a seasonal vegetable together with the strong and aromatic one of the mullet botargo (a.k.a. salted mullet roes).


Ingredients for approximately 6 persons: 1.3 lbs of spaghetti, 6 artichokes, mullet botargo (salted mullet roes), garlic, chili pepper, parsley, salt, olive oil.


Preparation: brown a couple of garlic cloves in some oil within a large pan. Put into then the tender part of the artichokes, cut in thin slices. After five minutes add three spoons of grated botargo, the chili pepper (powdered or grated), a glass of white wine and let all cook until the wine will be evaporated. In the meanwhile cook "al dente" the spaghetti in some salted water, when they'll be ready, strain them and put them in the pan together with the sauce adding some parsley (I don't love parsely in this dish, so this is up to your taste). Let the pan cook on a low heat for a couple of minute then dish the pasta together with its sauce.

Roasted Cuttle Fishes

I've got tired with raining weather. Stop! I need summertime, sun and, above all, some good seafood.
But... - I was thinking yesterday - who's stopping me from eating seafood?
In this season it is also better than in summer when fishing is limited and sometimes stopped.
So I entered in a bookstore to find out an inspiration and then soon to the nearest fishmonger.
This evening at last, while the rain was knocking on the my house windows, I was dreaming of summer while eating this simple recipe.


Ingredients for approximately 6 persons: 2.2 lbs. of gutted cuttlefishes, crispy bread, parsley, garlic, pepper, salt, olive oil.

Preparation: crumble the bread adding to it the parsley and the garlic, finely minced, some milled pepper and some salt. Amalgamate them all using some oil until the mixture will be enough fluid. Lay down the cuttlefishes, whole or sliced, inside a tin, previously oiled. Pour the mixture above the fishes adding some other oil if needed. Put the tin to bake into the oven at about 350°F for about half an hour.

P.S.: in the forthcoming days I'll post the tech details of the first shot. Stay tuned!

Anatomy of a Low Light Portrait

The more I'm using my new Canon 5d MkII the more I'm not regretting the money I spent for buying it.

A couple of evenings ago I was shooting a friend of mine who commissioned me an informal portrait. Because I had to work at his home and I wanted to catch unposed expressions I avoided to bring with me monotorches or other studio equipment, just some speedlights in pure "strobist-style".

After some test shots with available light (an abat-jour) however I quickly put away the speedlights and used ambient light raising the camera to a whooping ISO 3200.

I opted for a strong almost side light, very similar to a "Rembrandt lightning" scheme, even if here the main light is lower, almost at face level, but without any diffusion or softnening of shadows in the dark side.

For the lens I used a Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 80/1.8, a manual lens famous for its sharp rendering: the subject is a man so there's no need to search for softening effects, instead the skin details really add to the shot. I used the lens at full aperture and focused the right eye.

Little post production was required, just a bit of sharpening (but very little) and some "fake" grain to make the shot more similar to film.

The result, seen printed on photo paper, is what more similar to a real B&W film shot I ever achieved from a digital camera.

Bologna - via Santo Stefano

Arcades in Bologna are always a surprise even after forty years during whom one has walked underneath them. Whenever the sunlight nicely clashes with their shapes, it creates a moment where you are magically transported in one of the places painted by the surrealist artists.

Tech details: shot with a Kodak Retina IIa equipped with Schneider-Kreuznach Xenon 50/2 on Fomapan 400 film.