How many times has this happened to you? The food looks mouthwatering. The presentation, stunning. The scents waft up towards you to complete the picture as you’re tempted to take your first bite. But no. The camera eats first.
By the time you’ve arranged and rearranged the plates on the table to get the right lighting, walked around the table to find the right perspective, and finally taken the perfect shot, the food has gone cold. No more! Come join our Food Styling & Photography program with Julia Konovalova, author of The Ultimate Guide to Food Styling and The Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook, for a hands-on workshop where you’ll get to learn tips and tricks behind how to get the perfect shot, every time, to make your food look as delicious on camera as it does in reality! The workshop takes place Saturday October 26, 10am-12pm, and costs $7+HST to register.
And not a moment too soon, because you know what else is coming up? Halloween, followed by the holidays! You’ll be prepared just in time to perfectly capture the spooky vibes haunting the ghastly bites you prepare for any Halloween party you host or attend. And if you haven’t yet decided what you’ll be making, be sure to sign up for our Kitchen SCREAM for Halloween program, where we’ll be whipping up something eerie for the season.
And if you’re still looking for creepy treats and dishes to make, along with spoopy shows to set the tone, look no further! Here are some recommendations to get you prepared for the season:
If you haven’t already, Over the Garden Wall is a must watch for the spoopy autumnal vibes. I’m not a huge cartoon viewer, but this is a modern classic that perfectly captures the fall spirit and ferries you from summer to the undeniable death and decay that is the current season, as Alyssia has posted about previously. I cannot hope to describe it better than she does, so I will leave it at that and move on to creepy and gross food recommendations!
Although most of the Hallowe’en cooking books are intended for children, with recipes easy enough for all ages to follow along and enjoy, The Wicked Baker strikes a nice balance for adults who haven’t lost their delight in the most wonderful time of the year with a mix of unsettling treats, from simpler recipes like bat cutout cookies and creepy gingerbread twins (children in horror movies are always the most unsettling), to fully decorated cakes like that on the cover, requiring sculpting and fondant. There are also plenty of projects in between that I’d love to try, including the eyeballs on the cover, and chocolate frogs with red Rice Krispies guts. I don’t want to give away all of this cookbooks’ fun dishes, but with something for every skill level, these are all surely made to be photographed!
Now, if we’re talking beautiful yet unsettling, eerie yet mouthwatering, we can’t just not mention what I think might be the most luscious of series involving food that I’ve seen: Hannibal. Apart from the beautiful cinematography throughout the series, have you seen the food? My goodness. Food stylist Janice Poon has a blog post about the food from Hannibal that she made, including how to cook your own roast suckling pig and lomo saltado. For more recipes inspired from the show, check out Ranker’s list of dishes from Hannibal you might actually want to eat, with links to recipes included in the article. Personally I love black chicken soup, which I actually don’t remember seeing in the series (time for a rewatch, I suppose)! I find the black chicken so much silkier than your average chicken, and would highly recommend trying the soup if you haven’t had it before. You can find black/Silkie chicken at your local Asian grocery store to make it at home!
And since we’re on this note, while perhaps not always appetizing, I’d say food plays quite a big visual role in these movies below, with some recommendations for where to find the perfect recipe to recreate your favourite scenes, armed with your new food styling & photography skills:
- The Menu (2023): I don’t want to spoil anything if you haven’t watched it, but I felt that ask deep in my soul when one of the diners requested bread for the sauce, as someone who has asked for extra bread to mop up sauce off a plate that didn’t even come with bread for that purpose. Check out these titles to cook up your own sauces and recreate the scene, or the iconic dish from the movie:
- The Book of Sandwiches by Jason Skrobar promises recipes for every sandwich lover: put it to the test to see if you’d be able to save yourself
- The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book: ok somewhat of a mashup here, but I couldn’t not include this on the list!
- If I remember correctly, Oaxaca has a number of different sauces that you can make, and be sure to make your own incriminating tortillas and explore other sauces in Tacos: Recipes and Provocations
- Also check out What You Wish For (2024), on Blu-ray, and Delicatessen (1991), available through Kanopy, free with your library card!
- Tampopo (1985) is the ramen Western you didn’t know you wanted: you might even be inspired to cook up your own broth in anticipation of being able to enjoy your own handmade ramen!
- Start off with Let’s Make Ramen, a fun cookbook-graphic novel combination that will make you hungry for ramen! While I haven’t cooked from this one myself, a friend of mine has and says it is well worth the time to make the broth from scratch.
- Ramen Forever gives you the building blocks to build your own ramen in any combination you so desire
- And if you’re interested in the history of instant ramen, check out Magic Ramen, which is a picture book but tells the story of why Momofuku Ando came up with instant ramen. Another picture book worth checking out is Ramen for Everyone, which has a young boy trying to make his own ramen for the first time the way his dad makes it. It includes a recipe at the back for your own bowl of ramen!
- Let’s end this off on a sweet note, with my all time favourite movie(s): Paddington! If you’ve wanted to try making marmalade, inspired by the bears’ rig in Darkest Peru, look no further. Check out our jam-packed collection of jam cookbooks, including Camilla Wynne’s Jam Bake:
- Pam the Jam covers your standard jams and marmalade, but also introduces interesting preserves such as fruit cheeses and zesty fruit curds.
- Learn to use local produce at the height of their season with The Preservatory so that you can enjoy the season’s bounty any time of year!
- Jam Session will have you preserving your fruits into jams and jellies all throughout the year, with recipe suggestions above and beyond just jam on toast, so that you can use up your creations for dishes like fried chicken, pork tenderloin, and cake.