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Emirati Cuisine Cookbook

Traditional Emirati recipe photography and video for an ADAFSA cookbook through Austin Macauley.

The brief

This cookbook documents traditional Emirati home cooking for the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority. We photographed and filmed the recipes, working through the publisher, Austin Macauley.

How we shot it

Five chefs cooked in rotation, and every plate was built from scratch. Each recipe got two images, and all of them were held to one standard from the first day to the last: documentary precision at book-print quality. Across the shoot, the food runs from coffee beans roasting over glowing charcoal to a chicken stew with potato and dried lime, and a whole fish served with rice and lime.

Selected work

Pale coffee beans roasting in a dark pan over glowing charcoal, smoke rising beside a brass coffee pot

A whole fish with scored, spiced skin on an oval plate, with lime wedges, sliced onion and rice topped with fried onion

Close-up of a chicken leg in a rich red stew with potato, courgette, a green chilli, dried lime and parsley

Overhead of two small coffee cups, a bowl of dates, saffron threads, a brass mortar and a silver dallah

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