This Month through my Lens #2
Bacon Naan | Where Art meets Wine | "Lolling around like a Laurie Lee character eating cake" | Spuds and Butter
Hello! And welcome back to the monthly newsletter from Lens Soup.
My aim with these is to share the things that have caught my eye in the world of Food and Photography, and occasionally other random things that I think this Lens Soup community might love.
May is FINALLY shaping up really rather nicely isn’t it? I’m sitting here without coat or gloves (my studio is a garden based affair) although I do have a cardigan on the back of my chair, I’m not completely ready to be parted with that yet...
The seasonal shopping basket has finally got bigger with Jersey Royals, Broad Beans and Rhubarb all making regular appearances on my plate and in front of my lens, as well as some delicious Crab and Fresh Mackerel.
©Kirstie Young
There is a definite ramping up of activity in the food world too, with Food & Drink Award Ceremonies, Food & Drink Expo’s, and a plethora of new cookbooks (SIFT and SOBREMESA both in my basket this month. )
I jumped on a train up to Birmingham a couple of weeks agofor the annual NEC Food and Drink Expo. An exhausting but fascinating day, where the hottest trends and latest product launches all gather together in one (windowless!) building. As a Food Photographer, I go along to meet new brands to chat about what decent photography could do for their visibility in a such busy marketplace, and also to arm twist for meetings with established brands to see what they are up to and how photography might fit into it.
©Kirstie Young for Drinks Kitchen
My takeaway from the day was that the Lo and No Alcohol free market is still smashing it out the park - Saicho sparkling tea was a stand out for me, as was the Matcha Cold Brew with Collegen from Bizzi - a company that had literally launched the day before the Expo started.
As a brilliant bonus to the day, I realised I could take a mere ten minute stroll and have brunch in Dishoom, so the only sensible thing was to go and fuel myself with their legendary Bacon Naan Roll, ahead of the madness of tasting hundreds of tiny samples.
If you can’t get to a Dishoom restaurant then you could always spend a happy few hours trying to recreate it from scratch at home
Five things that grabbed my attention this month
Event
The Food Season is a brilliant and wide ranging series of events at the British Library that has been an annual highlight for 6 years now. It kicked off this year on Monday with Honey & Co’s Itamar Srulovich in conversation with some of the most interesting voices in food, and there are still plenty of events that you can catch up on, with many of them happening over the coming weekend. Most of them are streamed live online as well as at the Library, so you don’t have to be in London to enjoy this one
https://thebritishlibrary.seetickets.com/tour/food-season
Recipe.
If you watched my Behind the Scenes Video a couple of weeks ago I thought you might like to see the finished Recipe video for Thai-Style Banana leaf and Wild Garlic grilled Fish (Pla Pao) from Hangfire’s Sam and Shauna.
Meanwhile, as a big fan of the humble spud, I plan on making the most of the Jersey Royals by making both this Halibut with caper beurre blanc and crushed Jersey Royals and this Roast jersey royal, spring herb, hazelnut and bacon salad with lemon brown butter dressing. And yes, they do both feature Buerre Blanc heavily, because spuds and butter are life.
Inspiration.
The organisation, Hundred Heroines is a platform to promote Women in Photography, past, present and future. There is an absolute wealth of talent represented on here and a series of brilliant events. I found myself happily lost in their online galleries, films and podcasts and can really recommend it as a way to spend an evening down one of the better rabbit holes of the internet. They also have in-person gatherings planned, with the first one “Where Art Meets Wine” happening this Friday.
Should you find yourself near Nailsworth on Friday early evening do come and say “Hi”, I absolutely love it when online connections become real ones.
Novel
For full disclosure, The Painter’s Daughters was written by a good friend of mine, but I genuinely cannot recommend this highly enough. It is, unbelievably, Emily’s debut novel, but what with a casual HILARY MANTEL! recommendation on her front cover , and the Radio 2 newcomers Bookclub award in her back pocket, it’s definitely not going to be her last.
The story is an historical fiction about Peg and Molly Gainsborough, the much painted daughters of the famous artist Thomas Gainsborough. The core narrative is of Peg trying to conceal her sisters bouts of mental confusion to prevent her facing a life of incarceration in Bedlam, which is a brilliant premise in itself, but this book is so much richer than that. The characters and their stifled life of being women in the 1700’s broke me. It’s a real masterclass in writing about devotion, control and individuality. I loved it and was unsettled by it in equal parts, and am newly grateful to not live in a time and place where women controlled nothing, and had to bear everything.
Podcast
The Podcast Desert Island Dishes has a fairly robust back catalogue at this point, so if you haven’t come across it before you are in for a treat. The recent interview with photographer David Loftus is definitely worth a listen, as is the one after with the brilliant Food Historian Bee Wilson
In other news, I also have a lovely feature out at the moment in The Simple Things May magazine with recipes by Kathy Slack. In her words, we shot her “lolling about like a Lorrie Lee character, basking in the sun and eating cake”! Recipes for Pea & Lemon Arancini, New Potato, Little Gem & Tarragaon Salad and Lemon Fennel & Elderflower Loaf in May’s issue if you fancy doing the same.
A behind the scenes video from one of our magazine shoots is coming soon on both our Substacks if you are the kind of person who loves to see the tupperware-based reality behind such things!!
Thanks Matt, they’re a lovely company to work with and their drinks are devine. Enjoy your deep dive into Hundred Heroines, some lovely work in there x
Love that Drinks Kitchen shot, and their website looks similarly gorgeous. And didn't know about the Hundred Heroines project: definitely a rabbit hole I'll be burrowing further into.