Food photography is hard, hand-held food photography is impossible

During a very delicious dinner recently, I decided to try my hand at food photography. I'd heard it is very difficult to do, especially as a professional with hot lights. It seems that once you get a pleasing looking composition, then your food is reflecting light in an unpleasing way. Despite this challenge, I decided to do it anyhow, because practice is always good, right? Well, I didn't have my tripod on me so I had to do the shots hand-held.

Hand-held indoor photography is also a difficult task due to generally poor lighting, and the combination of trying to get the food to look good and to keep my hands from shaking too much, I only ended up with one sorta okay photo out of about 12. Above you can see the final result.