blight
At the library I tend to gravitate to the new glossy cookbooks on display. Call me shallow but this kind of window shopping means I can actually take the product home for a limited time with no buyers remorse if it turns out to be all front and no back, so to speak.
Cook: A Year in the Kitchen with Britain's Favourite Chefs put out by The Observer is something way too meaty to consider purchasing but was happy to take it home for a ride purely due to the name "Ottolenghi" on the cover.
Over a rather delicious late lunch, I sat outside and began flicking through the pictures.
Then I came to this.
Cook: A Year in the Kitchen with Britain's Favourite Chefs put out by The Observer is something way too meaty to consider purchasing but was happy to take it home for a ride purely due to the name "Ottolenghi" on the cover.
Over a rather delicious late lunch, I sat outside and began flicking through the pictures.
Then I came to this.
Would you eat such a manky looking avocado?
Would you include a photo of such a poor specimen in your blog, unless it was a post on manky fruit porn or to accompany a post like this?
Just as a blighted wedge of avocado can turn me off my breakfast, such poor styling can let down a cookbook.
Or am I just shallow?
Labels: avocado, blogging, cook: a year in the kitchen with Britain's favourite chefs, cookbook, photography
posted by GS at 3:37 pm
5 Comments:
Confession: after some deliberation, we ate an avocado that looked like that last night!
But no, it's nothing to be showing off in a cookbook.
I know my avocado thing is bordering on a phobia. I hate the stringy bits in older avos but most of all there's a flavour that some have that tastes off to me when they're not fresh or perhaps picked too early and artificially ripened.
Am I the only one who can taste it?
confession: I opened an avocado that looked slightly worse and didn't use it - meant to but didn't get organised! have been spoilt by glorious avocados lately
question: would we throw out less slightly spoiled but still edible fruit and veg if we had such photos in cookbooks rather than glowing perfection?
Excellent question Johanna. Have we been conditioned to only go for "perfect" looking produce? I stopped myself from photographing every avocado I've cracked open recently to say whether I'd eaten it or not, but stopped myself because that would take me closer to full blown OCD I reckon :)
For me the deal breaker is flavour. Some look good but the flavour is not right. The one in the cookbook just looks utterly crap, even the shade of green didn't look right to me. Of course in the UK they'd all be imported as well. Goodness knows where they are flown in from.
Being an organic junkie, I often by imperfect looking produce, I use all my senses other than sight when I'm shopping, especially smell and touch. But am still thinking about your excellent question.
oh dear maybe they are used to putting up with less quality in the UK - I think part of the problem with photos is that we can't smell or taste and hence try to amend with looks, which just doesn't really work in a real kitchen - virtual can't do it all!
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