Foods 2090 Lessons

Plating Salads & Sandwiches

Lesson Question:

Explain how attention to the elements of design may enhance food during preparation and presentation.

Lesson

“You eat first with your eyes”

Plating is the art of presenting food in a way that enhances and improves the appeal of the food itself. It involves many different aspects of food preparation and presentation, starting with the combination of foods that make up the meal, to how the food is cooked, to the plate that is used to serve it, to how it is arranged on that plate, to the garnish decorating the dish. Complicated presentations usually miss the point and distract from the wholesomeness of the food. Simplicity is hard to achieve, but there is beauty in it.

Basic Plating Concepts

Arrangement: Chefs use white space to strengthen their presentations and so a simple white plate is a good choice. However, this does not mean you can only use white dishes. Sometimes the color of the plate serves to set off the color of the meal. (e.g.: a green salad on a red plate; a juicy burger on a yellow plate; tomato soup in a green bowl, etc.) Make sure your serving plates are big enough to let each food item stand out, but small enough that the portions don’t look tiny. If you're serving a protein, starch, and veggies, arrange the three items according to the face of a clock, with starch at 10, meat around 2, and veggies below 9 and 3. Make sure one of the items acts as a focal point on the plate. Center your food and leave the rest clean; that’s the principle of ”white” or “negative” space. White space allows the elements to exist at all and is key to composition. It reinforces the elements of the presentation.

Color: Play with color and texture. Respect natural colors and enhance color by cooking. Small, high contrast elements usually have as much impact as larger, duller elements. Think about color. If you've taken any art courses you may have heard about the color wheel, complementary colors, contrastng colors, and so forth. Concepts such as these can help you with plating.

Proportion: A guideline for portion in a meal is vegetables should cover about half of the plate, starch one fourth, and protein one fourth. See the picture at left for an example.

Balance: The rule of odds is used in many art disciplines, in particular painting, photography and advertising. It states that objects displayed in odd numbers seem to bring unity to a composition. The logic behind this rule is that by displaying, three, five, seven, etc… items instead of even numbers, there is always one item that looks framed by the surrounding ones, which looks harmonious. Even numbers tend to bring symmetry in the composition, which appears less natural. Try plating your food with this idea in mind.

Harmony: Striking a harmony between color, texture, shapes and arrangements form the basis of a stylish food presentation. The food presentation ideas are becoming increasingly flamboyant and artistic but it's best to avoid over-garnishing the dishes. Just be creative in presenting the food. Remember, simple is best.

Plating Sandwiches

In gneral, most sandwiches are cut in some way before serving.

Cutting serves two purposes:

1. it makes eating and handling the sandwich easier.

2. it makes for an attractive presentation

Displaying the cut edges to the outside rather than the crust edges is more attractive. If you make the sandwich with great looking ingredients and it is attractively garnished it will be tasty and nice-looking.

You may present hamburgers and other uncut sandwiches open-faced to display the attractive ingredients. (In fact, some sandwiches are served with only one slice of bread, making them "open-faced" sandwiches.) For example, hamburgers are often presented with the patty on the bottom half of the bun and the toppings (e.g.: lettuce, tomato, onion, etc.) on the top half of the bun.

Plating Salads

When plating a salad of fresh greens, make sure you don’t squish it down against the plate. Fluff it to give it height! Make it look light and airy. The two examples below have exactly the same ingredients - see how attention to detail in plating affects the appeal.

Sometimes the ingredients in the salad, or the type of salad can influence plating. A Cobb salad, for instance, is often plated by placing all the ingredients in separate rows on a bed of lettuce, as shown in the picture below (far left). Some salads are layered and presented in a high-sided clear glass bowl (2nd to left picture), some are mixed with the dressing and plated right away (3rd from left) and others top the body of the salad (e.g. the lettuce) by sprinkling the garnishes on top (far right). In the end, look at the ingredients and decide for yourself how best to present them.

Next time you go to a restaurant, notice how the food is presented, and how different dishes are presented in different ways. Notice what you do like and what you don't like; this will help you learn how to present your own dishes. Also, don't worry too much about making your dishes look like 5-star restaurant dishes (which can be overly fussy sometimes); just aim to make the food look appetizing.