The Establishment of Minestrone Cookbooks
Tony Le Duc
Belgium
Capturing the perfect culinary picture
After a long career as a renowned culinary photographer, I decided to take my passion to the next level. The lack of visual guidance around my culinary photographs led me to experiment with self-publishing. That experiment turned into a thriving business with both permanent employees and freelancers. Together we publish extraordinary culinary books that distinguish themselves from other cookbooks with unique visual displays.
For over 20 years, I provided photographs to different magazines, advertising campaigns and publishing houses. Everything revolved around taking the perfect culinary photograph. I specialised in this field of photography and built up a reputation over the years. I am known as that stubborn photographer that creates images with a vision. Dishes were placed on concrete or wood before I photographed them. Ingredients were brought into ‘floating’ compositions and extreme close-ups of foods created a new dimension. FoMu, the photography museum in Antwerp, organised a large exhibition with my images around the theme of “25 years of ‘foodphotography’”.
It doesn’t take much to connect KitchenAid to this story. This prominent home appliances brand puts professional performance, quality and an iconic design first and is, therefore, the best choice if you want to turn numerous cooking methods into irresistible recipes. The first book I published for KitchenAid was in honour of the 90th birthday of their iconic blender. It was a substantial book that, like all their appliances, was finished off with the most elegant materials of the highest quality. All recipes for ‘KitchenAid – The Cookbook’ were created with the numerous possibilities that this famous blender brings to your kitchen in mind.
The first print consisted of 120,000 copies that were distributed in 14 different countries. Everything was carefully worked out by Minestrone Cookbooks and in the following years KitchenAid published several other books such as The Blender Cookbook, 24 hours a day (2010), Mix with the best (2012), The Foodpro Cookbook (2013) and The Cookpro Cookbook (2014). These books were always written with KitchenAid appliances as a versatile starting point to create different recipes.
Other than the numerous KitchenAid books, Minestrone Cookbooks have also published every book written by the famous Dutch chef Sergio Herman. These books were often artistic publications and were sometimes meant for a wider audience, but they always sold out and were reprinted several times.
Minestrone Cookbooks established itself on the renovated site of Brouwerij De Koninck in Antwerp during the summer of 2016. The publishing house is located in the former laboratory of the brewery. As an extension of my photographic and publishing activities, I worked with a creative team to equip the laboratory with appliances so that we can organise cooking workshops. We will be giving themed cooking workshops and ‘private dinners’ for up to 20 people. Each workshop will be related to the title of one of the cookbooks that Minestrone Cookbooks has published throughout the years. KitchenAid will deliver the appropriate appliances and kitchenware for the workshops.
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