Fruit Preserve Filled Pastries (Raviole Bolognesi)

Christmas is here and these traditional pastries from Bologna and its surroundings are the perfect way to help us to celebrate it.

In the last article I explained how to prepare the Mostarda (mustard) Bolognese but I also promised you a further recipe where you can use it: so let's talk about these pastries, usually called "raviole", that are filled with that mustard and were prepared in countryside homes to celebrate special occasions and festivities, just like now. It's an extremely easy recipe but its taste really lies in its simplicity.

Ingredients (serves 6)
4½ cups cake flour
1 cup granulated sugar
5 oz butter
2 eggs
1½ cup of "mostarda bolognese" preserve
1 teaspoon baking powder
salt

Preparation
Sieve the flour and mix with butter and backing powder. Create a well and pour into sugar, a pinch of salt and eggs. Knead the ingredients until you have a well amalgamated dough, then spread it out with a rolling pin until it will be about 1/5 inch thick. Cut the dough into circles and put a teaspoon of preserve in it. Close the circle folding it in two and pressing the edges together. Cook in the oven at 350F for about 20 minutes then sprinkle them with some other sugar and let them cool a bit before to serve (they're good also completely cold btw).

The other articles of the reportage: Tales from the "Bassa" (Flatland):
Tales from the "Bassa" (Flatland) - Introduction
Traditional Sourdough Pork Fat Bread: the "Coppia Ferrarese"
Pumpkin Tortelli
Quinces and Plums Preserve

Did you enjoy this post? Click and get fresh Foodografia updates as soon as published by RSS feed or email

Quinces and Plums Preserve

A preserve used to fill cakes or to dress meat that also changes name and ingredients almost in each town of the Po valley: the "mostarda" (mustard).

This time, continuing our culinary reportage about the traditional recipes of the plain zones between Bologna and Ferrara, we meet the "mostarda bolognese" (Bologna mustard), a preserve made with quinces, plums and oranges that is widely used to prepare cakes or other sweet bakes or also, added with mustard seeds, to flavour boiled meat. Almost each town in the Po valley has its own recipe that slightly differs from the other, the most famous are from Cremona, Mantova and Bologna, but probably every family has its own method as it was the only way in the past to preserve the fruits that won't survive in the winter.

Ingredients
2 lb. quinces
2 lb. plumes
2 lb. sugar
1 orange
3-5 drops of mustard oil (optional)

Preparation
Peel and stone the fruits and cut them to pieces. Peel the orange, keeping the zest apart, and squeeze it. Put the juice and the sugar in a bowl, adding some water until the sugar is completely melted. Add the fruits and the orange zest and leave it to rest for 24 hour, stirring it from time to time.
Put the fruits to cook on low heat, make it boil for about 10 minutes then take out from the heat and let cool down. Repeat the procedure other two times, then sieve the mixture and put to cook in a oven at 180F for 3 hours or until very firm and dense. At this point if you want to use the preserve to dress the meat add some drops of mustard oil, depending on the strength of its flavor.

The other articles of the reportage: Tales from the "Bassa" (Flatland):
Tales from the "Bassa" (Flatland) - Introduction
Traditional Sourdough Pork Fat Bread: the "Coppia Ferrarese"
Pumpkin Tortelli

Did you enjoy this post? Click and get fresh Foodografia updates as soon as published by RSS feed or email

LIFE and TIME Magazines: the 2009 year in photos

As usual in December both these magazines publish on their web site galleries with photos that depicted not just the most important events of the year but also some of the most spectacular, intriguing and sometimes shocking photo-journalistic shots.

Both these galleries really deserve to be browsed and appreciated and also consider to navigate through the LIFE website as its filled with great, great (and I mean great) pictures from today and the past. Too bad isn't published anymore on paper.

While I love PC screens and the net a photo is still a lot more enjoyable printed on the good, glossy paper of a magazine that you could read while sitting in a cozy armchair while having a good drink.

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I think this year I will subscribe to more magazine that still invest in quality imagery. Quality must survive.



References:
LIFE's 2009 Pictures of the Year
TIME's The Year in Pictures 2009

Isco Iscaron 180/2.8

Are lenses of the past just a matter for some crazy collectors or do they worth some interest also for today photographers?


Today I'm talking about a lens made in West Germany probably in the late '60 or early '70. Isco was a subsidiary firm of the more famous Schneider lens manufacturer (actually it seems Isco meant "Ist Schneider's Company") and produced less expensive glasses than the Schneider ones.

Though some of its lens designs became pretty legendary in these days, the Iscaron 180/2.8 being one of them because of its wide aperture that was pretty uncommon for a 180mm tele lens and put it in direct confrontation with another legendary lens like the Zeiss "Olympia" Sonnar 180/2.8.

I got this lens in m42 mount which seems to be rarer to find, I met a lot more of this lenses in exakta mount (Exakta cameras were considered more professional than m42 ones like Praktica and similar).

So it was very easy for me to mount this lens on my Canon 5DmkII and get some test shots.

This lens is made of 5 elements in 3 groups, a preset diaphragm, manual focus of course with a shortest focus distance of 5.9 feet and a built in rotating tripod mounting collar.

But let's see how it behaves at full aperture with frontal lighting (not the best situation for a tele lens).




We can see that while sharpness isn't exceptional, chromatic aberrations are a lot less than many tele lenses I used, Sonnar 180 included, while the artifacts produced by the frontal lighting are kept pretty in line with just a bit of diffraction, which becomes nasty in the bokeh highlights in the out of focus area.

Having tested this lens in one of the worst situation where you can use it, I wanted to test it shooting some scenes that should be the ones it was designed for.





The results once the lens is stopped down are pretty impressive. Details and sharpness is on par with some of the best tele around while CA is kept to a minimum, in the first shot actually there's almost none. Even if I post processed my shots as usual, I can see that colors are well balanced even if the warmer ones tends to prevail. Its native contrast is also pretty good but not excessive, it's very hard to blown out highlights if you keep exposure under control.

This means that you should add a bit of contrast in post processing when you "develop" the RAW file while more modern lenses are more contrasty from start and you need to be very carefully when you expose not to burn out highlights. Sometimes this means that you then end up with too dark shadows and this is why I often prefer to use older lenses like this so I can have more details in the darker parts of the image.

To conclude this is a very good lens to shoot landscapes and nature but it could also be used for closer photography, like portraits, thanks to its luminosity and short focus distance, paying attention to lighting though as it is very prone to flare and other light produced artifacts.

Did you enjoy this post? Click and get fresh Foodografia updates as soon as published by RSS feed or email

Pumpkin Tortelli

Which recipes could be better to prepare for the forthcoming festivities than a really traditional dish from the foggy plains of Emilia?

Pumpkin tortelli, or as they are called in the area between Bologna and Ferrara "Cappellacci di Zucca", are really a historical food: first mentions can be found in medieval sources of the XI century while “tortelli di zucca con il butirro” (pumpkin tortelli with butter) are included, pretty identical to how they're prepared today, in the cookbook “Dello Scalco” written by Giovan Battista Rossetti, cook in the court of Duke Alfonso II d’Este in Ferrara, and published in the year 1584.

Ingredients (serves 4)
4 cups all-purpose flour
5 eggs
2 1/5 lb. pumpkin flesh
5 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
breadcrumbs
grated nutmeg
salt
pepper
½ cup butter
1 sprig of sage

Preparation
Create a well with the flour and open 4 eggs into its center, knead well for about 15 minutes. Spread out the dough with a large rolling pin so that it will be about 1/16 of an inch high. In the meanwhile cut the pumpkin, take out the seeds, roll it with kitchen foil and put it in the oven at 350F for about 20 minutes. Take the cooked pumpkin flesh and crush it with a fork or a mixer, add one egg, Parmesan cheese, grated nutmeg, pepper and salt to taste and enough breadcrumbs to soak up the humidity of the pumpkin. Cut the spread dough in squares with sides of about 2 inches and, with the help of a spoon, put some of the pumpkin mixture in the center of each. Fold the square to form a triangle, then curve behind two of its corner and join them so to create the classical "tortello" shape.
Boil in hot salted water or stock for about 8-10 minutes and serve with hot butter, in which you fried some sage leaves and some other nutmeg and Parmesan to taste.

The other articles of the reportage: Tales from the "Bassa" (Flatland):
Tales from the "Bassa" (Flatland) - Introduction
Traditional Sourdough Pork Fat Bread: the "Coppia Ferrarese"

Did you enjoy this post? Click and get fresh Foodografia updates as soon as published by RSS feed or email

Food Photography: Flash Lights

Do you want to enter the world of professional studio shooting? Then read on this post that describes the various alternatives for you to create a flash illumination system, paying special attention to the needs of food photography.

Let's start explaining what is a photographic flash (also called strobe light). Its main characteristic is that the light is emitted by a bulb filled with xenon gas where high voltage electricity is discharged: the result is the generation of an electrical arc that produces a flash of light in a very quick time (on average about 1/1000 second). The very good thing about flash light is its "color" (do you remember when we talked about white balance?) as it is around 5500k, alas very similar to the natural sunlight.

I'm proceeding now to list the various systems available from the commonest and simplest to the most sophisticated (and usually expensive) ones.

Integrated Flashes
I guess that it's very probable that about any reader that uses modern cameras (SRL or compact) knows what these flashes actually are, as these cameras usually have one in them (also cellphones cameras usually have one!).
The main problem with those integrated flashes is that you cannot change the direction of the light: it comes from above your lens and it usually produces a nasty "flattening" effect on the subject, being a human or an inanimate object.
Usually the only practical use of the incorporate flash on the camera is to provide some "fill light" so to avoid that the subject will result in shadow, especially when there's a strong light on the back of the subject.
Still they're about completely unuseful if you're shooting food unless you want to capture ugly images of what you're eating in a dark ambient.

Hotshoe Flashes

Continuing to talk about flashes we meet the devices that are intended to be connected on your camera through the "hot shoe" located on the top of it.
These flashes are usually a lot more powerful that the incorporated ones but still suffers from the same problem: you can't really change the direction of the light if you keep them upon the camera, the best you can do is to rotate the head and bounce the light around on some walls.
There are other methods to use these hotshoe flashes away from the your camera, like on a bracket or on a stand, and various accessories to connect them to the camera (cables, radio or infrared transmitters, etc). You can browse the Strobist site to collect more information about them and the various techniques that can allow to you to use these devices in very creative way.
Even if buying accessories and learning cool techniques could allow you to use hotshoe strobes in a very professional way, still they aren't greatly suited to food photography, and the expense of accessories takes quickly away any economic convenience. Still if you need to shoot away from your home/studio, especially in outdoor locations, then you can use the main strength of this solution: portability, low weight together with pretty good results if you know what you're doing.
Hotshoe strobes usually have a their power indicated by a number which is called "guide number" (usually abbreviated GN). It is used to calculate which is the smallest aperture you can use with that flash considering its distance from the subject using (unless otherwise indicated) a 100 ISO film or digital sensor setting. The formula is pretty straightforward:
f-number = GN/distance (in feet)
For example if guide number of a flash is 80 and the distance in feet of the subject is 10 feet, you can close the lens aperture to a maximum of f8.
Be careful, where a decimal system is in use guide numbers are indicated considering the distance in meters!

Monolight Flashes

I'm now talking about the first type of studio beasts: the monolight (or monotorch) strobes. They are big, powerful strobes to be used on stands and with an incredible number of accessories that allow you to shape the light as you wish. The first thing you need to know is that once you have a system the accessories are usually compatible just within the same system, just like lenses for camera. There are also third party producers that sell less priced monolights and accessories compatible with the most common systems, the most common being the Bowens S-bayonet.
The accessories you can't live without if you want to shoot food are softboxes, that are used to simulate the soft light coming from a window just to speak plainly. But also others are very important and they deserve an article for themselves.
A monolight usually have a tungsten "modelling" lamp, pretty less powerful than the light emitted by the flash, that it is used to allow a "preview" of how the light will be.
Monolights power is usually indicated in watt per second but it's very misleading, as it indicates how much power a monolight uses. The power of the light emitted is always indicated by the guide number of the flash: so you can have flashes with the same watt per seconds that have different GN. Monolights can be used just in studio or in places where you can have some electric power source. They are very flexible in use but this is their drawback together with the fact that the maximum power a monolight can use is around 1200-1500 watt per second. If you need more powerful strobes you have to resort to flash heads and power packs, described below.

Flash Heads

Flash Heads, as the name implies, are flashes that just contain the strobe tube and the modeling lamp, while their controls and electric supply is delegated to a "power pack" to which can be connected multiple heads. The advantage is that you can control lights from a unique source, usually faster recycle times (alas the time after which the flash is ready to lamp again) and also more power if you use the biggest power packs available. Plus the heads are smaller, lighter and usually less expensive than monolights because most of the electronic is in the power pack.
Some power packs can also be paired with batteries to be used on locations where electric plugs aren't an option.
For the rest you have the same range of accessories and options available to the monolights, maybe even some more as these systems are for professional only.

Conclusions

Ok, I gave here a fast and rough overview of flash light systems. Of course there are a ton of details and informations that I had to leave out to make things simpler but if you're really interested in buying a system like this at least now you know the basics and can understand better the more technical pages you can find browsing the web.


References:
Wikipedia: Flash Photography
Wikipedia: Guide Number

Did you enjoy this post? Click and get fresh Foodografia updates as soon as published by RSS feed or email

December 2009 Desktop Calendar

Also this month, with just a slight delay (too much work lately), Food~0~grafia offers you a desktop calendar, alas a wallpaper for your PC screen with a food photo and the calendar of the current month.

The image of this month is a (humble) tribute to a great flemish painter of the 17th century: Willem Kalf.

You can browse web or books to find some of his wondeful painting, but I want to show here the one that i used as inspiration to compose this shot.

To set the image as your desktop click on the link at the end of this post with the image dimensions that suit your PC screen and, after the image will load, right-click on it with your mouse (or press ctrl while clicking for some Mac users) and select "Set as Desktop Background..." (or something similar depending on the web browser you're using).

This month you can also download the same image of the calendar as a wallpaper for the iPhone. The link for it is below.

References:
Wikipedia: Willem Kalf
Painted Light: The Still Lifes of Willem Kalf (Die Museen der Stadt Aachen)
Web Gallery of Art: Willem Kalf

Did you enjoy this post? Click and get fresh Foodografia updates as soon as published by RSS feed or email


800x600
1024x768
1280x1024

iPhone Wallpaper