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#WFHCafé with Andrew Scrivani, Episode 5: Pasta with Peas (and bacon)

nice to see you again, Andrea. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. That's Ah, it's great to be here. Thank you for coming back to the work from Home Cafe. So here we are once again, Week five. Yeah. So we've been We've been at this a few weeks, and I think we get a little bit technically better every week. So, fish, it's really feeling like a real show. Now, even though we're remote, way absolutely allowed, it feels pretty cool. It does feel pretty cool when I tell people about how we do it. They're all pretty pretty impressed, so I know. So it's been a lot of fun. So let me tell you about what we're cooking today. So I have been making a dish. That's something in the neighborhood of this. There's some little tweaks you can do to it. And I'm gonna talk to talk you through some of it. But this is like a family favorite of mine. Um, it's a, uh, peas and onions with pecorino cheese. Now, I'm gonna add bacon today, so that's gonna add another sort of layer of complexity to it, and then I'...

m not going to go much further than that. But I will tell you how you could go further if you wanted to. Ah, one of the things that I because of the bacon, I I'm taking out the garlic today because I wanted to have a little sweeter, smokier flavor. But you could to the garlic with your onions in the beginning and then on the back end, if you wanted it to be creamier heavier, you know, mawr decadent. You could definitely had some cream. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go right down the middle between those two things today, and I'm gonna show you how to do the sort of basic with a little bit of Ah, uh, we're gonna up sell it just a little bit with the bacon. So, um, of course, bacon up sells everything. Right. So, of course it does. Yeah. So, um, So you said we were getting some requests for pasta. So how did how did that come about? Like you were there any specific pasta dishes people are questioning? Remember last week at the end of the show, we were talking a little bit on, and I think there was some ravioli requests. Okay, Right. Yeah. Oh, Gnocchi, Gnocchi. You're right. That was the other one. So yeah, um, Gnocchi is one of those dishes that you better practice quite a few times before you go live on television and and start seeing two people how to make it. We had a bit of a We had a little bit of a gnocchi disaster here about a month ago. My niece, who's here with us wanted to do Cookie and she was trying to do a gluten free from my benefit. And the dough just did not come together. So he ended up with two or £3 of potato dough. That was sort of unusable. So I don't want to go down that road. I think I'm gonna have to perfect my MILKY skills before I get on creativelive and do that in front of a live audience. That's a little nerve wracking. That's that's a little high wire act that I'm not quite ready. So holy pasta in general is it's a little scary to do live, but it is so it's totally doable. I actually my husband for my mind birthday was literally right. As quarantine was was going into place and he made me this amazing four homemade pasta speaker. We don't We don't have a kitchen aid. We just rolled it all out. Chance, not It it was very time consuming, but it was It was I mean, it was incredible. And handmade pasta like there's nothing better than ham a pasta like Fred, Only that's amazing. And we all have a little bit more time at home right now. So whoa! Yeah, I highly recommend venturing into making some ham. IPAs because you can't get No, absolutely not. And you see, like I know a lot of you have been noticing by starter on the counter in the past few weeks. So it finally was mature, and I was started to make some sour dough. I made two loaves to speak. I was really happy with the texture. I was really happy with the with the color and my shape and my kind of beauty skills. I'm not quite up to food stylist quality just yet, but they were They need some pretty good French toast just today. So? So the sour dough experiments are underway. We're probably gonna make some pretzels. Uhm, I'm going to try to make my grandmother scones with with sour dough in there? I don't know. I'm just gonna try to put soured on everything. So the Salgado is something that I can actually digest without without as many problems. Because I don't have a gluten allergy. I just actually just have a reaction to a week. And I just avoid most things that have weed in them. But I notice that I could liken drink beer. Well, that, thank God, Yes, I could drink beer. And by by being able to drink beer, I realize it may be the fermentation process. So I went and I started to experiment on my self again with Salado. So so far, it's been OK. It's not too bad sums of hanging in there. I haven't been doubled over in pain yet, so we have that. That's good. I tell you, before, we get started doing this For the last four weeks, me and my husband have been so fired that we did actually get a kitchen aid mixer and we're deep. We got a vital mix and the kitchen aid. Thank you. Spent some money. We did spend some money, but we we figured we're gonna be cooking from home a lot more and you're giving us such great recipes that inspired us to spend a little bit on some kitchen supplies to really up our cooking games. So I I'm really glad to hear that. And I have been a really big supporter of anything vita mix cause I use invited mixed like every day. Yeah, I have a kid. I have a teenage years Use it all the time, and andre were two tools that you spend a lot of money on, but they'll last you forever. So that's what everyone says. So we find a bit the bullet and did it because this I've been having so much fun in the show that I want to be up in my my cooking game at home, so that sounds great. That sounds terrific. So if you ah, you could look over here on our B cam on the side cam that I already could some hot water up on the pot because I wanted to Didn't wanna have to stand around waiting for water to boil. And I'm gonna salt the water now because it's already it's sort of in a nice low boil and gonna be pretty generous with my water and then covered again on Let that sit for when I'm ready to make the pasta. Uh, I'm gonna flip you down now so you could see my stable top. And you can check out what, um, doing down here. So I have some pre cooked bacon here. It's sort of I didn't cook it all the way. Like the way it normally would for bacon and eggs. It's sort of like just just cooked because I'm gonna chop it up. I'm gonna put it in my mix and going to continue to cook it while we do the peas and onions. So the first thing I want to do is I want to cut this onion, Gonna get to tell the head and tail off, get it out of the way, and skin this onion. Now, a really sharp knife here helps because you don't cut too much of the onion through and just get the nice skin off. It's a little layer, so you might take a little bit more off here, but my knives are very sharp. We're gonna talk a little bit about knives and knife safety. Ah, while before we go over and shoot today because I want to start to include, um I want to start to include some kitchen tips every time. Sort of like what we did last week with the with the separation of the eggs. So here's our onion, and I cut it in half. And here's the green, and I want slices of onion. Right. So I'm gonna go across the green and I'm gonna go straight down ST down. Nice, thin slices. This gets a little hairy here at the end, so I'm gonna pinch it and just go slow, make sure it's fighting and then rock the nice down. Same thing here. Get it in, make sure it's fighting. Rock the knife down. You will not be able to do that unless your knife is really sharp. Oh, he's talking to us. Yeah. Do you have people from every walk their walk in this morning or afternoon it. You have someone from Uganda? Someone from Chicago, Becca from Chicago. Let's see, Who else do we have here? We have India watching. All of it's a girl, so that's amazing. Totally amazing. So I'm going to get these onions started. So I'm gonna get Thea. We're going to get this pot going. And while that's heating up a little, chop up this bacon and I will be the last thing I do here on the table top. Now this is two ounces of bacon. It's quite a lot. I don't Mel Ifo use all of it, so I try to. Sometimes when I'm cooking like this is to have a little bit mawr ingredients, then I might need, because I could always use it for something else. So if I if I'm looking at the pan and saying that might be too much bacon, which I don't know, that there's really such a thing, I think so. Then I made back off a little bit. But I have two ounces here at two cups of peas Here, have some olive oil and butter. I got the pecorino cheese and I got this really nice kind of trumpet looking pastors. So I think it's time for me to get the camera on my chest. So I'm going to get that going for you and and those are those fresh peas. Are those frozen peace? Doesn't matter if it either. I think you could use either. Um, those are fresh, crushed in a bag. Not like fresh from the farmer's market. Um, I think, Yeah, I got them fresh. Um, just the other day, and I've used a few times, so I'm gonna take you off here. And No, that's not what I meant to do. I'm supposed to take you on the little carousel ride, remember? Right? They're gonna put you back on their don't screw it. He'll go. So, Rod in a live TV, everyone okay, Now get your own here. Could start seeing there again on here. Yeah, tighten it up. All right. We're getting there. Almost all right. Nothing like handling bacon and handling your phone. Yeah. Okay. How is that looking? Looks. Okay, So I got about two tablespoons of olive oil here. Do you know pants good and hot already sizzling up. And I'm gonna also throw in, like, two tablespoons of butter like that under and all their qalea butter and olive oil Could just you know, you're not gonna be adding any more milk bad or any kind of cream to this. So you do want it to be pretty. The next onions are going to go in moving the left owns but the caramelized. I'm gonna add a little salt, a little pepper, even sick. I'm gonna also uncover this because if you hear that we have come That's pasta water getting angry at us. And what kind of pasta were cooked in today? You know, it's it's this little trumpet shaped one that I had on my show that I got rid of the bag because I keep my pasta in jars and I don't remember. I actually don't remember the name of it, but it's somebody who's watching. Wants to look up the trump trumpet labor. I mean, there you go. It's like it looks like a beautiful Remember, remember those snack food bugles? Yeah, it looks just like that. I but Okay, so we got that going. I like to cook Campanelli. Campanelli. That that sounds That sounds very familiar. That sounds right. Of course. I should have known that I could have done that research beforehand, but I was too busy trying to get on. I was too busy trying to get a lot of Mike the work for this show today, which obviously did not work because I'm still in my airpods. So I don't know, like that kind of start cooking down in the Meanwhile, I'm gonna get our pasta going, So I got about 10 ounces of competently, as we've just learned you could see. It's like, Did you tilt it up here? Get that going. I think that you turn that flame up a little higher. Now the process is in. Their water is well salted and your sultan, when the water comes to a boil or begin before it starts playing, I put it in right away. I think that when you put it in like I did after it starts boiling this time I did it that way because I wanted to show it. But it really does make the water. So jump up, and sometimes you might boil your pot over when that happens. So I tend to put it in first and let the water come to boil with the salt in it, rather, rather than throwing it in when the water's are deceiving because you have a chance to their of growing it up. So and you don't want that is that it's gonna make a mess on your still, and I I do that regularly. Oh, queen this Stoke every night. Like because I'm cooking all day long in this thing. So I've just been It's been a workhorse. You know, I did this. This home is our weekend home vacation home on it wasn't really intended. I mean, even though this is a piece of equipment that's intended for this type of use, Um, it's a really good stone, but I really never intended to use it like this day to day basis, cooking constantly and, you know, doing a television show. So it is, you know, a little bit outside of what I thought it was gonna be, but it's capable. It's ready. All right. I think our pasta will probably take somewhere in the neighborhood of, like, 8 10 minutes. And I'm gonna show you one thing I'm gonna do for training to Frank might use a little bit of that pasta water in, like, use a little bit of that pasta water in my, uh, in my mix when I add my cheese. So I'm gonna start adding in my bacon now because I think my onions have starting to caramelize nicely. and I'm gonna photo, go back, go back field here, see how much? Because it is only pronounces a pasta. So I do wanna be I want to be liberal about it, but I don't want to be Oh, I don't want to overpower the dish with bacon So I think like that's a really good distribution I figure I used about 2/3 off what I intended. I think that's probably like a little more than announced, announced, maybe closer to announce and 1/2 off me. And like I said, you could use Pan. Chetta, you can use guanciale A. You can use any of the sort of Italian meets. The sort of coal cut style cured me in this, which would really work nicely, so I would not I wouldn't shy away from any of them, but I had bacon in the fridge and I'm going with bakes. What about? So you know, you you could do that. You just have to cut it really Well, yeah, you know, because this is getting us really smoky flavor now, which is it's really nice. The bacon and the onions is really coming up to really my smoky flavor It smells great in this kitchen right now. Look, look, there's somebody peeking. That's Daniella. We talked about her earlier. We're talking about your Nokia adventure notice. When you do your work through Home Cafe, there are people in your home. So I've had my dog bark because there's a delivery. My husband was going down my Internet feed the other day. You heard the tap allies are producing from home. So now I'm going to start putting into peace. I have two cups of teas, and I'm gonna do exactly the same thing I did before. I'm gonna take a look and see how my distribution looks Kind of make it in termination as to whether or not I feel like it's enough. And I feel like I think about a cup and 1/2 probably where I want to live on this because this starts. This is starting to feel good. Now what? I'm gonna go ahead Susan wants to know is Do you have a name for this Disher. We're just calling it a pot of what the ingredients are. Yeah, that's I don't have a name for it. I mean, I guess we could name it all right way. Why don't we take? So why don't we take suggestions from the audience? What? What? Our name should be for the fish. And then from here on out, it will be that may. So you know, what I'm really liking about this is that I feel like I just added a little more fat. It just added a little more oil. A little more butter. Feels like it wants to be a little wet, more wet and a little bit more fatty and oily and delicious. So that's what I'm gonna do way. Have another question for you. Another Susan. Get Uncle Blockchain Susan's. We got a lot of Susan's, uh, Susan is asking, Do you recommend adding a spoonful of all of oil to your pasta water to keep it from sticking? That is a misnomer and a myth. I would not recommend that. Okay. And I think that that is not something that helps the things not stick. What helps it stick is not stick is the salt and the heat of the water. Okay, And story. So I'm gonna cast out, okay, Pops is just about ready. It's a little bit of that day which I like. But before I take it down and strain it, I'm gonna get a legal. I'm gonna add a little bit of the pasta water in here and stop the onion from cooking and add a little bit of moisture to this. I want those peace to cook down and get a little software, but I don't want the bacon or the onions to cook up too much. But you see, we have a really nice distribution there. Maybe a tiny bit more water. They're mostly cook off. Okay, Now, this is going to be a tricky one, because I want to take you over to the sink. Whoa, That's heavy. Okay, Green or pasta? Who were the steam and everything? We're really authentic here. Favorite word. What? Synthetic. Okay. And now the pasta It was in there. We're gonna mix it up together. Now, this probably also some still some residual water in there. We're going to start at all through. So that's about 10 ounces of pasta. We did about a cup and 1/2 rupees. We did about announcing 1/2 of bacon. One whole onion sold pepper, butter, olive oil. And, like I said, don't be afraid. It's the roots. Um, more in there you want? Like, I would I took that much butter out just because I saw Well, we may want to use that. I'm thinking what the heck itself is just so pretty. Really is and really could take place. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, this which shells shells is nice because you know, any of the pastas where, like, it has these little nooks and crannies boot where the peas could hide and can be like way you can get a really nice flavor. Okay, so I think we got battle mixed. Think we're done with that? I'm gonna pick up this spoon I dropped on the floor. Sorry about that. I will not use the dirty school. I will get a queen seven. You have a name suggestion that's come in. Okay. Blinkers on the pasture way have bacon, pastas, hostile lose up. Oh, I see. I get it like a like a lot of loser Bonnie Scramble. Well, we don't have any egg in it. Right. So, uh, you're gonna save that one? Yeah. I have to preserve that one. So far, I've put in about 2 to 3 TC tablespoons of ah, of pecorino Romano cheese, which you already know if you've been following The show is my absolute favorite grating cheese, and we're gonna mix that through. And I have a, um I'm doing this all in the pan because I think from a photography perspective, I want to shoot this in the pan because I think this would be really pretty in the pen. I'm gonna try to pull some of those peas up from the bottom and get it going like that. I haven't and this pasta is probably pretty out Dent. A. I don't overcook the pasta and Italian pasta like this one that comes from Italy, doesn't cooks brother relatively quickly and gets to that really nice Al Dante stage pretty quickly. So there it is. It's really pretty and looks delicious. I'm gonna take a little taste and make sure we're good on flavor for salt and pepper and everything else just because you know you won't see me this time. Italian cooking is so simple, everyone like it's something that I think people think is a lot more intimidating. And last night, for instance, I made catchy a Pepe and I was on the face time with my friends. And they're like that. Oh, yeah, really, Just spaghetti with Parmesan cheese and pepper. And they're like, What do you mean? That sounds so fancy? And I'm like, Really, It's telling. You have ingredients, and if you're making this for a crowd and you have a vegan in the house or a vegetarian in the house, you absolutely conf change this dish to do it that way, like you don't have to use the butter. You don't have to use the pecorino. You could use it a vegan cheese, or you could use no trees at all. You can add garlic for more flavor if you like. Um, you know. So this what this dish is very versatile in that the base flavors off the peas and the onions in the oil. Um, is what really constructs this dish, and then everything else is sort of an addition or subtraction based on what you want to do. So I just tasted this and has just the right amount of cheese to wear. When I played it, I would want to put more cheese on it, but I think that this is a good baseline for anybody. You're serving this to, um, that you might want Teoh, keep it here and then let them add more cheese. Because for some people that if you put too much cheese, it gets a little bit salty and I want to show you something. If I could get this close to the camera, You see how the P stuck itself? Yeah, right in in the bugle here, it fell out. But you see that? That's one of the reasons why you use pasta like this and why pastas are different shapes bosses of different shapes because of the sauce you're gonna put on them. And something like this is really gonna hold sauce is really nice. So that's that's really nice. He got all the color you got the green. You've got the red from the from the, um, bacon. Okay, there's a couple of things I wanted to go over before we do photography today because I know I'm spending a lot of time in the kitchen with you, and I want to go over some things that are really important when I'm teaching people in my kitchen as stylists. Um, there are certain things that I implore them to do or not do. Okay, The first thing is, you see this the pan hanging over the edge. This is something that most people do because they handle their pans like this, right? And then they forget any leave him out. But when you're in a tight kitchen, somebody walks by and can knock this off the stove, especially if it's got hot oil or something really dangerous. And the other thing is that with Children, Children who are smaller will come and grab it and then knock it right on top of themselves. So this is one of things where when I'm working with people in the kitchen, I always tell them to turn their handles in. And you have to be very mindful of that because it's important. The other thing that I want to tell you about is, where's my kitchen towel? Here it is. So a lot of times people just grab a kitchen towel out of the sink or out of the rack, and they go toe handle something really hot. Now these pants don't have hot handles, but a lot of the handles that you have sometimes are hot, and they go to grab them with a wet towel or reach into the oven. Even worse, reach into the oven with a wet towel. Um, you will, and you will get a steam burn if you do that, because the wet towel will heat up faster than a dry towel because water conducts heat. So if you went like that, you might end up with a big bird on your hand. So that's another one that I wanted to tell you. That's a little, but I have, like all these little pet peeves, because I work with different people in kitchens old time, and I try to make sure that they understand the things that are important to me. The other thing is about knives and knife ones. One is tactical. If you wash a knife, never put it in the drain board because then somebody reaches into a busy drain board and cuts their hand on your really sharp knife. So that's one. Don't put knives and drain boards. The 2nd 1 is keep your knives really sharp because your knife should be able to do this, which is I did not saw through that. I basically just pushed. I pushed the blade right through. So you could tell I keep my knives really sharp. I start in this. Just I actually didn't sharpen this. I just honed it on a steel right before he started. Today. Just 123123 This is not a way of sharpening a knife. This'd is called honing on what this does, is it? It Smoothes out the little ridges that build up on the edge of your knife and makes them smooth again. Once this honing doesn't work anymore than it's time to sharpen your knife. Those are a few little things I just want to tell you. Island were in the kitchen, honing was sharpening. No honing will not sharpen a dull knife. What it will do is it will keep a sharp knife shark, but it will not. It will not, um, sharpen a dull knife. It'll help a little bit. But when you, uh, I would like to one day when we have some time is actually go over the method in which I sharpen my knives. Because I noticed that probably if you're doing a lot we're cooking these days, um, you will find that your knives are getting very dull. We're gonna take this much money on live with love to see that people are really appreciating your tips today. So good. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. Okay, well, that's the wrong way to do that. There we go. Yeah, you're not on the, you know, I took you so you could still see the thing on my chest. I just took phone off. So I cannot say hello. So, yeah, I mean, a couple of those little safety items in the kitchen people's handles turned in. Don't put the knives in the drain board, keep them sharp and make sure that you're using a dry towel or another mitten when you're reaching into anything hot because you don't want to end up with a steam burn. And I've seen it happen. And even with professionals and people that work in really fast, they just grab stuff and they go and grab stuff out of ovens and they get hurt. So let's be safe as watches. We are being tasty. No. Okay. Um, I'm gonna put you down for a second, cause I got to get my harness ready to put you guys on the table so you can show you can go shoot. Sounds good. All remind everybody. This is creative lot T r. Three live stream that we're taking the homes and kitchens and studios of our favorite creators every Monday. Me and Andrew Scrawny are getting to the other remotely. I'm okay. Guess of the host, and I'm here. Andrew is home in the Jersey shore, and he has some beautiful lighting in this house and an amazing kitchen. So each week, he's bringing us inside this kitchen to teach us a new recipe and then teach us some. So I'm gonna bring a trip it over to the table this week so I can put the hot pan right on my table, okay? And then set you up to look at that. And then I'm gonna bring the other camera over. Keep Okay. I'll keep you with me for a second. I'll just carry your of. Okay. So there's our pan, and then when you flip the camera from Oh, and it was old school strainer you have with the apples in it. Oh, yeah. Reminds me of my grandmother's looks exactly like the one I used to use it as a kid. I was, Ah, very big into far finding antiques while I was collecting my props for, um, all my photo studio. Everything. So, um, I have a lot of very interesting old props. Andi, those are making their way into my home because a lot of my clients don't like old props anymore. Really? Even or not, Yeah, it's really weird. It's weird that everybody wants something looking new and fresh. Ah, and not as much antique and like that. So Okay, so I have my camera, and I am set off. Think, um, at a very high I eso which I think it's probably gonna be too high. Let's see, actually, not really. It's kind of dark in here today. Um, Okay, that's just about ready. I just want to get a few props, and then we'll get going. So I have a nice would be school. Yeah, e thinking like a spoon. What else? Yeah, I'm getting sitting audience around the pan to make to make those out or tough. Top the PM with more ingredients. I think what I'm going to just do is I'm gonna put some of cheese and a ram akin because I think the cheese is Ah, the only thing last year that I would put on it. I mean, you could use parsley or something. I'm not big on garnishes when I'm eating at home. Um, so I think doing it this way. Plus, I want to get a bowl that I could take some out so that I, um I can show that the pan has been like something's been served out of the pan. I think that's one of the things I do put quite often. So yeah. So, like, I take a few out like, I just served it to somebody, and it gives me a little bit of room in the pan to move stuff around and show the ingredients, and it kind of gives it that lived in feel a little bit old story a little bit more. Exactly. So I don't know if I did this before, right? I had chopsticks. I moved things around. I moved things around on the on, in here or on the plate. Wherever I'm doing it, um, with chopsticks. So that I could kind of distribute the color better, or you can you see my hands here. Okay, I'm just I'm directing. I'm producing all in a day's work and all in a day's work, I'm gonna need a spoon because the peas aren't being cooperative and you don't know with chopsticks. Yeah, the peas are not being cooperative there at the bottom. You see all those peace? Yeah, I'm gonna Sprinkle those over the top. I actually might take some more pasta out of this to come see a little more. But like when you're planning to shoot something like this, you know, having the ability to just manipulate the food as much as you like, where it's not really going to change much. This pasta is not going to be looking at different 10 minutes from now than it does right now. So I can mess around with it and give it a little bit more life. So I'm worrying. I helped my my sister in law was an ice cream business. And in San Francisco and I take photos and ice cream is the hardest thing to take photos off because it does not look the same second by second as its melting. And it's one of for me one of the hardest things I've ever photographed. Yeah, I scream is really hard, but really rewarding, because you ultimately, as you could see, I'm making my little artful mess with the cheese because that's exactly what happens when you're working with it. And I'm gonna go for this overhead shot and see if we got something work with. All right? We're a little bright, which is fine, man. And we'll go again. Okay. Gonna get over the table. Little don't have my camera stand. So this is ah, D I Y version. Okay, I'm going to show you guys now. All right, check it out. So it gives the alley Nice. Sort of lived in flavor here of serving. You know, I think like we did with the risotto the other day. We kind of got in the pan a little bit. Will do that. You could see I think this crop is a little I'm gonna work on it a little bit, but you see where I'm going for? Yeah, that looks great. So the one thing I'm noticing from looking at that is that you're not actually getting any of the pasta that's on the plate. Just kind of have that little corner tell you, except one that, you know, you've served a dish and you're actually trying to get them all in one shot. That's right. I'm trying. I'm trying to kind of very like what it done because, you know, we've done this a few weeks now. Yeah, and we show it plated food pretty much all the time. But if you really want an accurate indication of how I shoot, a lot of times I will prep. And I have really nice looking cookware, And I would normally prep the, um I would normally prep the food in cookware that I know will photograph. Well, therefore, I can do this. And then from here, I could decide to plate the food and do it a different way. So I'm, uh, from a photography standpoint, I am on my 50 millimeter macro, um, defy the the 2.5 known leading off 50 millimeter macro, which I like. It's that cannon. So now I'm taking up a little bit off background. I have a little bit of a flare happening on the spoon. Has a really nice lived in look with the soft depth of field so I think, Yeah, it's really given us. Ah, pretty kind of rusted feel to It is great. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, and I'm pushing this pretty hard right now. I'm at 1600. I s 0 120 15 2nd at 5.6 in this room today, where we've been pretty much overcast all day long. So I think it's fine for for this once they get a little closer, I probably have to open up a little more. So I think what I'm gonna do now it is only do something like a little even messier routine and show the spoon on the table so I could see a little bit more of the food. We're going to get a little bit more of the bacon in the shot. It's the distribute the peas a little more so that is more green throughout its not all bunched up in the corner because that happens. Yeah, and you want to be You want to be mindful of that because sometimes it looks weird when you look at a shot and it's all the all the peas have sort of migrated to one part of the one part of the plate. I don't want to be too precious, but definitely want to be mindful. And let's say, Can I get high enough? Ashley Lewis has a question about lighting. Are do you always use natural lighting? Are there instances where or types of food that you would opt for studio lights? Some? Yes, all of the above. I shoot. I shoot with daylight quite often, but when I do, you studio likes I try to mimic they like So there are certain kinds of things that I like to do in a studio setting with lights. I use a lot of led lighting That looks good. I don't use um I don't use strove very much anymore. But there are instances where strove is more appropriate, like beverage work. Um, you want a really crap better for beverage than led? It depends, But the thing is that that was do doing this. Ah, really fast shutter. And you're trying to get a long um Ah, what do you say? I'm trying to think of what they taught us in art school. The of the Ark of the light is different with the strobe because you want to be able to shoot, like, stop motion. You can't do that with an led light. It's just not enough. There's just not enough light there to get the camera up to speed to shoot something in stop motion. Okay, so you get you get a better you get a better opportunity to do that with the faster light, something that's gonna give you the opportunity to shoot it, like, 250 52nd 500 of a second. And you're never gonna get that with led lighting. So that's really the difference. So very. And are you seeing like, a continuous laying source? Or do you ever use flash? Well, Strobe would would be, uh, would be the continuous lighting source. I mean, I'm sorry would be a flash source, but I normally use a continuous source because I find it easier work. Yeah, so here I'm gonna plate some of this, um, pasta from the other plea and make sort of a ah bigger seen here. I'm gonna make a scene, People. Most of the most of the photos were taken, have been pretty close up, So this will be nice to see more before a little bit more of a scene. I'm gonna try Toe. Get in there. Yeah, I got a nice distribution of color. I don't have too much food on the plate. It's one of the things that a lot of people ask me about is how much food to put on the place. Because a lot of times you people put too much, and it's just a little bit overdone. So I think the only thing that's missing in this is maybe a little bit of a little grind of pepper, which I, you know, I like to have sort of a colorful sort of representative plate. And I would might I might actually just like a little bit of pepper on this. I got some extra cheese on there. I don't have a utensil, which I'm going to grab get 1/4. Well, you know that you have another question, Tanya. She wants to know. Is it possible to actually capture Steen from your camera? Or is that something that's always averaging? Most of most of the pictures you've ever seen of mine that have steam are riel. So, um, I capture steam all the time. You need to have a background that will support that. I'm really bright. Um, so you need a contrast the background to do that. So I got a lot of stuff happening here, so I think I need to read. I need to reevaluate how I want this laid out. So I got this little mess here, which works for either that or this. So if I leave the little mess there and then I got to get this back in here kind of condenses my seen a little bit and gives me a little bit more room. Teoh, I want to see handles to when I look at pots and pans. I want to see handles because I want to know that it's a pot or a pan. I don't want to make a guess. System of what that is. And you only have to pick up a piece of it. But it really does add something to the shot. I'll show you what I mean. So we're a little under me. We lighten up just a bit and then we'll go again. Yeah, I need a little more room. Maybe crop that later. Maybe not. Okay, so when I get over here, you could see that there's the handle of the pot here in the little bit of a handle here in the shot, Um, and it gives you a sense of place. It gives you a sense of what is actually in the shot. If I only kind of saw just this half here of the pan, you may not quite get that. It's, you know, quite interesting. It's got nice shapes. It's a pretty Panitz, really got a lot going on. And you want to be ableto pull things in tight and then catch a lot of that in one shot. So that's kind of nice to Oh, yeah, that looks so good. That's how a full story there, that's so that's great. That's the hope, right? And the hope is that we are just doing our storytelling like this and that you only need, you know, to buy two feet by three feet to ah, to make that happen. And if you make the right choices with your lensing and you look lighting the way you need to look at your lighting, you're gonna end up having ah, a lot of success. And, you know, I can do a macro shot here, I could do a big, wide overhead. If I had my camera stand, I would be shooting from way over the top of this table and creating that shot, which I know a lot of people do. I could put everything on the floor, but I don't know that that's very good television on the floor. But I know a lot of you do that, and I think that's absolutely valid. If you want to dio that big overhead is to cut your your table surface on the floor and shoot standing over it. Just make sure you're not blocking the light. When you do that, that's really important. Yeah, that's something I would say often when you're doing the overhead shot, you're you're creating a shadow very opted, and people ask questions frequently about is how we're capturing those overhead shots. You know, you have to be very aware of your light source. And do you have any other recommendations on how to avoid, you know, get a getting your shadow in those overhead shots? Well, sure. I mean, I think that when I talked about last week about getting too close to the table while you're wearing any particular color and casting on the table where you're bouncing light. Could you wear white or your Meghan light because you're wearing black? I want actually, I want to show you have one more thing that I had brought from my studio this week. I didn't use it, but I want to show it is if you look at me in the bigger camera. So this is a piece of foam core and me step over here. This is a piece of foam core, and it's white on this side. It's black on this side, and I can cut this up into pieces or I could use it as is. And I could use it with those brackets that we showed you last week, which are still hanging around and kind of create a big bounce card. That and they could stand up Well, I might want to put two of these on and actually create more of ah tripod act, but basically I just put a lot of Phil back onto that or if I wanted to flip it, I just created a lot of shadow here, so that's kind of what I was thinking in terms off last week. I didn't have this with me. I was doing my D I y with that. But this is really more like what you would do in a studio setting where you have a big piece of foam core. You can cut it down into smaller pieces of film core. You got your brackets, I'm a clamps, and you are able to create a little bit more of a scene that you normally would have in a studio setting. So it's an inexpensive thing. You can order it online. You could pick it up in an art store when art stores are open again. But there you get a nice piece and cut it into workable pieces that you could use, and you bring them with you when you go to shoots. And it's a very easy D I y kind of fix. So if you are trying to capture steam like Deana was asking earlier, would you kind of use that black that black for phone court to kind of Yeah, I definitely contrast. I definitely would like. So let's say that pot was steaming. Yeah, I would take this and put it behind it where I'm not blocking the light. Right? So let's say I got this cross light coming in and I shoot this way with this is my background. The steam is rising off of this. It is absolutely going to become sort of contrast e against this and then you meet you meet her for the overall scene, and you're gonna be able to see the steam rising against the black background. That's definitely how it's done. So I have my entire studios draped in theatrical curtains so I can close the entire studio down to get rid of all of the light in the room. Or I could selectively use the curtains to block off or create contrast where I need it. So very often I will shoot against those black curtains where there behind my subject and I have steam or something rising off of it and gives me a lot of high contrast where I can capture Steve cool. And I'm just thinking about, you know, because the steam evaporates so quickly. If you're if you're trying to capture seeing you should probably keep the pot closed for a long as possible. Before you have that all set up and then you take it off and because that's a it reminds me of shooting ice cream. It's a big one, a very finite amount of time before the food actually starts to look different or the steam looks different. So getting that all set up ahead of time is really important, right? Yes. And having you write your correct meter and make sure you have cards in the camera, make sure all of the things that are gonna could that could possibly be something to delay. You already taken care off on, then the other thing you could always do is get a hot plate, because that's what I do. Too cheap. OK, good. So I'll we'll put a hot plate on the table top, and then I'll put the soup pot or the fried chicken or whatever I'm working on. Then frame it out or crop it out in the shot. And that capture I've captured on oil just jumping off of fried chicken. I've captured steam and smoke and flames all with that technique, so ah yeah, putting. Having ah heat source toe work with on your studio table is a riel. Yeah, that's really it's really quite amazing to do it that way. And when you're shooting stuff like that What? What speed? You know what I o s r Are you shooting at when you're really trying? Teoh get, um those kind of very quick happening things. I think you need to be at least 125th of a second, and then you need to adjust your other your aperture on your I s so according to your light situation. But right there, you're your shutter. Speed is your priority because you're gonna need a little bit more speed captured things in motion. Smoke doesn't move, and steam doesn't move that fast. But flames flames flicker very quickly. And if you want to capture really clean flame shot, you want to be as fast as possible. Clearly we have We have some people sharing photos of ice cream. People are loving all of these tips that you're giving nice info about the curtains around the studio. This? Yeah, people are really appreciating this. Cool. Yeah, I got them at a place that specializes in theatrical curtains. And then a buddy of mine came in, and not one of my assistance in the three of us installed them in the studio. So basically, we put that track that usually is like around the hospital room. The track in the ceiling. Yeah. So the cat, the It's all the way against the walls and against the windows so I can just draw them all the way around everything up, doing so. Like when I'm in there with studio lighting and I don't want the light from outside coming in, I'll draw the curtains all around and then like to set the scene in the middle, so it's pretty cool. That's genius. I'm excited for when you get back to your studio and we're coming to people from your studio kitchen. Yeah, I'll be fun. I mean, we'll have a lot more stuff to kind of play with over there. We have lots of caps and we have lots of gear, and we have the whole studio set up in my camera stand. So we have a lot of toys to play with, so I think eventually will do one from there. Once I get back to New York, um, New York had ah, bit of ah would have been having a bit of a rough time I've been back a few times to check on things, but I think our governor today was saying that they're going to do modified openings in a few weeks. At the end of the week, they're going to start modified openings of certain businesses. And I think that should start to pave the way for me to get back to New York to do. Ah, a little bit more things back home. Yeah, well, I'm excited for you to be a little bit to get back to the city and get back into some somewhat of a regular workflow. I'm sure you miss your studio greatly. You have so many cool tools of marriage, toe of your photography. So I mean, yeah. Said your photography has been beautiful with D I Y. But I'm sure all of the photos from the studio are gonna be that much more impactful. Yeah, we're gonna trade Were gonna trade the luxury kitchen for the nuts and bolts kitchen. When we go back to New York, my stove is older than I am. I think my my studio I don't have this fancy stove or anything like that, but it gets the job done And we have all of the tools at our disposal to make to make great food and to make really great photography. So I'll be happy to share that with everyone when we get back there. All right, That sounds good. Well, I'm excited to try out this dish this week, and I'm beginning it. I'm gonna track down some of this pasta, because I I just have pen a and this just is so much prettier than Penny. And it feels like we got You gotta get something pretty toe. Make those peas, pop. Yeah, I think so. This. Ah, there's quite a few really pretty shapes when you when you kind of really dig deep. And if you actually google something like best pasta for peas, they may actually have a recommendation on. I do recommend shells, Small shells I actually needed. Last time I made it, I made it with small shells and the piece just love to go right into the little shell, and it's really delicious. One of the other things I like to do with the dish like this is a dollop of ricotta cheese on top. That's you can't go wrong with that either. So like I said, you can. You can play with this dish a number of different ways. You could make it more decadent, make it less decadent. You could make it vegan. You could make a vegetarian. You could do it. Anything you want with this, um, you can use different types of meats, not just bacon. You can use guanciale, a you can use and cheddar. Um, you can add cream at the end. If you want, you would add to about 2 to 3 tablespoons of cream and just trying to thicken that up and make it a little bit more decadent. Add as much cheese as you like, and, Ah, and just enjoy it. It's a fun dish. It's really easy. It's very instinctive cooking, and I'm hoping that you pick up on that.