It’s been a busy week chez Kiely with the photoshoot for Gimme the Recipe 2 taking place from Sunday through Wednesday. 4 intense, whirlwind days have just whizzed by. It’s been an amazing experience to work with a professional food stylist (Jette Virdi), photographer (Marta Miklinkska) and graphic designer (Sarah O’Flaherty) while I did the cooking. My team in the kitchen were my twin daughters Daire & Eimear and my eldest daughter Ellie was on-hand for the food stylist and photographer. There is no way that I would have survived the 4 intense days without their help as non-stop cooking meant it was essential to have counters constantly cleared, wash-up on the go and ingredients sought out with ultra efficiency. Organisation was everything and each evening I typed out the list of the next day’s recipes with notes and instructions on the food styling. Ingredients were weighed and measured in advance and as much advance preparation as was possible to do was done. In the course of the four days 58 recipes from the book were shot – some as groups but mostly individually. I didn’t believe it was possible to do so much so quickly but I guess this is what professional chefs do all the time.
I’ve worked in professional kitchens as a student. I worked in the MaryRose cafe in Cork city making sandwiches and clearing tables, I worked in Hotel Alfa at Place de la Gare in Luxembourg under two French Chefs doing food prep. and I worked in Obadiah’s kitchen in Nantucket as dishwasher and food prep. and in The Starlight Theatre & Cafe in Nantucket as restaurant hostess. Some chefs handle stress better than others and in one of the establishments the chefs would be throwing frying pans and barking at the waiters until service was over then they’d disappear out the back and eventually come floating back in for clean-up magically mellowed…. hmmmm. It is very stressful and hats off to the chefs who can handle the stress and still be civil to those around them.
All this cooking means that my freezer is now full and I can’t see myself doing any real cooking for at least a week. Phew.
Here’s a few pictures from behind the scenes and I can’t wait to share the finished article – Gimme The Recipe 2 {to be published with Mercier Press} – with you all in Spring 2016.
‘Til next time, Sheila.
& p.s. the blog has made the Longlist for The Blog Awards Ireland 2015.
