By Cynthia NElson
Hi Everyone,
On a weekly basis I can be heard saying any or all of the following: “What am I going to write about this week? I have nothing to say this week. I haven’t cooked for my column yet. Why is the sun hiding behind the cloud when I need it for my photo-shoot today?” And then of course there are the long moments when I sit at my desk and stare at the computer screen, my mind blank as the cursor blinks, willing me write, to say something, anything.
For my weekly column, I do everything myself – the cooking, food styling, photography and writing. Sometimes it can be more than a little challenging. This week, I thought I’d give you a behind-the-scenes look at how one of my columns comes together. Sometimes people ask me, “how come you cook so many dishes for your column?” As you read on I think you’ll see that it has a lot to do with the unexpectedness of inspiration.
Like all writers, I am always looking for inspiration and because you never know when or where it will strike. I am constantly armed with a notebook and a pen. Sometimes I’m driving and an idea will strike, at those times, I wait until I get to a stop light and jot down my idea or use my digital audio recorder.
Reading is also a great source of inspiration. I read a lot of cookbooks, food magazines, food blogs, and even academic articles written on food-related subjects. I watch cooking shows on television and movies where food plays a role. But my muse doesn’t restrict itself to food-related material. I read all sorts of books, magazines, and newspapers. Sometimes I’ll see or hear something that seems to have nothing to do with food that triggers a thought, an idea, or a memory and just like that the topic of a column is formed. I spend time talking with people; my tasters are often a source of invaluable information. I enjoy responding to emails and questions about the subject of my columns and so all of my blog friends and email buddies are sources of inspiration.
I go to the farmers’ market weekly and the reason is three-fold: to find inspiration, to purchase the ingredients for the dish I plan to cook for the column in the upcoming week, and to buy fruits and vegetables for my personal cooking during the week.
Before I can write a word, sentence, or paragraph for my column, I have to finish cooking the dishes, photographing them and editing those pictures. I’ve tried to do the writing first but it just doesn’t work for me. I think the reason is that preparing the food, plating it in an appetizing manner, and then photographing it from various angles, gives me more ideas and thoughts to discuss and express when I write.
Last Saturday I went to the farmers’ market and I found that cherries were in season, ripe, red juicy cherries. I hadn’t given a thought to how I was going to use them or if I was going to even make something with them for the column. I just knew that I had to buy some. I also saw lots of soursop and given that this is one of my favourite fruits I bought one.
On Sunday, I started to think of things I could make with the cherries and soursop that are different from how we generally prepare them. Cherries, if they are sweet, we eat as they are or with some salt and pepper or we may juice them. For the soursop, we either eat it as is or sweetened with some condensed milk; made into a drink or ice cream are the other ways we like this fruit.
I decided to make a soursop sorbet and then I started considering the cherries. I began to think of ways to preserve the cherries so that I might use them over a period of time. For some reason, jam and jelly were not appealing to me this week. I wanted something cooked with spices and a little syrupy and thus the idea of compote took hold. Compote is the slow, low cooking of fruit in syrup and flavoured with spices or liqueurs. I made my cherry compote flavoured with a vanilla bean.
I enjoyed experimenting with the cherries and soursop, but I still wasn’t sure if they were going to be the subject of my column. More inspiration was on its way from a different source.
Last week, one of my readers and I exchanged emails about hassar which had been the subject of my column a couple of weeks ago. We got to talking about fish choka and he mentioned that the flying fish (Barbados’s national fish) would make a good choka. What a brilliant idea! However instead of frying the fish before making the choka, I wanted to give the fish that true choka essence – fire roasted and smoky. And that is exactly what I did. On Tuesday I went to the market and bought two packets of cleaned and deboned flying fish. You see, another idea had struck me while at the fish market. What if I oven-fried the flying fish instead of the usual pan frying with oil. Also, how about giving it a gourmet presentation by breading it with panko (Japanese bread crumbs)?
I did two photo-shoots. The one for the cherry compote went well and that was done on Monday. The second photo-shoot is where I was at the mercy of natural lighting. On Wednes-day when I made the flying fish choka and oven-fried flying fish, the day was cloudy and rainy. Sure I had my lighting equipment but I also wanted natural lighting but definitely not dark, rain-filled clouds. The sun never came out and so I had to do studio-like shots.
Editing the photographs is a lot of fun because this is where you get to see the actual fruits of your labour – all the shopping, prepping, cooking, styling and photography is complete all you have to do now is edit and crop your images.
And finally the writing, generally, there are notes I would have jotted down throughout the process and some I make just before writing.
There are times such as this week, when apart from recipe-notes, I make no writing notes because I have no idea what the subject of this column is! It was only while chatting with a friend, expressing my frustration about not knowing what to write about this week and explaining what I cooked for the column that the topic was chosen.
As I was talking, she was writing and then she handed me a note that said, “The trials of being a columnist.”
As soon as I send the column and photographs off to my editor, I take a mental break from all of it on Friday but, then comes Saturday and the process starts all over again.
Each week I learn something new about all aspects of what I do.
There are days when you are just bursting with ideas and enthusiasm and then there are days when you just stare at the ingredients, the food, the empty plates, the camera and the computer and will them to inspire. It’s hard work, but it’s fun. I love it very much.
