Chicken Farmers of Canada
Every year CFC creates new recipes for your enjoyment that we place on our website. I thought it would be fun to take you on a little tour today and explain how the whole process takes place.
First, most of our recipes are developed by a dietitian, who we have been working with on recipe development now for about 4 years. Before Nancy Guppy stirs up her creative juices, we have a talk about trends and any needs or requests we might have. While we have this discussion, Nancy is already thinking of new ways to prepare chicken. We do occasionally also get recipes from staff or sometimes from recipe contests. We always have a nutrition focus in mind, meaning that we try to create recipes that not only taste good but are lower in sodium and fat and higher in fibre. Nancy creates her recipes at home in her kitchen and tests them out on her kids and neighbours. Nancy’s kids and neighbours eat a lot of chicken.
Once we have the recipes from Nancy, we send them on to our photographer. We’ve just started using a new photographer, Ryan Sulzc, who is located in Toronto. It’s a fun process to watch and you would be amazed at the amount of detail that goes into each shot.
When Ryan gets the recipes from me, he then sends them off to the food stylist, Marilyn Dunphy and the prop person, Madeleine Johari. Marilyn takes a look at the recipes to make sure everything makes sense and nothing is missing, she then buys all the groceries for the photo shoot and prepares each recipe to be photographed. Madeleine and Marilyn discuss each recipe with Ryan to figure out what it will look like when cooked and how it should be presented in a photograph. Everything is fully cooked and we don’t use any funny ingredients to make things look better than they would at home.
As our prop specialist, Madeleine loves shopping for new kitchen accessories and is always on the lookout for fun and interesting pieces. Before each shoot, Madeleine puts together almost every kitchen item you can imagine including table clothes and serviettes in almost every colour to bring to the photo shoot. Madeleine brings about 8 plastic bins full of dishes, glasses, pots, pans and other serving props, based on what each recipe might look like.
While Marilyn is cooking, Ryan and Madeleine start setting up the shot. Once the food is prepared, Marilyn carefully places it on the chosen setting. They often move pieces of the food on the plate to make sure they stand out in the photo and to make sure there aren’t any visible gaps. Tweezers and syringes are common tools for moving food or removing liquid without disturbing the rest of thefood on the plate. It’s a fun, relaxed environment with music playing in the background all day.
You can see these pictures on our website. Enjoy.
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