Slow Food Perth will join with Christ Church Grammar School’s ethics centre to present a forum entitled ‘Food sovereignty: what’s on your plate?’ at the school in Claremont on 24 August 2010 at 7.30pm

The panel will include:
Frank Sheehan – Priest & Christ Church Grammar School chaplain
Anthony Georgeff – Journalist and editor of Spice magazine
Dr. Felicity Newman – Academic, lecturer in food and culture at Murdoch University
Annie Kavanagh – Farmer, from Spencers Brook farm in the Avon Valley
Max Trenorden – Parliamentarian, Nationals leading Member for the Agricultural Region & chairman of the Australian Landcare Council
Kim Chance – Former Labor minister for Agriculture and Food (2001-2008).

Food sovereignty’ – the right of local people to decide what they grow and eat.

A burgeoning interest in knowing where your food comes from – who grows it, is it local, and how it’s grown – together with a heightened awareness of the cost of ‘food miles’ and the effect of genetic modification in staple crops, is encouraging support for local farmers’ markets and prompting questions at the local butcher

Date/Time: Tuesday 24th August 7.30pm- 9pm

Venue: Christ Church Grammar School, Chapel

Costs: Gold coin donation to Anglicare

Is that you can never afford to eat enough of them.

The above photo is what became of some left over truffle risotto made at the Slow Food Perth food piazza stand during the 2010 Mundaring Truffle Festival, and comprise perhaps the most expensive arancini (recipe below) the world has ever seen.

The festival was a big weekend. I personally stirred 24 kg of truffle risotto into existence, and have a right arm the size of Popeye to prove it. I would have loved to be posting lots of other photos of amazing truffle goodness from the festival but spending most of my time in the Slow Food Perth tent I didn’t get to annoy as many people with my camera as I have in previous years. Idle hands and all that, it was probably for the best.

It was an interesting event anyway, with a who’s who of local Perthonality chefs bringing their kitchens up to the festival to wow ever growing crowds of gourmet food fans with their wares.

I enjoyed the variety of foods and some of the amazing things people has created (Emmanuelle Mollois’ truffle macaron for one) and it’s always interesting to see the looks on peoples faces when given the opportunity to try truffles for the first time. “So that’s what it tastes like!” is the common theme.

Personally that’s the best thing about the festival for me. Seeing people who would never have had a chance to try truffles presented them in a way that’s affordable and accessible, so they can make up their own minds as to whether they’re worth $3000 per kg or not.

Slow Food Perth did a fantastic job over the weekend. With a tent to educate kids about food (where apples originated, the history of wheat and how to make fresh pasta), and in the food tent Terra Madre delegates were cooking up a storm. Turning out pizza, mushrooms and porchetta from the wood fired oven and truffle risotto, polenta, and Blackwood Valley beef rolls with truffle butter.

Hopefully next years event can keep hold of the organic community roots that made it such a unique event on the Perth food calendar.

Truffle Arancini (or regular arancini)

First I should say that you should never make a risotto solely to turn it into arancini, unless you’re a caterer or a sadist (arguably the same thing) it’s just a waste of good risotto. If however, you are already making risotto, just use a little more rice and end up with more than you need, that way you can enjoy your risotto and have a guilt free path to arancini left overs the next day.

So to make truffle risotto arancini above you basically take a whole pile of cold truffle risotto, some small balls of bocconcini or fresh mozzarella, flatten a layer of risotto onto the palm of your hand, place a piece of cheese in the centre, and wrap the risotto around the cheese. Then roll it into a ball, dip it into a beaten egg, and roll it in breadcrumbs.

Shallow fry in olive oil or deep free in vegetable oil til golden brown, then drain onto absorbent paper and leave to rest so you don’t burn your mouth off when you try to eat one.

The result should be a delicious crunchy exterior and a cheesy truffle risotto interior that gently coats your mouth with goodness.

Eep. This is tomorrow night. I’ve been tardy I know, but If you can make it along please do. The words come from Jen @ 5 Senses

What comes after # 1? Another super cheap $15 barista competition fundraiser.

Time to re-group with Barista Jam #2 and get down to business. Consider our first get together hosted by the lovely people at Elixir Coffee Specialists a who’s who / meet and greet. Now that we are all friendlies, it’s time to talk a little bit more seriously about this year’s upcoming barista competition.

We are looking for all potential competitors, hopeful judges, volunteers and sponsors to make themselves known and come join us for another beer and pizza session at Epic Espresso in West Perth this Friday the 23rd from 5pm onwards. We obviously don’t want to waste all the prize money on advertising, so it’s up to you to get the word out there to anyone you think might be interested.

We are planning some comp focused training during the evening. We’ll aim to spend time each Barista Jam breaking down a section of the scoresheet in order to offer insight and tips on getting the best results beginning with the espresso section. On the table at 5:30pm sharp (before Pizza) will be the top ten Honduras COE samples for cupping. It will be an opportunity to discuss flavours, characteristics and pesky” Nuancessssss” with the comp blend descriptor training in mind.

Lastly, we are keen to reward some budding artists! 5 bucks in the hopper, 1 cup, judged by comp rules, winner takes home a fancy new Reg Barber.

If you’re interested in providing your venue for #3 we are keen to hear from you.

See you this Friday,

Jen

Facebook event link here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101782406543046

Yes that’s right folks. Whilst it may also be duck season, and rabbit season. It is now most importantly truffle season ! As the weather cools and the rain falls, you can take some comfort in the fact that those little nuggets of earthy goodness have been slowly growing in their special funghi like way for the past year (or 6 or 7 years perhaps) and are now ready to be harvested and savoured.

W.A is fast becoming a truffle haven it would seem. With the Mundaring Truffle Festival going from strength to strength each year, and Manjimup truffles being joined by Pemberton (The Stone Barn has just harvested it’s first truffles), and others in the works. It’s a boutique industry success story.

I picked up a little truffle at the Perth edition of the Good Food & Wine Show last weekend. It was from the Manjimup Wine & Truffle company who currently supply most (if not all) the black truffles you find in restaurants and gourmet stores across the country. Apparently the little 15gram piece I bought had been harvested the day before, and was vacuum sealed with a little padding for maximum freshness so it would still taste as strong as it did when it came out of the ground.

I like to do as little as possible to truffles. I think their uniquely pungent flavour should be the star of any dish they’re added to, and my lack of finesse when deal with fancy ingredients tends to lend itself to simple classics.

As such, the two dishes I made with this truffle were: Asparagus / Poached Egg / Black truffle, and a very simple truffle risotto with scallops.

My egg poaching method these days involves boiling water, white wine vinegar, and then just dropping the egg directly into the water without swirling or wrapping anything in cling film. The secret to the beauty of this is using really nice fresh eggs. The eggs I had this time were sourced from a stall at the Subi Farmers Market, and based on shape and consistency alone were obviously far superior to the supermarket eggs I’ve dealt with in the past.

The risotto was made using a chicken / rabbit stock as the base, and a little milk added along the way. I got the idea for the milk from Vince Velletri who used a similar method to cook the risotto for the Slow Food Perth lunch at the Mundaring Truffle festival last year. I was responsible for stirring about 10kg of rice that went into one massive pot and the memory still sticks in my head. The idea behind the milk is really just to mellow the flavours of the onion etc in the base so that the truffle has more poignancy in the dish.

The rest was simply frying some scallops in butter for 20 seconds or so on each side, and then shaving what was left of the fresh truffle over the top.

Served with a Bellarmine 2004 Riesling, it wasn’t a bad meal at all.

Really looking foward to the upcoming Truffle Festival at the end of this month, and you should all get up there and check it out.

This is going to be another post for the eyes. Where words take a backseat to the photos. This is mostly because it’s freezing at the moment, and my frozen fingers are less inclined to sit here tapping away than they are to be wrapped around a mug of something warm. So click the images below to make them big and feel the warmth radiating back at you.

I made this dish a few weeks back after Domenic, man of the land, hunter, and all round nice guy, brought me a couple of rabbits that he’d recently caught while on a farm down south. I’m not entirely sure what it says about me that I get most happy when friends bring me dead animals as presents, but the sight of a freshly killed rabbit was a beautiful thing.

Bunny lovers beware, you’ll find no sympathy on this site. Wild rabbits in W.A are very much in the unwanted visitors category, having been introduced by English settlers a couple of hundred years ago who wanted to bring a touch of the English countryside to Australia and carry on with their Sunday afternoon hunts. The result of which was a massive population explosion that has led to significant loss of native plants, and a large contribution to erosion of top soil from the land.

Not that I need to justify anything, because the only real reason to eat rabbit is that they’re delicious. When the meat is fresh and the rabbit is young there’s a gamey sweetness that you can’t help but appreciate. And so my great rabbit ragu plan was hatched.

The basics of the dish are really very simple. Take one rabbit, separate the legs from the body, remove and debone the saddle, and cut it into pieces. Sear the rabbit quickly in a hot pan til it’s brown all over and set it aside. Make a mirepoix (onions, carrot, celery) and cook it down in olive oil and a little butter, then when it’s getting soft, turn up the heat, add a splash of wine (white or red both work), then put back the rabbit, a can or two of crushed tomatoes, a teaspoon of sweet paprika, a bay leaf, some thyme or rosemary, and enough stock to cover the meat (chicken or rabbit stock work well). Then put the lid on, turn the heat down to a simmer, and let it cook for a good couple of hours.

After that length of time, the meat on the legs should be falling off the bone, so take them out, put all the meat off and shred it up, then turn up the heat a little, reduce the sauce, and stir the rabbit meat back through.

The pasta I served this with was not the worlds greatest pappardelle, so perhaps use someone else’s recipe. My basic pasta making method is 200 grams of flour, 2 eggs, a splash of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a tablespoon or two of water (if the eggs don’t give enough moisture). Then knead it all together into one consistent ball, flour up your bench and roll it out as thin as you can.

Unfortunately my pasta roller is broken since I tried to take it apart and clean it last year (note to self, never take things apart), and so I was left to do it Nonna style^[1] with an olive oil bottle as a rolling pin . I didn’t get it to quite the thickness I was after, but otherwise it tasted fine. After flattening it out into sheets I just rolled it into a tube and used a knife to cut thick slices out for very “rustic” Pappardelle.

Then cooked it for a few minutes in salted water and tossed it through the rabbit ragu at the last minute. A little fresh parsley and a glass of pinot, and the result was one of the best meals I’ve cooked all year.

Notes:

^[1] I’m not assuming all (or any) Nonnas still use an olive oil bottle to roll out pasta, I’m sure many of them have machines to do that.

I don’t necessary use this site as an online diary. I’d best describe it as a small window into the kitchens and dining rooms of my life. It does invariably say a lot more about myself than I think, but then other times can be suspiciously vague. This hasn’t really been by design, it’s just that most of the interesting things that happen to me do so when I have a knife and fork in my hand. But then ever so often, something does come along that is both non-food related and noteworthy. So i thought it best to let the long time readers know about a little piece of personal news that’s happened recently.

That being, the dreamy looking young lady you in see in the photo above you has said she’ll marry me.

Queue the marching band and put the champagne on ice :)

Matt

If Largesse Dining is what happens when a bunch of chefs get together and start drinking, then I may have to start taking bottles of tequila with me every time I go out. Let’s keep these guys drinking and hopefully they’ll all start feeling the love on a regular basis and put together plenty more amazing meals.

I was fortunate to be among the first people to attend one of these events, which I tip to be a popular and well patronised institution in no short time.

So basically without too much waffling because this event was a month or so ago, and all the cool kids have already written about it, 6 chefs and a certain sexy Eurasian food writer got together to plan a dinner that would rival the Power Rangers and Captain Planet kids for the combined power of their culinary skills. Each chef picked a card and got given a dish number to prepare to showcase their skills at the same time as fitting in with what everyone else was doing. Wine matchings were provided by Thumbprint Wines, and Myattsfield Vineyards, and all proceeds for the dinner went to Food Bank WA, a fantastic charity who do great work in distributing food to people who really need it.

So the menu for the meal looked a little something like this:

Goats Cheese, Bunya Nut, Tortilla
Kiren Mainwaring – Dear Friends

Snow Crab, Scampi, Scallop
Todd Stuart – Bouchard

Porcini and Spinach Rotolo
Jason Jujnovich – Divido

Salmon, Rabbit, Beetroot
Stephen Clarke – Clarkes of North Beach

Pork, Black Pudding, Molasses
Hadleigh Troy – Restaurant Amusé

Au Chocolat
Scott O’Sullivan – Red Cabbage Food + Wine

And if you’re wondering how any of those dishes actually looked, you can find out below:

Personal highlights for me was the gin and vodka punch on arrival (soup kitchen style), the deep fried fish skin appetizers, the wonderful selection of wines (notably the Myattsfield Viognier), Hadleigh Troy’s pork with hay smoked molasses, and having Clint Nolan (head chef of Harvest) as my waiter for the night.

Sadly they have a ‘no double dipping’ policy, which means you can’t book consecutive events (to make sure lots of people get a chance to attend), so it looks like I won’t be able to make the next one, but fortunately my identical twin brother Mark still can !

This is a public service announcement to the coffee people of WA. Nevermind the EAST COAST … Perth is where it’s at!

Our professional coffee community has a lot to offer and if you’re
interested in hanging with some like minded people, make your way to
Elixir Coffee Specialists (145 Stirling Hwy, Nedlands), Saturday May 22nd (That’s a week and a bit away)
from 6:30pm onwards for the best beer, pizza and coffee combo around!

A group of us, Tom Wearne (Euro Foods), Charles Stewart (Rocket Fuel), Jesper Bood (Ristretto Coffee), Jen Murray (Five Senses) and myself have recently started talking about this year’s WA barista comp. We’re hoping to get the ball rolling to make this the best comp we’ve ever run !

In order to raise some much needed funds (the best cost’s money), get
everyone together and put WA firmly on the coffee map we are going to start having a regular shin dig at different venues each time. So this
is your chance to have your say, ask questions, shoot the shit or just
volunteer your space for the next barista jam.

Even if you’re not competing, it’s about bringing everyone together and
getting involved. If you know of any coffee professionals that you
think might be interested in attending please forward this on.

When: May 22nd, 6:30pm
Where: Elixir Coffee Specialists, 145 Stirling Hwy, Nedlands

$15 bucks gets you entry, some pizza, some drinks, and a healthy level of caffeination.

Come on down.

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*** Update
Well it’s the Monday after the first barista jam, and I’d say it was a great success. Many thanks must go to Justin, Jonny, Ruth, and Gemma from Elixir for putting up with 50 odd random coffee nerds in their cafe, and to everyone who came along for making it a good night of social coffee interactivity.

The aim for these events is really just to get everyone in the coffee scene together and get them talking, as I think the more interaction we all have the better the scene will be. Every barista comp seems to take everyone by surprise by the time it happens, so the more time people have to prepare and talk about it, then the better and more smoothly it should run.

So thanks again to everyone who came along and keep an eye on the internets for news about the next one.
In the meantime, check out Chris’s blog for a bit of wrap up and some photos.

So if you’ve just finding out about Greenhouse for the first time via my website, you can consider yourself a little slow to the party.
Not that that’s a bad thing of course. I’ve always considered myself 80% tortoise and 20% hare. That you get there in the end is all the really matters, and any restaurant owner will tell you it’s the long term regulars that make the business worth being in, not us fly by nighters who swagger in on opening night, never to be seen again.

So Greenhouse is/was the most interesting place to hit Perth in quite a while. The concept first started in Melbourne as a temporary installation in Federation Square, constructed in 14 days primarily from recyclable materials. I could warble on about the idea of the place for a while, but I’d really only be restating what’s already been said, so here is something directly from the Greenhouse Perth website (which has lots of background info) about what they’re trying to achieve.

The Greenhouse is about designing and operating better places for people. Places that let us touch natural materials, understand where everyday things come from and taste fresh food straight from the garden

…

All the features of the Greenhouse are carefully considered first for their practicality, recyclability, life cycle and embodied energy and then for their aesthetics and cost. By putting each decision through this rigorous process, it is hoped that the Greenhouse can provide information and examples to builders, designers, restaurateurs and the public, regarding their daily choices of materials, ingredients, and practices.

What this means practically is that the insulation is straw, the flooring in places is former milk crates, the tables and chairs are recycled timber, and smart little touches have been made around the place to make the construction simpler, and the overall sustainability of the place high.

Now all of that is nice and interesting, and I think a great approach to take to designing spaces that are environmentally efficient and use less resources. But no matter the concept, if the food is bad, I’ll be leaving it to the hippies to enjoy on their own.

Fortunately for Greenhouse, the food is not bad. In fact it’s very good. The kitchen is headed up by Matt Stone, former sous chef at Star Anise, and briefly at Pata Negra before irreconcilable differences meant he looked elsewhere. The boy knows how to cook. The food at Greenhouse is considered without being pretentious and the back to basics produce driven approach is a lovely natural way to eat that definitely fits the Greenhouse agenda.

On previous visits I’ve tried the “bits and pieces” board featured cheeses, meat balls, salami, salads, and pickled vegetables, as well as an outstanding skirt steak with green papaya salad, and slow cooked lamb necks. The food is not overworked, it’s simply but beautifully plated and tastes great. Bread is house made using Eden Valley Biodynamic flour from Dumbleyung in the Wheatbelt (who are also members and supporters of Slow Food Perth. I love the focus they have on seasonal ingredients and I think it’s the kind of food more people should be cooking.

Greenhouse Perth is split into two levels, with a restaurant and bar downstairs and a separate bar overlooking St Georges Tce upstairs, surrounded by a fairly extensive garden growing all manner of herbs and vegetables, and the whole place trapped inside walls of strawberry plants. According to Matt, not all the herbs they use come from the garden (simply due to the quantity needed and timing) but where possible as much produce as they can grow themselves is used in the food they serve.

Greenhouse is part owned and managed by Paul Aron. He’s had a background in cocktail making and the wine trade, and that shows when you take a look at the booze selection and the wine list. It’s extensive, interesting, and whilst it’s not parochially West Australian, all the best we have to offer are represented.

For me, Greenhouse is a little view into the future of restaurants and the way things could go. The compromise to comfort and style is minimal and the food, service, and atmosphere are great. I hope it’s not just seen as a novelty venue, because the thing I like the most is that thought has gone into all levels of the design. Where conventional choices of bulding material and design are involved, much of the decisions are made already, but in places like Greenhouse, right down to how the toilets work, there is a considerable amount of time spent thinking about how the right balance of function and efficiency can be achieved.

If this considered approach to design and food can be continued in other venues then you can wrap me up in chicken wire and roll me on down to the next one.

Greenhouse Perth
100 St Georges Terrace, Perth
Phone: (08) 9481 8333
www.greenhouseperth.com

And so it was that a flutter of a butterflies wings in Sydney, turned into a ripple in a pond in Melbourne, a wave swept across Bass Strait to Tasmania, and abnormal convection currents limped their way over the bite to Perth, til very shakily the word spread across the country and the seeds of the first ever Australian Food Bloggers Conference were sown.

I’ve just returned from Melbourne after what was a resounding success for a conference. It ticked all the right boxes for conference junkets (food, wine, abuse of taxi charges, dubious morality), but also managed to be extremely personal and very relevant to the majority of people who attended. Namely, the hard working and dedicated food bloggers of Australia, who day after day present you with alternative sources for information about where and what to eat and drink.

The event was championed by Ed and Reem, and ably assisted by a team of helpers including Mellie, April, Jess, and Tammi. They organised people together, contacted potential sponsors (Essential Ingredient, Prentice Wines, SBS Food, St Ali, Der Raum, Daylesford and Hepburn Springs Mineral Springs Co, Red Hill Brewery) and generally got the cogs turning that so often come unstuck when bloggers are left to their own devices.

So a time and date was set, a provisional list of topics to talk about drawn up, and the bloggers of Australia enlisted to share their knowledge with us all.

Presenting on the day and providing great insights into topics such as how and why we blog, how to deal with legal issues/defamation, How to handle public relations, search engine optimization, and perhaps how to make some money along the line were Reem, Gill, Zoe, Ellie, Nola, Claire, Ed, Penny, Michael, Brian, Jules and Phil

All the speakers did a great job, and I think we all got a lot out of it. I personally picked up some new techi tips I plan to implement soon on the blog, as well as a good deal of insight into how others approach things like advertising and promotions, which often throws me into an ethical quandary (for the record I rarely accept freebies or promotions, will disclose anything I’ve been given, and won’t pass opinion on anything when I feel I can’t be objective).

You can find a bunch of information about the conference, and slides from some of the other presenters on the conference blog .

So at some point in the organisational process, I was asked if I’d like to speak about photography and bring some of my “wisdom” to the discussion in the guise of practical steps to improve your photos. Always happy to be given a platform to espouse my view on how things should be (and keen to do more Melbourne dining), I gladly accepted the offer.

I didn’t want to prepare too much content because I think basically anything that I could put together you could find on the web. Flickr, Google, camera review websites, and photography forums are where I found most of what I know in the first place. So my talk was mostly an off the cuff discussion about how I take the photos I do and why.

So to make this post useful, and not just another “what I did on my holiday” gloatfest, I’ll hopefully encapsulate for you here what I had to say at the conference. I’m recollecting it as best I can because sadly the few notes I did manage to scrawl down onto paper were lost along with my SBS goodie bag, somewhere in a bar in Melbourne between 11pm and 4am. If you found them, please make sure my Gabriel Gate DVD doesn’t go to waste. I love that man.

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What Matt thinks about how to take nice photos: A list

1) Light is your friend. If the lighting conditions inside a restaurant or house simply aren’t good, your shots will always struggle. I’ve taken photos in terrible restaurants that make the food look amazing because there’s a nice lamp overhead, and have horrible shots taken in the near darkness of some of the best. You can try and improve the lighting by rearranging candles or using the light from a mobile phone to provide a focus point, but it’s always going to be an uphill battle.

2) Gear matters (a little bit). Whilst it’d be nice to detach yourself from technology, the creative process I employ is based fairly closely around the camera and lens I use and what they offer me. Surprisingly perhaps, I’m still using a rather old dSLR, the Canon 350D. This has been my stalwart shot maker for a few years now, and as many times as I think about upgrading I always come back to the idea that if I just improved my technique my existing camera would be fine. The lens I use primarily plays a big part in that too. It’s a Sigma 30mm f1.4. This lens on my camera lets me take photos of tables in front of me at a nice range that suits my style, and the f1.4 part of the name means it lets a lot of light in with each shutter flip. Meaning low light situations can still be captured well. This doesn’t mean that these are what you *need* to buy or use. But it’s a combination that works for me, and the more comfortable you get with your equipment, the less you need to think about it when taking your shots. Buying an expensive camera and lenses will not make every shot you take look awesome, but eventually it’ll help.

3) Do what you need to get the shot. This is mostly about shooting in restaurants where you don’t have the luxury of changing lighting, rearranging things on a plate, or really messing too much with what’s there. I set my camera to aperture priority because I know there is little available light, and I choose the lowest f-stop (1.4). I then bump my ISO up to it’s maximum (1600), which is a cardinal sin to a lot of photographers. The reason I do this is because if I didn’t I wouldn’t get the shot, period. I could try messing with tripods and remote triggers, but really, if you’re trying to capture any kind of dynamic process or action, you just don’t have time to mess around. The only rules you should have are making sure you do what you need to take photos you’re happy with. This combination of low aperture and high ISO (reactivity to light) means that I can obtain faster shutter speeds, in turn leads to the shallow depth of friend blurry goodness that you see above you.

4) Post Process. This doesn’t mean spending 3 hours in Photoshop trying to remove smudges from plates or superimposing the best elements of one photo into another. Of course if you’re good at that kind of thing, go for it. But for me post processing is basically bringing the photo back to how I saw the scene when I pushed the button. Sure if my white balance and exposure levels had all been calibrated at the time, I likely wouldn’t need to do much, but they never are. If you think post processing is cheating somehow then consider this: If you’re shooting in JPG mode on your camera, the moment you take a shot your camera has already applied it’s own processing settings to the shot, and compressed the image down from it’s original, losing quality and resolution. Why let your camera decide how things should be ? Take charge of your photographic destiny by shooting in RAW and using a program like Lightroom (my tool of choice), Aperture, or even Picasa to process your shots the way you want them. I generally adjust exposure levels, fill light, black levels, and colour balance, and apply a healthy dose of noise reduction to get the style I like.

5) Don’t be scared to take photos. Yes it can be intimidating sitting in a fancy restaurant surrounded by people and waiters with a camera in your hand, but if you’re respectful to your dining companions (or have trained them well), and to the rest of the restaurant (turn off the flash!) then you shouldn’t be scared about taking out the camera. I take my same setup with me mostly everywhere, and will leave it up to anyone who’s had the pleasure (?) of dining with me to tell you if it’s annoying or not. If I were a chef / restaurateur, I’d be a lot happier about someone with an SLR taking shots of my food than someone with an iphone…

That’s basically all I have to say for now. Hopefully you’ll take something general out of it, rather than anything prescriptive.
All the shots in the gallery above were composed, shot, and processed using the methods I just described. Photography is a creative art, and as such ultimately a personal thing. I guarantee 8 out 10 people reading this will completely disagree with most of what I have to say :) But choose your tools wisely and apply your skills as best you can.

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So to the food bloggers of Australia (esp those lucky enough to be at the conference) it was great to meet you and I hope I didn’t managed to offend too many of you over the course of the day / night. To the organisers, fantastic job, and congratulations. I’m already looking forward to next years event, which I’m sure will be bigger and better.