The prettiest detritus

One of my favorite images lately...a common tabletop scene for the farmer-apprentices at UC Santa Cruz's farm school (aka "The Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems" or CASFS). Normally, I do quite a bit of "styling" but I barely touched a thing to make this image. Maybe I pushed an apple over a centimeter or so, but that's it. This is just what the communal table looked like post-lunch.

Shot with my iPhone 5 and edited with VSCO cam.

© 2013 Christine Han Photography

Get Fresh

I really dig this photo! Marissa of Nourish Kitchen + Table wanted to create an edgy still life with some of the products she would be selling at her brand new shop. We got to work and came up with this, which I love.

It looks great as a postcard with her logo on it.

That same day we also shot this beautiful watermelon radish salad, which she made and style for her shop's "Get Fresh" postcard and for Q by Equinox's Summer Salad Series (excuse the less-than-perfect scan).

All images © 2013 Christine Han Photography

Summer Salads for Nourish K+T and Equinox

It's been HOT. I miss those lazy summer days when all I did was ride my bike to get an ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins with my saved up coins and dollar bills. Being a grown-up is overrated! Anyway, this heat calls for cold noodles and salads everyday (plus copious amounts of iced coffee to get through grown-up things like 'work').

Speaking of salads, Nourish Kitchen + Table collaborated with Q by Equinox to produce a Summer Salad Series, which I got to photograph! All these salads are delicious (I tasted them all, natch), and just perfect for the season.  Try them out and let me know which is your favorite.

Up on Equinox's blog today is Watermelon Salad with Basil, Ricotta Salata, and Red Onion. The salty-sweet combo is totally refreshing.

The last three weeks featured:

Steak Salad with Asparagus

Quinoa Salad with English Peas

Watermelon Radish and Beet Salad 

All images © 2013 Christine Han Photography. Recipes by Marissa Lippert for Nourish Kitchen + Table.

Sassy Radish on Pantry Confidential plus a gratuitous picture of her cat Forrest

I love when cats make this face. You cat lovers understand, right?

All images © Christine Han Photography

Head over to Pantry Confidential for the full post, one more awesome pic of this cat, and the recipe for that delicious broccoli farro salad!

Sarah of Seoul in the City + Kyotofu

Sarah is the blogger behind Seoul in the City, a website chronicling her adventures in the world of food, travel, and design--with an emphasis on her three-year stint in Seoul, Korea, of course!  Before I met her, I visited her site often in preparation for my trip to Korea this past January. I took her recommendation for the best pork belly (sam gyub sal) in town, and boy, it did not disappoint.  I only wish I had had more time to visit all the other places Sarah wrote about!  If you are planning a trip to Korea and good food is important to you, do not miss her blog.

Incidentally, she made a big move to NYC from Seoul, and I got to meet her in person to do her headshots. Thanks, Hana, for the introduction to a new friend! I absolutely love meeting and working with people who are passionate about food.

Sarah is also the Director of Sales, Catering, and Events at Kyotofu, a modern Japanese dessert bar in Hell's Kitchen, a place that deserves a write-up of its own. After taking her portraits there, she treated me to some seriously good desserts. That chocolate chip cookie you see is one of THE best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had. And guess what? It's gluten-free (using Thomas Keller's Cup4Cup gluten-free flour). That other beautiful concoction you see is a black sesame sweet tofu panna cotta, also gluten-free, and for the lactose-sensitive out there (ahem), dairy-free as well. They make their own tofu, and it is superb. Thanks to Sarah, I also got to sample the green tea creme brulee, miso brownies, green tea muffin, and white sesame soft-serve...you will not believe any of it is gluten-free or non-dairy. I don't have celiac disease, but I know quite a few people who do, and this place is just amazing for gluten-free folks. Even if you're not gluten-free, Kyotofu's concoctions are stand-alone awesome...so good that I went back a few days later for more goodies ;)

Sarah pours hoji-cha syrup over the kuro goma sweet tofu (black sesame tofu panna cotta), which adds just the right balance of sweetness atop the nutty panna cotta...I really liked this dish.

All images © 2013 Christine Han Photography

Chef Seamus Mullen on Pantry Confidential

I don't know why I hardly post here about my other blog baby Pantry Confidential (co-founded with my good friend Hana Choi of Stylefare), but I'm about to change that. Seamus Mullen's (of Tertulia and Iron Chef fame) home is a photographer's dream. You know I go crazy for details, and this shoot was just full of them! If I had a tail, you would have seen it wag the whole time.

Here is one of my favorite shots from the day: chef chilling in his barber chair, waiting for me to call him for his portrait.

Click here for the full post and the chance to win a signed copy of Seamus Mullen's book, Hero Food, over at Pantry Confidential!

The Best Lobster I've Ever Had

All images © 2012 Christine Han Photography


...was at Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound on Mount Desert Island in Maine.  It was a 2lb hard shell with the most succulent meat, perfectly briny but balanced by an underlying sweetness.  It was so good that for the first time, I was sucking out everything from every little part of every little leg and even the end of the tail part that you wouldn't think had any meat in it.

After trying both soft shell and hard shell lobsters, I'm in the hard shell camp.  They have more meat because they've grown fully into their shells.  Soft shells are supposed to be sweeter and more tender, but I didn't notice much of a difference and preferred the succulence and sheer meatiness of the hard shells.

Trenton Bridge was simply the best lobster pound we went to.  It's family-owned and operated and did not feel touristy.  They boil the lobsters in seawater over a wood fire in a row of pots outside.  If that weren't enough reason to go, they also happen to have amazing blueberry pie.