The Knobbly Plate

A veggie, foodie, photography site

Archives for January 2024

Borough Market, Vegetable Stall

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One of my favourite pastimes is to get out and about with my camera at food markets and halls. This is one of the veg stalls at Borough Market in the heart of London. From this image you would think that everything is in season, sadly that’s not the case. I took this shot in December and the only in season produce I could find was carrots, cauliflower, cabbage and celeriac. I asked the stall holder where all the other fruit and veg came from and he said, lemons from Sicily. Green beans from Kenya. Asparagus from Peru and various tomatoes from Spain. I couldn’t help thinking “oh my god” all those food miles. Being in the heart of London as well the price of all this produce was extortionatly high. I know the stall holder has to make a living and I know a veg stall in London’s Borough Market is probably not cheap but it did make me think that I am blessed to live by the beach in Selsey on the south coast of England with fields all around me growing everything from potatoes to lettuce and there is a farm shop less than a mile away from me.

Roasted Butternut & Carrot Salad with Baby Leaves

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This to me is pure heaven on a plate. Roasted butternut squash, carrot, with baby leaf salad and sous sous. This has become a go to meal for me these days. Butternut squashes are very in season now as are carrots. Very simple to make. Just cut up the butternut squash into bite sized pieces and along withe the carrots, drizzle olive oil over them and sprinkle sea salt over them and roast in a hot oven until you see the tips of the veggies begin to char. Couscous is even easier to make. One cup of couscous in a bowl and add one cup of boiling water and leave to stand for around five minutes. Then fluff with a fork. iv’e added cherry tomatoes, red onion and baby leaf salad to complete this recipe. Quite often I also drizzle some French dressing over the salad for even more of a flavour hit but it’s delicious on it’s own.

Wild Mushrooms, Fly Agaric

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One of my favourite pastimes is to go foraging for mushrooms. At this time of year pickings are very meagre due mainly to the very cold weather. This year however we have had very little in the way of frosts. I can think of only two since early November. I went mushroom foraging in December to collect wild mushrooms for my Christmas dinner table centre piece. A wild mushroom and chestnut wellington. I was really surprised at how abundant the crop of wild mushrooms were growing. I managed to collect, cepes, horse mushroom, field mushrooms and almond mushroom. However there was also a plethora of deadly mushrooms growing as well. The image shows fly agaric which you should stay well clear of even to the point of not getting the microscopic pores on any of the edible mushrooms you are picking.

I took this shot with my Canon camera and I have a cable attached to my flash to enable me to move the flash head around to get a better shot rather than just the ubiquitous head on flash.

Food Styling

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Hello again. It’s been years since I last looked at my blog. I lost all interest in photography in 2017 when I last blogged. A lot has happend over the last few years. From moving house to getting myself reacquainted with my favourite pastime. I have just started a new course in styling food. There are thousands and thousands of cookbooks out there now and they all have one thing in common. The food photography has to be exceptional in todays market to get you noticed and increase your sales or readership if you have one of the many millions of food blogs, Instagram pages or Facebook pages. I made this mushroom veggie burger as a start to my journey and used simple angle anglepoised lamps to light the subject. I think it looks very tasty, but then as a vegan myself, I would, wouldn’t I.

I will get back to the core reasons as to why I stared up this blog in the first place. Which was to bring people on my vegan food journey. Veganism  in this country, England, has exploded into very much the mainstream of cooking and diet. When I started this blog 7 years ago finding vegan produce was quite difficult. For example, soya milk seemed to be the only thing supermarkets stocked. Now there is a wide choice of dairy free products. Today there are so many meat substitutes for you to choose from. This last year or so I have been like a kid in a sweet shop with all the choices.