Instagrammers, take note: this year’s Cook the Vineyard will celebrate the art of food. For the first time, food photographers will join the cookbook authors at the annual luncheon that showcases Island food culture.
The event, which is in its fourth year and sponsored by the Martha's Vineyard Magazine, will take place at Lola’s Southern Seafood on Monday, July 17 from noon to 2 p.m.
Sissy Biggers, lifestyle personality and Today show contributor, will act as host to five acclaimed cookbook authors and three of the books’ photographers. Guests will enjoy a five-course lunch featuring a recipe preparation from each of the books while chatting with the experts.
Jane Seagrave, publisher of the Vineyard Gazette and the magazine, explained this year’s focus.
“Some of the cookbooks that have come out this year seemed to me to be spectacular in their visuals, and we heard a couple of the photographers speak at a book signing earlier this year, and their perspective on making the food look appetizing and adding another dimension to the cookbooks was so interesting we thought that people would want to hear it,” she said.
Elizabeth Cecil, whose photographs fill the pages of Sarah Waldman’s Feeding a Family, will attend along with Ms. Waldman. Speaking to the theme, Ms. Cecil said: “It really is an art form, and cookbook photographers bring an especially unique look to photographing food.” She continued: “I apply a lot of the same care and principles to food photography as I do to my landscape and fine art work.”
To her that means an authentic approach that is conscious of light and a sense of place. This translated into staging seasonal photo shoots for Ms. Waldman’s cookbook. Photographer Randi Baird embraced this tactic as well. Ms. Baird worked with Susie Middleton on Simple Green Suppers.
Both Ms. Cecil and Ms. Baird shot the books’ recipes on Island as the ingredients in each came into season.
Ms. Baird said: “I had, as a photographer, the opportunity to photograph the stars of our book at their most beautiful, at the peak of their flavor and at the peak of how they look, the tomatoes being red, or sun golds being yellow, eggplants being cute and purple, and it was just beautiful.”
Working with food has other advantages, according to Gabriela Herman, who shot featured author Joan Nathan’s King Solomon’s Table. Ms. Nathan is a journalist, expert on Jewish cuisine and a renowned cookbook author with eleven volumes in print.
“It was a dream shoot,” Ms. Herman said. “We ended up shooting 10 dishes each day, and it was great because at the end of each day we had a whole feast to all sit around and eat.”
Ms. Baird had a similar experience collaborating with Ms. Middleton. She said before the shoot began, they were trying to figure out what they’d eat on set.
“We soon realized that the food, how I like to shoot food, is the food. We’re not using any glycerin . . . most of the food we either ate for lunch or took home for dinner.”
Other authors will include James Beard award winner Kathy Gunst, who will attend with her latest book, Soup Swap: Comforting Recipes to Make and Share, and Jessica Harris, an award-winning culinary historian and cookbook author who recently published a memoir titled My Soul Looks Back.
Guests also can participate in a raffle for items made by Island businesses and artisans. Proceeds from the raffle will be donated to the Island Food Pantry.
Tickets for Cook the Vineyard are $75 and available online.
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