I think that most Melbournians will agree with me when I make the claim that Melbourne holds an amazing array of cafes and bars, quite often hidden by small entryways down dark alleys, the harder that a place is to find apparently making it that much trendier (e.g. “Go down this dark alley, then turn left into this darker alley, into this unmarked entrance then up two flights of narrow, dimly lit stairs till you hit the jackpot”).
It was over a year ago that my friends and I made our first visit to Madame Brussels, an extremely adorable and (thankfully) not too difficult to find bar, where we plonked our keesters on the white garden furniture sitting atop the laid astroturf to eat highly overpriced (and kinda average) cupcakes and cocktails by the JUG.
After many jugs, not too many cupcakes (and no cucumber sandwiches) and many many laughs, the last of us left standing eventually stumbled out of the bar into the warm night air, still in high spirits (quite literally - hah!) and not wanting to end the night on that note. We decided that a little caffiene might not be a bad idea to fortify us for our journeys home, so we stumbled across the road to a little cafe called Pellegrini’s.
Note - drunk lasses in high heels, not attractive to watch, but potentially extremely amusing.
We eventually made it to the extremely crowded cafe and collapsed onto some barstools (my head may or may not have landed on the bar at this stage…) where the more sober of us gave a huge grin to an older Italian man in a bright purple print top which brought him right over. We placed our orders for coffees and teas, and once the warm fluid began circulating through our bloodstreams, we got our second wind and started to continue on our previous conversations in quite an animated fashion.
Sitting at the bar, this meant that we were quite difficult for the three waiters to ignore, and pretty soon the six of us were all chatting and giggling quite loudly. Mr Bright Purple Shirt asked us what on earth we’d been doing to be in such good moods, to which we answered that we were high on both alcohol and life.
“Pfth!” he responded. “You don’t need alcohol! I got something better than alcohol!”
Being the most boisterous of the group, I met his eye and dared him to prove it, upon which he removed a lid from the counter in front of him with a flourish, used a scoop to pour some beautiful, orangey pink icy drink into a tall glass and presented it to me.
Hesitant, I held it to my nose and sniffed. Now, anyone who knows me also knows that watermelon is one of my ultimate weaknesses, so when the first scent of watermelon hit my nose, my eyes rolled back in bliss. I brought the glass down to my lips, readied myself and took a long sip. I can’t say whether it was just the good mood or the remnants of alcohol in my bloodstream or perhaps just the sticky warmth of the night, but the flavor practically burst all my tastebuds and I let out an involuntary whimper as I lay my head on my arm against the bar.
“Girls…I think my mouth just orgasmed” I mumbled, and the glass was immediately taken from my hand and passed down the bar as each of the other girls had a sip. None of the others quite had my first reaction, but all agreed that it was extremely refreshing, and that it was just the thing for this warm summer night, which prompted two more glasses of the magical stuff to appear on the bar top with Mr Purple Shirt winking and telling us that it was “on the house”.
Once the waves of euphoria left my mouth and I was once again able to speak, I asked him what it had in it.
“Well…it has watermelon…sugar…ice…a little lemon juice”
“Is that it? That can’t be it!” I responded.
“Well, there is one other secret ingredient” he replied, with a big grin and eyes twinking.
“And what is it?”
“Love. Lots and lots of love” was the answer I received.
Which, lets admit it, is the secret ingredient to making most things taste good.
We eventually left the cafe and parted ways to traverse home, and once I woke up the next morning and the hangover tamed with lots of water, orange juice and aspirins, I began to think of the granita. With only that many ingredients, surely it could easily be replicated at home, couldn’t it?
I nicked out to buy a watermelon and some lemons and came home and went to work, going to task and trying to recreate the flavours that blinded my memory so. While I haven’t quite recreated the mind-blowingness that I experienced that night, its still tasty, and whenever I make this, it brings back very fond memories of the night my mouth exploded 
Well, figuratively anyway.
Watermelon Summer
(Based on the watermelon granita from Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar)
Ingredients (makes approx. 2L)
8 cups ripe watermelon flesh
1/4 - 1/3 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
Crushed ice, to serve
1. Blend 6 cups of watermelon flesh and run through a fine sieve to remove the chunkier flesh and seed fragments, then pour the remaining liquid into a large jug.
2. Take the remaining 2 cups of watermelon flesh and place into a bowl and lightly crush them with a potato masher till the flesh is mostly pulverised but still has a bit of crunch, then add this to the jug also.
3. Stir in the caster sugar till dissolved, then add half the lemon juice, stir and taste, and add more according to your tastes (this will depend on how sweet your watermelon is).
4. Place the jug in the fridge to chill. Before serving, place crushed ice (or ice cubes, whatever is easy) into glasses and carefully pour the watermelon punch over the top.
Of course, nothing beats a fresh, ripe watermelon, but sometimes its nice to try new things. Besides, this makes a great drink for barbeques, and has the added bonus of not leaving any sticky juice all over your mouth and chin!
Technorati Tags: watermelon, summer, fruit, drinks, punch, recipe, Melbourne, Pellegrini’s, Madam Brussels
 |
So, welcome to the LONG overdue post of photo editing basics. If you’re a competent image editor and know your way around Photoshop, then this series will be of no use to you, but to those who are new to or unfamiliar with photo editing, hopefully this series will help you learn a little more about how to really make your photos shine!
Now, the first thing you need to do is make sure you have a capable software. Ever since I received a basic crash course in Adobe photoshop back in high school (on tiny tiny little Apple computers now considered vintage, mind you!), Adobe has always been my choice of editing software, from graphic editing to audio and movie editing (I know, I’m a jack of all trades and master of none). When it comes to editing my photos, I use both Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop as part of my workflow, and I find that they do a great job and are easy to comprehend, especially to the self-taught user. |
However, I managed to get these with student discounts and educational bundles which made acquiring them fairly cheap, but they may not necessarily be something you can account for in your budget, so here’s a list of the most common photo editing softwares that you can compare and look into:
1. Adobe Photoshop (Win/Mac)_-US$649.00
This is one of the market leaders when it comes to image manipulation, and whilst it provides a vast array of functions, its easy for the everyday photographer and computer user to get lost. One of the down sides of this program is that it is a form of destructive editing, in that all changes are made directly to the image file, and the history tool allows you to backtrack the last 20 steps. Unless you’re happy to spend quite a few hours learning the ins and outs of this program, I’d probably steer clear and leave this to those who have some use for an in-depth editor such as this.2. Adobe Photoshop Elements (Win/Mac) - US$99.00
This is an extremely paired down version of photoshop, designed to be used almost exclusively for image editing. Though it is far more user friendly to the beginner, te trade-off is that you also lose a lot of manual control for touching-up finer details. However, this is a great program for people who just want to be able to press a few buttons without too much fiddling around.3. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (Win/Mac) - US$99.00
Photoshop Element’s direct competitor, this program is very similar to the above. Personally, having started using Photoshop when I was taking digital art in yr10, I find Photoshop to be the easier program, but you may need to give this a try to see if you prefer it.4. Ulead PhotoImpact 12 - US$89.99
I have to admit that I’ve not used this program before (in fact, I’m downloading the trial as I type this), but from the reviews I’ve read it appears to be a snappier alternative to Corel’s Paint Shop Pro, and more tailored than the former to photo manipulation. From most reports, it also appears to be a good software for your intermediate user - those who are fed up with the limitations of something like Picasa and want a little more manual control for tweaking, but aren’t quite ready to go the whole hog with something like Photoshop.
5. Adobe Lightroom (Win/Mac) - US$299.00
This program takes all of Photoshop’s photo editing elements and compiles them into a simple, easy-to-use, non-destructive editor. You still need some knowledge of the various aspects of photography to make full use of it, but it doesn’t require as in-depth knowledge as Photoshop and is extremely intuitive to use. So long as you know a little about photography and image manipulation, its a program that won’t be too difficult to learn to use.6. Apple’s Aperture (Mac) - US$299.00
This was the first image editing program released for professionals, and is in fact the product that sparked the creation of Lightroom in order to compete. Like Lightroom, it is a program aimed at serious photographers rather than general designers, and makes great use of the intuitive, non-destructive editing process that it pioneered. The only flaw here is that, being an Apple software, it is only available to Mac users, which means the rest of us Windows bums have to do without.7. Google’s Picasa (Win/Mac) - FREE
An extremely limited photo editor, this is a program designed to be used by the hobby/casual photographer who really doesn’t want to bother with learning much about the process, but wants to be able to just click a few buttons and have instant results. As is to be expected, it is extremely limited in function and does a far from perfect job compared to all the programs listed above, but it is a lightweight program which is ideal for anyone with very little image manipulation and computer experience to use.8. GIMP (Win/Mac/Linux/Unix) - FREE
Want the finer control of the expensive programs, but don’t want to pay a dime? Then this program is the way to go - it is a free program developed by a community of volunteers who contribute their time towards its development, and from what I’ve seen, it is quite a good program! Like photoshop, you can get down into the nitty gritty of layers and masks, or keep the editing simple with easy-to-find menus for fiddling with brightness and sharpness. However, as this is a destructive editor, you will have to be careful when editing and make sure that any changes are saved as a copy file, as saving down onto the original means that you will lose the original image and not be able to go backwards.
Right, so now that you’ve got the software ready and rarin’ to go, there’s a few starting points that we need to discuss:
Firstly - remember, with photo manipulation, LESS is MORE. Especially if you’re not sure of what you’re doing and using a destructive editor (an editor that makes the changes to the actual file, thereby ‘destroying’ the original data). If you’re using one of these editors, never ever make the changes to your original photo, instead you should create copy the file to a new folder (good idea to keep all the edited photos together) and make the changes to the duplicate file. That way, if you muck something up, you still have the original photo to create a new copy from.
Secondly - photo editing is meant to enhance the image, it is not some kind of voodoo magic, it cannot turn a crap photo miraculously into a good one. You should always try and take the best photo possible with your camera, paying particular attention to focus/sharpness, white balance and exposure, this will mean you have to spend far less time fiddling with the photo in post-production and the editing process will be far less painful.
Thirdly - another camera related point is that you should always take your photos at the best quality and highest resolution possible. Why is that? Because this means you’ll experience less of a drop in quality when editing and resizing the photo later on! Sure, the file sizes may be pretty big (each photo off my camera is roughly between 6-10 mb each) but I think that in the end, its pretty worthwhile!
Fourth - STAY AWAY FROM OBVIOUS EDITING! One thing that I notice a fair bit is an almost obsessive overuse of the blur and smudge functions that must image editors offer. Whether it is to try and simulate DoF (depth of field) or blur out an unattractive background, the results do very little for enhancing the natural beauty of the food you’re photographing, and often serve as more of a distraction. A sheet of thin white cardboard or a roll of wrapping paper is just a few dollars, and is a better alternative to hand-blurred photos. Another thing that really gets my goat is over-lightening, but I’ll discuss that a bit later.
Fifth - Make sure your monitor is displaying colours probably, i.e. calibrate your screen. Now, my current LCD monitor has an iffy white point which I, for some reason, can’t fix, so I know that images that I view on my machine will probably appear slightly differently on others or when printed. This site has a great, easy to understand series of pages on monitor colours and calibration which is a good starting point for you.
 |
Here’s the image that I’ll be using for this guide. Other than the fact that is a less than stellar photo (slightly crooked, inconsistent background etc), you can also see that its just a touch on the dark side, the colours are muted and the focus could be snappier. Nonetheless, its a good starting point for editing your photos.Now, when it comes to basic photo editing, there are a few key things we are looking at:1. Lighting/Exposure
3. Colours 4. Sharpness/Clarity 5. Cropping/Resizing and saving your images These are the basic building blocks of photo manipulation, of trying to really bring your photos to life without crossing the border into the realm of digital art, so feel free to work through the links and let me know if you have any questions or need a bit of help figuring something out Technorati Tags: photos, editing, illustration, photo manipulation, photography, tips, guides |
Now, despite our best efforts, us home/hobby photographers working with just the camera in our hands and no other equipment often have to struggle with less than ideal lighting situations - it might be too bright and sunny, or alternatively, it might be too dark. Both situations give rather unsatisfactory results and can wash out or mute colours, but depending on your software, there are a number of tools at our disposal that we can use to combat this:
If you’re using a basic, bare-bones editor such as Google Picasa then you’ll be working with just three sliders (fill light, highlights and shadows) which you can manually edit or ask the software to automatically edit it for you. From what I’ve seen, the auto editor doesn’t appear to be too bad so long as the photo is of decent quality to begin with, but you might want to make the $100 investment into something like Ulead PhotoImpact, Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop Elements. Or, if you want something that works for free and has the capability to make all these changes and don’t mind the extra headache of working it out for yourself, you can always try having a play with GIMP!
I know that having 5 options just to control the light seems a bit excessive, but I’ll take you through them one by one to explain just what they do, and how to use them and hopefully you’ll see that used wisely, they can be a great asset to you!
Happy new year, folks! I hope everyone had awesome NYE celebrations, and if you had half as much fun as I did, then you’re doing well
Sorry this is a brief post but I’ve got some personal shite going on at the moment and am feeling a bit tired from it all, so its just the recipe today I’m afraid. However, I am quite happy to inform that this is a fantastically tasty recipe and it is vegan, but I guarantee that herbivores and carnivores alike will enjoy the tastiness of these Asian mushroom spring rolls!
I’ll try and have a more substantial post for you before the end of the week, but for now - onto the recipe
Mushroom Spring Rolls
(Adapted from The Cook’s Book)
Ingredients (makes about 10-15)
100g oyster mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
100g enoki mushrooms, roots cut off and broken apart
5 shiitake mushrooms, cleaned and roughly diced
150g fresh firm tofu, drained and diced
100g bean shoots, rinsed
4 spring onions, cleaned and finely sliced
2 tbsp snipped chives
2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves
4 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp corn starch
1 pk medium sized spring roll wrappers
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1. Heat a little vegetable oil in a wok over high heat till nice and hot, then toss in all the mushrooms and garlic and fry for 5 minutes over or till softened. Add the tofu, bean shoots, spring onion, chives and coriander and fry whilst stirring for 1 minutes to combine. Add the corn starch, fry for another minute (keep that wrist loose!) then remove from the heat.
2. Season the mushroom mixture with the soy sauce, sesame seeds and pepper, then leave to cool completely.
3. Open packet of frozen spring roll wrappers and cover with a clean damp kitchen cloth. Pull off one sheet, then place it on your table (or wherever you’ll be rolling these) and place a line of stuffing at one end, leaving enough spring roll skin so it can be pulled around it from the top and folded over on each side to meet in the middle. Lightly dip a pastry brush in the egg white then run it around the edge of the pastry, then roll it up nice and tight. Set onto a plate/tray lightly dusted with corn starch, then repeat with the remaining mixture till you run out.
4. Deep fry rolls for 3-4 minutes, or till crispy and golden brown in colour. Drain well, then serve with some super crisp lettuce leaves and your dipping sauce of choice
Technorati Tags: spring rolls, The Cook’s Book, Christine Manfield, mushrooms, vegetarian, vegan, Asian, food, recipes
Would you believe that once upon a time, I was absolutely terrified of baking muffins?1 Yes, I kid you not - in the early days of this blog, I publicly outed myself as having absolutely no skill in the muffin department, as the recipes I’d tried till then had always given disappointing results.
Well, folks, as it turns out, I was just using less than stellar recipes! I’ve since then accumulated much better cookbooks which hold the most glorious recipes for muffins, and my family and I (as well as friends who are often recipients courtesy of various family members) have been enjoying these handfuls of fluffy fluffy goodness.
Despite my new years resolution for 2007 that I would not add any new cookbooks to my collection till I had tried at least 20% of the recipes in each, I have somehow ended up with a much heavier bookcase over the course of the year - thankfully, most have been gifted to me so I’ve not been burdened with too much guilt at the new acquisitions, however there is a mild amount of panic that has accompanied each addition as I wonder when on earth I’ll have the time to try all these new recipes! I plan on lowering the limit for 2008 (I’ve decided that 20% is far too much, considering the sheer size of some of my kitchen tomes) down to just 10% of each cookbook, but that still leaves me with a few hundred recipes that dearly need trying the the coming 365 days.
Whilst I am grateful for the bountiful fruit of the summer season, such as all the glorious mango around, there are two thing that summer brings which I can most definitely do without - that is the stinking humidity and sweltering heat. Both are fine when lounging by the pool or sea, soaking up the rays and cooling off in a large body of water, but when I want to bake in my kitchen which is unfortunately not one of those lovely climate controlled kitchens, it often means I have to leave my baking shenanigans till late at night, when the rest of the family has gone to bed and the house has cooled down enough so that my turning on the oven for an hour or two (or more, depending on how much baking needs to happen) doesn’t turn the house into a sauna.
This was, unfortunately, the case a few weeks ago when I was struck with an intense longing for some muffiny goodness. Of course, we have a few decent little mom & pop bakeries around and I could have easily gone and bought a few…but if you hadn’t guessed by now, I’m not one for buying baked goods (or anything premade, for that matter), especially if I’m more than capable of making it myself. As the rest of the family was out, I apologized to Mr Woofy for the coming swelter-session and began to prep my ingredients to try two recipes that I had been eyeing off in my ‘Marie Claire - Comfort‘ cookbook for awhile - one for mixed berry muffins, and the other for carrot and coconut muffins. The pictures for both in the books were absolutely adorable (much better than my humble attempts here) and combining that with my lust for muffin-love meant I couldn’t wait, and I had to have them now.
Alas, as I began to sift my flours, my mother arrived back from her game of golf and eyed my baking supplies sprawled all over the kitchen counter. Giving me her attempt at an evil eye, she asked what exactly I thought I was doing. When I told her that I was about to embark on a muffin-baking session, she immediately ushered me out of the kitchen, telling me that it was far too hot to be doing any sort of baking, and that if I felt the same way after midnight, I could make them then.
Hoboy.
The rest of the day was spent longing for muffins and watching each hour crawl by slower than a sleepy tortoise, till finally, at one minute past midnight, I sprung from the couch with cookbook in hand and a look of grim determination on my face.
Ah-hah! Muffins, you would be mine!
Though I didn’t actually finish baking and cleaning up till almost 3am, I have to say that sitting down at the kitchen table with a fresh muffin, still warm from the oven, in hand, it made all the waiting and tiredness worthwhile! Unfortunately, I only got to have that one as the rest were taken away by various family friends, but by all reports they were extremely glad I’d had a midnight muffin session too
Mixed Berry Muffins
(Adapted from ‘Marie Claire - Comfort‘)
Ingredients
250g plain natural yoghurt
100mL natural applesauce *
2 medium-sized eggs
2 tsp natural vanilla extract
280g all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
100g brown sugar
250g frozen mixed berries
Demerara sugar
* - The recipe originally called for vegetable oil to be used here, but I decided to try replacing the oil with applesauce to see how well it worked. I must say that the results are MOST pleasing, and I’ll be looking to use applesauce as a replacement for oil in my baking more often!
If, like me, you’re not the kind of person who stocks applesauce, then you can easily make some by taking some SWEET apples (I always have some fuji apples in my fridge), peel and core them and put them in a large pot with about 1-2 inches of water in the bottom (depending on how much you’re making). Put the lid on and cook them till they’re soft all the way through, then allow them to cool, drain the water and put the apples through a food mill. Ta-da, its that easy!
1. Grease 12 holes in a standard muffin tin or prepare 12 muffin papers and preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Whisk together the plain yoghurt, applesauce, eggs and vanilla extract till well combined.
3. Sift together the all-purpose flour with the baking powder, then stir in the brown sugar and mixed berries till evenly mixed together. Add the yoghurt mixture to the flour mixture and lightly fold together, taking care not to overmix.
4. Spoon into the prepared muffin containers and sprinkle the top of each muffin with a tsp of demerara sugar and place in the oven to bake for 30-40 minutes, or till a wooden skewer inserted into the middle comes out cleanly.
Carrot & Coconut Muffins
(Adapted from ‘Marie Claire - Comfort‘)
Ingredients
280g all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
150g caster sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
200g finely grated carrot
100g desiccated coconut
2 medium-sized eggs
Zest & juice of 1 small lemon
1 tbsp honey
200mL natural applesauce *
1. Prepare 12 muffin holes (or 12 muffin papers) and preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Sift the all-purpose flour with the baking powder, then stir in the caster sugar and cinnamon till evenly mixed together. Add the grated carrot and coconut and toss till combined, then make a well in the centre.
3. In a smaller bowl, beat together the eggs, lemon zest and lemon juice, honey and applesauce. Pour the wet mixture into the well of the dry and lightly mix together till just combined.
4. Bake the muffins for 30-40 minutes, or till the muffins are golden brown and a wooden skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
People who have tried this recipe:
- Thanh from I Eat Therefore I Am
Technorati Tags: muffins, berries, coconut, carrot, recipes, baking
NOTE: You may have noticed that my instructions call for a wooden skewer to be used. The reason for this is that the natural grain of a wooden skewer allows you more accurately to tell when the inside of your cake is done - slightly moist crumbs will slide right off a metal one, and with something like these very moist muffins, the skewer could be the difference between an underbaked and a perfectly baked muffin.
1 - The fear of muffins was actually a fear of small cakes - which included cupcakes as the other miniature which struck fear into my heart. Whilst I’ve conquered my fear of muffins and replaced it with pure love, I’m afraid the same just cannot be said about cupcakes. Yet another resolution for the new year, I suppose.
