I need to make an all-purple dish

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Hi all,

I am throwing a chromatic dinner party, where each course will be a different color... just for fun, to challenge myself and make some interesting food.

I've sorted out all the courses except for the purple one - my aim is to make each one quite distinct in the color, as well as being tasty and a little bit fancy.

So I'm wondering if there are any suggestions of something (even one element of a few) that I could make. The meal is vegetarian, and I am not using any food colorings (but if it's natural, such as using beetroot juice, that's ok). The purple course is going to be savoury.

I've done lots of googling for ideas, and have looked into purple fruits and veg, and there are some stunning ones (purple cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, capsicum, potatoes) which I am thinking about but don't know (a) if I will be able to source, and (b) how well they keep their colour in cooking.

My current thought is something like this (note that I haven't done any tests to see if it works, and looks purple):

Red/purple cabbage leaf roll - filled with caramelized red onion, walnuts (not purple but in small bits so they won't be too visible), maybe some prunes or raisins, and perhaps grated beetroot. Served with a sauce of some kind.

I think this would be ok, it might turn out quite red, but I don't think there's a lot I can do about that.

My other idea is something very fresh, a bit like a coleslaw - finely sliced purple cabbage with some kind of dressing... but I don't know how to make that into a dish in its own right. If I can get some purple-inside potatoes I will make them into chips to serve with it.

A bit of an obscure request, perhaps, but I'd love to hear what you clever peeps have to contribute

I'll be posting a report/pictures after the event if people are interested.

- Cheers, Stuart

[Blether]

I came across Syrian Beetroot & Yoghurt Dip (photo & commentary just past halfway down) for the first time, only yesterday.

That's a good blog, too - the man really knows how to take pictures and how to work with wood, as well as how to cook.

[annecros]

Ruby chard comes to mind. A savory fig tart with the skin side up could be a real show stopper, I think, and something a little different. A pomegranate glaze?

[mkayahara]

If you do go with the cooked purple cabbage, keep in mind that acid (e.g., vinegar) can help set the colour. Also, walnuts, while not purple themselves, seem to have a tendency to turn bread purple when baked in it, but I'm not sure what the mechanism at work there is.

[Lilija]

I'm a big fan of those Japanese purple sweet potatoes, and they definitely stay purply when you cook them. They would make delicious chips, for your cabbage combo. If you have access to an Asian market, you could probably find them there.

[Tri2Cook]

I did an almost entirely purple dessert recently...

wild blueberry ice cream - sous vide wild blueberries - oatmeal cookie crumble

...a little blueberry puree and some dried blueberries could be worked into the oatmeal cookie crumble (which was basically just an oatmeal cookie dough with lemon zest added) to get it on track with the color theme and some freeze dried blueberries could add another textural element.

For savory, blueberries make a great stain along with providing flavor, so maybe some peeled turnips, radishes, parsnips or something poached in a flavorful stock based on blueberry juice. A reduction of the cooking stock would get you a sauce and, depending on the flavor profile of the sauce, you could garnish it with purple basil or oven roasted purple grapes or whatever makes you happy.

[skipper10]

That sounds like fun! I second the purple sweet potatoes, only in my neck of the woods they are called "Korean." You may also want to look into Thai black rice which turns purple when cooked. Thai use it for dessert only, but I discovered that Thai black rice cooked with stock, bouquet garni and other goodies makes a perfect side dish. You may want to use it as stuffing for your red cabbage rolls. Do post pictures when you are done. Skipper

[Kouign Aman]

The purple potatoes dont look very purple in yellowish light, after cooking.

If they were browned at all, the combination of browning and light hide the purple.

They make a lovely light purple mashed potato which looks a hideous grey with yellow light.

Ditto when boiled for potato salad. S'not a problem with blue-white light.

Blueberries are the most reliable purple I've encountered for cooked food.

They withstand all kinds of light conditions.

[OliverB]

I get purple potatoes (not sweet ones) at Trader Joes, they're often almost black and keep the color well. It does get a bit lighter, but still qualifies as purple.

Blueberries of course are super purple. Maybe you could add a bit of blueberry syrup or juice to your too red dish? Probably won't need too much.

this is a fun idea for a dinner, what other colors are you using? Post some photos please, that would be neat to see!

That desert a bit up on the page looks fantastic too, maybe shift purple to the desert location?

[KD1191]

Poi is a sort of grayish purple...

[Lisa Shock]

Purple cauliflower keeps its color very well. I have gotten it at Sprouts and 99 Cents Only stores.

[baroness]

Ube (purple yam) is a Filipino ingredient.

Its flour is used in bread rolls (maybe you could make noodles?), and there are ube sweets such as ice cream.

[greenmountain]

How about a ravioli dyed with beet juice, purple potato juice, or blueberries for color. A Ukranian dish of purple pierogy(dyed with beet juice) Filled with Purple potato and farmer's cheese with some juice mixed in. Our family has potato and farmer's cheese pierogy every christmas eve. Plums retain their color as well, even after cooking. Where I work we make dumpling skins with beet juice and fill them with beef and beets. A total purple appetizer.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

wow, thanks for all the comments, guys! Some great input here, I appreciate each post, even though I can't respond to everything

I hadn't really thought about blueberries much, because they are quite expensive and I wasn't sure how purple they really are... but I will look into that.

Anne, I love the thought of this... very classy, quite different, and I like pushing the sweet/savoury border.

Tri, I actually saw that picture just yesterday! I was mainly just entranced by the icecream... the color, the glossiness, it really did almost convince me to turn purple into a dessert course just from that

But the rest of the menu (which i will post with the pics after) is pretty much set so I don't think I want to rejig it all at this stage. your savoury suggestion is nice too... we had purple basil last summer and it was a great visual contrast.

Kouign, thanks for your comment about lighting... I had (briefly) thought about that, but I don't really have control over it as I have to use the lights that are installed in our house already! Unfortunately they ARE yellow, so i will have to fight against that. Maybe I can bring a lamp over just to show that it IS purple, heh!

Greenmountain, good suggestion. I haven't got a pasta course (though i have some pate choux gnocchi) so that might be a good option, and dying the pasta could work well!

[OliverB]

if the beet juice is too bright, you might be able to town it down with squid ink too, if you can find it somewhere. Or use that for some other black part of your dinner. I've never used it, but maybe if you thin it out it even has a purple tone to it? I hope to find it someday as I want to make black pasta.

[Kouign Aman]

USe frozen blueberries if the chief job is color. Or Grapejuice concentrate?

Dark intense purples will win against yellow light.

Cant wait to see pix of the entire meal!

[EllenC]

I like black rice. It is a lovely color of purple when cooked and I agree that with the stock and maybe some walnuts it would be a terrific filling for your purple cabbage rolls. Blanch the cabbage in water that has some vinegar to soften the leaves and set the color. I can't wait to see your pictures.

Ellen

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Minor update here (the actual dinner is tomorrow night, so about 36 hours to go!).

I went to the Queen Victoria Market which is the main market in Melbourne, and was hoping to find all kinds of fruit and veg to inspire me... actually a lot of the stuff was very 'normal'. But that was ok because I had planned all my dishes already so if I found new stuff, i'd have to rethink it all on the spot!

The most exciting purchase I have made are Purple Congo potatoes... very very purple, and apparently keep all their color when they cook. So that's great

I got some nice purple cabbage, and so i will be making a little cabbage, beetroot and red onion parcel, probably with a bit of apple and/or prune in it. Both the beetroot and onion strike me as more red than purple, but it's a fine line and I'm sure it will be acceptable! Still need to work out what to do with these stunning potatoes... some kind of simple prep, I think, maybe just roast or saute them with some oil or butter and garlic. Or a little rosti would be nice, very crisp. I might test one tonight to see if it holds the color well after browning.

Edited September 18, 2009 by stuartlikesstrudel (log)

[Lisa Shock]

You could try Duchess potatoes, those are always well received.

[OliverB]

while they keep their color, I found browned purple potatoes to look a bit odd, I'd definitely do a test run.

The current Food & Wine has a risotto with beets towards the back, that's also quite purple. I think I'm gonna make that next week.

[eatenmess]

youre not cooking for Prince are you? if so i know he doesnt like blueberries for the fact that they say they are blue but arent in the same way he doesnt like red cabbage.

utterly pointless post of course if youre not cooking for his purple majesty/royal badness.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Alright, it's time for the report of the event! It happened on Saturday night and I was very happy with how it turned out... (this post is going to be BIG I reckon, I will go into a fair bit of detail for my own enjoyment and anyone else who's interested!). Of course you can feel free to just look at the pictures and skip all the overblown details, haha.

So first a few details on the 'setup'. The idea, which I had sometime last year and gradually mulled over, was to have a many-course dinner party where each course was a different color. I didn't want to use food colorings, and it was a vegetarian meal (as I am vego myself). I thought it would be a good chance for me to try out some plating ideas, as I haven't done that before, and love to look at the beautiful plating I see here and elsewhere. My preference leans towards the fancy, intricate plating seen in top restaurants, I loved looking through the StudioKitchen thread and admiring all of Shola's food...

I have very limited dinnerware at home so I decided to just do them all on the big white plates we have, keep it simple. I'll reflect a bit at the end on what I learnt/thought about plating.

One thing I did to keep things a bit easier for me was to put a bit of masking tape on the edge of each plate and get people to mark their plate, so we could clean them between courses without having to use new plates or anything... it worked really well, I just got one of my guests (all friends, so it was nice and casual) to come and rinse them while I prepared the next course... then they helped to plate it, so it was fun to have them slightly involved

OK, onto the menu! I didn't think too much about trying to keep to one style/cuisine, because I don't have a specialty and also, with the color restrictions, I thought it would be hard enough without trying to bend everything in one direction. I don't think it ended up too scattered, and I reckon people wouldn't have even thought about big variety in flavours.

As for my cooking abilities, I consider myself a good home cook, but I don't consider myself a chef, and so I also hoped to try a few new techniques and flavours... overall I didn't get too out there, I would have liked to do a bit more of that but found myself mainly thinking of how to get a dish to be the right color, so the taste sometimes took a back seat! They all tasted nice, but weren't super adventurous, I think. Not that that's always a bad thing!

So I planned out the menu, and during the week started to do a bit of prep. I didn't get as many things done ahead as I would have liked, so I ended up rushing through it a bit... I had to skip one dish, and I didn't enjoy the process as much as I could have, but it was still pleasant and never TOO hectic.

I didn't test the recipes before I made them - since it was just a fun experiment, and with friends, I wasn't too concerned if some stuff didn't work out (and of course, plenty of things didn't go quite to plan ). I also decided not to get too much contribution from here on eG - I know I would have received a lot of great ideas and feedback, but I wanted to do it myself and see what I came up with, so I only checked in about the purple because it was the most difficult bit for me...

Here we go! (this is in chronological order). I will link to recipes in the description if I used them - most of it was kind-of made up though. Sorry for the poor photos, I didn't test the camera settings first (dumb idea!) and so I found afterwards that they were quite overexposed and with some nasty shadows...

We started the night with a GREEN appetizer.

This is Olive Oil Crackers to which I added some minced parsley in the hope the juices and leaves would make it a beautiful green... it wasn't TOO bad, but not vivid, and though I tried to bake them at low temp to keep them from browning, it didn't really work, and I had to amp it up to get them crisp. Oh well.

I thought it would be neat to have a few little "tastes" to progress through, so I made the crackers long and thin, so each bite could be one of the three toppings, which were : a mashed potato flavoured with dill, which I then pan fried to get a crispy bottom. Then, a refreshing cucumber diced finely with lots of lime juice and coriander (and a little chili). Lastly, a pea puree with lots of mint and some feta.

The colors were good for these toppings, the potato was least green, but still ok. The concept of the consecutive bites worked well, I think... people seemed to like guessing what the next taste would be, a few thought the final one was avocado, so a bit of a surprise there

Next was meant to be black, but in the excitement I got confused and served ORANGE instead!

This is a Chilled Carrot Soup which I topped with a little dollop of double cream (tinted orange with some leftover soup) and toasted orange zest. The soup is delicious but a bit odd... it really tasted like pumpkin, I think, and so did others. Once you know it's carrot you can understand the flavour, but for something that's pretty much just carrots, I was a bit surprised. I added quite a bit of lemon juice to make it fresher tasting, I'm surprised there is none in the recipe.

This was a real winner, I think. I thought of the toasted zest just to add a little visual detail and interest, and the taste worked really well, adding a bit of bitterness and fragrance to some mouthfuls.

BLACK came next...

This was a dish I had pretty much made before, trying to replicate something I had eaten at a Balinese restaurant - it's eggplant slices cooked in soy, sweet soy (Kecap Manis) and coconut milk. I served it with black glutinous rice and black sesame seeds. I had some Asian black dried fungus which I was going to do something with as well, but discovered that they actually weren't very dark in color.

Overall this dish was one of the weakest, I think... I knew the color wouldn't end up fully black but it was the best I could do without resorting to squid ink, which I didn't want to use. It tastes nice, but was a bit dry and didn't look appealing (the eggplant breaks up too much, especially since I sliced it so thinly). I had hoped it would look nice, with some thin overlapping circles creating a nice rhythm on the plate, but it just didn't, especially since they broke up a lot. Thinning a bit of the marinade with more coconut milk and making a sauce is nice, but i didn't thin it much because it made it non-black again. People still ate it.

The plan was to have purple next, but I didn't want to have it after black because i thought they would be quite similar in texture and also color... if I hadn't mixed orange and black up, it would have been right. But I decided instead to have YELLOW next.

I think this was one of the best dishes, and others seemed to agree. It's Gnocchi Parisienne, minus the herbs and tinted with a bit of tumeric to be more yellow. This is good to make in advance and freeze, then just defrost and pan fry to crisp and heat... very handy! It's resting on a bed of corn and yellow capsicum (heated)... the capsicum was roasted for a bit, maybe 20 mins, to enhance the flavour and soften a bit, without become slimy or darkened. It still had a bit of tooth, which was perfect with the juicy bursting corn and soft gnocchi. A few shavings of parmesan on top, a good squeeze of lemon juice, and a sauce of butter with half a vanilla bean and some lemon zest. I love vanilla and just felt like it would go well here. I think it did! It was subtle, but present, and looks great on the plate. I want to explore vanilla in savoury applications more.

Next was PURPLE - the subject of discussion here, and in the end a great success

I found the good potatoes I mentioned a few posts earlier, and also the purplest red cabbage I could find! I blanched the leaves, which faded their color a bit even though I used acidity in the water, but they were still nice and purple. To fill, I shredded some more (raw) cabbage very finely and mixed it through caramelized purple onions and some walnuts. Add another splash of vinegar and it was a tasty sweet, rich and sour filling. I hadn't tried to wrap parcels in cabbage before, and my leaves weren't huge, so by the time I removed the tough core of the leaves there wasn't heaps of space left to work with... lucky I was only making small servings! They came together ok, and I pressed them for an hour or two to help seal, then just warmed them in a pan before serving.

With it are the purple potatoes, which I boiled in thin slices for a few mins to soften, then quickly pan-fried in a good dose of EVOO and salted nicely. They were semi-crisp, with a good burst of salt so they worked ok, and looked great.

I used the water from the blanched cabbage leaves to boil the potato, so by the time I'd done both those things, it was very purple... so I decided to try and make a thin reduction for decorative purposes. I added a bit of vinegar and sugar and boiled it down a bit. It didn't taste great, not bad but not something I'd normally serve, but the color was right, so I added it! And people seemed to eat it, I guess it was ok with the potatoes

I was so pleased with the color, it was really vivid and there was no doubt it was purple.

Now, if you've managed to keep track of the INTENDED course order, purple should have been followed by yellow, then red, resulting in a good contrast of colors, but since I'd already done yellow we went to RED from here... so the color impact was lessened. Ahh well!

This dish is a risotto with a lot of roasted capsicum puree added for color and flavour. I then chilled it and cut it into bars which I pan fried to crisp up. It's served on a sauce of tomato with harissa added, and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. The sauce was meant to be done earlier and probably would have been more considered, but I just ran out of time so i threw some harissa in and made it middle-eastern tasting, which was fine but a bit of a cop out! Pomegranate seeds were a great burst of freshness and flavour, but are annoying to eat with their seeds in the middle... I'd forgotten about that!

I was happy with the taste of this dish, but the presentation didn't end up like I hoped. It looks quite a lot like a 'log', if you know what I mean! And I was going for a very geometric, clean look, but I have learnt that if you don't get it SUPER exact, it just ends up looking a bit try-hard and messy... the cuts need to be so clean and precise. Also, I think the dish needs another 'detail' element with the pomegranate seeds... something fine and wispy over the top - herbs would have done that, or some red pepper threads that I have seen, but couldn't find in the shops.

Onto dessert...

This was quite disappointing, because I was planning to have 2 desserts, but I really ran out of time (due to not getting enough prep done early, and a few unavoidable delays, so I had to ditch the WHITE dessert, which would have been good looking and probably tasting, I think. It also means that we went from Purple to Red to Pink, which is a bit similar.

White WOULD have been this :

Rose flavoured floating island (poached meringue) with a lychee mousse centre, in a coconut custard/cream, with a coconut tuile. I think it would have looked nice in some white bowls we have, and would have been very white, with a tropical-ish taste... quite delicate, I think.

Ahh well!

PINK was therefore the only dessert course. And it didn't really work in color, but tasted nice.

The main feature was a Strawberry ice cream which I infused with mint (which worked really well). This sat on some oat crumbs, much like Tri2Cook's beautiful dessert upthread. I tinted these with berry juice, but they came out pretty grey. I think this style of presentation is great in terms of look, and also texture as you can eat the creamy ice cream by itself, and also get bites that have a crunchy-ish texture from the crumbs.

The idea to go with this was super thin slices of compressed watermelon and a pear-raspberry gelee... but it didn't really happen like that! The watermelon worked, but was distinctly red rather than pink, even when i laid thin slices on the white plate. I decided to keep them, though, because they are an unusual experience to eat, and were refreshing to go with the ice cream. My slices looked pretty sloppy and ragged, again not geometric enough to look precise and super neat.

I made a pear puree and added raspberries, but the texture was a bit coarse and gross (from the pear fibers). I decided it was alright though, so I added the gelatin to set it. The resulting product kept the icky texture and was kind of enhanced by the gelling, so I ditched that and just smeared some of the puree on the plate. Instead, I made a gelee of raspberry and lime juice, which was better, and a nice sweet-tart balance. I was hoping it would be a beautiful pale pink and quite transparent, but it wasn't really. I didn't want to water it down to get the color right, so I let it stay red. I couldn't get thin enough slices to layer with the watermelon, so I made little cubes and sprinkled them around.

So in the end, the dish had most of the elements I planned, but in different forms/plating and not really pink!

Originally i actually had pink and white planned quite differently - pink was going to be the floating islands (rose flavoured, tinted with raspberry puree) served in a raspberry custard with a candied rhubarb strip. White was going to be a coconut ice cream with a banana cream puree (may not have been very white) and a coconut tuile.

Both the desserts were quite creamy and rich, so I could have tried to branch out a bit with that, but most ideas I had needed cream to keep them white (or dilute red to make pink). I would have liked some kind of pear/raspberry/champagne sorbet or something like that, but I was keeping it non-alcoholic for a friend.

Actually we kind of had a white dessert to finish... I brought out some Gin and Tonic Sorbet I had made a while ago, which was a refreshing taste to end with, and it is very white. So that works, I guess

As for BLUE, I had planned to bring out one blue gummi bear each on a big fancy platter, as a bit of a joke, but I forgot to buy them! I decided not to even try and make a proper blue dish, as the bluest thing I could think of were blueberries and they're purple! If I had seen blue corn I could have tried that but there wasn't any. When I wandered through the market, the one other thing I saw were some black mission figs which were black/blue/purple in color and could almost have passed as blue (grilled, on a piece of blue cheese, I reckon) but it would have been pushing it and I decided it's better to just give up on that one. A bit of a long bow to draw, or whatever the expression is.

My guests really got into the theme, which added a lot of enjoyment to the night. Most said that their favourites were Yellow, Red or Pink, which isn't surprising to me, as I think they're the most substantial dishes... the Orange was also quite popular as something different. I was most pleased with the Yellow, as the taste was great, the color was true and I think the plating worked quite well.

So to wrap up ("Shut up already!!"), here are a few little reflections on the experience :

- Prep is king! The things that I did have time to prepare beforehand came together much more easily, and it took a lot off my mind knowing I had them ready, and didn't need to worry about them. Even things like cutting veges in advance (stuff that didn't lose freshness) and getting garnishes ready helped.

- Plating is pretty hard

I think I did alright, but my suspicions were confirmed, that elegant plating is an art and a simple plating done well is a deceptively tricky thing to do... it's easy to make it look amateur and overworked, or just dull. Achieving a balanced plate, but one that has a rhythm... tricky! By getting my guests to help me plate, I noticed how shifting things slightly, or positioning a bit differently can dramatically change the effectiveness of a plate, using the same elements, so it really is about precision. I think little details such as tiny bits of seeds, herbs, sauces etc play a big role... I started to think of my dishes in terms of the main element, the support (such as a complementing vegetable or preparation), the sauce (if there was one) and a garnish. I think that adding a few more layers, such as a second sauce or oil, maybe a separate support/side and a second garnish, can add to the perceived complexity, and therefore fanciness, of a dish. Having said that, I know it's also an art to pare it back to let a few things shine, and adding extra layers can sometimes just muddle things.

- Photography can make a big difference! The same dish, taken in different ways, different angles and lighting, close up with depth of field, looks so different. I like the shot of the gnocchi, but one of the other shots that's zoomed out and all in focus looks much less exciting.

- Food is fun, and tasty, and when combined with friends, makes for a wonderful evening!

And on that warm and fuzzy note, I'm done!

Thanks for reading, I needed to get all that out

- Stu

[Tri2Cook]

Cool stuff Stu. I've never tried doing the monochromatic thing. I can definitely see where it would be challenging but it looks like you pulled it off. I wouldn't sweat the small stuff that bothered you too much, a 7 or 8 course dinner party is a pretty big undertaking. If the food was good and you and your guests had fun then nothing was missing.

[Shalmanese]

Stuart, congrats on your first dinner challenge. Trust me when I say it gets easier with experience which just means you start planning even larger & more ambitious events. You're at an inherent disadvantage with the pros when it comes to plating & presentation since you only ever get to make a dish once or twice whereas they can tweak the plating over many iterations. Any time you do one of these, there will always be 2 or 3 dishes that turn out pedestrian (hopefully no out & out disasters). Choose to focus on the high points instead.

[pastameshugana]

Uh, oh. I think you've created a monster. Now I won't be happy until I try the 'Joseph's Coat Feast' myself!