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Food Plating

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Re: Food Plating

Postby ZeroCook » Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:40 pm

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Could very well be, Suffs.

Research indicates not just American, but from the South.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hand_pie

Back to the OP. I think really we're partly talking about food presentation on a plate and partly about food industry styling and marketing which encompasses but not only includes plate presentation.

Interesting to note that the Grauniad fruit pies or hand pies or turnovers or whatever image is very styled, that is to say very deliberately fashioned and made to look the way it does. Its the intended deliberate"look". See image credits.

Food styling is primarily about visual and by extension visceral marketing . When we decide to do cheffy plating up at home it comes from the marketing idea of cheffy presentation which began as urban Bourgeois chic in haute cuisine restaurants and went on first to printed media and later to tv and digital to the point where many including myself sometimes feel the need to avail ourselves of haute style when serving up a plate of food. I'm not an extreme style plater but I've become more platey during the pandemic as we're not eating out and I like to add a bit of pizzazz to our endless very good but always at home meals at the moment!


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Re: Food Plating

Postby Amyw » Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:30 pm

ZeroCook wrote:.

Just to be clear, are we talking talking about this photo?

Image

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/aug/08/meera-sodha-vegan-recipe-peach-and-strawberry-hand-pies




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I do think it’s an awful photo . Would have been much more effective with a close up of a pie cut in half so you can see the filling .

I do like well presented food and think you do eat with your eyes . Even if I’m making a salad for myself , I like it to look nice and think it helps enhance the pleasure of eating . I really enjoy baking too and love making a beautiful looking cake or cheesecake

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Re: Food Plating

Postby karadekoolaid » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:01 pm

Totally agree, Amy. One pie with a crack in it, another with the filling leaking out and a scrappy-looking piece of oven paper which is not even straight. I´d be happy to see that on Kitchen Nightmares (as an example of what not to do, but this is an ´igh class international newspaper. I wouldn´t expect something as sloppy even from the Sun.

As for the creeping Americanisms (yep, they happen, and I´m probably one of the biggest offenders because that´s the common English over here) - what about "Hash Browns" for a full English, then? :gonzo

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Re: Food Plating

Postby Stokey Sue » Mon Aug 10, 2020 12:42 am

To me “hash brown” is different because we imported the name attached to a food we didn’t already have, like brownie or jambalaya

Whether it belongs in an English breakfast is a whole different argument :lol:

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Re: Food Plating

Postby jeral » Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:50 pm

With pasty or turnover making, one's biggest nightmare is the filling leaking out, so arguably the recipe needs tweaking rather than alternatively featuring only the pies that turned out best.

On plating, I don't like mash being dolloped onto a plate. It must be a hangover from school dinners as it's not the mash but the act of it being doled out that seems to unsettle me.

I suppose hash browns are very sensible actually since they keep hash tidy and easy to portion. Our version would normally have e.g. corned beef, smokey bacon or suchlike added. Strangely, I don't mind that being untidy. The spud in bought hash browns is undercooked for me.

What do you all think about serving e.g. chips or whatever in a ramekin on the plate so the content doesn't mix with what's sitting on the plate? On the one hand, good; on the other, should it be being served if it doesn't mix with what's on the plate?

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Re: Food Plating

Postby Earthmaiden » Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:32 pm

At school, mashed potato was served using an ice cream scoop so that one got a perfect half circle. I thought it looked lovely.

I think that the things that many places call hash browns (like the ones sold in Macdonalds) are an abomination, always with lumpy potato oozing with fat. Proper hash browns are probably what we might call rosti, beautifully fried with crispy bits and not greasy. I would far rather have an untidy pile of that on my plate.

Chips are always a treat and can be made to go with anything 8-) . I rather like them served separately, you can then choose how you want to eat (or maybe share) them. I do think they go well with salady things and in that case it is rather nice to have them separate.

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Re: Food Plating

Postby Amyw » Mon Aug 10, 2020 6:53 pm

I like chips and salad too . My dad always used to make us salad , cold roast chicken and piping hot deep fried chips on a Saturday lunchtime .

Hash browns are OK but most shop bought ones are pretty meh. We have a bookshop cum cafe in town that do homemade potato Rossi with their breakfast , which are gorgeous .

I do like sauces served in a separate gravy/sauce boat so you can control how much you want and where you want it poured . I hate loads of gravy poured over my roast spuds as they lose their crispness .
I do hate when dishes /plates aren't wiped round the sides before they're served . Little touches such as some croutons or swirl of cream in a bowl of soup make the world of difference and just show a little more care and thought has gone into the whole thing

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Re: Food Plating

Postby Lusciouslush » Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:42 pm

Earthmaiden wrote:At school, mashed potato was served using an ice cream scoop so that one got a perfect half circle. I thought it looked lovely.


you must have gone to the same school as me then EM.......!

I definitely fall into the 'eat with your eyes' category jumbled up plates are just not right or attractive - it extends to the dish it is served on for me too - must be white fine bone china - every time, every meal, always - just how I have always liked it!

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Re: Food Plating

Postby Stokey Sue » Mon Aug 10, 2020 9:03 pm

Wasn't all mashed potato outside the home served with an ice cream scoop from about 1950 to 1975? :lol:

Not just schools, hospitals, works canteens, Lyons Corner Houses

Actually Northwick Park Hospital were still doing it quite recently

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Re: Food Plating

Postby karadekoolaid » Fri Aug 14, 2020 1:16 am

I definitely fall into the 'eat with your eyes' category jumbled up plates are just not right or attractive - it extends to the dish it is served on for me too - must be white fine bone china - every time, every meal, always - just how I have always liked it!


This is what I made for a client a couple of weeks ago. She plated it, not me, and I thought it looked lovely:
Indian lunch.png

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Re: Food Plating

Postby jeral » Fri Aug 14, 2020 3:33 pm

karadekoolaid, Hmm, that's placing of plates. Fully agree on artistic balance. I see easily the order in chaos (or my brain's interpretation):

A closing rectangle of flatbreads, then small plates framing a triangle of round dishes, with two small dip/sauce jugs bridging it and a sauce boat pointing to a crescent of round bowls enticingly close to the dining plates.

Pity I can't taste the food as easily since the joy is really in the eating and it looks like a lot of work went into that little lot and then some.

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Re: Food Plating

Postby karadekoolaid » Fri Aug 14, 2020 8:15 pm

Yes, Jeral - it was pretty hard work because the lady chose two of the most complicated vegetables imaginable: Navratan Korma and Baingan ka Salaan . But I liked how she´d set it all out; very elegant for her dad´s 80th birthday!
I´m no specialist, but when we serve a "curry feast", there are two things I always watch out for. The first is a clean rim to the dish; there HAS to be a rim because filling the dish to the top strikes me as horrible. The second is to try and establish colour contrast. If the plate is purple( like the aubergines) then add a sprig of (green) coriander or a (red) chile, or a slice of tomato. Something to attract people´s attention.
NOTE: the flatbreads were actually naans when I took them out of the oven, but it looks as if she put them upside down! :lol: :lol:

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Re: Food Plating

Postby OneMoreCheekyOne » Fri Aug 14, 2020 9:37 pm

Seatallan wrote:I'm rather glad that the fashion for eating off slates seems to have run its course. I was beginning to find it a trifle annoying. It was OK for some dishes but really didn't work with anything that might run away such as gravy.


For me it is the scrape of cutlery across a slate. Nooooooooooo! We have some beautiful plates from Anthropologie but they have a very rough texture and cutlery makes a godawful screech across them.

I can’t imagine putting an oven tray down on the table to serve from but we often/usually go down the serve yourself from dishes at the table route. This would be what we do for guests or as a family. The only time we plate individually is if we’re cooking for just the two of us and it’s something like steak/fish with a sauce and we want it to look pretty :D

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