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033: Gabriel Cabrera: Food Styling, Photography and Mexican Cuisine

May 1, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with him.
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Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about food styling, photography and Mexican cuisine.

The Artful Desperado

On The Artful Desperado, Gabriel shares his favorite things from food to art and design all through his beautiful photography, styling and his lively commentary. Originally from Mexico, he now lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

I am so psyched to have Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado here on the show.

On Starting His Blog:

Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting his food blog.

The reason that I got started is at that time I was going to culinary arts school. There were a lot of things that were new to me which I assumed were new to the world. They weren’t. So then I started doing it A: I wanted to just document a lot of the stuff that I was learning and seeing and B: honestly, it was a hobby, just something that was cool to do.

On Food Styling and Photography:

Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about food styling and food photography.

I’m a prop stylist. But as of late, also, because part of the job, I have been doing quite a lot of photography, so now the balance is tilting a little bit more towards photography. So, I’m going and reading about classic photographers, and just going back into film.

Every time I start something, I get really obsessed with it and I deconstruct it. So it’s a little bit of, I guess between photography and styling.

Mostly, I would say styling. So as you can see, just for example, on the blog, I do use original recipes, but a lot of the recipes are adapted from other sources because that really helps me minimize the time that I have to develop, test and do something with the recipe, and leaves all the time to do the styling. Which, is what I’m mostly interested in. That’s what I do for a job, so my heart will run with styling and sometimes it runs away with photography.

What happened was, photography, I have always been interested in since I was a kid. I was lucky enough that my parents also loved photography. They are not photographers. They just loved it as a hobby, so we were always exposed to that. So, I guess that is where the love of photography came from at an early stage.

And, the food styling, in a sense, we were always cooking at home and I was always interested in the kitchen and that is what lead me into culinary arts.

In culinary arts, a big part of it is plating your dishes. It’s part of the process, but it’s more than just spending time in the kitchen and preparing it, I love the part at the end where you get to present it or create a crazy way of putting it together or just a classic way with a little spin to make it a little more modern. I guess that’s where my interest came from.

I knew there were food stylists. Actually, I guess I knew, but I never thought I would do it full time. When you see a magazine or something, I think most of us think of the photographer. “Oh, what a good photographer,” right? It wasn’t until I started blogging and doing things on my own that, “Oh, there’s a stylist!”

And now that I work for a company doing full time styling for other clients, there’s a photographer, an assistant, and cooks. There’s a whole other layer of things. So, no, I didn’t know you could do it full time. Doing it, I was like, “Oh, there is potential here.”

I’m lucky enough in Vancouver, people love, love food. And everybody is a foodie. It’s an easy thing to do. It’s not like you’re trying to explain things to people, like this is whatever dish. So, it was a surprise, a very, very happy surprise.

On Cooking:

Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about cooking.

I’m originally from Mexico. I was born in Mexico. We do love our food down there. So, I guess the same as when I was a kid. We were not the typical Mexican family that you would see in the movies where, “Oh, we are all gathering together there around the table and making food.” It was just regular food, Mexican food. But, I was always interested in it.

My brother is a pastry chef. Well, he’s not doing that anymore, but he was doing that for quite a long time. There was also that component. So, that was when it started. I was good in the kitchen. With just regular stuff, I was good.

I guess going to cooking school really helped me boost that on to a professional level. I just learned so many things and I think I take it for granted now because when I’m cooking or when I’m doing things, I just do it quickly and done.

When I have friends over and they see me, they say, “How do you cut like that?” Just things I take for granted I learned in cooking school that you wouldn’t have learned maybe so much if you were just at home. That’s where my interest came from, from actually just being hungry all the time.

On Food in Mexico:

Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about food in Mexico.

Mexican food is, I think, internationally has a good and a bad rep. A good rep because it’s yummy, a lot of people like it, but it has a bad rep because a lot of people think it’s burritos, chips and salsa and guacamole and that’s it. That’s snack food. There’s so much more to that.

In Mexico City, I will say that it’s like the epicenter of almost everything there. You can find all sorts of food. It is basically like New York, but in Spanish. It’s huge and there are so many trendy restaurants now that retain our food culture, but they make it more modern. Like I said, you will not find there a burrito. You will not find there chips and salsa. It’s a whole different level of cuisine.

There’s a mix because of all of our history. There’s a mix of Spanish influence, French and our own food comes from the Aztec times, corn and different kinds of mushrooms and desserts. It is quite huge and broad, but I do love it in Mexico City.

Every time I eat Mexican food in Mexico City, it’s like a little party with your family and it’s so good and it’s always so yummy. That’s in a nutshell how I will describe it there.

On a Specialty Mexican Food:

Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about a specialty Mexican dish.

The name in Spanish is called huitlacoche. It sounds really gross, but it is really amazing. What it is, is a fungi that grows in corn. So, it’s a pest, you know, something that actually grows in the corn. But, Aztecs harvest it and they will eat it. It is very good for you and also, it tastes amazing. Unless you knew about it because it is an Aztec word, it would be hard for you to find if you don’t know the word. Locals know it. We eat it all the time. It’s a earthy flavor thingy. But, the thing is, you never Google how it looks because it looks really weird, but it tastes amazing.

It would be its own dish. It looks like little fibers, very thin fibers. What people will usually do is sauté it with onions and garlic and put it for example in a tortilla to make a taco or they can put it on top of something as well, rice or something else. You can put it in mole sauce. It’s very famous, mole. They can put it in mole and you can eat it with mole.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jamie Oliver’s show and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and I just discovered an Irish cook.

His name is Donal Skehan. It’s DonalSkehan.com. He has all these little YouTube snippets and he as all these different shows but they’re really cool and are very quick and easy. They are usually really decadent desserts. I just discovered it recently. So, I have been watching those little ones and it’s really fun.

What are some food blogs or websites that we have to know about?

For websites, I would say, Food52 for sure. That’s like the almighty site for everything.

For blogs, I would say, she’s quite big now, Top With Cinnamon, is one of my favorite ones. She’s really, really good. She has lots of great desserts and her recipes are usually very simple and her photography is amazing.

Another one would be Bakers Royale. Her photography also is super. It’s crazy. And I’m sure everybody knows all about her too, but I always go back to it, What Katie Ate from Australia. It’s also stunning photography. I think she puts more of her commercial work rather than just her recipes, but if you go back to the archives, her history I will say, there are beautiful photos and her style is very unique.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter that make you happy?

Instagram, it’s called Slice of Pai. She’s a local photographer and she is really sweet. She always has really beautifully photos and I’m always so jealous because she posts these photos like, “Boom, I was having coffee,” and it’s beautiful and it makes me happy. She loves Paris and she puts a lot of things about Paris. So, that’s amazing.

On Pinterest, I’m going to say, she has the best food boards. Every time I see it, you are amazing, please never leave earth. It’s called Lucy supergoldenbakes and her board for food photography is great. She finds the best stuff in there.

Laura from The First Mess is what it’s called. I follow her, well, we are friends too. Well, we have met online. We are online friends. But, Laura from the First Mess. She’s great, she posts so many beautiful things. She has a vegan blog. Her photos are always stunning and she lives on a beautiful farm in the Niagara region. And of course, she just has fresh veggies coming up from the ground and it’s just happiness and wholesome foods.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

Chocolate.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without.

Chili flakes.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Yes, so, Barefoot Contessa Parties! it’s called. It has a lot of classic recipes and some of the recipes might be a little bit old school like cupcakes with chocolate, but great book to have.

Maybe it’s not a cookbook, per say, just Gather Journal. It’s culture magazine, and it’s a biannual magazine. The photography in there is just breath-taking, the styling is stunning and their recipes are really good and very easy to make.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

There’s a band called St. Lucia. They have their latest album that is called When the Night and that would be one because it reminds me of summer. They’re a little bit of 80s vibe, but you always want to have summer. When it’s kind of crappy outside, I put it on and say, “Okay, let’s get something cooking here.”

Keep Posted on Gabriel:

Gabriel Cabrera of The Artful Desperado on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with him.

Instagram. Artful Desperado on Instagram would be the best one. That’s where I keep in touch with everyone and post regularly. So, yeah, you can find me there almost every day.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Bakers Royale, Barefoot Contessa Parties!, Donal Skehan, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Photographer, Food Stylist, Food52, Gabriel Cabrera, Gather Journal, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Mexican Cuisine, Mexican Food, Slice of Pai, St. Lucia, supergoldenbakes, The Artful Desperado, The First Mess, Top with Cinnamon, Vancouver, What Katie Ate, When the Night

012: Maria Siriano: How To Have Fun Baking and Her Top Baking Tip

March 13, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted on what she's up to.
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Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast on How to Have Fun Baking and Her Top Baking Tip

Sift and Whisk

Today we’re chatting about baking and for me the best part of any dinner, dessert.

Maria is a self-taught baker and dessert maker whose love of baking and sweet things shine through on her blog and in her photography.

I am so pumped to have Maria Siriano from Sift and Whisk here on the show.

On Starting Her Blog:

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her blog

I used to work in textbook publishing and I actually started off as an intern, literally the day after I graduated college. So I was doing that for about a year and a half and they brought me on from intern to being a temp. The company went on a hiring freeze right before I was about to interview for a permanent job so that kind of sucked. I then was able to go freelance doing publishing stuff.

So I was at home doing textbook editing and I was baking all time because it’s stress relief for me.

In Ohio, which is where I live, we have cottage bakery laws so you can have a home-based bakery, sell stuff at farmers’ markets and that’s what I started doing. I did that for a year and half while I was editing.

Because I was selling stuff I had a website that I created for my bakery and I was doing a blog. So I would put some recipes on there of the stuff that I didn’t sell because I really only sold cookies and occasionally cupcakes but I really enjoyed the blog process and the photography process more than actually going to farmers’ markets and selling.

I was making the same thing every single day which didn’t really appeal to me.  So I was like I want to experiment and try new stuff and take more pictures. I was really into photography in high school so then I kind of gradually shut down the home-based bakery and picked up full-time with the blogging.

It has been a little over two years now, it was two years in November and I love it. It is the best job anybody could ask for. Now that’s what I do entirely.

I want to share things with people.

I find that I get a lot more joy out of sharing with a broader audience than I do in a really niche market of just my hometown. So it’s a great way for me to connect with people.

On The Process of Blogging and What Comes Most Naturally:

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast talking about the process of her blog and what comes most naturally.

I still don’t think that it comes naturally to me and whenever somebody compliments me on any of those things I’m like OK what do you want.

But it takes a lot of work and I can see improvement in myself. I’m still trying to improve everything I do because I have my own style of writing. I am an English major. I was really good at writing essays about literature, but I’m not a fiction type person and I always say I’m just such a narcissist and that’s why I can do a blog because I can just write about myself all day.

It’s like journaling.  For me it is really cathartic, and I like to have a sense of humor about it and I hope that people appreciate that sense of humor. I hope that I don’t offend anybody ever. I am always worried about that.

Then the photography, I am obsessed with looking at other people’s photography. I always feel like I am almost there, and then somedays I’m just like this is just crap. I still struggle with it, and feeling like it’s good, but if somebody else looks at it and thinks it’s good, I’m over the moon.

But basically my blog is exactly how I talk but with less cursing because I try to keep it clean because maybe a fourteen year old will want a cookie recipe, and then I’ll feel really bad if their parents are like, “Oh, stop cursing.”

On Her Connection to Baking:

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast talks about her connection with baking.

In my family growing up, we almost never cooked homemade meals. We did a lot of the frozen. We were like Stouffers‘ people. We did the lasagna. My mom made a couple different meals that she would do like homemade meatloaf, but homemade is in quotations because she would do the Hungry Man or whatever that is in the can.

Both my parents worked, and she was going to college when I was a kid so it was all very take out and boxed food and all that. Whereas my husband grew up in house where they cooked dinner every single night, they rarely went out to eat.  So when we moved in together, I was like, “Oh my gosh, he is cooking me dinner every night. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.” But it took some getting used to.  Because we never cooked in my family.

The one thing that we did was bake. For a while we did a lot of boxed mix stuff like cakes like that. We weren’t really fancy about it or precise about it, but we did a lot of cookies, which is my first from scratch baking experience. We did molasses cookies which is a recipe I did on my blog and is still one of my favorite recipes because it is my family’s recipe.

I always want to learn how to cook so what I started doing a couple months ago up until the Holiday craziness set in, I was saying “I am cooking dinner every Wednesday night because I need to learn to cook.”

For awhile right after I got laid off at my publishing job, my parents were trying to kick me back some money so they were like, “Hey, come cook for us. Make freezer meals and we will pay you.” So I would cook everything for them and freeze it, and they’d give me a hundred bucks a week or something and I was like, “Thanks mom and dad.”

Everything I make always turns out really good if I follow the recipe but I can’t do what my husband does which is open the fridge and be like, “Oh, I will just throw all this stuff together and we have dinner.” I can’t do it.

On Baking Being More of a Science Than Cooking:

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast talks about baking being a science.

Whenever people are like I want to get into more baking, I am always like buy a scale. That is my number one advice is buy a kitchen scale. It’ll set you back 30 bucks and it’ll change everything.

My husband has had relative success baking with his kind of free-form method. There are certain things I think that you can do if you like dessert and want to make dessert but don’t want to do all the complicated stuff, and it gets a little what I call “semi-homemade with Sandra Lee.”

You can go to the store and you can buy pre-made pound cake. You can dice that and put some strawberries in it and some whipped cream and that’s really easy.  You can just pour sugar or whatever and just toss everything together and that’s really easy to do. You don’t have to do a lot of measuring and things like that.

Even pie, if you don’t make your own crust, the filling you can guesstimate and if it’s not thick enough you add a little more corn starch or you bake it a little longer and it’s not so daunting, but there are certain things that I would stay away from.

Cookies can flop miserably if they aren’t very accurate and cakes, so I think that it just depends upon how desperately you want something.

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast talks about things not going as planned in the kitchen.

I did a black forest pie for my husband and I got the wrong type of liqueur for the filling and I just ran all over town. I actually literally have the bowl of the first filling sitting on my counter top just sitting out right now because I’m like, “Maybe I can put this on French toast tomorrow morning.” I don’t know what to do with it.

There was one time I made, a couple years ago, and this didn’t even make it to the blog because I was so over it, but it was a lemon zucchini bread. It tasted like rubber. I don’t know what happened. It was so disgusting. I made two of them because I am always really hopeful that it’s going to turn out. Instead of paring back a recipe, I just go all in. So I had two of these loaves of rubber, and I just threw them in the trashcan because I will rage eat the bad stuff.  I eat it because I am like, “I hate you so much.”  I don’t understand it but that’s what I do.

I had that with macaroons. I made those literally ten times before I finally got one that was blog-worthy.

I was like, “I will go to the bakery down the street.” We have a really good French bakery down the street and they make amazing ones. I’m like, “Why do we even bother.”

On Getting an Idea to The Blog:

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast on getting an idea onto the blog.

What I usually do is I start off with a seasonal ingredient and I do a lot research on that. If there is nothing seasonal then I go with chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, things like that, but I try to stick to seasonal because I am a big fruit person, and I know people are always like, “Make more chocolate.” And I’m like, “No.”

So I start off with finding something seasonal that I want to work with and then I have the book called The Flavor Bible. I will go through there and there’s a list of complementary ingredients and flavors and I will go through there and kind of get inspired by that.

Then I will just think of all the formats and I try to flesh out the categories equally so like pies, cakes, cookies, whatever, but I will say I tend to skew toward pie. I like pie. I will end up with so many pies and tarts that I am like, “Oh my gosh, I have to tone it down,” but I love making them. And then summer, ice cream, I’ll just do ice cream until my ears bleed.

And honestly, a lot of what I do is built off other people’s work because that is what’s great about making recipes is you can. A lot of the testing is done by other people for you so you can find a base or find something similar. Like the roasted plum, I knew somebody had done a roasted peach ice cream, so I said, “Okay, if she did it like this and used this method for peaches, I can do the same thing with plums,” and kind of build from there.

I always try my best to list my source because I’m not a genius. I can’t just make up scientific baking things in my mind.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

So this is embarrassing but I don’t have cable so I don’t watch a ton, but what I do have is some Alton Brown, Good Eats.

We actually have them downloaded and when we travel, we will put episodes on our iPad and watch those because they’re fantastic and full of science.

What are some food blogs or websites that we have to know about?

Everything.

I have a thousand in my feed. I am a huge fan of Serious Eats because again they do a lot of science so I love listening to all of that, reading all that.

Blogs, I love Bakers Royale, her photography is just ridiculous and I’m jealous. Also Half Baked Harvest, and my friend Sarah who does the Sugar Hit and my friend Elizabeth who does Sugar Hero.

Elizabeth does candy and she’s amazing because I cannot do candy to save my life.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter that make you happy?

Bonnie Tsang. I think she is the one that has the little daughter, and she is so cute and every time, she just posts really fun and brightly colored things. Every time I see a picture, it just makes my heart happy.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

All home cooks should have chocolate.

I can’t tell you how much you can make with chocolate but if you don’t have it, it kind of stinks.

So the great thing about chocolate is if you have it, you can just eat it.  If you don’t want to just eat chocolate, you can make all kinds of stuff with it like pudding, whip that up really fast, or just add it to any other thing and it makes it better.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Butter. It is very simple for me. I go through so much butter it is not even funny. Every time I do a vegan recipe, I am like, “Where is the butter?”

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Oh my god, everything. I collect cookbooks so I just love everything. My favorite cookbook is the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook because it is just such a great reference. If you want to riff on something, they’ve got such a great base recipes.

I also really love, this isn’t baking but, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution book.  We cook a lot out of there, and since I’m not very good at cooking, it is really easy for me to follow. It’s got a revolutionary way of making rice that is just fantastic and lots of Indian food which I love.

I love all of the Baked cookbooks, Baked Bakery in New York. I get all of them as soon as they come out.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

This is really embarrassing, from West Side Story, the song, I want to live in America.

I am a big proponent of singing show tunes while I’m baking, it has such an up beat, it’s just very upbeat so it really gets me going and on track, and the solid beat of it makes me do everything in a timely fashion.

Keep Posted on Maria:

Maria Siriano of Sift and Whisk on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted on what she

I’m best at updating Facebook. I’m terrible at Twitter, so yeah definitely follow me on Facebook because you will always see the new recipes. Any other things that are a little bit personal, and maybe kind of funny, is on Twitter, but I’m not regular about it.

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    Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Alton Brown, Baked Bakery, Baker, Bakers Royale, Baking, Bonnie Tsang, Cook's Illustrated, cottage bakery laws, Dessert, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Revolution, Good Eats, Half Baked Harvest, Maria Siriano, Ohio, Serious Eats, Sift and Whisk, Stouffers, SugarHero, The Sugar Hit, West Side Story

    Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
    Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.

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