London - The other evening I caught myself doing something decidedly odd. I was making dinner and had peeled a courgette into ribbons and left it to marinate in a dressing of olive oil, mint and lemon zest.
Returning to the kitchen, I hovered over the courgettes, not quite satisfied with the result. They tasted nice enough - summery, Mediterranean - but some of the ribbons were tangled or twisted and there was a smear of olive oil along the edge of the plate.
So, with all the care of a hairdresser tending to stray wisps, I carefully rearranged the courgette ribbons, layering them into a lattice before scattering toasted pine nuts on top.
Only then, with courgettes suitably primped and styled and olive oil mopped up, did I whip out my iPhone, take a photograph and post it on the photo-sharing app Instagram.
A year ago, I would have thought this a very weird thing to do - photographing my evening side-salad had never occurred to me. Then, this spring, I upgraded my knackered, old BlackBerry to an iPhone and was hooked by the Instagram app.
Having signed up to follow chefs, food bloggers, restaurateurs, allotment holders, florists, artists and travel writers, my Instagram news feed filled with sepia-washed pictures of edible nasturtiums in the dew, saffron strands steeping in rose water, platters of linguine alle vongole on check tablecloths, and cloudberry pavlovas in lakes of jersey cream.
Gorgeous as it all was - the glossiest of glossy food magazines on your mobile phone, with some new treat to feast your eyes on every few minutes - it didn’t half make me feel inadequate.
Why weren’t my frittatas more photogenic? Why wasn’t my kitchen work surface Italian marble instead of wood-effect laminate? Why wasn’t my soup ladled into an antique porcelain bowl brought back from Kyoto?
When I did cook something special for a Friday dinner or Sunday lunch with friends, I began to fuss over whether it was worthy of Instagram.
Some meals were. My frittatas improved. My poached rhubarb garnered ‘likes’ from friends, as did my first attempt at a tarte Tatin.
The more “likes” a photo got, the more encouraged I was to continue: a tray of beetroot roasted with thyme, a gooseberry crumble, a peach and prosciutto salad.
But I must be honest: this is not how I eat most of the time. For every beetroot, feta and za’atar dip I make, there are ten meals of something-with-pasta.
There is no trick of the light, no atmospheric filter I have yet found to make tinned sardines on toast look pretty, so I don’t photograph the cobbled-together lunches I eat at my laptop.
Even the food bloggers, I tell myself, must occasionally have a bowl of soggy Weetabix for breakfast. But if you were to look at their feeds, you would think it was all plum and mascarpone tartlets and foraged chanterelle mushrooms. Every dish is a winning tableaux.
There is, of course, a little trickery going on. The most prolific Instagrammers - and it is possible to make a living from the app - are not just selectively posting only their most enviable meals, but applying Instagram’s clever light filters, which can make even a limp fennel frond, forgotten at the bottom of the salad drawer, look zingy and fresh. Think of it as Photoshop for your focaccia.
It is not enough that we should feel anxious about what we eat - and there are plenty of Instagrammers like the Hemsley sisters and Ella Woodward of Deliciously Ella who snap pictures of “massaged kale” and “chia seed jam” - now there is the disappointment of our insufficiently camera-ready meals, our bog-standard pie dishes, our dowdy napkins. (A confession: I recently bought new printed cotton napkins with which to style my dinner.)
The expectation for every meal to be photo-worthy is now so widespread that Lakeland, purveyor of sturdy Tupperware pots and Kilner jars, has a yummy mummy in its latest advert, leaning over her chocolate pudding with a cameraphone. The caption reads: “Olivia now thinks the hardest part of making the perfect fondant is taking the perfect photo.”
Tesco’s adverts, meanwhile, show a tower of plump profiteroles with the banner: “Our finest Belgian chocolate-drenched, Instagram-worthy croquembouche.”
I don’t follow the Ellas and Hemsleys and other acai berry acolytes. I find their puritanical recipes - no gluten, no dairy, no sugar - too joyless. But I have become rather addicted to food photographers who take pleasure not only in forbidden foods (pastries, not-yet-plucked game birds, apricot jellies), but in all the paraphernalia of cooking: the cast iron casserole dish, the willow pattern plate, the bamboo-handle knife.
Chefs such as Ed Smith, a Londoner with a collection of covetable mismatched crockery and Japanese rice bowls. Or the food historian Anissa Helou, who photographs half-moons of watermelon in the street markets of Zanzibar.
Or Venetian food blogger Skye McAlpine, whose pictures are the stuff of Dolce Vita fantasy: palazzos, gondolas, plum and amaretti tarts and silver coffee pots at Caffe Florian.
They don’t make me feel guilty for having dairy milk in my tea, but, by God, they make me ashamed of my Habitat plates.
I feel a bit of a ninny for being gulled by all this social media show-boating. I have never posted a selfie, so why get hung up on the culinary equivalent? What shall we call it? The courgelfie?
All social media feeds off status anxiety: photographs of the party you missed, tweets about the Booker prize-nominated novel you haven’t read, snaps of the safari holiday you could never afford or the washboard stomach you’ll never have. The dish of bourbon-poached peaches photographed against an antique linen tablecloth is just another manifestation.
I could stop, of course - cook my meals in peace and who cares if the quiche is soggy? But I’ve been suckered. If the top of my crumble caramelises, I want to show it off.
The thing to remember, as you scroll enviously through pictures of Marsala ice cream, elderflower panna cotta and pewter dishes piled with clam shells, is that the photographer is very likely now sitting at their laptop, tucking into an illicit slice of Marmite on toast.
Daily Mail