136 replies to this topic

[SWISS_CHEF]

Hi! I'm not Tony but I've been stabbing at my monitor with a fork for the last 10 minutes...lol! That looks SOOO good ;-).

Thank you Blondelle!

[SWISS_CHEF]

I made this pasta/shrimp/capers/olive oil/butter but I am not happy with the way the pasta looks on the white plate. I think it looks anemic I wonder if pasta might look better on a black plate?

[Tonyy13]

Scallops on sauteed leeks with a balsamic reduction glaze on a WHITE plate. Am I getting any closer Tony?

Swiss Chef,

You have to tell me if you are getting any closer. How do you feel about the dish? Do you feel that it looks better than previous plating attempts? In my opinion, I feel that yes, it is closer to what we talked about in the course lecture. But again, my word is not the end all say all. I like the plating of this dish better than I did of your previous dishes, but I do not think that any of them are bad.
As far as your pasta dish goes, I think that it looks great just the way that it is!! I would think that it would look ok on a black plate, but I personally would steer away from the blue plate. The black would allow the pinkness of your shrimp to sing, and the pasta wouldn't look sort of dingy (not your fault, it happens whith pasta made from semolina and whole eggs). Overall, I am happy with the fact that you guys are participating, whether or not your plates are perfect in my eyes or not....

Tony:/ What do you think of glass plates? Do you ever present on them? What goes particularly well or poorly with them?

Glass plates are tough, not too much goes on them. The only time that I feel like glass plates are nice are when they are being served on a table that has a white tablecloth (and so we are back to a "white" plate....). I feel that they do have their applications, but they are less readily available for home cooks, so I dind't go too far into talking about them. I find that desserts usually seem to look relatively well on glass plates, usually becasue hot food causes steam to make it look cloudy, as well as fat is nearly impossible to hide. With desserts, I usually see the plate dusted with powdered sugar, which can hide some of the imperfections on the plate. Overall, not a huge fan, but again, they absolutely have their applications.

[Shalmanese]

I made this pasta/shrimp/capers/olive oil/butter but I am not happy with the way the pasta looks on the white plate. I think it looks anemic I wonder if pasta might  look better on a black plate?

Again speaking as a complete amateur, I think a dusting of some saffron or other red spice around the rim of the plate would create the contrast neccesary. As it is, the pasta sort of bleeds into the plate. Also, when serving pasta, I like to do plate with tongs and give a little twist at the end to give a nice neat pile.

[SWISS_CHEF]

Scallops on sauteed leeks with a balsamic reduction glaze on a WHITE plate. Am I getting any closer Tony?

You have to tell me if you are getting any closer. How do you feel about the dish? Do you feel that it looks better than previous plating attempts?

Thanks Tony and everyone else,
Here is what I see is wrong with my shrimp plate:
In the picture the pasta looks dead... even though it didn't look so white in real life. I think the flash did that.
If I was plating this in a restaurant I would twist the linguine with a long two pronged fork into a tightly rolled tube and center it in the plate almost timbale style then lean the 5 shrimps against the column of pasta, then finish with with the capers and maybe drizzle with some extra virgin olive oil.
I tend to stay away from herbs and spices dusted around the rim because it was always considered so "80's" in the kitchens I cooked in.....personally I like the look of a dusting but most of the serious chefs I cooked with frowned upon it. I usually only do it for people that aren't really serious foodies. (I hope that doesn't sound smug)

On another note: Tony, I have only just noticed that you worked at the Manoir aux Quat' Saisons! Raymond Blanc has been a source of inspiration for me for at least 15 years. I had (now lost, I think I loaned it out and never got it back) his cookbook, which I really loved...talk about platings! WOW! I do still have The Gourmet's Tour of Great Britain and Ireland, Sir Clement Freud, Bulfinch 1989 which had a couple of killer platings from MaQS one which looks like a Miró painting and another which is equally as delightful! Did you work there in the late 80's and have a hand in these platings? What an honor it must have been to work in such a serious and respected kitchen! Bravo!

[debler]

Swiss_Chef....have you concidered using a diff colored pasta? Perhaps a squid ink pasta? or a spinach one?

[doctorandchef]

My Webpage
Any thoughts on this? Pistachio and panko crusted Ontario Rack of Lamb, rosemary jus, Maple-Soy Asparagus, and truffled mash potato.

Edited by doctorandchef, 04 April 2005 - 10:36 PM.

[Shalmanese]

I cant see the pic.

[Behemoth]

 
As far as your pasta dish goes, I think that it looks great just the way that it is!!  I would think that it would look ok on a black plate, but I personally would steer away from the blue plate.  The black would allow the pinkness of your shrimp to sing, and the pasta wouldn't look sort of dingy (not your fault, it happens whith pasta made from semolina and whole eggs).  Overall, I am happy with the fact that you guys are participating, whether or not your plates are perfect in my eyes or not....

Hmm. I find myself more than a little ambivalent about the "always white" thing. White plates are great for formal western platings but more rustic preparations can come off looking a little lackluster (or worse, silly....)

Actually, I find that I look to the culture of a certain dish to get ideas on how to plate it -- for example, with the pasta dish above, maybe play on the idea of asian noodles and use a) a rectangular white plate or even more daringly b) a shallow blue chinese soup bowl? Asian soups look so much nicer in patterned bowls (IMO) for example.

Another big example is middle eastern foods. I find that clay pottery and heavily ornamented dishes can really flatter the food. For example, here is something I posted on the dinner thread recently, a moroccan grated cucumber salad:



The plate is some cheap thing I rescued from a friend's flooded basement. I've held on to it all these years because I think it really works well for certain things. I don't think this particular salad would have looked nearly as nice on a white plate. And what would moroccan food be without all those stunning clay tagines...Indian food also comes to mind. I have served deep red rogan gosht in a white bowl (when I was cooking at my SIL's), but it looks so much better when I serve it out of deep brown clay bowls at home.

Obviously, having idiosyncratically patterned dishes would be impractical in a restaurant setting, (not to mention that the food and setting of a typical white tablecloth restaurant would make clay look completely out of place) but for a home cook who gravitates towards foods of certain countries, it might be worth getting a few pieces that flatter that particular cuisine?

But anyway, I ain't no chef. Just wanted to throw another possiblity out there

Edited by Behemoth, 04 April 2005 - 09:26 PM.

[Behemoth]

By the way, can I just add that I am really intrigued by the way the sauce is applied here? Very Jugenstijl, somehow.

[SWISS_CHEF]

Swiss_Chef....have you concidered using a diff colored pasta? Perhaps a squid ink pasta? or a spinach one?

Good idea, I think that would help the pasta to contrast the white plate.

[SWISS_CHEF]

My Webpage
Any thoughts on this? Pistachio and panko crusted Ontario Rack of Lamb, rosemary jus,  Maple-Soy Asparagus, and truffled mash potato.

Only one...what time is dinner?

[SWISS_CHEF]

By the way, can I just add that I am really intrigued by the way the sauce is applied here? Very Jugenstijl, somehow. 

Actually my balsamic reduction was a little thin so I couldn't place as neatly as I wanted to so I had to apply it quickly in a large circle from a pointed top mustard bottle.

[EllenH]

If I was plating this in a restaurant I would twist the linguine with a long two pronged fork into a tightly rolled tube and center it in the plate almost timbale style then lean the 5 shrimps against the column of pasta, then finish with with the capers and maybe drizzle with some extra virgin olive oil.

How about pasta with a colorful (ie tomato) sauce? I tried "plating" my standard spaghetti with italian sausages by putting the pasta & sauce on separately (deconstructed? ) and then arranging the sausages, but it ended up just looking silly. Big gloppy pile spaghetti, pile red sauce, line o' sausages. I didn't even take a picture 'cause it looked so dorky.

[Susan in FL]

My Webpage
Any thoughts on this? Pistachio and panko crusted Ontario Rack of Lamb, rosemary jus,  Maple-Soy Asparagus, and truffled mash potato.

Yes, I certainly have thoughts about that! It's beautiful and looks delicious, and I would like to eat it.
Did you cook, plate, and photograph that?

[doctorandchef]

Ya, I cooked, plated, photographed, and ate it! Thanks for the encouraging comments!!

It's actually not too hard to plate this dish, as the potatoes provide a solid base to put everything around. I wasn't going for the vertical thing but it was the only way of keeping the bones clean.

I mirror what previous posters have said, I totally avoid all garnishes that are non-functional, hence I omitted the almost ubiquitous rosemary sprig...

Edited by doctorandchef, 05 April 2005 - 02:42 PM.

[Tonyy13]

Any thoughts on this? Pistachio and panko crusted Ontario Rack of Lamb, rosemary jus,  Maple-Soy Asparagus, and truffled mash potato.

Great looking dish!!! Plating is nice, simple, and the food looks well cooked. Perfect! Very nice job....

I mirror what previous posters have said, I totally avoid all garnishes that are non-functional, hence I omitted the almost ubiquitous rosemary sprig...

Doctor,

Thanks for the omission of the sprig, I can't stand that...

[Anna N]

I have not been plating much lately as I am away from my own home, but I have been paying much more attention to plating in food magazines. I have noticed that in the two Italian cooking magazines I recently bought, white is rarely used. Red, ochre, soft green, and earth coloured plates, platters and bowls are in evidence. They are rarely patterned and are heavier than one sees in most fine dining rooms.

[Peachpie9]

Tonyy13 et al:

This is a wonderful thread. I am considered a good cook among my friends and family, but presentation has never been paramount to me although I love to see it. Now that my kids are grown and I am helping my husband lose weight and control some health issues, I am looking at presentation as well as improvements in flavor, nutritional value and portion size.

Instead of just cooking the usual things in the usual ways, I am researching the creation of satisfying textures and flavors, presented in appetizing and stimulating ways, in smaller portion sizes. This seems to me to be much more fun than diet food.

I have to tell you, the food on this thread looks wonderful, even that that the critics (usually self) panned. I applaud the efforts and thank you for the ideas.

Doctorandchef, your chops look as good as anything I've seen in print or set before me. The color combination, pink and green, is a whirlwind favorite with me (my bedroom sings with it), and you've achieved a serendipitous perfection in this regard. I say serendipitous because even though your plate looks deliciously perfect, it is in no way plotted or proscribed. Very, very nicely done.

Behemoth, I think you are so right that white is not universally the perfect foil for food, although it is right MUCH more often than anything else. I agree with you that rustic Latin and Mediterranean food is set off to advantage by rustic, earth-toned framing.

Anna N, I have noticed the same things you have with the subtly colored, substantially built dishes in food magazines. I think the point is to keep it interesting. There is no absolute in color of serving dish. It’s art. White fish, for example, looks more appetizing on one of those thick, celadon plates you mentioned than in any other setting. Think how Swiss-Chef’s pasta dish would look on celadon!

Swiss_chef, your pasta doesn’t look dead; rather it looks eminently edible. Perhaps you could have accidentally spilled a few more capers in one or two spots around the edge of the pasta to provide delineation from the plate. I loved your family style plating, too. When I serve myself from a plate like that, I know I’m among friends.

As to plating with highly colored/patterned dishes, I am going to opine that your food impact will always be (at best) competing with the plate graphics, or (at worst) upstaged by them. The pics you offer from a cookbook of food served on busy plates are obviously designed to feature the PLATES. Some of the food isn’t even edible, like the roses.

The antique plates you have are real treasures. Have you considered arranging a wall vignette of them and some complementary ones near where you eat? That way, they are available for you and your people to enjoy, their design won’t get in the way of your food efforts, and they are safe from the breakage that can occur with regular use. Vignettes have been used for years in England to showcase their beautiful blue and white pieces, but I have seen contemporary ones done with stunning effect, using antique pieces.

Abadoozy, your plate is brilliant. Hot rich spicy juxtaposed with cool crunchy. Mmmmm. I think I would have tried to curve the flank steak slices around the salad, like a croissant? Nestle the salad in the curve of the steak. Then the food wouldn’t look like it’s trying to emulate the squareness of the plate. But keep the hot from touching the cold.

Tonyy13, your food pictures are inspiring, and I love that you did these because you had time to experiment, no other reason. Your “bad” food pictures, were I to come up with something that good, would make me very happy. I know I am going to have a lot of fun trying. You are a really magnificent teacher.

Catherine

Edited by Peachpie9, 08 April 2005 - 12:23 PM.

[SWISS_CHEF]

The antique plates you have are real treasures. Have you considered arranging a wall vignette of them and some complementary ones near where you eat? That way, they are available for you and your people to enjoy, their design won’t get in the way of your food efforts, and they are safe from the breakage that can occur with regular use. Vignettes have been used for years in England to showcase their beautiful blue and white pieces, but I have seen contemporary ones done with stunning effect, using antique pieces.

Hi Catherine,
Thank you for your nice compliments. Actually plates have figured into our decorating scheme. We hang some of our 18th century Sèvres plates on the wall and display some in a glass cabinet. It was fashionable to do that even in 18th century France.
Here is a picture of our dining room in Montreux:

And our living room.

[Peachpie9]

Hello Swiss_Chef,

You have many very beautiful things. Obviously you've spent years in the careful accumulation of exquisite pieces.

The vignettes I am talking about, and I feel certain you know more about these than I could hope to learn, are the focused, ambitious ones with maybe between 12 and 20 pieces involved. The plates are arranged in a grouping, usually taller than wide, with the key peices at the center and top of the grouping. The rest of the pieces in the grouping are smaller, lesser items designed to showcase the main pieces. Usually they are consisent in color but always are different in pattern and style.

The vignette has a balance in that the count is symmetrical, but the ones I like best DON'T have the same pieces to the left and right of the key pieces. The mismatched effect IMO yields more in the way of interest and artistry.

Looking at the photos of your beautiful home, I'm not sure this concept would work. You have achieved a very formal, sophisticated classicity in which a vignette would probably ring with incompatibility. Anyway, it was an idea. Your home is stunning. I would love to cup my hand around one of those huge old crystals in that chandelier.

Catherine

Edited by Peachpie9, 09 April 2005 - 08:33 AM.

[stephenc]

I made this pasta/shrimp/capers/olive oil/butter but I am not happy with the way the pasta looks on the white plate. I think it looks anemic I wonder if pasta might  look better on a black plate?

I would plate this using a bowl. Maybe a japanese soup bowl or italian pasta bowl or something.

[SWISS_CHEF]

I would plate this using a bowl.  Maybe a japanese soup bowl or italian pasta bowl or something.

Actually it is a bowl. You can kind of see it in the bowl in the background. The camara angle makes it look like a plate though.

[Tonyy13]

I  I have noticed that in the two Italian cooking magazines I recently bought, white is rarely used.  Red, ochre, soft green, and earth coloured plates, platters and bowls are in evidence.  They are rarely patterned and are heavier than one sees in most fine dining rooms.

Anna,
I asked a pro food photographer and she said that magazine photographers don't use white because when taking hi-res shots, something messes up the color and apetrure value of the pictures. She said that light is reflected sometimes differently on white with studio lights and filters. So, I wish I could elaborate more, but unfortunately, that is all the info I have regarding magazine shoots....

Behemoth, I think you are so right that white is not universally the perfect foil for food, although it is right MUCH more often than anything else.   

Great point Peach, perfectly said...

Tonyy13, your food pictures are inspiring, and I love that you did these because you had time to experiment, no other reason.  Your “bad” food pictures, were I to come up with something that good, would make me very happy.  I know I am going to have a lot of fun trying.  You are a really magnificent teacher.

Thanks, this is so much fun, I love helping out!! Plating just makes practice, and if you have had as much practice as I have had, you wouldn't be happy with them either. It is like when you exercise, how at first, you would be happy with running just a mile (at least, that is how it has been in my experience!! ), but after eight years of running, you would look at a mile and wonder how you ever only did one... (I have yet to reach this point in my exercise life..... ).... So keep it up, you will get there....

Edited by Tonyy13, 12 April 2005 - 02:20 PM.

[Susan in FL]

Well, upthread I mentioned that I would soon be doing some family-style serving instead of plating, for company... I did, and I was quite pleased with how it looked. This was a braised leg of lamb with garlic, and white beans with tomatoes & spinach. For the family-style presentation, I put it all on a big white plate and Russ sliced the meat at the table. Then we passed it around and everyone helped themselves. (It tasted good, too!)

[doctorandchef]

[quote name='Susan in FL' date='Apr 12 2005, 08:24 PM']
Well, upthread I mentioned that I would soon be doing some family-style serving instead of plating, for company... I did, and I was quite pleased with how it looked. This was a braised leg of lamb with garlic, and white beans with tomatoes & spinach. For the family-style presentation, I put it all on a big white plate and Russ sliced the meat at the table. Then we passed it around and everyone helped themselves. (It tasted good, too!)

Hey Susan,

Great photo! I especially love the various colors spanning the entire color palette.

I think one of the techniques of making food look great is to put colors from across the color spectrum e.g. if you have a green thing, put in something red or purple, and make good use of complementary colors.

WHen I worked with Susur Lee, I noticed that he subtlely added various elements on the dish whether intentionally by color scheme or just by accident, he usually has multi colored components to his dishes.

I would love to have a bite of your leg of lamb!
Raymond

[doctorandchef]

Pork tenderloin with red wine apple star anise sauce.

[Blondelle]

I was just wondering what you thought of apple green plates. I was trying to think of what foods might look bad on it and couldn't. It's the color of a granny smith apple. It's a hot color right now, and so pretty. It's hardly basic like white, but really what food would not work with that color? The only thing I can think of are veggies the exact same color, but you have the same problem with white rice on white plates too!

[Susan in FL]

Not speaking for Tony, but what I think is that food looks good on light or medium shades of green. They don't photo as well as white china, but I like the look of plating on green plates... so much I have two sets of green. I also like to use black plates for certain foods, but again it is not usually photogenic.

[percyn]

A few pics from a home cook's previous posts (embarassed to place them near Tony or Swiss_Chef's dishes) :

Edited by percyn, 30 April 2005 - 11:04 AM.