In the past few months, I've got hooked on a couple of food blogs. It's fairly simple - people (in this case, mostly women) share their recipes and post pictures of whatever dish they're currently presenting. A semi-food blog I've been following for a while is Ilse's, although this one is not typical - she does write mostly about food, but she's not taking it too seriously. Perhaps her casual approach to cooking is what I like about it - it reflects her everyday life and it doesn't seem she's on a holy mission to make the world believe she's the ultimate master of the ladle.
But if you really want to learn something and get to grips with that recipe you've always considered too difficult for your skills, there are plenty of blogs that offer advice and tips galore as well as very professional and precise instructions and measurements. The same ambition is reflected in the photographs that accompany the recipe: sometimes shot with what seems to be professional studio lighting, sometimes carefully photoshopped and everything around the subject wiped out to create an illusion of pure negative space (which looks kitsch when it's not done properly, but that's an altogether different story). The blog authors tend to swoon over their works - each recipe they upload is the best ever. The competition is tough. And because I know that the few blog entries I've written about food were the most demanding undertakings, I can only assume that the work they're doing is incredibly time-consuming, let alone difficult in many other ways. I get the impression that the food blogging community is incredibly competitive and complex: it has sub-communities dedicated to different genres: the haute cuisine, the national cuisine, the pastry aficionados, the eccentrics etc.
I'm not trying to say that it makes you lose your appetite, because there's a lot of stuff out there that's very useful and well, mouthwatering, but sometimes I can't help but wonder who gets to eat all the stuff they're constantly stewing, reducing, mounting, deep-frying, poaching, baking, blind-baking, caramelizing, glazing, flambéing and sautéing. When I see the photos of those slender fingers holding the perfect cube of caramel pie, I honestly doubt they belong to the consumer of that sugary masterpiece's 4-digit calorie count.
Pictured above is just a part of the savoury offering at my aunt's birthday party. It was all delicious and all made by herself in two days. Yes, that's thirteen dishes, without the nibbles and the dessert. I'd personally much rather read about her struggle with this endeavour than about cooking a perfect chocolate ganache over a bain-Marie (and what to do when the cream reaches the critical temperature of 72.3º C).
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