Curries and pastes - second batch of food packaging photos

Here are the second batches of the curries and pastes food packaging photos, shot last Sunday, March 25, 2007. I was recovering from a horrible flu and I guess was not at my peak form to shoot good photos. The photos turned out to be more suitable for magazine shots instead, albeit a bit dark.

There were instant pastes for nasi lemak sambal, prawn mee, chicken curry, fish curry, and curry laksa. As usual, my cousin who needed the service cooked and styled everything, while I just shot the photos. Took a longer time to shoot and convert the pictures as I was very tired and there were more products.



Curry Chicken


Nasi Lemak


Prawn mee


Curry laksa

Breakfast: Bacon & fried eggs, roasted rosemary and garlic potatoes, toast and tomato & lettuce salad

This was a spur-of-the-moment creation for breakfast today (March 17, 2007). I was supposed to go out for fish head noodles for breakfast today with a friend before heading to KLIA POS Malaysia to collect a parcel from the US (needed customs clearance apparently) but it was raining heavily and he had to run some errands for his friend so I managed to find some stuff in the refrigerator to come up with this. Tasted quite good except that the roasted potatoes were a bit too salty.

Pictures here taken without studio lighting and tripod, just with my external flash.

Recipe for roasted rosemary and garlic potatoes

Ingredients
5 or 6 small waxy potatoes (I used the pink skin ones, which can be found at Bangsar Village's Village Grocer, Cold Storage and Jusco)
1 sprig of rosemary
3 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
pinch of salt

Procedure
1. Preheat the oven for 20 mins (at 180C)
2. Clean the potatoes and cut into 4 quarters, leave the skin intact.
3. Chop the rosemary leaves and garlic finely.
4. Add the rosemary, garlic, salt and olive oil to the potatoes, mix till even.
5. Roast the potatoes for about 20 minutes, serve hot.

Curries...shot to get paid! Woo hoo...I'm "OFFICIALLY" a food photographer

The BIG DAY in my professional food photography journey. My cousin has approached me to help her take some food photos to used for product packaging. Her company sells packaged instant curry pastes. I bought a new studio lighting a couple of days ago just so that I can get to shoot these photos properly. On Friday night I was trying to get the lighting working and really had trouble getting the effects done properly. Thanks to Sam's suggestion (my interpreter), I managed to make it run properly, and by the time I figured out...it was already past midnight! Oh well, certainly worth the time I guess.

I didnt get paid much for this but now at least I can claim that I shoot food photographs professionally (even on a freelance basis hehe)! The lighting helped quite a bit. Took me like 3 hours to shoot for the 3 curry paste products, and another 3 hours to go through the photos, converted to JPGs from RAW files and burn the CDs.

Let me know what you think of the photos, would love to have feedback! Thanks Sam for the reminder on using the flash function of the lighting! P.S. Kindly DO NOT use these photos for any purposes as you and I can be sued if found to use these pictures. Sorry guys!








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My signature dish - Asam laksa (Rice noodles in spicy and sour fish soup Penang style)

Finally, pictures of my signature dish - Asam laksa (Rice noodles in spicy and sour fish soup Penang style) . And since I do not have much time today to post the recipe (it's way too complicated, needs about like 20 ingredients to make this soup noodles). And its the first time I take pictures of this dish as well. Made it for my mom's friends, my neighbours, cousins (and their kids), and a few of my friends for the final Chinese New Year open house thingy..

Shredded white radish, carrot, green mango and red radish salad

A good way to dispose leftover ingredients...I made this from the leftover ingredients for the Italian dinner on Monday, mainly shredded carrots, radish, green mango, red radish, yellow bell pepper, and coriander. The salad dressing was made from fish sauce, lime juice, organic cane sugar and shallots. (Fried the thinly sliced shallots with peanut oil, then add the rest of the ingredients). Sprinkle some toasted white sesame, pistachios and chopped macadamia nuts (leftover from the baked chocolate pudding) onto the salad before serving.

4-course Italian dinner

Made this dinner for my tech guy with his wife who is back from Germany for Chinese New Year holidays . He gave me a set of J.A. HENCKELS INTERNATIONAL knives and a knife sharpener for my birthday this year, so I promised him that I would cook a proper meal for him with his knives. The menu: Starter - Mango avocado crab cake served with citrus salad dressed with toasted almond flakes; Main dishes - Pesto linguine with pan-fried bacon wrapped king prawns; roasted baby potatoes, pumpkin, baby swiss brown mushrooms and white onions in fresh Rosemary, Thyme, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and olive oil; Dessert - Jamie Oliver's Baked chocolate pudding.

Starter - Mango avocado crab cake served with citrus salad dressed with toasted almond flakes

Assembling the mango avocado crab cake



Pesto linguine with pan-fried bacon wrapped king prawns. Unfortunately the pesto did not have enough salt so it turned out quite bland.



Roasted baby potatoes, pumpkin, baby swiss brown mushrooms and white onions in fresh Rosemary, Thyme, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and olive oil



Jamie Oliver's Baked chocolate pudding. Forgot to put the caster sugar in and didn't turn out the way it should be, but oh well, there's always room for improvement.

Hainanese Chicken Rice (cooked with free-range chicken fed on organic grass land)

Cooked this for lunch yesterday (February 25, 2007). Served with ginger garlic chili sauce. Recipe follows next time! Laptop running out of battery and have to cook a 4-course Italian dinner tonight for my translator and his wife who is back from Germany for holidays, using the knives he gave me as birthday present!

(Updated on Feb 28, 2007) Okay, here's the "rough" recipe for the poached chicken and the rice. Not quite sure how the "genuine" hainanese chicken rice is prepared, but this is my version of the recipe! :P

Poached chicken

Ingredients
1. 1 whole free range chicken (some people call it kampung chicken or village chicken), preferably between 1.5 to 2 kgs in weight, then it tastes more flavourful as the chicken is more developed.
2. Enough water to poach the chicken
3. 2 tbsp of sea salt
4. 1 cucumber, skin peeled
5. Shredded spring onions and coriander for garnishing

Procedure
1. Clean the inside of the chicken under running water, rub the inside with about 1 tbsp of sea salt, leave for about 5 mins.
2. Boil water in a big pot, enough to cover the chicken. When the water is boiling, put in the chicken and the remaining sea salt.
3. Poach for about 20 minutes then turn the chicken to its other side, reduce the flame. Continue poaching the other side for about 10 minutes or until a chopstick can poke through the chicken - an indication that the chicken is cooked.
4. Remove the chicken from the pot and leave aside to cool before chopping chicken into smaller pieces. Collect the juices dripped from the chicken on the plate, which will be used to make the garlic and coriander soy sauce later.
5. Cut the cucumber into half lengthwise. Slice thinly in 45 degrees slanting, about 3 - 4 mm thick. Put the cucumber slices on an oval plate and transfer the chopped chicken onto the plate. The shredded spring onions and coriander is sprinkled on the chicken just before serving.
5. In the meantime, prepare the rice for cooking. The stock is then used to cook the rice and the remaining served as soup (add a bit more salt and some white pepper powder for more flavour) together with the chicken and rice later.

Ingredients for cooking rice
1. 2 cups of basmati rice, rinsed 2 times with water
2. 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3. 3 tbsp of cooking oil (best to use blended oil containing groundnuts)
4. 1 tbsp of butter (optional, but tastes better with it, can be fattenning ;))
5. 1 tbsp of salt
6. approximately 3 cups of chicken stock (from the poached chicken in the pot), depending on how soft you want the rice to be.

Procedure for cooking rice
1. Heat up the cooking oil (and butter) in the wok (or pan), put in the garlic and fry for about 30 seconds before putting in the salt and the rice.
2. Continue frying for about 3 minutes or until the rice blends well with the oil, butter, salt and garlic. The pleasant savoury smell is a good indication that the rice is ready to be cooked in the rice cooker now.
3. Remove the rice from the wok and transfer into the rice cooker.
4. Pour in the stock from poaching the chicken into the rice cooker, when the rice is almost cooked, stir it so that it is evenly cooked.

Garlic and coriander soy sauce (to be served on the chicken before eating)

Ingredients
1. 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2. 3 stalks of coriander, finely shredded
3. 3 tbsp of light sweet soy sauce (just add a little sugar to light soy sauce)
4. Approximately half a cup of cooking oil

Procedure
1. Heat the oil in the wok, fry garlic till golden.
2. Turn off the heat and put in the coriander.
3. Dish out from the wok into a bowl, add in the dripped juices from the chicken collected in the plate and add the soy sauce just before serving.

Ginger and garlic chili sauce

Ingredients
1. 4 red chilis
2. 2 small fiery hot chilis
3. 3 cloves of garlic
4. 2 cm square of younger ginger
5. 1 tsp of sea salt
6. 1 tbsp of sugar (in my case, I used organic cane sugar)
7. 2 tbsp of vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
8. juice of 3 kalamansi lime juice (limau kasturi)
9. 1/4 cup of water

Procedure
1. Put all the ingredients (except for vinegar, sugar, sea salt and lime juice) in the blender and blend till finely chopped.
2. Pour the blended mixture into a pan over low heat, add sugar, salt, vinegar and the lime juice. It is advisable not to put in all the salt and sugar at once, taste first before you decide if you want more or less of the sugar and salt.
3. Heat for another 1 minute and turn off the heat, leave to cool.

Serving the chicken with the rice
1. Sprinkle with the shredded spring onions and coriander. Pour the garlic coriander soy sauce over the chopped chicken just before serving.
2. Serve with the rice, ginger and garlic chili sauce, and soup. You can sprinkle some chopped spring onions into the soup if you like.