When I was growing up, dinnertime was always marked by the frying of vegetables. It was always something we did
a la minute, right before serving. And it made sense. By dinnertime, everything else was already either done or set along its way. Meats were resting, soups were simmering, seafood steaming gently in the pan. When you smelled the unmistakable fragrance of garlic, or fried onions, that meant that it was time to get your butt down to the dinner table. Vegetables were always served piping hot, the steam rising furiously against the dim yellow lighting of our dining room. To this day, I prefer cooking my vegetables. Maybe it gives me closure to preparing a meal. Maybe it brings back associations from my childhood. I don't know.
I made a stir-fry of bok choy, shitake mushrooms and red cherry peppers last night, just for old times' sake. While it was cooking, I got my camera and snapped away, trying to find the perfect mix of flash, shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings. As I am rapidly learning, food photography is so difficult because you only have a limited time to get the perfect shot, before your food starts to decline in appearance. This was the best I could muster while it was in the pan.
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1 comments:
Time does make you bolder, doesn't it?
I grew up with a southern mother whose idea of cooking vegetables was to boil them with a big ol' chunk of salt pork until they were gray and unrecognizable. I was an adult before I had hot, crispy, stir-fried veggies and became an instant convert. I realized then why parents always seem to have such a hard time getting their kids to eat right.
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