Monday 22 September 2014

SAMANTHA LEE'S FOOD ART

Tweet birdie, tweet! Ingredients: Toast, cream cheese, strawberries,grapes or blueberry 

Samantha Lee, a Malaysian, was pregnant with her second child. It was December 2008. Her first born was 19 months old. Samantha's biggest dilemma was how to get her older child to eat independently after her baby sister arrives. Since mommy would be busy with the newborn. 

How do you make a child eat vegetables, rice, fish and other healthy foods that they usually hate — independently, voluntarily and happily? That's asking for the moon on a platter. Well, Samantha didn't ask for a moon....instead she created one — on a plate.
Samantha Lee

She began making attractive food art that told captivating stories. Her daughter was hooked. And to mommy's delight her two-year-old ate every last morsel on the plate. "Food art made her look forward to every meal," Samantha says. It made eating and family dinners "so much more fun". 


Until August 2011, Samantha's food art was a family affair. Then one day, Samantha clicked a photo of her art-on-the-plate and Instagrammed it. Bingo!
Fans came in droves and soon Samantha's hobby turned into a food-art series. Currently, she has more than 465,900 followers — a number that keeps growing by the 'plate'. 


Ingredients: Onigiri (ketchup + rice) and Nori (seasweed)
Cooking three meals a day, 365 days, till your child grows wings and flees the coup is an ongoing nightmare for any mother. For Samantha, it doesn't stop with cooking the meals alone, she also turns them into stories of people, places, animals and so on. She has created more than 450-500 plates of food art till now. The art appears on the table either during lunch or dinner atleast four times a week. "Can't do more than that," she quips. 

Bonjour

Samantha is constantly thinking about things like "What ingredients should I use? How should I present it? Can I give a twist to the tale? How to reduce wastage?" She first sketches her ideas, which is based on the contents in her fridge. This way, she says, she is organised and "does not waste food. The aim is to keep it healthy, simple and avoid wastage." She also keeps the drawing in front of her when she cooks the food. Samanth uses scissors, knife and a toothpick to create her food art. 


Michael Jackson. Ingredients: Onigiri, charcoal noodle, Nori, cheese and sesame seed for buttons

Her favourites? "Batman, Harry Potter, Wednesday Addam...and all my celebrity-food art." Her most challenging work so far? "Michael Jackson," she says. "He is the King of Pop. And there was tremendous pressure to get the essence of his spirit and a semblance of resemblance." She nailed it. It takes Samantha around one to one-and-half hours to create an art work. "And that includes cooking the meal right from scratch." She loves to work with rice, seaweed and vegetables. Rice makes for a good base, while seaweed is used to add details and vegetables come handy to make outfits. 


Snoopy's starry summer night. Ingredients: Onigiri (rice ball), Nori (seaweed) and cheese
Even as her children are growing up, Samantha's art is taking her on a different trail: She hopes to publish a cookbook with her food art soon, and promote positive parenting through workshops and "inspiring talks". 



Simpson: Ingredients — pancakes, blueberry, strawberry, cape gooseberry, choco chips for the eyes and choco icing for the lines.

Though Samantha's hard work results in fascinating art, it is ephemeral — gobbled up within minutes; disappearing into a dark hole, literally. But that's her prize, Samantha says. "The original purpose of food is to savour it. So I'm happy to see my daughters (who are now four and six years old) enjoy their food wholeheartedly." That's burpy-love for you. After all there is no love sincerer than the love of food.

No comments:

Post a Comment