Backstage at the L.A. Times Food section

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In the Test Kitchen here at the L.A. Times downtown, we test all the recipes that appear in the Food section, and most of them we also shoot -- in the adjacent photo studio. The shoot for today’s cover story by Betty Hallock on plateaux de fruits de mer -- multitiered seafood platters -- was one of the most challenging we’ve done in a long time. For the cover, we weren’t sure whether we’d use a photo of one of the beautiful plateaux showing up in L.A. restaurants lately, such as those at Comme Ça or Water Grill.

But we knew that the seafood we assembled and prepared for our plateaux-to-make-at-home (you can find the recipe in the story at latimes.com) was pretty spectacular-looking, so we were hopeful we’d get a great shot.

It was tricky because we had to cover big platters with crushed ice, lay out all the prepared seafood, style the platters, stack one atop the other, and photograph it before the ice melted. We didn’t want to shuck the oysters or clams too long in advance, or they wouldn’t look great; ditto the sea urchin, which we wanted to look pristine.

Although Test Kitchen director Donna Deane had some previous experience wrestling with live sea urchins, neither Betty Hallock nor recipe tester Noelle Carter nor I did, and we were eager to see how it was done. Photographer Carlos Chavez, who did the cover shoot, had plenty of experience with them -- he loves to pick them up to eat at home (‘with salsa,’ he said; ‘they’re amazing).

Noelle, who spent three months in New Orleans, much of it shucking and eating oysters, shucked all the oysters and clams for the photo (then later taught me how -- I’d long been wanting to learn). She had already cooked the lobster, shrimp, crab, periwinkles, cockles and mussels in court bouillon and chilled them, and dressed the mussels, made the sauces, etc. She and Donna split the lobsters and cracked the crab and we arranged it all on the ice, and put it in the fridge.

Then Donna prepped the sea urchins -- there were three of them waving their quills around gently. Using a knife, then kitchen shears, she cut a circle out of the top of one. It was filled with horrible-looking liquid and other icky stuff -- then Carlos jumped in. He showed us how to pour out the liquid, discard the black parts, and gently pull the sections of roe off the inside of the shell, keeping them intact. I tasted one -- and though I’ve eaten uni in some of the best restaurants in Japan, this was really something special -- so unbelievably fresh and sweet. Spectacular. It’s one of the great treats in life. Donna prepped the prettiest one; we rinsed it out and filled it with crushed ice, and laid the roe on top. We placed it smack in the center of the top tier.

Then quickly, we brought the two trays into the studio and stacked one on the other, using a stand like you’d see for placing a pizza on a table. Carlos, who had lighted the spot he’d be shooting beforehand -- a beige tablecloth laid on the floor -- started shooting. He could see the shots instantly on his computer, so we started rearranging the plateau a bit, filling in here and there with more oysters, making a pretty sea snail more prominent, moving some of the clams. He shot some more, but the tablecloth showed wrinkles, so we got down on the floor and pulled it tight. And he shot some more. Another touch to the plateau here and there, and more shooting, and what Carlos got was so spectacular we decided to use it for the cover. (Stephen Osman later shot a step-by-step of Donna preparing the urchin; you can find that online, with other step-by-steps, in the story.)

There was nothing left to do -- except eat all that wonderful seafood.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photos by Leslie Brenner (the amateurish ones), Carlos Chavez (the professional one you see last) and Stephen Osman (the professional one of the uni)