I've noticed a trend in food magazines over the past year - they are illustrating their articles with plates of half-finished food, food that's in the process of being eaten. A broken-open muffin. The last drops of soup at the bottom of a bowl. And, in the recent issue of Fine Cooking (my favorite food mag of all time), the bones, crumpled carrot remains, and streaks of sauce left over after the editor ate the cover recipe, a previously luscious-looking coq au vin.
Examples like that last one really bother me. They seem to me to be saying, "We've run out of ways to show you a beautiful chicken dish, so let's show you that we liked it so much all that's left are the bones." It shuts down my imagination about what the dish will be like to eat, and gives me that "sigh, well, I guess it's time to do the dishes" feeling.
But not all food-in-process photography is so irksome. This piece of pie from Gourmet is the trend at its best. It looks like a real person has helped themselves and is about to take a bite - but unlike the chicken example, I want to hip-check that person out of their chair and take up their fork for myself. It's appetizing, even if it's not "neat" in the traditional food magazine style. It invites action, chiefly the instinct to swipe up those almond-y crumbs with my finger, and it highlights the colors textures of the dish.
I think there might be another angle to this trend, one that connects with the whole locovore/Omnivore's Dilemma movement. Food magazines are picking up on the growing number of Americans whose chief criteria for good food is that it is real, genuine, and looks like it actually came from somewhere you could visit. Never forget that the chicken you're braising is an animal, complete with bones. The fruit in that pie came from a tree and was gently cooked down into a sweet, gelatinized filling. It's not only food you actually want to make, but food you can imagine yourself sitting down and tucking into, leisurely, at a table. Eating is, perhaps, coming back into vogue. Or at least Gourmet.
Have you noticed the magazine trend? What do you think of it?
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