Samira's Baking Journey

We've had the good fortune to be called upon for some very interesting photo shoots over the years and we thought it would be fun to share some "frameable things" - not just faces...  

So cue the music - "These are a few of our frameable things....."

You've probably seen or heard us gushing about Samira Cholagh and her cookbooks, one of which (Treasured Middle Eastern Cookbook) is available at our studio here in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield.  We met Samira in 2009 as she was working extremely hard on her third book, and she needed someone to photograph the dishes she was going to feature.  A special friendship was born (Believe that - Doug and food?  Do you know Doug?) as we spent a good chunk of that summer at Samira's home photographing and eating.  It was incredible - this book focuses mostly on baking so we were eating pies, tarts, pastries, and cookies pretty much daily.....  oy.   Samira is the genuine article - sweet, generous, full of life, and her recipes are fantastic.  We think the Food Network needs to discover her and have a show that focuses on middle eastern cuisine.  Indeed, her show Samira's Kitchen can be seen on MEA TV & Radio every Thursday at 7:00 PM and you can go to her YouTube channel or Middle Eastern American TV & Radio for more details.

We were very excited to see Samira on Detroit's Fox 2 News again yesterday morning doing a cooking demonstration and promoting the new book A Baking Journey, and you can watch the clip from the show right HERE from the myFOXdetroit website!

Meanwhile here are 4 photographs we took which appear in Samira's book!

Yes - this is what we did with our summer that year....

Pineapple and coconut - one of Doug's favorites from the book...

Beautiful - and yummy... 

The fig pie is incredible - Doug's other favorite - we just made this one ourselves a few weeks ago...