Welcome to my website. I am the author of ‘Vietnamese – Simple Vietnamese Food To Cook At Home’. I am a photographer and film maker. You can book into my supper club, Vietnamese cooking classes, buy my book, check out my photography and lots more here.
Please follow me on instagram @loveleluu – Thank you so much for visiting x
Best Food Photographer in London
The supper club is held in my home in London Fields, Hackney. It is like a dinner party in the tradition of a Vietnamese feast with homemade Vietnamese food.
Vietnamese food is about the balance of flavours, of sweet, salty and sour – there is no measuring device that can ever match your own taste buds.
I met Rachel Khoo at Cactus Studios, we cooked along with her, some recipes from her new book & TV show ‘Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook’ on the Good Food Channel, airs on Mondays at 9pm.
Rachel also studied at Central Saint Martins (Art & Design) after I had finished there. Then moved to Paris and started her little supper club in her home there. Now has a few TV shows and books. Lives just around the corner from me in Hackney but has kept her little Paris apartment.
She is gorgeous, open and lovely to talk to. We made parsley spatzle (similar to gnocchi but without potatoes) with roasted onions – really delicious, it will be something I will keep doing at home.
We also did smörgåstårta – a savoury Swedish bread cake with horseradish cream, beetroot and beetroot cured salmon and salmon roe with dill. Learnt a lot!
Isn’t she so pretty!
Create beautiful photographs of the food that you cook at home with just a few simple steps.
If you enjoy taking photos of a kitchen creation, it can be easily incorporated into the ritual of cooking itself. I usually take my daily food pictures with my iphone. Just one snap and off I go and eat it all up!
I have a few props to set up at the ready, especially while waiting for water to boil or things to cook. I create a simple scene and a mood on a table surface so that it is ready for when the food is cooked. After all, you want to eat the food as soon as it’s cooked and while it’s still warm.
Backgrounds can be simple, like the table itself or pieces of fabric such as tablecloth or napkins. Chopping boards and serving trays add an element of style and homeliness to the image. Plain walls and areas with no personal clutter work well, otherwise make birds’ eye view shots.
Props give food a sense of belonging and personality; you can have lots of fun with it. Sometimes it can be as simple as the book you’re reading or cutlery and kitchen utensils – whatever it is you need to eat the food or to serve the food.
Look at the frame of the picture and see how the props and food are angled. Avoid pointing things towards one direction, or it might look too composed.
One way is to fill the frame with items in a zig zag, from top to bottom, so that the eye can move all around the picture. Avoid things that aren’t relevant to the picture, for example a TV remote control.
Ideally, the image is there to create a desirable mood for the dish or ingredient and is supposed to bring on food envy and make people want to recreat the dish.
Food photographs are hugely dependant on good natural daylight and it should be used whenever possible, even if it means preparing dinner at breakfast during the winter months. Daylight adds a natural dimension to food because it will show the true and natural colours of ingredients.
Always bring the food to the nearest window to take a photo if you can. If using artificial lighting, place the food underneath the lamp to light it to avoid shadows or invest in a daylight bulb.
Styling the dish is the second important element. Sometimes I prepare a styled plate of food with a small amount with every ingredient visible, but never as much as I would eat. Showing a huge plate of food is never that appetising to the viewer.
Be minimal with garnishes and sauces. Try not to cover everything in gravy but instead have a jug of gravy on the side. When plating the food, try not to use any burnt bits or overcooked ingredients that have lost their shape. Place the best looking bits on top to show it off.
If the dish is complicated, like a roast dinner, it is best to use fewer props. If it is simplistic, like pasta with pesto, go for more props. When selecting a mood for the picture, consider the weather and the seasons. Think about the main colours of the food, for instance if it’s a plate of pasta with green ingredients, add a dash of red or yellow somewhere, be it with a slice of chilli or lemon or the red handle of a parmesan grater.
I always share a quick snap of the food that I cook on Instagram. Then I go and load a lot more onto my plate and eat it all!
For more food photo inspiration, take a look at the Good Food Channel’s Instagram.
Uyen Luu’s new book My Vietnamese Kitchen is now available to pre-order on Amazon.
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| pho bo |
In the first of her series of blog posts on how to cook Vietnamese food, guest blogger Uyen Luu shares the basic principles behind Vietnamese cooking.
There is a certain solitary quietness when bent over a steaming hot bowl of phó, slurping away and sucking at noodles. The broth is laced with the fragrant spices of star anise, coriander seeds, cinnamon and cloves, with top notes of fresh spring onions, coriander, basil, saw tooth herbs and lemon.
Vietnamese cuisine is one of the most flavoursome in the world, with many of its basic principles based on satisfying every taste bud. Preparing and cooking Vietnamese food is about fine tuning tasting skills to balance and master sweet, sour, salty, umani, bitter and hot flavours. It is about combining perfect textures, such as silky meat or fish with crunchy vegetables or herbs to satisfy the bite.
Vietnamese food is about accomplishing a perfect balance in taste, in texture and the lightness of being. Many people naturally follow the yin and yang principles in combining ingredients, for example, a soup with hearty ginger to warm up the body is contrasted with refreshing, cool leaves like pak choi to harmonise the feeling in your body. Eating in balance is a major factor in keeping healthy and many believe that food is medicine.
To maintain an equilibrium, plenty of refreshing shakes, like avocado, papaya, pennyswort and watermelon, are drank as snacks, especially in the evenings to freshen the body before bedtime.
Vietnam has taken much inspiration from its occupiers, especially the French. The streets are buzzing with food and its aromas, from barbecued meat-filled baguettes (bánh mì), hot pork pastries, crunchy carrot salads and beef steaks with French fries.
The famous noodle soup, phó, was influenced by French casserole pot-au-feu (pot of fire) – and you find many Vietnamese words reflect French, like pâté, pho –(feu), Bò bít têt (beef steak), pâté so (pâté chaud) or cà rôt (carrot).
Vietnamese people love eating so much that they have a term called “an choi”, which means to eat playfully, or snack. There are many small and light street food portions that you can pick up, eat and go, throughout the day. Sometimes they are even referred to as gifts to the mouth.
There isn’t a starter, main and dessert – there are snacks, meals in one dish and family meals with many plates all served at once. Vietnamese food is all about the love of food, flavour and eating. Or in other words, how food is love.
If you want to try cooking Vietnamese food at home, have a go at Uyen Luu’s Saigon summer rolls.
In the second of her series of blog posts on how to cook Vietnamese food, guest blogger Uyen Luu explains how some of the key ingredients are used.
Vietnamese food is full of flavour, bursting with tangy freshness, sweet tastiness and umani spiciness! When cooking a Vietnamese dish, most of the work is within the prep and little on the stove.
All of the work is fine tuning every taste bud on the tongue to make sure that there is a balance of sweet, sour and salty. It is also important to combine and balance ingredients that pair well with each other and people remain loyal to combinations.
The Vietnamese use herbs in abundance. They don’t just sprinkle a little on here and there, they use them like salad leaves. Full of perfume, flavour and health benefits, herbs are used in almost every savoury dish. Coriander, sweet basil and mint are the most readily available, so if you can’t find the required herbs, use those.
Rice is essential in Vietnamese cuisine, providing most of the carbohydrates one would need and it is also the base of most noodles, buns, crepes, dumplings, rice paper etc. Rice is neutral and is neither warming or cooling for your body so it can be eaten as much as desired. This makes for an easy gluten free diet.
In Southern Vietnamese cooking, a lot of garlic is used for an appetising aroma; sugar for sweetness and vinegar for acidity. Combine this with a good fish sauce to make many wonderful dishes, sauces, dressings and flavours. It can be varied by adding water or lemongrass, peanuts, ginger, lime and so on.
Fish sauce is the staple of Vietnamese cuisine and is often used instead of salt to season dishes. Fish sauce was invented when someone had left a bucket of fish in sea water in the sun for too long. It rotted and fermented but gave us this wonderful pungent sauce that is now used daily by every cook in Vietnam.
Investing in a good premium fish sauce is imperative and makes a huge difference to the taste of dishes. The fish sauce that is usually stocked in supermarkets are cheap and have not matured enough for a good taste. Use any fish sauce that is over £3. All fish sauces vary in flavour, some (mainly from the Northern regions) are saltier so less should be used.
Being one of the most fertile countries in the world, the Vietnamese use all the great vegetation vastly available on the land. Meat and fish are usually luxuries. One fish per family of five instead of one per person.
Therefore, herbs, fruits and vegetables such as morning glory, taro root, lotus roots, watercress, pineapple, tomatoes and cucumbers fill out a delicious meal, making a Vietnamese diet quite a healthy one.
For more from Uyen Luu visit her blog Love, Leluu, follow her on Twitter @loveleluu or get Uyen’sLove Leluu Facebook updates.