Today we’re going to be continuing our chat about plating techniques and how to make your dishes look elegant when you want them to. Episode 66 was about doing a chef’s tasting menu for fun at home in a simple, delicious way that’s totally possible. You definitely don’t want it to be overwhelming.
Just to bring a bit of balance and reality, let me say that I’m always inspired by doing fancy meals at home, but most of the time I’ll cook something very simple like mince and pasta, shredded grilled chicken with potatoes, or something like stroganoff, which takes a little bit more time in the Instant Pot, Sometimes I’ll get a high quality frozen meal from a place that I trust for my family of seven, so we definitely have a lot of evenings where it’s easy. We have pizza on Friday nights, or sometimes Chinese, but it’s only once a week, or maybe twice.
We have a date night once a week. Sometimes we’ll get takeout for that, and sometimes we’ll make the food at home, but it’s always very simple. It’s only two, or maybe three times a week where we’re doing something more fancy or more intricate. Even then, I try to keep things simple, like in my recipe book, Elegant, Easy Appetizers. The emphasis is on easy as well as elegant. The recipes have all got five ingredients, and they’re really good, and simple enough to make at home. Some of them require a little bit of cooking, and some of them don’t.
I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed when talking about things like chef’s tasting menus. It’s simply a really fun, special idea to do at home, to make some family memories, and to try new foods. Just try it at home, and have a longer meal with courses.
So, today we’re going to talk more about practical examples of plating. Episode 66 was ideas for the actual chef’s menus, the structure of them, and how they work. Episode 67 was about South Korea, and then episode 68 was about how you can elevate the way your dishes look for your chef’s menu, or for any date night or celebration with family.
This time we’re going to go into more practical detail. Last time I was talking about different dishes you could use, like a Chinese soup spoon to serve one of your courses in. We also talked about the principles of plating. Today, we’re going to take specific dishes and break down how you could plate them at home.
I’m definitely the type of person who likes to make things fun. I struggle to do something if it’s just work, and if I’m not inspired in some way. I love being inspired by different cultures, different methods of making food, and definitely by elegant and beautiful table settings by restaurants, and all of that kind of thing. My favorite gift at any time would be something for the table, whether it’s crockery, whether it’s gold knives and forks, cutlery or silverware, if it’s napkins or little lights for the table, or anything that enhances that experience. I collect those things and use them where possible.
But I’m also passionate about family time – time with our kids; quality time to enjoy each other, and to not be in a rush. I’m the type of person that’s usually in a rush and usually busy, so I really need this kind of thing to help me slow down and relax with my family.
We have five children, two of whom are young adults and can cook independently, and another two can cook quite a few things already. The last one is learning, but it’s lovely to also be able to sometimes give them the chance to cook one night a week. They learn responsibility, they learn how to do it, it gives me a break, and it’s something different. It’s really helpful that the kids are older. When I had young children, I was definitely less creative in terms of fancy dinners, but we still did family fun nights a lot, and things that were age appropriate for our young kids.
There are lots of ways to do all of these things. You can even get different kinds of takeout and do a family food fair without it being extra work. If you have a young baby and little toddlers, or younger children, that’s always easier.
So, back to the subject at hand; plating. Here’s a practical idea for plating a simple chicken dinner. Let’s say you’ve made a baked or grilled chicken breast, some mashed potatoes, and some roasted vegetables. First, you would spoon the mashed potatoes onto the plate into a circle, slightly off center, and then you would slice the chicken breast, and fan the pieces out over the mash. Then you would place the roasted vegetables leaning against the chicken, or in a neat pile to the side.
Then you would dot or drizzle gravy around the plate. You could do one big circle, you could do a few dots in the open space, or you could pour it over the chicken breasts. Then top it with a small, fresh herb like parsley or rosemary, and wipe the plate’s edges before serving. It’s very simple, but a little bit elevated.
Next, let’s talk about pasta, and how to make your pasta dishes look elegant. Here are some general tips for all pasta dishes – not so much those with bolognese, but for the dishes with a simple sauce or topping. Using a wide, flat plate gives you more space to work with. Generally things like spaghetti and tagliatelle are easy to present, and they work well on a plate. If you’re going to do something like penne or fusilli with those short, small pieces, those are harder to plate well, and they’ll be better in a bowl, perhaps mixed with the sauce or under the sauce. Use a bowl to contain that.
So, let’s talk about spaghetti and tagliatelle. If you take a fork and you twist it after placing it on the plate, it always looks really elegant. If you have a sauce that’s not too wet, you can mix it in with the pasta a little bit, and then twirl it, and it’ll hold that shape. If you have a sauce that’s runnier, then it’s better to put it on the plate, perhaps next to the pasta. You can use it as art.
If you’ve got a pesto, a red pepper or a basil pesto, or anything like that, do a swirl or a swoosh on the side, or mix it into the pasta, and then twist it with the fork like I mentioned. A garnish of something like basil leaves always looks amazing.
When you’re layering your pasta, you can use a big ring mold. Put the pasta underneath, and then the sauce on top like a crown. Again, it depends how liquid it is. If it’s bolognese or something; if it’s not too liquid, then you can do the spaghetti twist with the crown of the bolognese on top. If the sauce is quite liquid, then perhaps mixing it in is better, or as I said, doing the pasta in a bowl. You can use edible flowers on top as well, or toasted seeds or nuts as well as the herbs. The tagliatelle or spaghetti nest and crown is great. Always put a little bit of shaved Parmigiano Reggiano on top.
You can also deconstruct it. You can make the little nest of pasta in the middle of the plate, and surround it with small streaks of different components; your ricotta cheese, your bolognese sauce, et cetera. You can drag a spoonful of bolognese across the plate like a brush stroke, and then put your twirl of tagliatelle or spaghetti over that, with the parmesan on top.
Let’s talk about salad plating. For example, maybe you have pieces of roasted beetroot with a goat’s cheese salad for an appetizer. Cut your red and gold beets into wedges or round pieces. Then use a flat plate, a white one, or maybe a black one to contrast with the color of the beets. A medium sized plate or a wide bowl is good for an appetizer.
Then we have the goats’ cheese. We need to soften it a bit with a fork, and then take a spoonful and spread it on the plate with the back of the spoon, or even with a spatula. You can do a swish or a circle. If it’s very crumbly, you can mix it with a little bit of cream cheese or even regular cream to get a smoother texture.
And then you place – remember the rule of odds – three to five beet pieces around the smear. If you have both colors of beets, you can alternate the red and gold beets. Tilt some of them to create depth. Fresh greens are always lovely, so put a little bunch of micro greens in the center or on top of the beets. You could also add a few crushed nuts. A sauce accent is always nice. You could use a little olive oil and some crushed salt. You can put your sauce into a squeeze bottle, and do the dots or the drizzle. Perhaps you can use balsamic glaze, or any sauce that you might want to add; maybe something like ranch dressing.
Now let’s think about plating soup. Let’s say you have a lovely green broccoli soup or a blended cauliflower soup. A wide, elegant bowl is lovely for this, and then you’ve got lots of space on top to decorate. If you have your green broccoli soup in a low wide bowl, then you can take some cream and drizzle it over or into the soup. You can use olive oil or balsamic reduction to do the same thing. Draw swirls, zigzags, or concentric circles on the surface. A squeeze bottle helps, or a spoon tip, to give you more control. You could also drag a skewer through it afterwards to add to the effect.
You can use a small pile of microgreens, nuts, or croutons in the middle to add to the effect and to the flavor. In creamy tomato soup, you can use a bit of goats’ cheese or even some grated cheddar. If you’re having cauliflower soup, you can put a pile of pancetta or a few seeds in the middle, maybe mustard seeds.
Another way to have soup elegantly is to have it in a jug or a pitcher. Inside your bowl you have a little pile of croutons with microgreens on top, with no soup. Then you pour the soup into the bowl, and it slowly surrounds the croutons in the middle. That’s always very elegant, and the kids find it so exciting to do your soup that way.
Also, with soup, what you could do is have two different colored soups. Say you have a butternut and a beetroot soup, or a broccoli and a cauliflower soup. First, pour the cauliflower soup into the bowl, and then pour a little bit of the broccoli or pea soup to get a green color into the middle of that soup. Then there’ll be a darker color inside the cauliflower soup. You could also put your butternut soup in first, and then a little bit of cauliflower soup in the middle; just two contrasting colors. You could use a skewer to just create some little patterns inside there, but it always looks amazing just to have the two contrasting colors.
Then lastly, let’s think about desserts. The most important thing is the dish you use. A lovely glass dish is very elegant, or any small, delicate dishes that you have, because dessert doesn’t need to be a lot. It just needs to be a suggestion of something yummy; something very tasty, but small. Think small dishes, then. Keep it simple. Two or three elements are enough, so think of the main dessert, a sauce or a fruit, and maybe a garnish. White plating or glass always works well to highlight dessert colors. A wide rim can be decorated – you can decorate it with the sugar dip, as I mentioned in the previous episode.
Focus on balance. You want textures like soft cake or mousse combined with crispness like a cookie or a nut crumble. Use contrasting colors like chocolates with berries, or lemon with green mint. Dessert plates are always amazing with shapes; triangles, circles, squares – contrasting shapes. You can even use cookie cutters for fun shapes.
So, let’s try plating a brownie with berries and some whipped cream. First you would make neat slices or a shape out of the brownie. Before you do that, warm your knife by running it under hot water, and then wipe it dry. That really helps before you slice your brownie.
Place the brownie slightly off center on the plate or in the bowl, not right in the middle. Then you’re going to add some fresh berries beside the brownie. If you don’t have berries, use a spoonful of jam, or drizzle some chocolate or caramel sauce in an elegant zigzag on the plate. Then you’re gonna add your whipped cream, or even ice cream. Use a spoon, or a Ziploc bag with the corner cut off to pipe a little whipped cream on, or put a clean scoop of ice cream using an elegant scoop on top of or next to the brownie.
Then for the garnish, some chopped nuts, some cookie crumble, or some shaved chocolate is divine, and looks amazing. Then you can add a mint leaf and an edible flour or some orange zest on the top for a pop of color. Then you can dust powdered sugar or the icing sugar over with a tiny little sieve. It dusts it over like snow.
Get your children involved in looking at some pictures of how things could be plated. For me, pictures work best, because then I know what I’m aiming for. It doesn’t always turn out like I’m aiming for, but it’s still fun. So, look at some pictures online. Search for something like “spaghetti bolognese”, or “fancy brownie plating”, just to get some ideas. It’s best to plan your plate before you go ahead, so that everybody knows what’s being aimed for, and hopefully it’ll look amazing. I’m sure it’ll taste amazing. Just have fun.
