Reprinted with permission from the Missoulian. Visit www.missoulian.com.

Patent pending: Chef’s home becomes a studio while food is photographed for his upcoming cookbook


Written by MEA ANDREWS & Photographed by LINDA THOMPSON of the Missoulian

Greg Patent pads down the stairs of his home in sweatpants and a T-shirt, eyes bleary from so few hours of sleep. He stayed up until nearly 2 that morning, mixing, baking, decorating, planning, spending hours in the kitchen juggling mixing bowls, recipes, the oven and timers.

Piled in the sink are the pans from the marathon. Whisks and spoons from four or five concoctions drain on the counter, washed and ready for yet another round.

“I’m so-o-o tired,” he says with some exasperation. “But we are really making good headway.”

Patent a Missoulian food columnist, radio-show host and award-winning cookbook writer n is in the final months of a project nearly four years in the making, a cookbook celebrating the baking of immigrant families in America.

“A Baker’s Odyssey” is due out in November, published by John Wiley & Sons of Hoboken, N.J. It’s a cookbook with national appeal and a made-in-Montana story.

Patent even recruited a Montana photographer Kelly Gorham of Missoula to shoot the photographs for the book, including the cover.

And thus, the late-night mid-January whir in Patent’s kitchen.

Kelly Gorham remembers seeing Patent years ago on television, when the Missoula science professor turned to his passion of cooking in a public way. Patent was host of a show that featured the then-new food processor.

“I was probably 8 or 9,” Gorham remembered. “It used to come on on Saturday afternoons. I think what I really liked was the Cuisinart: When you’re a kid, you’re fascinated by things that whir and chop and slice.”

Food, says Gorham, is wonderfully photogenic. Last year, he finished a series of art photographs that celebrated the beauty and color of food, including kiwis and popcorn, and even Oreos and milk, a photograph he named “Self Portrait.” Robert Neaves’ gallery in Hamilton, Art Focus, hosted the show and now carries the prints.

Gorham also photographs food at the exclusive Rainbow Ranch in Big Sky, and for Triple Creek Ranch in Darby, two luxury Montana getaways famous for their chefs, menus and wine.

“There was one time I was entertaining the idea of going to culinary school,” he said. “But I realized that if I did that, I might not like food anymore.”

Today, he said, “chefs are artists. They are really passionate about what they do, and how well they do it. I like the challenge of trying to do their work justice. “They take so much pride in what they do, I don’t want to let them down.”

On this day, freelance photographer Gorham arrives just minutes after Patent finds his morning burst of energy after the late night. Baked goods cover the counter, ready to be primped for their starring role.

The living room is piled with napkins, tablecloths and placements of every texture and color some natural, some vibrant, some hand-stitched by grandmothers. These bits of fabric become backdrops of color.

An ironing board stands ready, in case a wrinkle needs taming.

Patent raided the kitchens of friends, gathering up all of the plates, coffee cups, silverware and other props that might be useful in the shots n black, clear, red, white, blue-rimmed, ornate, simple, with designs and without designs.

“We have stuff pretty much everywhere,” said Patent.

On past cookbooks, Patent said, he’d finish his writing and then fly to New York or some other headquarters for the baking and photo shoots. He’d cook in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable kitchen, often with pans and equipment he’d dragged from Montana. A cadre of professional food designers and stylists and photographers and artists would then gather, directing the photographs.

“I just felt we could do all that right here,” Patent said. “And we can.”

Starting in January, they did. Five days of shooting. Eight-hour days. Forty different items to photograph. What could be done in advance went into the freezer, what couldn’t was baked the night before.

In days gone by, food photographers faked some of their foods and embellishments so that dishes didn’t wilt or melt in the hot lights, Gorham said. Truth-in-advertising rules, cool lights and the kinder, gentler world of digital photography changed the industry. Today, food photographs in magazines and cookbooks are the real thing.

Gorham and Patent discuss details that seem small to outsiders as they work together on the book. Would a fork be OK in this shot? No, because people don’t eat cookies with forks.

Details are critical. A stray crumb is messy and unappetizing. Use the wrong lighting, and a flaky pastry looks greasy and dense.

Gorham might spend two hours setting up a shot, trying one color plate and then another, to give each close-up its own beauty.

At his side is a tool box with implements of his trade: small brushes, Q-tips, putty to hold a fork or knife in place.

“When you are doing this tight of a shot,” Gorham said, “every shadow and highlight becomes a big deal.”

Once the best photograph is chosen, Gorham sends it via the computer to the book’s editor in New Jersey. She studies it right away.

If she likes it, another baked good moves into focus to get its royal treatment. If not, Gorham and Patent are back to the staging table.

“This is not rocket science,” Gorham said. “It’s pretty much obvious when it looks good. There’s a raw energy you can get with food; you have to approach it like an eater. I look at food magazines, and some of the photos in them look a little overthought.”

One by one, for 40 different items in all, Gorham turns out beauty shots of Lamingtons from Australia, a green-iced princess cake from Sweden, a potica from Slovenia, a cake from the Basque Country, anzac cookies from New Zealand, a Hungarian walnut torte.

One of the photographs is of a pasty from Butte, a recipe shared by state Sen. Carol Williams, wife of former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams.

“Does she put mushrooms in them?” Gorham asks as he inspects the sheet of pasties for one with a beautiful shape and color. “Some people put mushrooms in them.” “No. No. No. No,” Patent says firmly. “Beef and onions and potatoes.”

Williams’ recipe is one handed down through her family, a version of pasties that went deep into the mines of Cornwall, England. “People think of pasties as Irish,” Williams said. “They’re not.”

A pasty is proof that eating on the go is not a new phenomenon: They were self-contained meals, sometimes cooked with meat and potatoes on one side of the folded-over pastry, apples or other fruit on the other side, for an entrée-and-dessert combo that could be eaten while still underground.

Williams’ experience is like many of the others in the cookbook. She learned at the side of a grandmother, who learned from her mother. “I can still smell the kitchen,” she said. “There’s a lot of chopping and dicing, and it’s an all-day experience.” No one used a recipe, but grabbed flour and salt in the right proportions, added lard, and went on with ingredients from memory and texture. “It’s only after my grandmother died that I finally got the recipe down on paper,” Williams said.

Patent faced the same challenge with this cookbook, taking verbal and inexact directions (“take 15 soup spoons of ... ”) and making them work for modern families who use measuring cups and teaspoons.

The photographs are finished. Patent is editing the recipes, and the personal stories that go with them.

In the end, his cookbook will have 140 to 150 recipes reflecting 32 nationalities. He found nearly a third of his 65 bakers n 60 women, five men — in Montana, and traveled to each baker’s home kitchen for personal instruction.

“I wouldn’t have needed to leave the state,” he said. “Once you start looking, you find people with connections all over the world right here.” “The children of these immigrants are so busy,” Patent said. “They have every intention of doing things mom’s way, but they don’t have the time. “I’m just afraid in a generation or two, so much of this will be lost unless we collect these recipes today.”



Reach reporter Mea Andrews at (406) 523-5246 or by e-mail at mandrews@missoulian.com. Reach photographer Linda Thompson at (406) 523-5270 or by e-mail at lthompson@missoulian.com.