"I'm not sure about the placement of the tomato" is a phrase that I never imagined would come tripping lightly off my tongue.
I actually said that last week as chef Umberto Bombana and a photographer and I carefully examined a dish of snapper with baby spinach that Bombana had cooked at his restaurant, Otto e Mezzo. The position of the tomato garnish really bothered me.
Bombana - and 19 other chefs - will appear in a cookbook scheduled to be published this month. The book is composed primarily of my recipes that have appeared in Post Magazine.
Because my recipes are already written and photographed, doing a book based only on them seems a logical and easy thing to do.
But getting the green light for publication took some time: management said yes, then no, then yes, then no, then "yes, but we want to include restaurant chefs and can we have it done by the end of September?" (My reply: "yes to the chefs, no to September".) Then "yes, but can we publish it in time for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival?" (which starts this week, and which has two events I'm appearing in). Again, I said no.
It's very odd to be photographing chefs' dishes. I've worked with photographers and stylists on the images for my own recipes, where I could dictate (if I were so inclined) my preferences for the look of a dish if, say, I didn't like the shape of the plate we put the food on.