Hoping to see you guys there tomorrow! Make sure to come say hi

It’s been a little over a month since Steve Jobs passed away, and I’ve toyed with this post since then. As is the case with everyone who knew he was battling cancer, it was expected and yet, it seemed sudden. As I opened up a new tab to apple.com, hoping against hope that it was just a twitter rumor, I was greeted by a page that carried the simple words, “Steve Jobs, 1955-2011.” I spent the rest of the morning watching the news coverage highlighting his life and realized that a person’s legacy is what happens when he passes, the people that are touched by the news, and the impact that has on everything we do.

Diwali is almost here – lights, colors, bling and ofcourse, sweets. So on the occassion of Diwali, we bring you, live from the naihar kitchens, the Ghughra. Since I try to relate stuff we do to more colloquially known items out here, I suppose you can think of this as perhaps a sweet fatayer.

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Layered on the inside with sweetness that will change your mood regardless of angry you are on the day, fried on the outside to a nice crunch to boot, and filled with a richness that is supposed to give you energy and brain power (and maybe, a tad bit of cholesterol), the ghughra is a traditional gujarati diwali production. Not that it can’t be eaten during the year or anything, but well, it just must be on the table during all those diwali get togethers we have around this time. Relish!

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We also came across a Bacio. This was pretty much a chocolate mousse with some hazelnut but it looked oh so pretty with the little layer of chocolate around it.

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As we started ordering drinks – we went with a cappuccino, espresso and an orange juice, I started fumbling, unable to decide as my impatient company towered over me telling me to hurry up, unable to understand why I needed more time than I was given while they decided. I tried to read a very italian name (which I will need to go back to Brunetti to get exactly and then update here) and was like man, I can’t imagine what that would be…until in little tiny characters I read the words that always get me going: homemade iced-tea with lemon. Voila!

I’ve got to set up a disclaimer here. When in the US, reading those words were like gold. It meant I was in for a treat. Out here sadly, the words iced tea tend to be abused pretty easily with a few exceptions. So despite reading those words, and my general affinity for Brunetti, I expect little until this mammoth glass was deposited on the table.

The hell was this…?

Yup, iced tea with a comfortable, convenient and yummy deposit of ice cream. Goodness me….goodness me.

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I’ve never seen it before (and that’s saying considering it’s a given that if there’s iced tea on the menu that’s not out of a can, I’ve ordered it), and I was amazed. We quite literally just stared at the thing for a while.

But this takes the cake, pun not intended. I seem to have found the iced tea. And interestingly, it has nothing to do with the ice cream at all. The tea itself was light, fresh and it could possibly be and the right amount of minty without being overwhelming. (I realize everything now thinks I’ve got to be insane to psycho-analyze iced tea, but hey…I yam, what I am.)

The ice cream itself was good, not too sweet, and somehow didn’t overly melt and ruin anything. Over time, it lightly drizzled itself into the tea without overwhelming it at all and considering most people have their tea with milk anyway, the taste was more than acceptable.

The iced tea itself runs you to AED24, which is slightly higher than what is normally out there (AED12-20) but it still on par with the general Brunetti value.

Goodness that was good iced tea.

Goodness, goodness me.

Because Take 1 just wasn’t good enough.

This past week, a few of us gathered over at Tea Junction in Dubai to dabble in photography. The goal was to have an informal setting for people interested in photography/food photography (without necessarily being photographers) take a picture of a mystery food item – told to us at the venue – and use the settings around us to come up with 2-3 core shots that we’d share with the group. This could then lead to some feedback, suggestions and a general sharing of ideas. We also worked on a couple of concepts in pairs.

If, for some insane reason, you missed the title, then well, the mystery item was a plum. Well, okay, plums. 

I went with three different colored plums so that I’d have contrast – a dark one, a mixed one, and a fairly light one. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the whole ‘journey of the plum’ idea done well, although others were more successful [links will be posted soon]. My idea was to go with one very traditional food shot, one random one, and one hopefully somewhere in between.

To start with – and knowing my love for iced tea – I picked up a Boston Iced Tea (ie, Iced Tea with cranberry juice) since I knew the color symmetry would help. So the opening shots were very cookbook-like-traditional.

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Interestingly I had 2 thoughts almost simultaneously – to take a bite, and to use ice. Perhaps I should have disjointed the ideas a bit, but I mostly landed up incorporating both elements together.

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I didn’t factor these shots in during the day, but after a bit of post-processing and looking at it on a bigger monitor, I actually liked how they turned out.

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Then I did the expected – I broke the glass with ice just after taking the shot above. My apologies to Tea Junction, again 0:)

The result however was a splash of water on the table, which I figured would be worth a shot as well.

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Finally, I tried to factor in some elements at the cafe – and chanced about this. I call this series, “Cult of the Plum”.

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And finally, ‘eye on the prize’.

Did you know once can spend upwards of two hours photographing plums? I sure didn’t.