Stilton and poppy seed oatcakes

For anyone who missed out on my recent postal mailer, here's the recipe for some rather special stilton and poppy seed oatcakes inspired by some Cropwell Bishop stilton I found in the studio fridge!
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Sue's stilton and poppy seed oatcakes

100g plain flour

120g coarse oatmeal (can be ground from porridge oats)

75g butter

50g mature stilton

1 tblspn poppy seeds

pinch salt

5 tblspns water

Heat oven to Gas 4, 350 F, 180 C.

Mix all ingredients except water in a blender, finally adding water

in a steady trickle to make a lump of sticky dough.

Turn and scrape out onto a floured surface.   Knead gently to

remove any trapped air.

Roll out to a thickness of approx. 3mm and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Or, roll into a fat cylinder shape to the diameter of your preferred

biscuit size, wrap in cling film and chill for an hour or two.

Then remove from fridge and use a sharp knife to cut into thin slices.

(To keep the mixture cool cover the block you are cutting from with

a tea towel.)

Place on a baking sheet (probably 2) and put into hot oven for 20-25

minutes until beginning to turn golden brown.

Remove from oven and cool.

Store in an airtight container until required.

Wonderful with a bit more stilton and some juicy pears!

Photograph and recipe - Sue Atkinson September 2012

New Simply Food Advertising for M&S

At the end of March I did a test shoot with RKCR Y&R for M&S's new (press) advertising campaign featuring their value range.   Do you remember March? - beautiful long cloudless sunny days....   We shot one Sunday using the lovely directional daylight from my studio window and on the Monday got the go-ahead from M&S!

By April the weather had gone into gloom mode but we still captured a sunny feel, working to some interesting "book end" crops along with regular single and dps formats.

The TV campaign launched on the 12th May and the press ads have been rolling out since the 14th with a lot of the pictures also in-store.   I have been loving working on it - with a great team.

Here are some of the images:

Honey and Scotch Pancakes - for Bookends

Breakfast Range shot

Pasta and Tomatoes

 

 

 

 

Apples and Pears!

Pasta Meal Range shot

Everyday Shopping Range shot

Potatoes and Broccolli!

Tea and Choccy biscuits - for Bookends

All the above shots commissioned by RKCR Y&R for M&S - Art Director Paul Angus.   Food styling by Katie Giovanni, Props styling by Penny Markham.

Twinings Teas Fruit "constructions"

From the sublime to - well, this did seem even a bit more over the top than usual.

In 2010 Brand Opus asked me to shoot a series of shots for Twinings Black Tea range.  I do a lot of fruit shots - which I love - and often creating the composition can be challenging, especially when we are using real fruit, which I like to do whenever possible.   There is usually at least one ingredient it's hard to get your hands on - in this case real tea leaves and vanilla flowers.   But the brief for this was unusual in that a range of different crops were required to be used from the same image.   So, the only way this could be achieved (avoiding massive retouching) was to shoot one large composition which covered off all the crops.

In the visuals the fruit looked to be piled up and overlapping so I decided to shoot from above, allowing gravity to help rather than hinder, and also to give me the opportunity to light from the sides for the correct subject lighting and also from underneath to allow for a clean cut out - on all sides if needs be.

But it wasn't until we started constructing that we realised quite how many layers of fruit some lovely (and still nameless) designer had actually visualised.   The set just kept growing and growing as we all held our breath but happily there were no mishaps.   Thank heaven for all those games of pick-up sticks I played as a child!

Here are a few more shots of work in progress (courtesy Brand Opus Art Director John Ramskil):

Twinings Orange and Cinnamon Tea

Twinings Mango and Passion Fruit Tea

Twinings Lemon Tea

And reproduced:

  Thanks also to Alan Dunn (for flowers) Denise Smart and Dagmar Vesely.

First Bloomsbury Farmers' Market

First Bloomsbury London Farmers Market

Bloomsbury London Farmers Market begins to warm up

I couldn't resist a trip to our first local Farmer's Market in Torrington Square - just beyond Waterstone's book shop - on Thursday.   I went early when many of the stalls were still setting up and the golden light seeping through the plane trees made it feel just like a market in France.   It wasn't a huge market but there is space for it to grow as I am sure it will.   Even if you go just to look it's impossible not to have the odd nibble with many samples on offer - in particular delicious and perfectly ripe fruit, cheeses, let alone cakes...

Some of the stall were one-person operations - Lois Lawrence "Plumbun" impressed me with "I cooked all the cakes yesterday".   Others were family or family + businesses.   The friendly guy on Nut Hall Farm's goat cheese and produce stand had plenty of stories to tell about belligerent goats and I had an interesting squirrel conversation with the lady on the fruit and veg stall (Brambletye Fruit Farms, I think!) selling fresh cob nuts and hazel nuts - the ones the squirrels didn't get.   Apparently they had sent a shipment to feed the red squirrel population of Brownsea island!   But I suspect most of them were snitched by the pesky common grey variety!

There were plenty of lunch opportunities (for those NOT watching their weight) - free-range meat burgers from Woodwards Farm, Giggly Pig's delicious free-range pork bangers and faggots.   Different stalls offered free-range produce breakfast rolls, lamb burgers and plenty of pastries and pies - even fresh paella - plus plenty of seasonal fresh fruit and pressed apple juice to wash it all down with.

For the shopping basket there were treats like beautiful courgette flowers and the Bath Soft Cheese Company's blue and brie-type cheese were succulently oozing with flavour and perfect ripeness.   Now I am making myself hungry again.

I will be back another Thursday having planned my weekly shopping needs and looking forward to the promise of more and different goodies on offer.

For more info see www.lfm.org.uk

Apple Produce, Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Flourish Bakery at Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Lois Lawrence "Plumbun" home made cakes

Courgette and other edible flowers

Giggly pig bangers at Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Gerberas at Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Fashion and hygiene collide, Woodwards Farm free-range burgers

Plenty for lunch at Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Coffees in Fitzrovia

   There are enough coffee shops around Fitzrovia to go to a different one every day for a month - or I would guess so.   But the other day Debs (one of my long-suffering assistants, baker of great cakes and photographer in her own right) and I went out to explore the idea of coffee-drinking photographically.   We didn't get far but decided that Italiano's on the corner of Goodge Street and Charlotte Street was the best cappuccino we had - and with croissants thrown-in!

We didn't rate the coffees at Eat but loved the plastic spoons! (below)

Being paid to eat ice cream?

It is not often that I get to shoot on location, so when it is - apart from being a little nerve-racking - it is usually fun.

Just recently Golin Harris asked me to go up to Jean Christoph Novelli's Academy to shoot him preparing recipes for a Carte D-Or Ice cream Sundays promotion.   After a nerve-racking battle with the traffic the sat nav deposited us at a cross roads in the middle of 4 nice but fairly feature-less fields, telling us we had reached our destination.   Neither my nor my assistant's phones picked up any signal.   Fun eh.

We finally hit on asking at the nearest pub who naturally knew exactly where to direct us and arrived on time - only have to sit and wait for several hours while the video crew did their stuff.

By the time we got to shoot poor JC was pretty exhausted but none the less charming for that and we wrapped the whole thing up in about an hour and a half - which included - of course - tasting each dish.   Yum!

 

See Jean Christophe preparing the recipes on Carte D'Or's web site.

Tea and sympathy

... and tea and toast!

Anyone who has spent a day in the studio with me is bound to have heard me mention my Mum.   At 94 she still lives on her own, has more hobbies than me and I have to ring her up to check her social calendar before I make any arrangements for us to do anything together.   Not that she is ever too busy for me to pop in for tea and sympathy.

A dear friend and mentor of mine, photographer Peter Carey, suggested I photograph her as part of a new series of personal work about people eating and drinking.

Here is my Mum.............

With batter pudding from oven - "Hurry up dear, it's hot!"

We were staying with my sister in law when I shot these picture's of her hands at breakfast.   I love photographing people's hands, they are so expressive.   I did not photograph her actually eating it - she was fairly well tucking in!