Making food delicious to the eye is also part of making it delicious to the palate. When food looks fresh and interesting, it sets our expectations that it will taste that way, too. And expectations help determine what we experience. For an individual trying to eat less, it can help make up for eating less quantity. And for someone with an impaired appetite, it can be the difference between being able to eat at all or not.
A friend's mother, who is a well-known retired nutritionist and cooking teacher in Japan, always said that a meal should include 5 colors. In that way you could make sure to get a good balance of healthy food components. So the beauty of delicious-looking food is not just skin-deep!
I'm not an expert at food presentation, but I care about it when I cook and serve, and I expect you do, too. I've spent some serious time thinking about it recently, trying to organize my thoughts and reinforce my commitment to good presentation, and here's what I've come up with. To me, the key principles center around freshness, variety, and composition.
Food looks best when it appears to have just been picked or prepared. An obvious example is lettuce -- it looks great when it's crisp; it looks sad when it's limp. Similarly, veggies look more appetizing when they're closer to their fresh-picked colors. I may love the taste of green beans cooked until they're a muddy green with onion & a bit of bacon, but I will admit that they're not a treat to look at, even to these Indiana eyes. Beans steamed just until they're tender, however, are delicious to both the eye and the palate.
One of the big keys to a fresh look is moisture or juiciness. Think about two ripe tomatoes -- one glistens as if just picked with dew still on it, the other looks dry and its skin is a little loose. Which looks more delicious? If you cook meat or fish, the same principle applies -- it's most appetizing when it looks juicy. Maybe liquids hit more taste buds and throw off more aroma molecules for our noses, so our experience is that flavor is intensified? Whatever it is, I think, to our brains: Juicy = Fresh = Delicious!
When it's not all the same color, or the same texture, or even the same shape, food looks more interesting. A plate of whole wheat pasta with garlic, onion and parmesan might be good, but it's all pretty much the same color. Consider adding some parsley or colorful lightly sauteed veggies to give it some variety.
Another option is to use a colorful serving dish to set off bland-colored food.
Shape and texture can also add interest. Several years ago I had a wonderful dish of asparagus and snap-peas with fresh dill at The Screen Door restaurant in Portland. Rather than slicing everything into little cylinders, the chef had elected to slice the asparagus and snap-peas on the bias. I don't know if you've ever seen snap peas cut that way, but they're very intriguing looking -- you see the whole structure of the pod and peas in it. To add even more visual interest, the chef had then added some pea shoots, with their leaves and little curving tendrils. It was an amazing dish -- as delicious to look at as to eat!
Sometimes garnishes can be used to add shape and texture. My preference is to only use them when they add to both the taste and the look of a dish; it hurts me to see, for example, beds of lettuce and parsley sprigs just thrown away. At a tiny Japanese restaurant in San Francisco's Japantown, we were served smoked salmon nigiri sushi with a tiny thinly-sliced wedge of lemon topping each piece. It was very beautiful - a small fan of yellow atop the orange salmon on the white rice cake. But moreover, the flavor of lemon with the salmon was exquisite. That remains, in my mind, the example of a perfect garnish.
This is where we really enter the realm of art. The plate or the table or a serving dish is our canvas. For our design elements, there is the food itself, along with any garnishes or sauces and the serving dishes or plates.
If you're a visual artist, then you're way ahead of the game when it comes to composition. Fortunately, for the rest of us, there are various rules of thumb that can be learned and applied; techniques that are typically used in 2-dimensional art but, I think, can apply as well to food presentation.
First there are the design principles that don't tell you how to design, so much as what to shoot for in your composition. Principles like 1) creating a center of interest, 2) striving for harmony and complementary effects, 3) aiming for a unified whole, but with some interesting variation, and 4) using contrasting visuals.
Then there are some principles that can provide real guidance in achieving a pleasing composition. Here are a few that I find helpful:
The rule of thirds. In visual art, the rule of thirds says if you divide your canvas into 9 equal segments via 2 horizontal and 2 vertical lines, then placing the important elements of the picture along those lines or at their intersections will add balance and interest. So, when I plate food, I often consider the plate my canvas and try to arrange the food on it accordingly -- not at the center, not at the very edges, but about a third of the way over and/or across.
Balance. Applying the rule of thirds can put the main subject off-center, creating an interesting asymmetry, but also leaving an empty space on the other side. For balance, include one or more offsetting design elements in that space... another small amount of food, or a garnish, or even some painted strokes of sauce.
The rule of odds. For some reason, human brains like to see an odd number of subjects in an image. So if I'm preparing a plate of food, I'll usually try to arrange it to contain 3 groupings of food, for example a main dish and 2 sides.
Simplification. You've heard the mnemonic KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), right? Well, it applies to food presentation, too. Too much clutter on a plate detracts visually, drawing the eye away from the primary focus. So, use large plates, don't try to crowd too much on each one, and clean off smears and smudges of food before serving.
Bon Appetit!
