Exercise 5.01: A narrative Picture Essay

I’ve decided to create an essay about the making of mince pies, because it’s the time of year for it; we’ve run out over the last couple of days; it’s always a good result!

Lighting in the kitchen isn’t optimum for the images, so I’ll use high ISO settings for the majority of images. My beautiful wife has offered to demonstrate the craft for me, but I intend to concentrate on the making of the pies with close framing on the main subject. I’ll be quite restricted in the working area (it’s not a big kitchen), so some images will probably be difficult and possibly unusable.

Some of the images in the following sequence have been treated with Topaz Denoise 5 Photoshop plugin, to reduce the noise due to the high ISO setting.

This method is for unsweetened pastry – used for hot pies and cheese, rather than sweet pies eaten as they are. We start the sequence with the mixing of the pastry:

Mixing

Margarine, Lard and self-raising flour are blended together by hand.

Pastry

Further mixing with the addition of water produces the ball of pastry ready for rolling.

Rolling

The pastry is rolled on the floured work surface until the required thickness is attained.

Cutting

The cutter is used to cut the pastry into the pie base shapes. Reversing the cutter creates smaller shapes for the lids.

Shaping

The pie cases are shaped by pressing them into the baking tray. This tray is a favourite which has seen a lot of action but makes very fine pies!

Filling

The mincemeat is spooned into the cases.

Filled

The filled cases wait for their tops.

Capping

The lids are pressed onto the filled cases.

Glazing

Milk is sprinkled onto the lids to form a glaze.

Cooking

The pies are placed into the pre-heated oven

Turning

The trays are turned part way through the baking, to ensure even cooking

Cooked

The cooked pies are taken out of the oven.

Lifting out

A blunt knife is used to help lift the cooked pies from the tray.

Cooling

The pies now stand on the wire cooling rack until they are cool enough to store.

Testing

This is the most important part of the process – quality control demands a rigorous testing regime, where the pie is reheated, the lid briefly removed and blue cheese (in this case ‘blackstick’) is placed inside. The cheese needs to be on the point of melting for best results and works well with a good Malbec!

The following 7 images show how the narrative is displayed in the pages of the learning log – the blog isn’t very user friendly when it comes to presentation!

 

 

 

It’s been a fun and very tasty exercise!