For The Love Of Baking

Bake. For the love of baking.

 
In my confusion of whether or not Blogsome is ending its service, I found myself sitting by my kitchen table one afternoon. Tea with honey. And some sweet nibbles. I remembered wanting to post this but something always got in the way. Like my procrastination habit, that is.
 
Kenny, a senior writer of Lifestyle+Travel magazine in Bangkok, emailed me one day. He was compiling food blogs for an article in their food-inspired issue and wanted to mention this blog and used some photos. An over-excited me, agreed in a split second .
 
Lifestyle+Travel magazine is an English-language travel magazine distributed mainly in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Malaysia and Cambodia, with media representatives spreading in Vietnam, Japan, the Middle East and Australia.
 
The article went into the November-December 2011 issue which you can browse on its website here: www.lifestyleandtravel.com. It has a flipable e-magazine you can flip like you do hard copy. So very cool. Turn to page 36-37, and there the excerpt of myFemale Coffee, Wedang Ronde and Baklava. Or you can use the easy tabs on the side of the magazine, click on “The Buzz” and start browsing on “Blog A Petite” story. For those of you facebookers, their Facebook page is on www.facebook.com/lifestyleandtravel.
 

 
The wonder of internet realm never ceases to amaze me. I’m humbled by its limitlessness and feel so blessed. Thank you, Kenny. It looks gorgeous .
 
Happy Monday to you all. I hope Blogsome is postponing the closing forever.
 

Dear everyone,

sadly, Blogsome will be closing down their hosting service by December 7th, 2011. Consequently, this blog address will be no longer valid afterward.

Right now I’m trying to steal time to move this blog to Wordpress and tidy up the new place as best as I could. So no worries, we’ll meet there soon.

The address is http://pennylanekitchen.wordpress.com/ if you want to sneak a peek, or maybe help me with the window decoration?

I hope you stay around.

Love,

Lalampa, Kue Pisang Kenari, Ikan Bumbu Asam, Ikan Woku Belanga, Guraka, Bubur Manado
Just got back from 2 weeks voyage across Ternate - Raja Ampat - Banda Neira - Ambon, where I went crazy for Kue Pisang Kenari, Guraka, Terong Saus Kenari, Cinnamon Tea and Nutmeg Jam!
 
Adventure-wise, I had an unforgettable journey of a lifetime. Food-wise, I’m deeply in love.
 

 
Do you see the flaming red peeking from inside the nutmeg? It’s mace. Banda produces premium quality of mace for the whole world. The whole islands are covered in Nutmeg and Kenari trees. The Kenari trees are often very big and old, as old as decades, even hundreds of years.
 
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To masquerade my lack of food blogging lately, let me share some sneak preview from the upcoming recipe book by Fatmah Bahalwan and NCC Team that I happened to be the photographer of. It is the last instalment of the recipe book series of 60 Foolproof Recipes: Dessert and Drinks.

As with the last book, I worked with two of my colleagues, Citra and Nadrah, to help me with the styling. And it was one of the smartest decisions I made in life, beside quitting office work and getting myself a good handblender stick .
 
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We were in Yogyakarta end of January this year, me and my NCC fellows. We got to do a cake decorating demo promoting our books in Solo, then took the advantage of time and place by taking further trip to Yogyakarta. It was our last day, we drove to Alun-alun and spent the whole afternoon having Wedang Ronde, cycling around, giggling unstoppably along the process

Wedang Ronde is a Javanese dessert, one of the pride of Yogyakarta: glutinous rice balls stuffed with sweet peanut paste, floating in a hot and sweet ginger tea. Wedang means hot. But this dessert can be enjoyed cold too, although uncommon.

Classic, refreshing, nostalgic.
Damn good.

Here is the recipe taken from the upcoming book of Fatmah Bahalwan & NCC Team, which is the 4th installment of 60 Foolproof Recipes series: Drinks & Dessert. So this is kinda a sneak preview.
 

Food styling by Citra Anggraini Kusuma & Nadrah Shahab
 
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These photos are from last year. I was at Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia, waiting for my class to begin. I’d be teaching food photography class that very morning. I got to Sugarflours too early, obviously. The store was still closed, it was around 7. I found this old style cafe in the corner of the block. It was the only business opened in that early hour. The smell of the coffee vaporized and intrigued me in a second. Bangi Kopitiam.

Dragged my heavy backpack to a table at the farthest spot from the counter, plunked myself in a chair and grabbed a menu. One coffee caught my eyes in an instant: Kopi Perempuan. Or translated as Female Coffee. I could almost feel it in my mouth already.

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Got featured by Femina India Online, so cool. The reporter, Rajani Mani of “Eat Write Think“, she threw very interesting questions like:

• Your favourite cooking smells?
• 5 ingredients you just need to have?
• Other than the knife, name one kitchen tool that you can’t do without?

They are that interesting, try answering them yourself and see if you ever could reach fixed answers. I couldn’t.
 
Although she misspelled my name as Rianna, maybe confused with Rihanna , it was a wonderful article because I got to share my childhood story of where it all began. And, and.. I got to mention Kerupuk, as the one food I simply can’t live without!
 
Thank you, Rajani. You’re pretty.

I was in Melaka last week, backpacking alone. I got hungry, so I sat down at the nearest stall and ordered. This Nasi Ayam –Chicken Rice Balls– was one of the wonderful things of Melaka. It rounded up my one-day journey there: blissful.

Nasi Ayam Melaka is actually very similar, if not the same, with Nasi Ayam Hainan —Hainan Chicken Rice— of China. The difference was that the chicken was roasted and the rice was shaped into balls. But the gingery fragrance, the serving style: one plate of rice and chicken, one bowl of gingery chicken broth, were no question similar. So I guess this is another peranakan thing, Chinese culture and lifestyle that was adopted by Malays and later on modified to their own local culture producing a new way that is fusion and even richer than before.

So, there I was. An anonymous by-passer, with my predictable big backpack and camera, stranded in a land I never stepped my foot onto. Having a wonderful late lunch of my life. Nasi Ayam Melaka. Blissful.

Clockwise: Uchiet, Iin, Widya, Dina, Riana
Photo courtesy of Iin Sidharta

Human faces! How rare!

Taken from Food Photography Class last Saturday, a special additional class for the “mudikers” whom only stayed very shortly in Jakarta for Idul Fitri. Unscheduled beforehand, we had fun capturing all the nibbles on pretty props I brought to the class. Apparently no one remembered taking photos until some friends came by right after the class was finished. So in a very rare moment, we finally captured our faces. I think this is the only time we took class photo, in terms of FP class.

Wonderful afternoon with wonderful people. And I miss you all already.

An afternoon at Toko Jojo Bintaro
Special additional Food Photography Class for the “mudikers”
Natural Cooking Club

“..an appreciation of every sweat, every hard work, every honest effort,
all great things it takes to make one good food.
Let’s do some justice by capturing them right.
‘Cause when you make people wanna lick the photos,
you know you’ve done good.”
~ Riana Ambarsari ~

Before I forgot everything I wanted to say, I better spilled out anything now. Been wanting to write this for quite a while, I realized if I didn’t start writing right when I had the first chance, most likely I wouldn’t ever write it at all.

I just finished sorting about 400-ish photos and doing minimum editing to them. Those were for 30 recipes included in one of NCC upcoming books. Tomorrow, another 500 photos are waiting for the rest of 30 recipes. I won’t talk about food photography here, what do I know. I’m the street one, I’ll let other fellows do that.

What’s been tantalizing my mind is the irony of a phenomenon called “when a passion turns into a job”. People see it as a dream comes true. A dream job. Where you’ll be having fun instead of working. Well, yes. And no. And I’ll tell you why.

You’ll Lose Your Freedom
A classic conflict, may I say. I like these photos I know the author and editor wouldn’t choose. I sent them anyway only to listen to disagreements of why this photo didn’t show the shape of the food, or why the texture of this food wasn’t obvious, or why the angle is unusual, or why the color tone was extremely soft, or why most parts of this food look blurry. Ha-ha, bite me! You don’t care if one food doesn’t show its shape, or the texture was lost in an out-of-focus weirdly looking world somewhere in the background, or everything looks blurry, or the color was so soft you feel you’re in a dream, or everything is so over exposure or, worst, so dark you have to light a candle. You like it, end of story.
Calm down, don’t worry. The sun is gonna shine tomorrow. Of course you’ll always provide them with the “normative” version of the photos to finally call their stressed out spiky hair to come down to earth. Pick those, people. Our happiness can wait. We still have Dexter Season 6 to look forward to.

You’ll Lose Your Street Style
You get used to the above, gradually you become one of them. You’ll lose your wacky weird street style that was your charm in the first place. What can you say, you were born into this foodie photography sphere with no guidance. You crawled in the dark, dragged yourself out from the darkness until you finally see the light, and now you’re walking tall and proud, ready to explore more of the world in front of you, kick some more a**es. All that by learning your very own experience. First hand, first punch, first blood. You survived by your own way nobody taught you how. Instinctively, you lived. Now somebody else is trying to shape you into a certain form the society would prefer to accept. They told you to wear suit instead of ragged cool jeans, throw away your rasta hair and slick it back shiny. You are a corporate slave in the making. Gone is your bad boy-ethan hawke-rolling stones-tupac shakur charm, if you know what I mean. There, my friend, is where you struggle. To stay true to yourself. To not let anything tell you what is right and what is not. If you’re lucky, you’ll once again survive. When you sent those “unusual” photos anyway, even only to piss them off, there lies your true glory. You smile ear to ear you feel it is all worth it. The hell with the world, you’ve made your point. If you’re lucky.

You’ll Lose Your Appetite To Do Personal Project
For me, this is fatal. I miss doing personal food photo session. I miss doing everything from searching for recipes, shopping solely for that purpose, trying it, sometimes several times to perfect it, sweat myself capturing the result, processing the photos, ..all the way to uploading and finally writing the story. Publish, edit, re-publish. Repeat as needed. They say destination could be anywhere, it’s the journey that counts. And it is indeed a long journey.

I envy those who are still well supplied with time, energy, and, most importantly, enthusiasm, to do this. The sacred thing that brought me to where I am now, ironically. Funny thing, often times I still found myself planning: collected recipes I planned to try, visualized the photos I planned to take, but that’s it. I dunno why it is just not the same anymore. Maybe I’m just tired. Blame it on the work. Easy.

Worst thing is, it even expanded into taking photos in general. Right now I would kill for a chance not to be expected to bring my camera everytime I hang out with friends. And I would kill anybody who expects me to do so. Don’t take me wrong, please, I’m the queen of expression. I love my friends, I love taking photos of them. Just don’t expect me to do it under certain order, anymore. Have mercy.

However..

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