We had a great time doing laps down Minneapolis’s historic Main Street, Craig on his swank ride, me flat on my belly in the back of my mini van, strobe clamped to the open hatch back, Craig’s friend Hunter doing an admirable driving job not crashing in to Craig or anything else. Best of luck to Craig on his award nominations!

Out Styling in the Field – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

The oppressive temperatures were defeated by Rachel and Anna’s chilled dishes: fried polenta squares with savory tomato relish and onion straw, peach and tomato salad, raw corn chowder, basil and lime sorbet, chilled pork roast with arugula and mustard sauce, chocolate truffle cake – topped off with a homemade limoncello. All delicious, and beautiful wildflowers and place settings to compliment the rustic backdrop. Great times, and beautiful and delicious food.

Ahhh, summer! Thanks so much to Rachel and Anna for including me in the good times and artistry.

1. You like to cook.
2. Chemistry holds some appeal.
3. You’re pretty sure drinking beer is fun.

Find a friend with overlapping interests, and you’re in business.

Conor Lawrence and the gang at 514 Studios/Callahan & Co. have been brewing for longer than I have, and for years they’ve been brewing up a house recipe – Dirty Larry Brown – giving bottles away to clients and friends. When Conor told me the story of Dirty Larry Brown over coffee recently, I thought it would make for a fun photo shoot, documenting the making of a signature calling card of their business, while at the same time giving a sense of 514 Studios as a place. And a project was born.

Home Brewing at 514 Studios – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

(hover over images for occasional captions)

If you’re unfamiliar with the beer brewing process, it’s a pretty simple deal. The alcohol is created by taking the sugars from roasted and dried barley and other grains, boiling them in water for an hour or so with hops for bitterness and floral taste and smell characteristics, then cooling it down to room temperature and storing it for a while with some special yeast. The yeast eats the sugar and releases alcohol. Voila!

Of course there are countless variations of grains, hop varieties, and yeast strains to choose from – not to mention enough gear to keep any guy with his face in a Northern Brewer catalog for hours at a time. And for the OCD crowd, there’s the lingering danger that one small bacteria could get by your fastidious cleaning routine and skunk the whole 5 gallon batch. Ask any home brewer about any one of these nuances and you’re liable to be roped in to an hour and a half conversation. With any luck you’ll get a beer or two out of the deal, but just be warned.

In the brew pot the day I swung by was a recipe by the name of Ferocious, modeled after a certain aggressive local IPA favorite. The beer called for what some might consider a ridiculous number of hops, which Conor models in a few photos in the gallery. But the fun – and my favorite photos from the shoot, from a brewer’s perspective – came when it was time to transfer the wort (the raw liquid that will be beer after it ferments for a while) from the boil kettle to the carboy. Since there are always hops and other things in the wort, the boil kettle has a screen over the spigot to keep the non-liquids out of the carboy. But our boy Ferocious had so many hops that it clogged the screen and wouldn’t let any liquid through. Problems. So then Conor and his friend Dave tried bypassing the spigot and pouring through a strainer and in to a funnel. Then that clogged! Finally, other options defeated, the rest of the whole hoppy stew was poured straight in to the carboy.

And you know what? It’ll be delicious.

Thanks to Conor and Dave for sharing space, time, and brews. Looking forward to bottling.

Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation 2011 Annual Report – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

Story one was a new mixed use building housing 40 or so young people transitioning out of either foster care or homeless situations. I really had no idea what to expect, but what I found were people at ease and empowered, taking control of their lives after coming out of difficult circumstances. On-site job coaches talked of dedicated kids, and the residents who let me in to their rooms obviously took great care of their spaces.

Story two was a building that PCNF took over last year and completely renovated, serving low income adults. I spent the morning with one resident who had just moved in to a unit a couple months earlier, after a number of years with no permanent address. He still had plenty to work out when we talked, but imagine the stress lifting from your shoulders, knowing that you have a safe place to stay.

At the adult residence I also got to spend some time with the building manager, a woman with a history in law enforcement, who is the resident fixer-of-all-problems in her current role. So fun to talk to people who love their jobs: as we toured the building and she pointed out all the improvements that had been made, person after person stopped us to get her help on transportation issues, government agency red tape questions, building things. . . all kinds of stuff. It seemed like an exhausting position. But she told us, ‘I love my job. I can’t walk down the hall without meeting someone I can help. How many people can say that?’

Photographing the chefs and food that went in to The Culinary Mistress, we ended up setting up our roving photo studio in some. . . nontraditional spaces in order to accommodate the schedule of a chef: dining rooms during service, kitchens, back hallways crowded with ladders and spare 4-tops. My favorites were the chefs we photographed who were in the process of developing their next restaurant: Stewart Woodman prior to the opening of Heidi’s, Stephen Trojahn during the Gastro Truck off-season, and Steven Brown during the lead up to the newly-opened Tilia. Since these chefs didn’t have restaurants for us to invade, they opened their homes to us. And since there wasn’t the crush of responsibilities generally pressing down on an executive chef in the restaurant, we were able to have some great conversations.

Steven talked about the gastro-pub trend of the past several years, and about how the public’s growing embrace of craft beers has mirrored his own shift toward a cuisine that is much more approachable and affordable, but still well thought out and crafted. Based on Zimmern’s review, it sounds like Tilia is a perfect realization of Steven’s latest food thoughts, as well as exactly what tons of people (me included) are looking for these days in a restaurant.

Chris’s recipes, prepared by Sea Change Executive Chef Erik Anderson, reflected his cool, and went perfectly with author Geri Wolf’s art direction: vivid reds and oranges in all three of his dishes, giving a very contemporary, saturated look to each plate. The carrot broth in particular, being poured from above in the book photograph, photographed beautifully.

Diane Yang, of La Belle Vie fame, is one of the top, most talented pastry chefs in town. She’s also particularly nice and easy to work with. In fact, of all the chefs featured in “The Culinary Mistress,” Diane was one of the toughest to get to not smile. But just like any chef, she can kick ass when necessary, so we got through our shoot with some great images.

A couple other things to pass on. The serious portrait poses fit beautifully with Geri Wolf’s art direction for the overall aesthetic of the book, but when you meet Sameh you sense immediately that he is FAR from as serious as he looks here. No one portrait can reflect every facet of a person’s personality; Sameh has an easily-accessible serious side that we explored on these portraits, but hopefully I’ll have a chance to reflect his other sides on another shoot someday. Also, we got to sample the small plates pictured below, and if you think all hummus and baba ghanoush are created equal, think again. Sameh’s subtle spicing took dishes I thought I knew and transformed them completely.

Congratulations to the Wadi brothers for all the accolades that they have recently received!

To kick things off I thought I’d start with Stewart Woodman, in honor of the opening of his latest creation just yesterday, Heidi’s Minneapolis. Since Heidi’s was weeks away from opening its doors, we used Stewart’s dining room for the shoot. Led Zeppelin was on the stereo, the living room was wallpapered with various restaurant opening-related lists scribbled on white butcher paper, and a team of four chefs churned out the sea bass recipe Stewart contributed to the book.

Stewart, aka Shefzilla, has a certain reputation around town as a man whose passions for his craft sometimes spill over onto the spicy side of the thermometer. But sadly, I can’t add to the legend; true, I was only around for a few hours, but what I experienced was a confident, friendly, cohesive bunch of people. And the sea bass? Holy crap, it was delicious.

Midwest Food Connection instructors visit Twin Cities classrooms throughout the year. What they bring is raw food that kids can touch, smell, and taste. They tell stories about how root cellars were the grocery stores 100 years ago, and explain things like how rolled oats are made. Meanwhile the instructors use the oldest trick in the book to gain attention: free food. Like a kale, rutabaga, and leek stew. The leek smelled amazing as it simmered throughout the class, and was a huge hit when it was time to dig in.

Given how complex the American food market has become over the past half century, and how food choices are being linked to an ever-growing list of diseases, it’s great that organizations like Midwest Food Connection are stepping in to the void to get our children thinking about food early. So often the connection between raw ingredients and finished ‘food product’ are entirely lost; only through education and hands-on exposure to real food will we as a society retain our food values. I’m so happy to be able to help them tell their story.