Chef at Work

With final semester students......... 'painting a roast chicken'

Roasted Spring Chicken.............make-over

Razali Hassan............basic food photography

Razak Aziz and Razali Hassan and the food styling's students

.............for the camera

Preparing Roasted Chicken.

Introduction

A good, fresh looking chicken will always be the most vital aspect of this task. As mentioned earlier the first styling tasks are to look for the best ingredients available you can find. If it have to take you to wake in the early hour of the day to find this ‘actor’ by all means you have to do it. It is not impossible here in Malaysia for us to look for freshly slaughtered and carefully dressed chicken. So what you need for this task:

1. Fresh and carefully dressed, proportionate chicken.

2. Aluminum foil.

3. Panting brushes.

4. Thread – strong and thin (fine)

5. Pins / needles.

6. For coloring – caramel. Thick and thin soy sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar syrup and oil.

7. Roasting pan.

8. Freshly selected vegetables

9. Sauce (optional)

10. Props and tools - crockery, utensils etc

Steps one:

Clean and dressed chicken carefully. Make sure there are no tiny hairs or any bruises. Stuff the chicken with aluminum foil and push up the breast upward. Use fine and strong sewing thread for trussing. If thick or butcher twine are used it with create a roasting mark onto the chicken. Position the chicken as how you want it to be. Pin both wings to it body using needles. Be careful with the wings if it turns dark during the roasting process cover it with aluminum foil.

Thick and thin soy sauce, oyster sauce and honey is used to paint the chicken for a roasting effect,

 Preparing the vegetables for the roasted chicken.

 The chicken is stuffed with aluminum foil this allow to better shaped the chicken.

 A pin or needles are used to secure the opening to make the roasted chicken more presentable.

 Trussing the chicken using a strong but thin sewing thread.

Before applying a paint on the chicken, baste it with hot boiling water.

When the chicken is ready, baste it with hot boiling water. This is to make the skin to be slightly cooked. This will allow it to be painted if not the color may not stick to the skin.Using the combination of the color that are available in the kitchen such as caramel, thick and thin soya sauce and oyster sauce, you may paint the chicken to resemble a fully cooked roasted chicken. A fully cooked roasted chicken may not look appetizing in a photograph – it may shrink in the process of roasting. The process of painting the chicken may take a few steps. You have to apply the color layer by layer, alternately by putting the chicken in a pre-heat oven of 200 degree C, 2 – 3 minutes at each time.

Once you feel that you get the right color that you want, untied the chicken, and paint it where the thread may leave a visible mark. Prepare a plate or casserole depending on how you want to present your roast chicken. Arrange it and visualize on how you want it to appear in a photograph. Be careful of the chicken jus and dripping it may wet you plate so you need to be fast. Before that you got to prepare the accompaniment – vegetables, starches and sauce where appropriate.

Question that always asked...............

I have always been asked similar questions every time when I told someone that I teach Food Styling at my university. ‘What is that all about?’ “What is Food Styling?’, ‘What really Food Styling do?’ and ‘Who is this Food Stylist?’. I guess this is due to the fact that Food Styling is totally an ‘alien’ subject for most Malaysian. They might not aware that how much they are been exposed to this food styling element almost everyday in their life. The TV that they watched, the poster and billboard that they stumbled on their way to work, or even food pictures and advertisement that they always encountered when reading newspaper or magazines, all of that are full with Food Styling element. Not to mentioned the menu card that they referred to order their meal. And all that are full lots of Food Styling elements.

As mentioned earlier in my posting Food Styling is an art of preparing and presenting food for the camera. It the works to make food look good and appetizing that will stimulates ones urging for it. So the work of food stylist is to create food and dishes that appear in magazines, cookbooks, advertisements, food packaging, television commercials, and sometimes even feature films. Using behind the scenes magic and culinary artistry, a food stylist is responsible for making food look exciting, enticing, and effortlessly prepared – in essence, seducing the viewer. The food stylist brings to a photograph a creative eye, expertise in food preparation, and artistic interpretation of the black-and-white words of recipe (Lou Manna, 2005).
What is need for a good food stylist? To be a good food stylist ones need to be ready to the challenges and endurances the trade demanded. Here are some attributes that are needed to be a good food stylist (Custer, 2010).
• Well organized
• A good cook and good baker
• A problem
• A good team player
• Someone who knows when to lead and when to take direction
• Confident
• Able to deal with stress
• Patience and tolerant
• Personable
• Professional
• Creative and artistic
• Physically healthy
• Able to see the humor
• Versatile
• Off course you must not be color blind! (me)

Food Stylist normally work free lance, they may be working based on assignment and task given to them. Food related company and even those company that might not have anything to do with food sometimes anggaged their service. Most of their work can be found in printed media such as magazines, nespaper, catalog, brochure and cookbook. Apart from that they also provides services for advertising, packaging and labelling. Below where you may find Food Stylist works:

•Editorial - Cookbooks, magazines
•Public relations – Newspaper, magazine, promotional material, recipe development
•Marketing – catalogs for food/equipments, Mini cookbooks, contests, point of purchase displays.
•Advertising – Ads, Commercials, Posters, Billboards, banners.
•Packaging – Food, equipment.
•TV and Film – Commercials, TV shows, movies, Training videos, Food shows, Cooking shows.

The semester as started............

Welcome to all students who are taking the Food Styling HTC640 course this semester. Welcome too, to students taking Food Retailing Management and Technology - HTC610. Hope this semester will be a fruitful and happy learning session for all of you. I am looking forward to meet all of you especially those who already with me in HTC610. I have prepared a scheme of work for both HTC610 and HTC640. What I waited most is the Food Styling classes, because during the holiday I have prepared some gadget (DIY) for the food styling class - A Light Box and a Tent Box. I am thinking to make this DIY project as your class project.

DIY that sound wonderful, for those who like it. I just found out that with a limited budget you can produce wonder if you want to. It all resulted when I tried to find some stuffs for the Food Styling course. So, I did some window shopping during the holiday - to Digital Mall in PJ as well as Law Yatt in KL. Off course camera shops were the main destination ........phew, know what I discovered? Most of this photography and camera gadgets are very expensive stuff. EXPENSIVE!!!! So,that what triggered me to do it myself. I then surfed the net to find out how some of these gadgets were made, especially the DIY types. And that where I found out how to make the Light Box and Tent Box. For the matter of fact, I would like to urge you students to do the same.........................so what do you think?

online learning

As I am sitting in the e-learning seminar, my mind goes to my blog - trying to figure out how best could I do to facilitate my teaching. There a lot of things that I need to explore especially the technical know how on IT. A lot of things that I need to learn however at this present moment I trying my best to provide my students some support and assisstance through this blog. Hope it will help my students who taking the Food Styling subject. On that note I do hope students will take this opportunity to browse through this blog. So, please give your comment on how to improve this blog, in term of content and approach.

McDonaldization vs Tomyamization

"Dari Perlis sampailah ke Sabah kita sudah merdeka" this is a lyric from a patriotic song that will always be on air come August. Literally it translate "We are independence from Perlis right to Sabah". It is true that we are an independence nation in a true sense? .............I'm not very sure.

Take food for instance! Do we really free from any influence? Just take a look at the stalls and even restaurants that can be easy spotted in every corner of our homeland, that are though to be offering local foods........ unfortunately most of them are offering Thailand menu (Southern Thailand to exact, infact some of Mamak Restaurant now offering Thai menu). Lately, it seems that Thai foods has become one of our eating habit. Tomyam has been too close to our taste buds and at our heart. I guess the new generation of Malaysian are familiar with dishes like Tomyam Gung, Paprik, Somtam and many more Thai dishes compared to the local Asam Pedas, Kari Kepala Ikan, Sambal Belacan, Gulai Tempoyak. And this phenomenon I might considered as an assimilisation of Thai foods in our culture which is known as Toyamization. While at the same time we are too, been influenced by the western fast food phenomenon like Beef, Chicken and Fish Burger and Fries that is known as the McDonalization. My question is so where are our food is heading?

Thing to Ponder - the tortoise and the rabbit

The moral of the story is not as simple as we always thought we know since we are kids!!!!

Once upon a time a tortoise and a rabbit had an argument about who is faster. And lastly they decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and started off the race. Being known as a good runner, the rabbit shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then seeing that he has already far ahead from the tortoise, thought he'd sit under a tree for a short rest before continuing the race. He sat there and soon fell asleep. While the tortoise, being known as a slow animal, struggling and ploddingly overtook the sleeping rabbit. And soon finished the race - and emerged as a champ. The rabbit woke up and realised that he'd lost the race.

The moral of the story is the slow and steady wins the race (this is the version of the story that we have all grown up with. Don't all of us?)

BUT, have you hear about it all. The story continues...................... The rabbit was very disappointed at losing the race and he did some soul searching. He realised that he lost the race only because he had been too confident (overconfident), careless, arrogant and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there is no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race.

This time, the rabbit take no chance - he ran and ran without stopping from the start to the finish line. He won the race leaving the tortoise far far away behind.

The moral of the story?

Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady.

The conclusion.................

"Fail for the first time doesn't means you are a losser. Learn from it and you will make the way to success"

It good to be slow and steady, but it's better to be fast and consistent........ So what do you think?