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#WFHCafé with Andrew Scrivani, Episode 2: Broccoli Risotto

nice to see you, Andrew. Welcome back to the show. Thanks. Its's great to be back. I had a ton of or boreal rice leftover for more orange chiney experiment, and I decided that today it would be a really good time to make some risotto, so we're gonna make a result. Would broccoli Because I bought a little bit too much broccoli at the market this week and it was taking a lot of room in the fridge. So if you are like we're working on, like fridge real estate issues right now, broccoli, I would recommend taking it off the stall, cutting it up, putting it in a box or putting it in a container because they take up less space that way. So that's been my my experiment. I have almost everything all prepped out for us today to get started. Our recipe, once it gets hits the stove should only take about 30 minutes. So we can I'll take you through the process. And then I have some other stuff working in the kitchen I could talk to you about. But also, once that is set, we're gonna run over to the t...

able to show you a couple of little tricks about how to plate risotto for photography, and then that will take some pictures. So I think it will be We'll have a full hour. Have fun here, and you get to see our new two camera shoot. Here we are. We are just hacking everything imaginable, and it's ah zee. Fantastic. So I can see there. I could see you here and then Wait till you see what we do with this camera. It's gonna be like we have four cameras in my little kitchen here, so check it out. So, uh, do you, uh, Kate, do you wanna ask me anything? The start, or do you want to just jump right in? Well, I want to talk Teoh a little bit about risotto because, like you're talking about before we hopped on live, we were talking about how risottos a dish that I think a lot of people are intimidated by, and it feels a lot more complicated. A lot of time, probably cause we've all heard Chef Ramsay yelling at people on TV on the Food Network for messing up the risotto. So tell us a little bit about the complexity of this dish. Should we be intimidated to make it, or is it actually a lot more simple than people may think? I think it is. Definitely. It's an involved dish, but it's not a hard dish, and I think it's a very forgiving dish. It's not something that is easily messed up because the reality is that you're consistently adding more moisture to it as you go as we'll see. And if you find it's a little dry, you had more moisture. If you find it's a little wet, you cook it off a little bit more. So it's definitely not something you should be afraid of. And if you have the right ingredients like the are Borio or the General, Lee writes, that gives it that creaminess that you're always gonna craving with risotto. And then the other thing that I recommend and you'll see in a second when I put the camera down is, um, I need some plus my whole dish. I am. I did reserve one stalk of broccoli just for informational purposes. You could put it on, put it right here and you can't see my lips. Um, because I want to show you what I did in terms of breaking this down into, uh into the to component parts for this recipe. So this recipe is a result of with broccoli, and you break down the broccoli into stems and flowers, and then once you have the stems, you dice them. And once you have the flowers, you slice them. So you end up with this sort of a little thin like flowery kind of things that cooked really nicely. Ah, that I have my stock on the stove simmering. The bigger pot in the background is another dish that I'm working on it. So it's a chickpea dish. It's just a nice have it in the fridge kind of all week for lunch or side dish for dinner. It's really nice to have and then behind me if you can see here I have. I don't know if you could see it. I'll show you later. It's, Ah, big piece of cold, big piece of pork shoulder that I'm gonna make into pulled pork this week, So there's quite a few things happening on my work from Home Cafe feed on my instagram story. If you haven't been there yet, it's at Andrews Cavani. It's I've been doing recipes since the beginning of the ah of the pandemic. I have probably 22 23 recipes posted so far. They're also on my YouTube page and in this story highlights. So if you want to go back and look at the story highlights, you can catch them there. So there's lots of really good practical information about cooking, particularly for those of us who are not, um, seasoned. Cook so really experience. Or maybe get intimidated by result, though. So, um, I think that's probably where we should start and our biggest us a little bit about your your background and food. I know you know Andrew is a world renowned food photographer, but he also started out as a chef. If I recall correctly or has worked with chefs a lot, and I know last last time you were on the show, you were making one of your grandmother's recipes that was really near and dear to your heart. So tell us a little bit about your background in food and what made you go to food photography in the first place? Yeah, I mean, my food background is not necessarily back to the house. I was the front of the house Guy definitely worked in restaurants as a waiter and in that respect. But my back of the House experience basically comes from being a really skilled home cook. Before I started food styling, which was when I started getting food assignments as a photographer and I It was something I did in Editorial world in early two thousands. Trying to pay food stylists to come in and work for very small day rates wasn't gonna work. So I learned how to do a lot of things myself, and it's sort of in the meanwhile became friendly with a lot of chefs and a lot of people in food, and we ended up with a skill set, that kind of rivals that of, you know, food stylist and chef. So I spend a lot of time developing recipes. Now I'm working on cookbooks as a sort of a consultant as well as the visual artist. So my experiences and food of sort of fucked spanned over several decades at this point. So I've acquired quite been a knowledge Nice. Yeah, that's actually I grew up in the food industry to and used Teoh actually be one of the managers of Ah, very amazing Italian restaurant in San Francisco called Delfina. Um, it is one of the best Italian restaurants in San Francisco, in my honest opinion, s p Q R guy, but okay. All right. Well, without further ado, let's jump into making this risotto, and I'll be asking some questions as I see them appear on social. So you get get going and all throughout questions as I start seeing them. Okay, so what I want to do first is I'm gonna flip this camera down so you could see my tabletop, and I'm gonna go gently so that we get down to where you could see where I'm working. Here. Think that works. Um, So I have reserved this last broccoli crown. It's a little off kilter. Let me square it off. There we go. Okay. So I preserve this last broccoli crown here because I want to show you how I kind of disassembled it into these component pieces, which is care of the flowers. And here are the stems, So I sort of divided them up. So what I did was I took this, and I just kind of cut off the bottom, and I'm gonna hold on to that for a second. You could see already these is starting to break apart. So I pulled him apart here. That nice, That nice snap. Oh, yeah. And a lot of times, you know, sometimes this is a really nice broccoli that the stems aren't really thick and tough. But even when you get the thick and tough ones, you have the opportunity to shave them down a little bit. So that's why I reserve this part, right, because this part has a little bit of a tough end on it. So I took that off, and then I'm going to just kind of start dicing this up. And most once they start to remove all the stems, I'm gonna call them down into pieces about that big. So I still have this piece, which is a little bit tough, so I'm gonna just kind of give it a little bit off shaving. But this these stems rip retained a lot of flavor. And one of the things about making these kind of long, slow cook broccoli dishes is broccoli has a lot of like flavor that comes out after it cooks a little longer. So it's a lot. It's a lot mawr. Like, um, it has, ah, richness to it. Brock, I make slow cooked broccoli dishes all the time. And I really loved the fact that Brock would takes on into character when, um when you're working with it in sort of a longer cook capacity. So as you could see, I'm just taking down to the to where we got the flower. You watch my knife technique. This is something I'm gonna talk about a little bit in some future videos. Is I usually cooked with just one knife? I like this big knife. I hold it, sort of. I choke up on it pretty hard, and I get a good pinch on the knife. So I have a lot of control. And then where? My place My hands use that finger index finger as a guide post. So that's as faras the knife will come. So I don't hurt myself. So I tried very hard toe adhere to that. And when I'm working with people in the kitchen knife safety is something that I'm a big proponent of. I think it's better to work safely than fast. So that's sort of where we're at working here. And so you get to just of that, we're not going to use this broccoli because I already chopped up the broccoli with you. So in the meanwhile, I turn on the stove so we get our oil going. Oh, Tiki, over there. You could see me in the other camera so you could see Hero. I'm gonna put a little bit of oil in here. Probably like two tablespoons full. Get that going. That will be hot and sec. So then the other part of the flower I see the bottom of the stem still has some something to bite into with the knife, and I will cut him down into those sort of little flower. It's so I'm going to do that with these off ST Bees for another dish. He's my demos. And Andrew, I intuitively of necessarily known to put stands in a risotto like this that some do work with stones regularly when you're cooking. Or is this just a dish that really complements the stamps? No, I always use the stems. I like the way they taste. I think that it's a it's It's good food that doesn't need to be thrown away. Yeah, so I try very hard not to waste. That's something that I'm pretty passionate about. Food waste. This, especially in our industries, is something that some kind of, ah rampant. I think it's important to, especially when you have a club public platform to talk about these things is toe be really mindful that we can. We can save food. There are parts of foods that week for a way that we really shouldn't. And that's part of why it's important. Hello, I'm back. It's important for me doing what I do and working with this much food is I work with to, um, to promote the idea of using food responsibly. So I like the taste, but it's also something that is no reason to waste. So yeah, and Teoh speak to your earlier comment of you being your own food stylist. Very often, you can then eat your food afterwards cause you're the only one touching it. Correct? Yeah, absolutely. Um So do you think that you would like me? I think, well, it's that once they start to work here, you might want to see this from the chest cam, right? Yeah. This onto the chest cam in just a sec. This oil is getting very hot. Something that just lower it while I put the chest camera on. All right, girl. Like, I think that is onion. I mean, all right, so we start with onion, we're gonna cook that down just a little bit. Uh, keep the flame. Sort of medium height. So it's not too. Yeah, it's about where I'm at. So it's not too bad. And are you will take a minute. I was like, Like, and as you see here are my stock is already sort of warming up, so that's gonna be incorporated in neurotically. And if you are interested in what that is, um, this is some chickpeas that I have had on the stove for about an hour. So far, It's a very simple recipe with onions, lemon peel, garlic, salt and pepper. And that's about it. It just cooks for a couple hours, and then you have a nice pot of chickpeas to work with. Um, excuse me. Oh, Okay. So we're gonna cook our onion down just slightly, bit more. I wanted to be translucent. but not brown. This is the other thing you want to make sure of. When you do the, um when you do the rice and the garlic is make sure your garlic doesn't get brown because when the garlic it's brown, you Ah, get bitter. Tasted tastes in your food. Alright, so we, uh first we saute the onion until it was translucent. Then we added the garlic and the rice and we mixed it together so that the oil would coat everything in the rights and the garlic would cook down a little bit. Now we're ready to add the wine. So this is a key component, Teoh to all. Ah, orange result. Oh, sorry. You said or Ntini before it got me thinking all you hear that? That sounds amazing. So we're gonna cook this until the liquid pretty much is all absorbed and this is the first step. Pretty much any time you're making risotto with liquid is the wine. So you get the wine and there may be turned the heat up. Just a touch and let that cook off and you could see when you move it around that the liquid sort of evaporates pretty quickly, So we're getting close. But you can also see how the the all of the ingredients that we've kind of put in there so far sort of already starting to get a little creamy looking. And that's the That's the aspect of our Borio that makes it so nice. So you see, it's already sort of There is no visible liquid anymore, right is perfect. So the first thing we're gonna add is these stems because the stems are gonna take a little longer to cook. So we're gonna mix them through, and then we got to start the process. That is what making result, though, is all about. And that is the Slow Inc off the stock. Now, you can make this dish vegetarian. You can make this dish vegan. It all depends on whether or not you use a vegetable stock. I'm using a chicken stock today and whether or not you choose to put cheese in later. So that's something that we're gonna do right now. I'm gonna start to incorporate about one lead a lot of time, which is about 1/2 a couple liquids. Do you kind of bring it across? Try not to spill it all of your stove, which is what I usually dio and go one, maybe two ladles out of time and let the battle incorporate. Right. And you do the same thing you did with this. The all right, Kate, I'm gonna incorporate you into this recipe. Now you know how you're now, my timer. So you're now gonna let me know when 10 minutes have elapsed because I'm gonna cook this down for about 10 minutes, but in the meanwhile, we'll talk about I'm gonna continue to add our stock each time this dries out. So that's how result toe kind of is a kind of a labor intensive dish because you have to stand over the stove, the entirety of the time that you're going to cook it. So you could see now we still have some liquid creeping in. And this is the way to kind of test that right? Chronic drag a channel. And then you could see how much liquid is left. Kind of creeping through. So this is a nice kind of having our little chest cam here gives us a good example of technique. Right? And you could see all We're almost there is almost no liquid. It's so exciting. The suspense is killing me. It's like waiting week to week for the new Westworld episode. So those who what what psychopath doesn't allow you to stream all 10 over radio time? Let's all go insane. No kidding. My God. Although last night's episode was really good, So yeah, Okay, now that we got our sort of baseline in there now, only one only one of the time. But you could see, like at the edges if you don't start through it. Well, it will start the dry out and stick to the pan. So you gotta be mindful when you're cooking. This is not a leave it alone. This is sort of you feel accomplished after you've done your result, though, and tell me, can you make risotto If you don't have a boreal rice, is there other types of rice that we could use if you're at home and you don't have it? You know the rights that you use the bumba rice that use for, um, Peya. It's also pretty nice short grain rice that you could use and look, I mean rice at the end of the day, is rice. So if you really wanted to use like Bozz, Matti or, you know, are any of those other kind of white rice is why not? I mean, I've made result. Those with all sorts of rice is because when I was shooting for the ah, Recipes for Health Column for The New York Times, we did all sorts of different, like sort of healthy options and a result so kind of technique with something that we always employed Teoh to sort of give people of familiarity with other ingredients so you could do it with a wild rice. You know, the rice won't get is creamy. Uh, that's but it would. It's absolutely possible to cook rice this way with vegetables with fish or meets, you know, and it just absorbs the flavor. Or it's not going to necessarily be like you said, this kind of creamy, hasta dish that we necessarily think of risotto traditionally. But it's that the wild rice is still gonna absorb whatever stop you're using and have a lot more robust of a flavor. Definitely, absolutely, that is, that is definitely going to be the case. And so if you have whatever rice you have, and you want to try out the technique. By all means, you could use water. You do not need to use stock. Okay, um, you can use, you know, salt your water a little bit. Just so it has a little flavor to it. But you can absolutely make this with water if you don't have chicken stock or or beef stock or any other you know, seafood stock on me. Making it. Making it like a peo with the seafood stock is always nice. Um, so that looks like it's about ready for some more. And is your stock. You make homemade, I assume, Based on on that being in the podcast. Uh, I I do make my own stock. Occasionally, I will use the store bought. But whenever I make chicken ah, you take the bones and make some stock. Last night, my wife made me Ah, delicious rice cake, um, soup. And she took the barbecue bones from the barbecue we had in the afternoon and and basically cooked them down until we had, like, a nice pork stock on and then added some kombu, um, kombu flavored stock. You know, we made like a Japanese kombu stock. And keep that in the fridge. So we mix that. So we ended up having, like, a dodgy almost and then with rice cake and a little bit of that leftover rib meat and an egg and some broccolini. It was delicious. If you want to see what it looked like, go to my instagram story. It's probably up for another few hours before it disappears. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Yeah, it was delicious. And, uh, I don't eat pasta of traditional pasta because I don't tolerate week Very well. So, um, everyone else was having Rahman or you don so I can eat soba, but I can't eat. You Don and I can eat Rahman. So, uh, my wife made me the rice cake soup. Sounds delicious. It was very good. How we doing on the timer? We got to be about halfway through. We're about halfway. Exactly. I've gone by. Excellent. We're getting there. We're getting there. So I want I want to tell you comment that we have from Grady on Facebook. He is one of our star students. Uh, high greedy. How's it going? Thanks for tuning in a little box. Your r and Chiney lesson. And he was so inspired and had extra rice and made mushroom and onion risotto this week. So that's grab. That's terrific. It's such a natural fit. When you have this rice around, you just want to eat it because it's just it's It's so versatile and delicious. I really I really love keeping it around, so but you could see the process is slowing a little bit. Our liquid isn't evaporating is quickly because it's starting to absorb. You know it's starting. The rice is starting to become full. It's starting to reach that capacity, but we're gonna bring It's a more vegetable into this shortly Now. I haven't seasoned this with anything yet. I haven't put any salt or pepper into this. I'm gonna wait until we get a little bit further along in the process and then incorporate a little bit of salt pepper. Now, if you really want to go crazy from last night where it was there, a salt that was put in the stock or there's no no seasoning at all. Touching this quite yet, this one. Yeah, I have this. This is not There's no salt in this yet. I haven't haven't done the salt yet, but I will incorporate some salt shortly. And is there a specific type of salt that you like to cook with their Sony? Very. You know, I have so many salts in my cupboard, but I tend to just gravitate towards either Mauldin or or uM or just traditional kosher, like diamond crystal. Kosher salt. Yeah, I think it's good to kind of cook consistently with the same kinds of salts that you know on your data for your day to day, because I think it's some you get used to sort of that pinch and punch style of cooking. And, you know, if you start using other types of salts, that might be a little bit higher solemnity and end up really ruining your food because you kind of get into a rhythm of cooking without a recipe. You know quite often, totally. You know, that's why I like diamonds because it's a It has a little bit less of a solemnity than a normal kosher salt, and so you a little heavy handed and not be scared that you're totally over salting your food. Yeah, and I do love to oversaw the meats before I put them into dishes. And that that particular salt does very well without, you know, it gets it penetrates and gets into the meats, and it really brings out flavor without being too salty. And then you have to finish with the mauled on obvious off course. But I have some pink Himalayan that I work with. Pinkham. Elaine's very salty. Yeah, I got to be careful with that. I do have some other. Like, I have a Suraj assault, which is really nice. I have, like, a mushroom salt that has sort of like dried porcini in it. So I have some other salts that I work with, but that wasn't really special, you know, the sort of specialty salts. So what do you think, Kate? Where are we? About seven or eight yet? We're about eight minutes. So we have a couple more minutes. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna maybe give it just, like, 1/ of ladle here and then took that off, and then I'm gonna incorporate those flowers next and cook those for another five, OK, and then we're done. Them were actually there. We're gonna season it and played it on their mobile. Walk over to the We'll go over to the table and take a picture. See how that looks? So how's this? Is this mesmerizing you? Oh yeah, in left. Commissions. Watching me. Stir this. This is one of those labor intensive watch the Geico's cook it from start to finish kind of recipe videos. Yeah, and when it's it's Laborites that simple. But even regardless of whether it's simple or not, it feels really good to eat something that put a labor of love into it. Oh, yeah, for sure, the more the more energy and time you put into any given dish. But you can see that the color change right? You could see our change in the in. The broccoli right is starting to lose color a little bit, and this is That's the stage with broccoli, where it really starts to change flavor. So I make a dish brought pasta and broccoli dish, and I cook the broccoli two deaths I really do, but and it turns almost like, almost like a great kind of loses most of its color. A man is a delicious, though, because it just takes on a whole different a whole different flavor. All right, so I'm assuming we're pretty close to 10 minutes and this looks pretty ready. I'm gonna dump the this in here. Well, it's gonna be pretty full. Yeah. This is a full pound of broccoli. This is, um but, you know, broccoli's gonna break down, so this is going to start to release water. And this is about the time where I'm going to start to add some salt because I want to encourage that, um, broccoli to release its water. And when you do that, the salt will definitely help that, and then I will add some more later to taste. So I guess that was probably about a teaspoon of salt around broccoli has a tendency to hold on to salt, like in those little leaves. And you got to really start through. So I'm gonna get this all stirred through, and I'm gonna need obviously gonna needs a serious amount here to kind of cover this start through and remind us how much rice you're using. Beating. I used a cup and 1/2 of rice. Okay. I used 1/2 a cup of minced onion. I can I'm gonna post the proportions for this recipe on my instagram when I'm done, and I can also send them to you so you can post them. And you could see that this this kind of gets starting to stick a little bit to the bottom so you gotta scrape with. That's why I use this flat headed wooden spoon because it really helps. Kind of dig a mostly trying to keep my body as steady as possible. Gosselin around. Um, so this is about five minute timer. So if you are my timer again, Kate them all right? We were two minutes. It? Yeah, we're gonna They are watching Creative Life TV. This is our 7 stream of what creators air doing to keep themselves motivated and inspired during this strange Kobe time. And today we have an dressed Rabbani back. He is teaching us how to create, uh, broccoli risotto. This is after he came on a couple of weeks ago teaching us how to make r and CI, and he had a little left over or Borio rice. So now we're making with whatever leftovers you have, you can make this delicious looking dish. It is a broccoli risotto And after we're done making it, which is just a few more minutes. Andrew is gonna teach us how to take some beautiful photos of it so you can share it and make all of your friends jealous. So, you know, broccoli is not the only, uh, vegetable you can use a risotto. I heard somebody earlier say they made a mushroom result, though, which would be made in a very similar fashion. You have to keep in mind that the rice itself will probably take close to 30 minutes of this process. So if you're vegetables or something, that would cook a little quicker, you might want to incorporate them a little later. Um, or you might wanna do something with them beforehand, like blanch them or, you know, like do a quick saute. And that way they broken down a little bit more, and then you can add the men later. But it's definitely something that, um, you could do with many different kinds of vegetables. So turn the flame off on that. I'm gonna give this one. Probably got two more applications here, so let that get creamy in a safe. Actually gonna save that last little bit of liquid. Now, who's to say I couldn't borrow a little liquid from those delicious chick peas on the stove? So if you're wondering, that's something I like to do early in the week. Especially during the work from home cafe days where I make a big pot of lentils or make a big pot off, uh, chickpeas and try to do something vegetarian. We are meat eaters here, but I do. Ah, no, that my housemates are not as big of sands of meat as I am. So I have to be mindful that they're going Teoh. Want to eat other things. What's my time or look like Kate? We're about four minutes. So that's about right. So what I'm gonna do is just let that simmer for a second without stirring from the Tampa Downs. Everything sort of in there. Then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna incorporate the last ingredients that we have, which are the cheese. Uh, maybe I'm gonna taste a little salt and pepper. Ah, little parsley. And that last little liquid. I think my peppers over here, which has would not hurt to put in and put it in now and I assume that the kidneys is karma job. But there other type of team that would recommend throwing you don't have a job. Normally it would be Parmesan, but I am more of a peck carino fan. And again, I had pecorino left over from making Orangina. Yeah, so I really love pecorino. And when I do the pasta dish with the broccoli, I also use Pecorino. So pecorino is a sheep cheese. It is very comparable to Parmesan in terms of its use as a grated cheese. It's delicious, it's salty. And it's something that I love to cook with. So I am using a pecorino today, So I think we're getting dried out here. So here goes to cheese That's 1/2 a cup of cheese. And here goes the remainder of our liquid, and I'm gonna actually turn this flame off. And I'm just gonna stir this through, and you could see how creamy and amazing that looks right now. And it looks like that you you did a very fine great on that. Is that something that is necessary or makes it easier? I don't know that it's necessary or easier of any maybe than like a big box. Great. What? I mean, it's it'll definitely incorporate easier if it's fine graded, but this is so hot that this is gonna melt whatever you put in it, and it's just gonna get Yeah, it's gonna melt it all down. But I think, uh, we have a pretty finished this year. Looks delicious. I'm gonna. But of course, before we put it out for consumption, you got to get your chef spoon and taste it and see where we're at. I have a tendency toe over salt food. So this time I went a little light. So I think I think I'm gonna probably wants, um, probably gonna want some. Ah, no, I'll share a little story while you're tasting that. Before we hopped on this morning or this afternoon, show you the stress of us. We were talking to our producers and they were saying, Well, you know, with a cooking show, it doesn't actually have to taste good as long as it looks good. That's all that matters. And Andrew Pipe didn't like Excuse me. You know it's gonna taste good. I'm making it. He was not gonna let us joke around at it. Potentially not being as good as it looks. And so there is this recipe is Justus delicious as it loves. And I nailed it with assault because the saltiness that I added, which was about a teaspoon Ah, a couple that with the pecorino, which actually has a salty complexion to it as well. And I feel like we started nailed. And so I have a question for you. Since, you know, Pecorino and Parmesan are both saltier cheeses. If someone that don't have one of the harder kind of age salty cheese is there a like would've mozzarella work? What would a goat cheese look like? What? What other kind of options? If you don't have an Italian, what kind of aged, Uh, Parmesan style cheese. Yeah, I think. Ah, go. Cheese could work here. It's a little sour. Uh, it's not gonna break down the same. It'll get creamy. I don't know that a mozzarella would work here because it may not break down the way you would want it to, but if you wanted to do in chunks, yeah, could That could be nice. I mean, I think you could take some liberties here with a lot of different applications with cheese is, um I think traditionally, you would use something that is ah, harder grated cheese. But if you did want to incorporate something else Listen, You want to put a big hunk of, uh, what is it? Uh, borssen. Uh oh, that that would be good. That would be delicious. So I'm gonna I'm gonna finish this with a little bit of chopped parsley. I'm going to save a little for the plating, so it's fresh. Um, I'm gonna start through, and our broccoli is still pleasingly al dente. So it's not. It's not totally like, uh, formless. So it does have a little texture. So if you're worried that this is a little bit too mushy for you, it's really not because it has a little bite to it. Uh, and those of you who don't know the term l den day, it's an Italian word means to the troops, So it has a little bite. So, um, I'm gonna flip out of this camera now and get back to talk to camera, so I'm gonna I'm gonna check out of this one, All right? Yeah. Just give me a second. No. So I'll remind everybody that are you create a live TV. This is Andrew Screw Bonnie. He is a world renowned food photographer and one of our amazing instructors at Creativelive. He has some incredible classes on our website. He recently came out with two new class of this, uh, food photography for your mobile device and social media for your photography. So those are two brand new classes that just came out this month of his their incredible If you're looking to up your food photography game, I high review at the men, uh, tuning into either of those. I will drop some links to those classes after this episode is done. So you guys have easy access to them today. He is here making a broccoli risotto. He joined us a couple weeks ago and we made our and she says his mother's or grandmother's dress to be Excuse me and had a little bit of left over Arborio rice. He is. I actually raise will be coming back every Monday while this is going on to teach you something new. Something new to cook for the week and quality beautiful photos of it afterwards. So he just out to the plating portion of this episode, and Andrew is going to show us how to take a beautiful photo of this still decision. So I was tending to my chick. Question is that I said I was I was tending to my chick piece. Oh, that's quite all right. He also has some chick peas on the stove. Maybe we'll have to get some chips on our chickpeas for next week. Yes, you do. One quick question that's come in after watching this. What is a good side? This you would pair with this risotto? I don't think amazing. Why not go with this dish? Yeah, I mean, I would. I cooked it with some wine and obviously so white wine is a good pairing for this. So if something light, like a pinot Grigio or some kind of ah lighter like Italian wine, which would be nice, or maybe even something with little sweetness, like a German like a German white. But as far as ah, I think this is a pretty savory dish. It's very kind of because you had the cheese into it. And when the broccoli cooks down, it's very, very rich and savory. It's a little creamy, I would recommend, like, sort of a chick Khoury salad. Something like that has a little bit of bitterness to it. And ah, a nice lemony vinaigrette would be a really nice pairing with this, um, as a side dish, because it would break down a lot of that sort of fatty cheesy savory. And you'll have that nice play of flavor in your mouth. Now you can achieve that with the wine. You can achieve that with the salad. You can achieve it with both. It's just up Teoh. What you feel is your is your palate for the day. So, um, I am going to show you a plating technique for this. I think it should work. But either way, I'll explain to you what my theory is when it comes to pleading risotto for a photo shoot, because there is a little bit of a trick to it. Um, and I may need to play with that food a little bit on add a little bit more liquid or a little bit more oil just to kind of get it to do what I wanted to do. But again, I do all edible hacks to my food styling so that the food remains edible and and viable so that we can enjoy it afterwards. So, uh Okay. So I got my table oval sort of set up over there. I'm gonna show you what I want to do with this. So we get the plate I have now, I don't have, like, all my regular plates, but this one turns out that it actually works pretty well. For result the because it's flat with a little bit of a lick. So that works out pretty nice. Um, yeah. I mean, I would imagine that photo easily. Kind of falls very flat on a on a plate. So getting the death and like, a nice stack Seems like a big, big part of capturing a beautiful picture. Yep. I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try to get it in the middle of the pleat to start, and then I'm gonna do what I normally do with a result, though, to get it to plead properly. Already have a little bit of a mess here alone. I'm gonna flip you down so you could see what I'm doing. Drink. Hey, there's likely. Okay. I'm a little messy here, so I'm gonna grab a little paper towel. It just kind of give a little cleanup on the corner. But here's the thing I do with result, though. So you could see is I started. I sort of let it run down the plate. Now, this is really chunky, but you can even see that. You see how it's moving? Yeah, like gravity. Sort of Take it to the edges of the plate. Now this isn't it's creamy and it is chunky because it has a lot of vegetable in it. But even just this little bit off rotation, I was giving it a little bit more of a flattening. And I kind of do this with result, though all the time, because it also keeps the plate cool without having to sort of smush it around. Oh, yeah, that's that's it. I mean, I do a little bit of food target and that the biggest thing is like keeping that clean plate clean because you know when you will have to wipe it down, you sometimes get like those those street. So this seems like a great tactic. So I'm tapping the bottom with plead as well, and it's kind of creating a little bit of a slackening effect. And you could see that I've gotten it out off that little mound without actually having to touch the food. Yeah, which is, which is sort of the point of it. I got this little outlier here, which is okay. I mean, it kind of feels a little more natural, but I think this sort of like moving as one now. So I think we've had just about Yeah, so you see, that's flattening out has really given it a little bit more shape. I'm not crazy about that. So here's what I normally do when I'm when I'm styling, please. Things around chopsticks? Oh, though I can kind of selectively pull pieces of this away and place them where I want TEM, if I'm not quite sure that I like where it is so like even that when I just want to move it a little bit and this so I'm kind of doing minimal damage and I still haven't sort of smudged on my plate. Now this is a shiny plate. Don't let severally like shiny plates. But this one, I have no choice. I'm here. It's the middle of a pandemic. I mean, what am I gonna do? Okay, so I'm gonna now give this place a little color, so give it a little bit off pepper. And it was like, you're kind of purposely letting it pull off of the risotto to kind of have that contrast on the plate. Yes, exactly. That's thank you for jumping in That I get I get caught up in this. So now you could see, Like, my plate has this sort of nice organic feel to it, And I'm gonna bring it over. I'm gonna bring this whole contraption with me over and reset the second camp, and we're gonna go over and start playing around with the camera. So Alright, so first I'm gonna put you over here where we were. Yes, last time. I think that's a pretty good space. You could see the tabletop do after angle down big guys to come down a little bit. Yeah, there we go. Ok. Is this some sort of like here? Last time he's up racing a nice little glass of wine next to it. How we were talking about some period earlier today on a nice left, Italians white line or make a German a little Stewart German wine from today or somewhere like that. Great hearing. Mentioning something like a sugary salad with acid dressing would be a really good compliment to this nice, rich pasta. So I will let you take it back over Andrew and tell us a little bit about how you're setting up this shot. Yeah, So I think you can see me here. Right high. So what I've done is I have a nice northern facing window here. Most of this, um the side of the house is open to the to the sky. There. No blinds. So it's nice and open on. There's no obstruction, so I have nice straight. And it's a cloudy day, So beautiful, sort of diffused light coming in. I had this really nice teak table than a shot on last time. It makes it really nice, neutral surface that I can shoot on. You saw me plate the food very deliberately and then on then decorate my plate very deliberately. And then now I'm just adding a utensil A little. Ah, a little white wine. It's not a particularly good white lines. I'm not going to be promoting it today, but it's definitely prop line on. Then I'm gonna take a shot. So I switched out from my normal 50 millimeter prime lens to my little 50 compact macro that I really like to shoot with ongoing a start here and shoot table level. And then I'm gonna move to the overhead shot and I'll switch back to that lettuce, so I'm gonna just just go for it here, so I don't have a whole lot with me here. I don't have a reflector cards, and I don't have scrims. I didn't bring a whole lot of equipment here with me, because when I do go back to shoot professionally, I shoot in my studio back in New York City. So I, um, I also intentionally want to show that, you know, even if you don't have a whole lot, you can make it work. And I think that's part of the whole aesthetic here. Is that we're making lemonade out of lemons here. Right? So let's let's go for it. What way? I'm gonna start here in the vertical ticking off edges. I'm gonna show you the back to the camera after each shot seek. You can see where I'm headed and you could see that I'm already sort of framing in that kind of Can you see that? OK, yeah, absolutely Grand tells a little bit about how you're framing it and why. Yes, so I like to use This is a little bit of a bigger pleat than I'm used to using because the edges are pretty far away from the food in this situation. And I do like to incorporate the edge of the plate into the shot. So I think that it's it's sort of a medium sized plate. It's on oversized, and in fact, it has. This turned up lip helps kind of shrink it down a little bit. That's sort of the purpose of the macro lens. So get close to the food but still have this edge and bring it all tight together, into the frame. So that's where I took that first shot. I said I was gonna go table level, but of course I was drawn to the overhead. I'm gonna go back to that overhead and just give it a little bit more room and you could see again I under exposed my shocks very subtly because, like e, I under exposed my shots very suddenly because I like to be able to, um, push them harder and post. So if that tells you that right now, yeah, you lose your whites in when you're shooting, you're gonna have nothing left for post. So I under exposed slightly and makes my colors richer. It makes my whites cleaner, and then I like to add black and shadowing later, so that sort of helps me a lot. So now I'm gonna go again. Vertical again. I'm picking up the edge of the table here, and it's very soft because I'm not, like a 4.0 aperture and being very careful to catch that edge. It's really pretty. Uh, I'm being very careful to catch the edge of the plate. You could see what I'm talking about. If that plate was subtly smaller, I could get closer to it and still be able to pick up the food, the edge to plate the Kump and all of that. So but the food does look nice. So I'm gonna do now in the middle chords on gold on the same shot, try to stay I'm a little crooked, kind of hard sometimes to straighten it out. We have that problem. I'm sure you do. And again, that's part of this time to pick up the edge of the plea. Uh, where you're trying to pick up the edge of the plate and level off your shot at the same time. So we're getting some nice. We're getting some nice things that get nice and close here close and low and pick up some of that wine in the background and and tell us a little bit about the difference between shooting on, you know, regular 55 million Mila. Later, milimeter. Excuse me versus a macro. Yeah, Macro obviously gives you Ah, focal point gets much closer to your subject. So the camera, my camera will focus right there, and that's Krabi. Six inches. Yeah, So I think that it's that's the part. The main purpose of a macro is to be able to get closer and then be able to bring the details off something that's on in front of your lens, really, up into the frame s. So that's the main reason. Even though these two lenses are the same focal weddings this lens won't focus this close. This will have to be at least 12 to 18 inches away. To get a good focus lock on this, this lens will get a focus. Locks even that close. Who was technical? E got a But here's thing. When you get that close, you got a bit more light into the legs ever so slightly. You get this real dreamy look with back with fear. Obviously, my light is over here behind me. I'm shooting against the light. I never shoot with the light. Shooting in this direction will flatten out my shot. It won't look very good. I came to cross lit if I want, so I can turn this way and shoot this way. So here, taking a little bit of a wider taking a little bit of a lighter look and you could see it's also that's a little bright. So make adjustments. Yeah, I mean, you could see that this also will work. It's not nearly as dreamy as our other shot, but it is still pretty in it. If you wanted to play with it a little bit more, it's probably more akin to, uh, an overhead. Yeah, for sure. And what? Bring that Tell us a little bit. Like I noticed you moved the pork. Um Oh, that's beautiful. You move the pork and the blast. You kind of assume you're kind of using those props to bring your eye into the food, tell us a little bit about positioning. And, like, the geometry of the props when you're setting up a shot like this, Yeah, I mean, I think that's a there's a natural feel to it that when you see what it looks like on the plate, it looks awkward of it. Look doesn't look like that's part of what I call the food continuum where it's something like between the cooking and the plating and eating. You know what this particular scene actually happened in that continual right? What? It would feel natural in that continuum. So, like, right now, you know, taking a few bites. Right? So how did it turn into a video? Okay. You don't want, you know, camera, because then you can talk. See, you know, there's something, like, very natural about that. Look, Yeah, that's right. Is that I like about by feels very authentic, right? Because I just took a couple of bites, kind of positioned it a little differently, but it's sort of a nice organized mess, right? Yeah, but it doesn't feel like gross. I mean, to put it bluntly, this is watching. It's like, you know, there's a very fine line for something to be purposely Messi and then kind of look like someone's. It's happy there. There's a delicate line there, right? I mean, the little half eaten messes sort of something I've made a living doing right? Is that sort of little messiness, too? It makes it feel a little bit little really little more than take a little less precious, and that's you know that's part of it. That's part of the charm of food when it's not so precious, because 95% of the time you're not eating in a four star restaurant with this perfectly crossed plate because eating food and if you could make it pretty and you could make it interesting looking and you could take a fun picture of it, especially now, yeah, we don't have a whole lot all the things. It's nice and on, and I thank you if you're posting pictures that are better crafted. You're inspiring other people to do the same, so that's pretty cool. Um, I wish I could share this with you, Kate. It's really quite tasty. I'm very jealous. I I actually have a boreal rice and broccoli in my country s. Oh, I know that I will be making the stupidest this week, so I will send Yusa. Oh, does it afterward. Just so you know that you're a great teacher and that I'm gonna tryingto do this with you after after this week. So give me some feedback on my my shots next week when you return. So if you got do we have time for another shot? Let's do one more shop. Okay? I'm gonna go back to the stove and bring the whole pan over, and I'm gonna shoot the pan. All right? So if you're just tuning in with us, we are here on creative life TV. We have a few minutes left here with Andrew. Screw Bonnie. He is a professional food are for and is a home chef. He is just hopping over to the stove right now to grab this delicious full of broccoli. Risible though that we need way one way or us and show us a little bit of a different type style of shock. And, uh, he's gonna bring that over here in just a few. Vince, if you are just in creative five TV is our black going into the homes and kitchens of our favorite creators to see what they're doing to stay inspired and connected. Right now, um, Andrew is in upstate New York at house and he is going to be coming to us every Monday at 12 o'clock. He gets t just you just a new recipe to make throughout the week and you just photograph it. So of result of that, he's judging up a little bit to take our last shop. Yeah, I'm gonna switch back to my 50 because I'm not gonna get close on this, but I just kind of get a nice overhead, and this is a is a like a cleaner like sharper lens. That's nice of getting further away. This little guy is like, been my stock and trade for a long time. They don't even make this leads. Any marks Sadly, Okay, So that in the pack, one of things I'd like to make sure doing shooting things in the pot is getting some semblance of the handle or the spoon or the edge of the plate or the edge of the bowl. So you have context because you really don't want to be contextually like not really showing what's happening. And it adds some geometry to it as well. It's It's pretty nice. So I'm a little bit under someone. Go so you could see this is gonna need some work in post production. It's a little It's a little gray, but those colors will come back. My light source today is pretty dim. I'm shooting at, um, about 800 s own 66 40 right now. So that's a little better. Actually, this angle is a little better on the show. Tiu set. It's actually kind of cool. And it as that dreamy quality to it that you can see that nice light bleed in the back. Yes, Here, you can see Cool. And then again, I'm using that glimmer. I want that the liquid on the spoon. But you see how close I am? I'm barely able to focus the camera, so I'm gonna hang here off the edge back up a little bit, and I get this sort of romantic, dreamy shot of my risotto. Yeah, backlit window behind it and picking up that sort of shimmer off the spoon to show that nice. That really nice a little. It's a little over still. Let me go back a little bit. See, that's a little better. Okay, yeah, getting some cool stuff here. Oh, yeah, that's really nice. Get lined up in the middle of the window and lose the window frame. It's nice. See, that is a mistake. It's when a professional photographer makes a mistake. What's the mystique? Can you tell I e. I can see the edge of the Tay ER, though like floor in the background. Is that it? There's two things. Yeah, there's the background of the floor. And then there's the spoon pointing directly at the lens. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I got rushed in and I didn't really look and frame properly, and that's what you get when you don't look at your old frame. So I decided I did a little portfolio review for somebody, and ah, they asked me if I would look at their work, and I thought their work. You know, compositionally was OK, but what happened was they were clipping and framing in very awkward ways. And I think there were ruining good shots because they weren't paying attention to the whole frame. They were just focusing on what was in the middle of the frame and the advice that I gave this person. Waas. Um, pay attention to your edges. You already got the middle of your friend locked down. Your food looks good. You're plating. Looks good. You're propping. Looks good. Your light looks good. Now you have to work on your frame. And if you're not paying attention to the perimeter of the shot, you can end up with a shot like I just showed you, which maybe it looks good, but the reality is that it's not sitting in the right setting now. It looks awkward. It you could see the sliding glass door. You could see the spoon pointing right in the frame, and none of that seemed Teoh feel that. Good, Right? So it's about kind of finding that balance, Andi, making sure that you can on you can use the entire frame to your advantage. So what I would do in this situation correct myself. It would be to pull this back into a space where I could pick up ended the table without taking up that window. It's positioning my body and making sure that school no longer pointing at the camera and, uh, fix the problem. There we go. Background is consistent. Yeah, on my positioning that I'm positioning and I'm looking for with spoon is there, and I have I have plenty of had plenty of, you know, sort of context in my entire frame rather than just focusing on Oh, what's that weird thing in the background? And then you distract your viewer, and then they lose sight of how good the picture could be.