bad twin, bad snack.

i had bad twin assisting on a shoot today.

she seemed to be in a mood with me, but it's difficult to tell.

i asked her to stand in for the subject when i was setting up the lights.

and here she is giving me her trademark look...

after the shoot we went next door to apostrophe for a snack.

for some reason i chose to eat this...

i won't lie to you. it was the worst thing i've eaten since school dinners.

the problem was that this was displayed next to a chocolate eclair.

so i assumed that the pastry was eclair-style stuff... so it was basically

a chocolate eclair but with fresh raspberries and chocolate smeared on it.

i was wrong.

sure enough it was raspberries sitting on a thin layer of chocolate sauce,

but the stuff around it was not a sweet and soft pastry... it was a rock

hard baguette !

ay caramba ! a rock hard mini baguette. what a liberty !

it was absolutely foul.

the only good thing to come out of it was that when she saw

what a mistake i'd made and realised how unhappy i was...

bad twin began to smile...

pub quiz

last night we had arranged to go to the dartmouth arms pub quiz

with jackie's niece rosanna and her boyfriend mike.

we hadn't been since january...

http://markwhitfieldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/01/pub-quiz.html

i thought long and hard about which gloria gaynors would be best suited to 

wear to a pub quiz. nothing too flash, nothing uncomfortable, no, it 

had to be a pair of kicks i felt at home with. it had to be trainers to

help my brain cope with anagrams and football trivia.

in a flash of inspiration i pulled these out from a far away alcove 

in the furthest corner of whitfield towers...

silver nike vandals.

i bought these about 5 or 6 years ago and i wore them to death but i probably

haven't worn them for 2 or 3 years now.

they are made out of a silver satin material. hi-tops with a velcro strap.

damn they are comfortable.

so off we went to the dartmouth arms.

the quiz sheet arrived and we had to choose one of the rounds as

our specialist round ( for double points )

look what we chose...

i have been tutored in the language of cockney rhyming slang by the

master himself... gooner jeff, for many years now.

though i'm deeply welsh and also have spanish in me, i've been

living in london for a long time. i've also been out with danny and jeff

on numerous occasions when as the night has worn on, they

almost stop speaking english and speak pure cockney.

i have even been tutored in an offshoot of rhyming slang...

pure cockney that doesn't rhyme.

( for instance one night gooner jeff came out to a gig i was

photographing and greeted me with the words... "blimey it cost me 

a carpet to get in 'ere" )

the quizmeister did throw a curve ball in here with

"hit and miss" a phrase which most of the locals didn't know but i had actually

used just a few minutes earlier !

to cut a long story short we came joint first in the quiz.

it came to a tiebreaker question and we won !

check out our prize...

like a boss !

strawberry flavoured kit-kat review

over the past couple of years kit-kat has started to overtake

twix as my snack of choice. although the twix will always have a place

in my heart, and is still doing a good job. i am beginning to think

of the twix as more of a seasonal snack. it seems like it's really useful in winter,

when it can be dunked into a hot chocolate or a cheap coffee.

for the other seasons though, it seems to me that kit-kat is the

one to choose.

of course the twix has been let down in a way by poor marketing.

it does it's job in a steady reliable way but it's not looking to the

future. it's not attempting to break into a new market.

that's where the kit-kat kicks in

( that's easy for you to say - ed )

in japan they love kit-kats and bring out new flavours every

few months. the packaging is also very cool.

over the next week i'll review a few kit-kats, but for now let's

start with a review of this bad-boy which i bought in hong kong a few weeks ago...

nice box

also when the box is opened there is more packaging. perhaps it's meant to be shared ?

opening up the packet immediately a smell hits you... a bit like medicine.

i won't lie to you. it's a horrible kit-kat.

i think i'll have to go to the cornershop and buy a twix.

eating churros

am i scraping the bottom of the barrel in the world of blogging here ?

my love of churros has been well documented over the past few months.

and i believe i've shown some fine photo's...

http://markwhitfieldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/02/desayuno.html

http://markwhitfieldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/03/breakfast-and-earl-of-stokes.html

http://markwhitfieldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/03/breakfast.html

http://markwhitfieldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/03/breakfast_17.html

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2wZ2Rqgtqehd0EEV-34S5rldNwENNhYYfY21d_GHjzGKS_5LGPv9dHybIpy_U1g-El9j26fH5iF3Jy1mGSSssP1gxXGwEZ7JU90zUfI2sjQgtk3KK4vysR5dv2dTK0ZLN7pcYo19JMfY/s1600/P1080133.jpg

i've shown the churros being made. how they look when presented,

and now i'm showing how they look at the half-way stage...

( are you sure about this ? -ed )

so here i am with 2 churros left to eat. by now there is hot chocolate 

spilled all over the place and the cinnamon sugar too.

note the bottom left of the napkin where i've been wiping my greasy fingers.

eating churros is not easy. there is definitely a knack to it and i've not quite

perfected it yet...

but i'm prepared to put in the necessary practise.

bunny banger

i was just finishing editing the west house photos and i found

this pic. i think it's possibly my favourite frame of the day...

the chef placing the rabbit sausage ready for me to shoot it.

damn that was some tasty sausage !

the west house

i did a shoot at a restaurant called the west house last week.

it's the one where bad twin stood in for the chef

http://markwhitfieldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/stand-in-chef.html

it's a great little restaurant and the chef is some sort of genius.

his name is graham garrett and here are some portraits i did of him.

here he is in his kitchen just after i asked his opinion on triple cooked chips

and in this shot he was contemplating west ham's survival hopes

we moved into the restaurant where i'd set up a couple of shots

i did a few in black and white...

and a few in colour

i think i was doing my james martin impression at this point...

and this was the very last frame of the day

ok, so that's a few portraits, now here are some shots of the food

graham conjured up in his kitchen.

this is octopus something-or other...

to be honest, although the food was offered to us, this was not really 

my cup of tea... what with the green things kicking around.

bad twin gave it a go though.

graham was making this garlic gnocchi when i arrived...

in fact it's in the first couple of shots of the post:

http://markwhitfieldphotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/bad-twin-photography.html

once again, a little too much green for my liking so i left this to my assistant too.

i think this dish came next...

unbelievable !

the best sausage of all time. it's a rabbit sausage ( bunny banger )

and i scoffed this bad boy in a new uk record time.

ha ha ! i can't remember what this was except that i thought it

looked amazing, 

this came next...

some pork, black pudding and the most fantastic egg.

perhaps i should call graham and ask him to describe it rather than 

explain it myself ? i think it was poached then fried on both sides or

something like that. without a shadow of a doubt it was the most amazing

egg i've ever had. the rest of it was perfect too ( apart from the green stuff

under the egg, which i left )

i think this was a treacle tart of sorts. maybe blood oranges on it too ?

it was very nice... ( yes i did remove the green bits before eating it )

the next dish up was this...

some top of the range creme caramel kind of thing with rhubarb

here's a shot of me offering it to bad twin afterwards...

as you can see by the playful expression on my face, it was an empty offer

as i quickly placed it infront of me and eat the whole thing by myself.

last dish up to be photographed was perhaps my favourite of the day.

it's called 'all the fun of the fair'

i probably shouldn't describe it as i can't remember all of it but it

is the most amazing dessert ever.

toffee apple panna cotta with candy floss and wait for it...

a shot of popcorn !

graham has a bit of willie wonka-type genius about him.

this dessert was off the hook.

it was a great shoot. graham is an amazing chef...

a michelin starred chef too. he tells good stories, he used to

be in a rock band or two, he seems to know everybody in the 

restaurant world and he's a west ham fan on top of it all.

he looked after us and kept us fed all day. top man graham !

www.thewesthouserestaurant.co.uk

weekend stuff

saturday morning and the breakfast was looking good

pineapple, grapes, yoghurt and honey.

a latte each and a fresh orange juice to share

while we read the papers and looked out over sunny n7.

we caught a bus to the tate modern where i took this shot of

me and jackie.

i am wearing the t-shirt released for the re-opening of the london bapestore.

trousers by minotaur ( only available at their shibuya pop-up store last year )

and oki-ni edition snakeskin adidas superstars...

just incase you were wondering.

after a while at the tate, we crossed the road to grab some brunch

at the table. feeling more peckish than somewhat, i ordered up

eggs benedict with an extra portion of pork and leek sausages.

what a schoolboy error !

i forgot to tell the waitress that i didn't want any salad, and there it was...

salad everywhere spoiling the whole meal.

i was in a foul mood now... glaring at the ruined dish and wondering if i could

send it back. jackie told me to 'man up' and tentatively i picked away at 

the food trying not to touch all the nasty green stuff.

well i did pretty well. the eggs ben, bacon, sausage and muffin were

excellent.

but i left all the salad...

that was a close one !

the coffee at the table is pretty strong so i just ordered a normal latte.

last time i ordered one with an extra shot and i didn't sleep for 3 days

this was perfect.

today ( sunday)  i decided to bring into play a pair of kicks i bought
in tokyo in 2008.

they are made by a japanese company called 'madfoot'
and i bought them not only because i knew that they would
go perfectly with any pair of trousers, but because they don't sell them
in the uk... ( probably a good reason for that - ed )

hmmm...

we took a trip to fernandez and wells and although i really fancied
a chorizo and cheese sandwich, for some reason when i was asked
what i wanted, the words 'chelsea bun' came out of my mouth.

the chelsea bun then went into my mouth and it was surprisingly
good. shame i didn't have my tape measure with me as i'd like to
have made a note of the dimensions of the thing... next time perhaps ?

on the coffee front i decided that i needed more than a stumpy so
i opted for a regular latte.

as ever, fernandez and wells delivered a perfect coffee.

then it was back to whitfield towers to edit a big shoot i did on friday
and to listen to chelsea's season collapsing against stoke city...

or maybe not.