I am sure we all had these foodstyling disasters when shooting food!

Ok, maybe I was a little too ambituous this evening when I thought I could cook, style and then photograph it all at the same time. O and eat the results afterwards as well.. LOL. Well, I guess I seriously proved myself wrong here. I have this new cookbook which had a recipe of creamy pasta in it, which I wanted to try. There was no photo in the book, so I figured I could try and do the photo before eating it. Guess I still have to learn quite a bit when it comes to foodstyling!

Pasta disaster

I should have guessed that it wasn’t a simple dish to style, because for starters the sauce was white mostly and the macaroni was well, wholewheat, so not too good looking either. The recipe called for all ingredients to be blended together, pasta on a dish, the rest on top and dinner is ready! And it was, but that sure did not look like anything you would want to take a photo off!! I did anyway, just to show you that my styling skills need serious improvements.
I then figured I had some of the ingredients left so maybe I could redo the dish in a better way. Show the ingredients separately. By that time I had eaten the first dish and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the taste; it was just the looks I was concerned about.
I tried it with a different kind of pasta and wanted to attempt to make a stack of the ingredients. I love stacking food and most of the time that works well. Not this time ofcourse… Pfftt…. I am a styling disaster; it is now official!!
If anyone has any good tips on what I could have done to improve this I would really like to know, as I am at a loss!!

So… for all those brave souls out there who want to give it a go and make something better out of this (and I DO seriously think that that should be easy to do!!!) here is the recipe:

Creamy pasta dish

Recipe type: Main

Author: Madelon Schoemaker

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 4

It’s a delicious dish but photogenic it is most certainly not!

Ingredients

300 gr pasta
2 spring onions chopped finely
400 gr. cherry tomatoes
250 gr large shrimps, peeled
200 gr. ricotta cheese (you can substitute with mascarpone if you want)
fresh parsley, finely cut
pepper
Italian herbs

Instructions

Cook the pasta according to the instructions. Cut the tomatoes in half. For the sauce fry the onions and add the shrimps.
Stir the shrimps and the onions through the ricotta. Add tomatoes, hazelnuts, garlic and parsley. Add pepper, salt and italians herbs to your liking.
Mix the pasta with the chive and divide across four plates. Pour the sauce over the pasta and sprinkle the chopped hazelnuts on top.

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