10 Tips for Taking #FoodPorn Photos on Your Smartphone

Today, we are taking a little break from our regular cooking (and eating) regimen, to bring you some food photography tips. For the first time, this year Taste of Atlanta is sponsoring a #FoodPorn Photo Patrol in The Kitchen Workshop. Festival-goers will receive expert tips and tricks for taking a drool-worthy photos of their food. The photo patrol is made up of skilled photographers and influential food bloggers who will be on-hand during each seminar to offer valuable insight for capturing that perfect photo of any delicious dish. Believe it or not, I was asked to help with this new venture. In preparing for my session, I put together a list of my top tips and tricks:

1. Keep Your Lens Clean – Duh! This may sound like a no brainer, but your smartphone is a workhorse. You take calls, text, and post to social media all the while taking your phone in and out of your pocket or purse. The lens gets gunky without you even realizing it. One good swipe with a soft cloth is usually enough to remove smudges and dust.

2. Use Basic Composition Rules - Follow the “Rule of Thirds.” No, it is not another "Game of Thrones" variant. This is a tried and true method to ensure your pictures are balanced. Imagine your phone screen divided into a grid of 9 squares (3 by 3); your smartphone may even have an option to display this grid right on your screen. The idea is to place your subjects along those grid lines or at the points where the lines intersect.

3. Minimize Clutter - If that spoon, napkin or busy background doesn’t add to the photo, it detracts from the photo. If you choose to accessorize your photo, use muted colors and tones that do not distract from the focal point. Plain white plates are the best option for showing off your meal and readers can see what the food actually looks like.

4. Take Photos Under Natural Light – Okay, so this is not ALWAYS possible, but you should avoid using your camera’s flash unless absolutely necessary. Move around to find the best light source. Don’t feel confined to taking photos in your kitchen. Experiment with using a flashlight to backlight your pictures for a different lighting effect and to reduce shadows.

5. Get Close But Not Too Close - Focus on what is most important in the shot, but don’t zoom in so much that viewers can’t tell what the food is. Getting close is not the same thing as using the zoom. We have never had much success with zooming on a smartphone. Zoom tends to be out of focus It is always better to crop than to zoom.

6. Take Photos From Multiple Angles - Some plates of food look better from above, or from the side, or at a 45-degree angle. Try moving around the plate and taking photos at various angles so you can pick your favorite later. You can also change the angle of a picture when you edit as well to move the focal point or emphasize a point.

7. Edit, Don’t Filter – This will probably not be a popular tip with Instagram-loving millennials, but take some time to actually edit your pictures on your phone before uploading them to your blog post or social media channels. Trust us, it is worth the time and effort. There are dozens of photo editors available for iOS or Android phones. Find one you like and are comfortable with rather than using the over-used preloaded filters available on Twitter and Instagram.

8. When All Else Fails: Quantity Over Quality - When you are trying to take pictures of a dish you are actually preparing for a meal, all of these tricks sound great, but there is little time to shoot photos while pots are boiling over, kids are yelling, dogs are barking, and hubby is losing patience. It is much better to take too many pictures than to miss a shot altogether. This is when you just start shooting and hope to get something usable before everyone has eaten your blog post!

9. People, Yes People - Pictures of folks actually chowing down on tasty food are a good thing, but always be sure to get their permission before posting on your blog or social media sites. Try including photos of hands when your friends get tired of looking like pigs on your Facebook wall.

10. *Bonus* Backdrop Tip - At a restaurant, place a napkin or menu under the plate and alter the angle of the shot to get the restaurant name or even the name of the dish in the photo. This is especially helpful if you are at a food festival like Taste of Atlanta where you are photographing dishes from more than one source.

Don't forget to enjoy the view from beyond the camera screen. And, taste the food! You'll need to be able to describe it to your readers!

Eggplant Mutabbal Will Enthrall

We included one lone eggplant in our yarden, this year. It remains the stalwart producer in our otherwise fading collection of summer vegetables. To quote New York Times columnist, Mark Bittman, “It’s safer to label [eggplant] a food like no other, beloved and appreciated worldwide and deserving of respect, not as a meat substitute, but as a treasure in itself.” Agreed. Eggplant is pretty fabulous!

One of our favorite ways to enjoy eggplant is one of the easiest, the eggplant dip most Americans know as baba ganoush. However, what most people call Baba ganoush is actually “mutabbal.” True Arabic baba ganoush is a dish of cooked eggplant mixed with onions, tomatoes, olive oil, while muttabbal is made with eggplant, sesame, garlic, lemon, and frequently cumin.

Both are typically served with toasted naan or pita triangles. Whatever you may call it, this is an incredibly tasty spread that can be made in advance and improves if made a day or two in advance.

1 large eggplant
1 clove of garlic
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
½ teaspoon cumin powder
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the eggplant on a cookie sheet. The eggplant will ooze a bit so you should consider place it on aluminum foil. Bake for about an hour.

Remove the eggplant from the oven and let it cool. Once cooled, remove the stem and peel. The outer skin should slide off the flesh fairly easily. Cut the skinned eggplant in pieces, put in a bowl and mash them with a fork. Add the mashed eggplant, lemon juice, oils, and cumin and mash again with a fork until it's mixed well. If you prefer the dip to be more smooth, you can blitz all the ingredients in a food processor.

Taste the dip and add salt and pepper accordingly.  Garnish the mutabbal with the chopped parsley and serve with pita chips, toasted naan or crudité.

Char-mingly Good Cabbage

The term cabbage is a derived from the French word, caboche meaning "head." The cabbage family is large and includes kale, collards, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts. In years prior to local farmer’s markets and Whole Foods, most of America was relegated to mundane heads of white cabbage, which because it was wildly inexpensive, made it’s way to the dinner table far more frequently than anyone preferred. It was most often finely shredded and drenched in some sort of creamy sauce and served at every cookout ever. During winter months, it was boiled or braised and served with pork chops and ham or as sauerkraut served with sausages.

Had any of us known how outrageously delicious grilled cabbage was, it would have been a dinner time game changer. Grilling cabbage adds a smokiness and char in addition to caramelization that occurs when the natural sugars boil at temperatures above 300 degrees. The flavors run deeper and the sugars get sweeter. The blackened edges or “char” (the burnt bits), add yet another layer of flavor and texture.

1 head of cabbage
3 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of a lemon
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

The best way we've found to grill cabbage is to cut it into large wedges, leaving the core intact. This helps to keep all the cabbage leaves together as it grills, and gives you plenty of surface area for charring. The idea is to char the exterior on all sides while cooking the interior so that it is soft but not mushy with a tiny bit of raw crunch at the core. You want the edges get a little blackened, and the cabbage to be warmed through. Because it can be difficult to control, the exact temperature of the grill, it is important to pay attention to the smell and appearance before flipping the wedges over or removing from the grill.

While the cabbage is grilling, mix together the olive oil, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper whisking until smooth and creamy.

For times when grilling is impossible or impractical, you can char your cabbage under the broiler of your oven. Set the broiler on high heat and place the cabbage wedges in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment or foil. Place the baking sheet under the broiler and cook for about ten minutes or until the edges chars nicely. Remove the sheet from the oven and flip the wedges and broil for another 10 minutes or so to char the second side. Make sure you are running your vent fan, as there will be a strong smell as the outer leaves burn.

Once cooked and cooled, the wedges can be served whole (like a wedge salad with bleu cheese dressing and bacon bits) or sliced to make a chopped-style salad as we prefer. Even without dressing, it is pretty darn good with a smoky flavor that penetrates deep into its layers, with a great contrast between the nutty sweetness of the charred exterior and the fresh crunch of the center.

Slice the wedges into ½-inch strips and coat with the vinaigrette. Let the salad rest for a few minutes before serving to allow the dressing to saturate the cabbage.  Any leftovers can be refrigerated and served as a cold salad the next day and works well as a sandwich topping.

Classics Win at Atlanta Meatball Festival

Last Saturday, I headed out to Belle Isle Square in Sandy Springs for the second annual Atlanta Meatball Festival produced by Taste of Atlanta and hosted by Chef Linda Harrell of Cibo E Beve. Twenty two chefs were on hand under the big tent to share their best meatball creations in this "battle of the balls" where guests were each given a gold coin to use as a voting chip for our favorite meatball! Proceeds from the event benefit Second Helpings Atlanta, which is a social action non-profit serving as a conduit between food donors and the front line agencies which feed the hungry on a daily basis.

Of course, like most popular food items, many cultures claim to be the inventors. Case in point; the meatball is claimed to have been invented by the Chinese, Romans and the Persians and this year’s chefs certainly left no cuisine untested with their unique offerings like:

• Braised Veal Meatball with Kimchi, Scallions and Charred Orange Vinaigrette from 1Kept
• Lamb & Ricotta Meatball with Candied Garlic Sauce from 4th & Swift
• Masala Meatball from Bhojanic 
• Pork & Smoked Bacon Meatball with Honey Garlic Sauce from Community Smith 
• Smoked Duck Meatball with Collard Green Kimchi from Food 101 
• Turkey Poblano Meatloaf Meatball with Jalapeno Tequila Gravy from Madre + Mason
• Shanghainese Lion's Head Meatball with Vermicelli Noodles and Cabbage from Makan
• Fried Chicken and Champagne Meatball from Max's Wine Dive
• Toragashi Spiced Lamb Meatball with Pita Almond Crisp, Tomato, Shisa Tzatziki Sauce from One Flew South 
• Korean Dirty Rice Meatball from Rathbun's
• Smoked Duck Meatball with Fire Roasted Poblano Puree and Cotija Cheese Cream from Smoke Ring 
• Shrimp Meatball with Thai Coconut Curry and Jasmine Rice from STK Atlanta 

Even with all the innovative and original presentations, I couldn’t help but be attracted to the traditional sauce-smothered, Italian-style meatball (25 years of marriage to an Italian perhaps?) thus my gold coin went to Davio’s whose classic delicate meatball doused with balanced, gentle tomato sauce is the genuine article and worthy of the name “meatball.”

I must not be the only one with this same penchant for a traditional meatball since all three of this year’s finalists (who will compete in the Meatball Throw Down during Taste of Atlanta at the end of September) were made in the classic Roman style:

• American Kobe Beef Meatball with Caciocavallo from Davio's Atlanta 
• No. 246 Meatball from No. 246
• Pork And Beef Polpette from Colletta

And a shout out to Morelli's® for sharing some Maple Bacon Brittle Ice Cream which was an excellent palate cleanser and to Angel’s Envy for sharing their amazing orange-spiked cocktails. Thanks to Brave PR for once again including us in this super enjoyable event again this year!