I’ve had the good fortune to work with Rachel Sherwood, Minneapolis food stylist extraordinaire, on a handful of projects over the past year – my Rest Stop Gourmet and Ice Fishing Gourmet among them. Earlier this summer she emailed me about a personal project she and her friend and colleague Anna Kevile Joyce were working on, inspired by various farm-to-table dinners sweeping the nation these days. Rachel and Anna had an event of their own in mind, and wondered if I would be interested in documenting it. Are you kidding?? I said.
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.
One of the things I love about professional chefs is that they’re often up for an adventure. Take Hakan Lundberg, Chef de Cuisine at Cosmos Restaurant in Minneapolis. When I first approached him a couple months ago about helping me put together a food photo shoot on top of a frozen lake, he put up about ten seconds of indecision, then jumped squarely on board. I did luck out a little bit, though; his first ice fishing experience happened after I made the request. If things had happened the other way around, I’m not so sure I would’ve got the same answer.
This shoot definitely had more variables to contend with than installment one of the Worldly Gourmet series last summer with Asher Miller. Variable number one goes by the name Lake Minnetonka. I went out to scout the shoot location a week prior to our chosen date, and temps had been in the upper 30s for several days. The foot of snow sitting on top of the ice had been turned to slushy puddles. Not really what I wanted to see. Then a good news/bad news kind of thing happened: first, a big cold snap froze the puddles, which was great. Not so great was the 14 inches of snow that came a couple days before the shoot, making travel across the lake much more tricky.
A very busy week leading up to the shoot meant that dialing in the location would have to happen the morning of the shoot, which certainly provided a couple anxious moments (that’s code for nearly driving in to the lake, then getting stuck for 15 minutes), but in the end we found a great spot and hit our schedule perfectly. Hooray for local knowledge, trusty assistants capable of taking turns at pushing a stuck vehicle, Google Maps, fallback options, and fallback fallback options!
Once we got to our spot, a magical thing happened that I find often happens when it’s time to take photos: the thick gray clouds parted, the wind died down, and the weather turned about as nice as you could expect on a late-February day in Minnesota. Hakan’s son Isaac had a great time ice fishing (although the highlight of his day seemed to be when the fish heads were removed – he kept asking if it was time, and when it finally was, he ran around screaming, TIME TO CUT THE FISH HEADS! TIME TO CUT THE FISH HEADS! Clearly the son of a chef – plus, check out the photo of him cutting carrots), and we did exactly what we had set out to do: have a great time, and take some fun quirky photos.
Sometimes the search for good times and original images leads you to some unexpected places. Last Sunday, the search took me and a hearty band of food lovers to an interstate rest stop one hour northwest of Minneapolis. Why? Well, have you ever seen photos of gourmet food mere yards from an interstate? I hadn’t either, so I thought I’d fill that gaping void.
None of this would have happened if not for the involvement of Asher Miller, Executive Chef, Wolfgang Puck’s 20.21 Restaurant. The challenge I posed to Asher was to come up with twists on traditional road trip dishes and prepare them on the road – practically on the roadway itself, as it turned out. To my continued amazement, he accepted the challenge, and invited some friends and family along for the ride. So what did he come up with?
Watermelon cubes with feta crumbles & balsamic
Deviled eggs
Local cheese plate, featuring blueberry & raspberry cheddars and aged gouda
Tuna carpaccio atop crostini with citrus greens
Mini burgers on homemade buns
Grilled quail
Potato salad
Assorted Surly beers
The food was incredible, the weather perfect. Judging by the smiles in the photos, I think the lesson is that a well-crafted piece of food can drown out quite a bit of road noise.
One more thanks to pass on, and that goes to Rachel Sherwood, food stylist extraordinaire, for her invaluable help wrangling props and making Asher’s delicious food look its best.
I’ll be posting my first behind the scenes video from the shoot in the days (weeks?) to come, so stay tuned!
