I shot the chef

To view the photos on Candace Maloman’s food blog, I Shot the Chef, is to experience hunger. Her coffee cake images conjure the smell of cinnamon and the taste of sugary glaze. But the blog isn’t limited to sweets. She also posts about dinners such as grilled Greek pizza, yummy-looking blue-cheese-stuffed burgers and garlic-laden shrimp scampi “that keeps the vampires away.”After graduating from culinary school at the Art Institute of Houston, Maloman honed her skills in the pastry shop in that city’s Four Seasons Hotel. “I did everything from the morning pastries at 4 o’clock, baking, like, 400 croissants, to fine dining at dinner … then lunch in between.” After two years of that, she decided against a culinary career. “It’s very tiring work, and the hours are pretty bad. You have to really, truly love it to do well at a career, and the money’s not so good in the beginning.” She decided she didn’t love cooking quite enough to do it full-time, but that she did love it enough to blog about it.Now, when she comes home from her slightly less stressful job as an insurance agent in Broward County, Maloman whips up tasty dinners, and her husband, professional photographer Stephan Maloman, photographs her culinary delights for her blog. In return, she lets him eat off the picturesque plate, she says, while she dines from the more casually prepared one.Whether she’s cooking someone else’s recipes (she’s big on Emeril Lagasse but down on Rachael Ray) or creating something original, her dinner preparations take less than an hour, and her posts contain unique tips, such as where a mere dollar can buy enough prepared dough to for pizza to serve four.Maloman, an admitted kitchen geek who keeps her ingredients stacked in plastic containers in her pantry, doesn’t come from a long line of chefs and says her mom is surprised at her abilities. “My mother doesn’t appreciate cooking,” Maloman says. “She makes really good egg rolls, and that’s about it.” A few months after starting her cooking blog, Maloman is hooked, though she hasn’t found a way to get rich blogging yet.She did, however, get an e-mail from a sea salt company inquiring about advertising on her site. “I’d kind of just like to keep the blog all nice and clean, but it depends on what they offer, I suppose,” she says. “If they give me sea salt for life, maybe I’ll consider it.”

CD: I love your food blog.

Candace: Thank you.

CD: I couldn’t stop thinking about those blue cheese burgers and sweet potato fries.
Candace: It really is good. You should try it.

CD: I’ve heard all kind of disgusting things about what people do to make food look good in photos, but those are just straight shots?

Candace: No, mine are all real food, but I know what you’re saying. My husband’s a photographer, so he takes all the pictures and he’s had experience with food photos and yeah, he said that a lot of them use all kinds of chemicals to make it shiny. Mine’s real.

CD: Where did you go to culinary schoool?

Candace: I went to the Art Institute in Houston actually.

CD: Then you worked in fine dining in Four Seasons but got burnt out on that?

Candace: Yeah, I worked about two years in their pastry shop. I did basically everything, from the morning pastries at 4 o’clock to baking like 400 croissants to fine dining at dinner, where everything has fancy sugar pieces and all that, so I did basically everything and then lunch in between. So I got a lot of experience there.

CD: What would you say to a culinary school student about expectation vs. reality?

Candace: It's very very hard work. It’s very tiring work, and the hours are pretty bad. You have to really truly, truly love it to do well at a career, and the money’s not so good in the beginning. So its a combination of quite a few things that are negative and it just depends on how much you love it, I guess. I found that I just didn’t love it enough to do it every day.

CD: What prompted you to start the food blog?

Candace: My husband. He’s been pushing me for I guess about a year, so I finally said “OK, I’ll try it and see if I like it” and I love it. It’s a great creative outlet for me, and it makes me think more about what I’m making for dinner. Because sometimes, even with a professional chef’s degree, I get into a rut where I make the same thing, and I find with the blog, I don’t do that. I make an effort to actually make something different.

CD: Do you find yourself wanting to cook more now, because you have to feed the blog?

Candace: I do. I do have to feed the blog. That’s perfect. I do. That’s exactly what I have to do is feed the blog. I do feel like that, but that’s OK, because I kind of have reason to make cookies, and make dinner, well, four to five nights a week. I don’t go crazy with it or anything.

CD: How’s the feedback. Do you get comments from people?

Candace: I do. I’ve been getting quite a few comments. It’s been really nice. And a couple of other people with food blogs have kinda given me a little bit of a shout-out. They found my blog and they linked to it. I had another blogger in Miami and she actually wrote about my blog in hers. She was mentioning several blogs that she thought were good, that she enjoyed reading.

CD: Was that Mango and Lime?

Candace: Yes, is that where you found me?

CD: I can’t remember. But I see that one all the time.

Candace: Yeah, that’s a great one. I enjoy reading that one.

CD: So is there a little community of food bloggers who support each other?

Candace: Surprisingly there is. I didn’t really realize until I started and this is still new for me. I’ve only really been doing it for about a month now. But I notice that I’ve met so many people who blog, and we go to each others blogs and we all comment on each other’s blogs. It’s kinda fun.

CD: Yeah, isn’t it funny, because there are so many thing in live that people get competitive about, but when it comes to blogging, people support each other.

Candace: It is. It’s very supportive. It’s very cool. Instead of “Oh, her blog is better, I don’t want you to see it,” it’s like, “This is cool, look at it.” It’s cool. It’s very cool.

CD: Since you started your food blog, what’s been your favorite thing to cook?

Candace: Well, my passion is pastries, but I try not to cook too much because pastries are obviously, well, the better they are the more fattening they are. I’d like to do more of that but I try to do it in increments. But I would like to do more cakes and stuff like that because I think they photograph better and its more fun for me.

CD: Your pantry looks so neatly organized.

Candace: You know, I am so proud of that pantry. … Usually After I go to the grocery store, it gets kinda shoved in there. But once a week or so I try to clean things out, but those containers – it’s the best thing to do because then you don’t have bags and boxes and everything everywhere.

CD: That must make you want to cook a lot too, having everything so readily available and organized.

Candace: It does help but that also kind of goes back to my chef days where you’re in a hurry and you’ve gotta have everything exactly where it should be. Everything should be all boxed up neatly.

CD: But it’s not too crazy because they’re not in alphabetical order.

Candace: No they’re not. Whatever I used last is on top basically. That’s how that works.

CD: That’s a good system. I understand you cook for your Chihuahuas Sushi and Rocky every night too?

Candace: I do, I do. They’re very discriminating. They’re picky little Chihuahuas, and after that whole dog food scare, I decided I don’t really wanna feed them canned food anymore. It’s terrible feeding them dry food because they look at me like I’m abusing them. They look up at me like I’m the meanest dog owner in the world. So I started cooking for them, which some people think I’m crazy, but they enjoy it, so I keep doing it, and its healthy. Everything I make them is healthy.

CD: What sort of gourmet delights do you whip up for Sushi and Rocky?

Candace: I do make them cookies. I make them cookies and biscuits, and I make their dinner every night.

CD: What kind of cookies do you make them?

Candace: They have peanut butter. They really like peanut butter. These are dog cookies, so there’s no sugar. Sometimes I’ll put a little honey just to kind of sweeten it up a little. They like cheese cookies. I make dried meat for them, kind of like a doggy jerky … all kinds of different things. I dabble in different things.

CD: What’s your favorite food blog?

Candace: My favorite one so far is Delicious Days. That was the first one I really saw and I’ve been reading that for about a year probably. She does a lot more than the cooking part of it. She talked about her travels with cooking too. It’s really a nice blog.

CD: Do you watch cooking shows or listen to cooking programs on the radio or anything?

Candace: I watch Food TV occasionally.

CD: Do you have a favorite show?

Candace: I like Ina Garten. She does a lot of fresh cooking. I really don’t like Rachel Ray. I know everybody loves her.

CD: I was gonna ask you that because it seems like people either love her or hate her.

Candace: You know what? I did love her in the beginning but I’ve tried a couple of her recipes, and I haven’t been happy with one. I’m not saying … I mean I can follow a recipe, because I went to school for it. …

CD: How long do your recipes generally take.

Candace: My dinners usually 30 minutes tops, just because I don’t wanna spend a bunch of time. I work all day. I come home, through traffic in South Florida, which is fun, and the last thing I wanna do is spend a lot of time cooking, so usually 30 minutes, sometimes 45. On the weekends, I may make something that takes a little longer.

CD: Did you grow up in a big cooking environment? Did your mom or dad love to cook?

Candace: Actually, no, my mother doesn’t appreciate cooking. She doesn’t really try to cook. She makes really, really good egg rolls but that’s about it.

CD: Just the egg rolls then.

Candace: Very good egg rolls .

CD: Did you guys have egg rolls every night for dinner.

Candace: It was, yeah … it was often. Every special occasion, it was like “How about egg rolls?”

CD: She must be shocked that you became such a good cook.

Candace: She was, she didn’t understand why I want to culinary school and fought me on it and now I kind of wished I listened to her, but its ok, ‘cause I still love to cook. I still enjoy it.

CD: Do you have any favorite cookbooks?

Candace: I do, these this one Fanny Farmer cookbook that is so basic, and it has every really basic recipe that you can kind of add things to and put your own touch on them and I kinda like that one. I think the first one was published in the 1800s so that shows how basic it is – but its a great cookbook and then I have a couple hundred other ones.

CD: Have you cooked anything you intended to blog about that turned out so badly that you just wouldn’t even post about it?

Candace: You know what? Just the other day I bought this pasta from whole foods and it was beautiful and it looked like little leaves, little tree leaves, and I was so excited. I bought it. It was like $4.50 for half a pound of pasta, but it was so beautiful. I was like “Oh this is going to be so pretty,” but when I cooked it, it looked horrible. All the color went out so it was faded and it didn’t look good. That may or may not make it to the blog. We’ll see.

CD: I guess when you’re doing a food blog that’s a much bigger consideration. I mean when you’re just cooking, no matter what it looks like, if it tastes good, it tastes good.

Candace: Exactly. … It’s my husband and I, but there’s only one dish that looks good. The other plate is just the food shoved on. I only make one plate look good. … The other one is just the food thrown on the plate.

CD: That’s funny. Who gets the good plate?

Candace: I give it to my husband.

CD: What’s been your biggest cooking challenge?

Candace: My biggest cooking challenge is finding the time. I think that’s the hardest part is finding the time to do it, but I mean, I love it. It’s kind of relaxing for me, but …

CD: Well, it’s not just the cooking anymore ... it's writing about it, the photographs.

Candace: Right, and then coming up with recipes – that’s actually my challenge because when I cook, I basically look in my fridge and … I think “I’ll throw it together and see how it works out and now that I’m doing the blog, I actually have to have recipes. So it’s a little tough. I find I have to write it down. Otherwise I have to look at the picture and try to figure out what I put in it.

CD: I’ve seen so many good local food blogs lately. Has there been any talk among food bloggers of having some kind of get together or something like that?

Candace: Not that I’ve heard but I definitely would be game for one if they did. Yeah there’s a lot of them out there. I think it’s become a fun hobby for a lot of people – people who don’t even cook all that much. A lot of them will just do it once a week or something.

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