This week's blogger makes food look good. Liz Mathews is a nationally recognized photo director, and serves as LPK's chief culinary creative director. A recent transplant from Los Angeles, Liz shares her thoughts on her move to Cincinnati, and finding inspiration in her new surroundings.
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Picture Perfect
Posted By: Liz Mathews
7/22/2010
As LPK's Culinary Creative Director my primary responsibility is to direct food photography for various brands. Making food look delicious in a photograph is tougher than it sounds, and every meal I am served, as well as every meal I cook, informs that effort, as I study those meals to determine what exactly it is that gives them visual appeal.
When I came to Cincinnati last summer to begin working on a series of projects with LPK, I made an effort to learn about the city's food scene, from Findlay Market in Over-the-Rhine, Taste of Cincinnati and Octoberfest downtown, to the Locavore movement statewide. Several groups and organizations promote sustainability, regional specialties or local chefs and there are many outstanding festivals that celebrate Cincinnati's unique food heritage and local flavors. Just as interesting is the great assortment of grocery stores here, ranging from the humblest neighborhood chain to the wild and crazy Jungle Jim's in Fairfield. After surveying the food scene here, my impression is that Cincinnatians take their grocery shopping very seriously.
A great example is the enormous Kroger Marketplace in Anderson where I am always astonished to find a full, sit-down sushi bar, a wine bar, a jewelry store, and a furniture and housewares department. That store, similar to the new Kroger in Newport, also has the wonderful Murray's cheese shop. I don't know about you, but I love finding a full service cheese store inside my grocery store! I also like to shop at Fresh Market and the posh Dorothy Lane stores where I recommend taking a break from your shopping to enjoy something from their wonderful bakery. And of course Jungle Jim's, which defies description- chock full of hard-to-find foods from all over the world, great wine shop, eclectic atmosphere . . . you just have to go.
Most of these stores are starting to stock more local, organic, sustainable, cage-free, cruelty-free, pesticide-free products, and it's great to see demand for these options rising. This time of year, it's easy to find local, organic produce at the many citywide farmers' markets, and some of them also have organic eggs, meat and poultry. But once the seasons change and the markets close, we are back indoors and pushing a cart down an aisle. Consumer demand is the only thing that will drive grocers to source products that are not damaging to the earth or cruel to the animals we depend on. Paying a little more for them now is a bargain in the long run.
And respect for beautiful ingredients is the first rule to achieving that picture perfect plate.