Feta Cheese with Preserved Lemon and Vanilla Infused Olive Oil and A Photography Challenge

One of the food blogs that I follow, Jennifer from Delicieux  had recently taken part in a food photography challenge, set by another food blogger Simone from Jungle Frog Cooking! Hopping over to Simone’s blog I noticed another photography challenge for September… a dominant  white theme…  a little colour allowed, but only to highlight the white! With everything around me that I needed… why not give it a try!

I have purposely posted other photographs to show how the lighting and camera settings posed a challenge and affected how some of the images looked. The first and last photographs are the images I am happiest with and I was very undecided which one to put at the top of this post!

With some vanilla olive oil, preserved lemons, feta cheese and props, I set about creating a photograph and recipe around the theme. I used props with different tones of white, some with texture and composed them in a way that appealed to me for this photo shoot… also paying attention to the available natural light and camera settings as I took the photographs!

Placed a fresh white frangipani flower from the garden into the small vase brought in another element of colour, with its yellow center!

Placed the prepared recipe of feta cheese, preserved lemons (adding more colour) coated with a little vanilla infused olive oil into the dishes and again some exposure compensations needed adjusting, as I was using aperture setting on the camera!

I stayed away from manual setting on the camera this time and as it was already late in the afternoon, daylight in Bahrain disappears right before your eyes! Trying (which I would have been) to use manual setting and a race against the setting sun would have probably left me in the dark!

You know when you say to yourself “let me try just one more photograph,” stuck a yellow cocktail stick into the feta cheese, removed some props… and it’s a wrap!

A very simple and delicious appetizer that is very easy to prepare! Although I recommend the preserved lemons for their salty lemony flavour and vanilla infused olive oil for its subtle sweetness, fresh lemon zest and a walnut infused olive oil is another alternative! I used a creamy feta cheese which was not so salty, bearing in mind the saltiness of preserved lemons!

Feta Cheese with Preserved Lemon and Vanilla Infused Olive Oil

Ingredients:

• feta cheese, cut into 1/2inch cubes
• preserved lemon, finely diced (use your taste as a guide, a little goes along way)
• vanilla infused olive oil

How to make: Pace the feta cheese and preserved lemon into a bowl, drizzle over some vanilla olive oil, you just want the oil to coat the feta cheese. Gently mix together, cover with some cling film and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours for the flavours to mingle. Place the feta cheese into small bowls and stick some cocktail sticks into cubes of feta cheese for easy serving!

Would like to know your views and tips when shooting white?