MensXpert.com - How To Dress A Plate

The sprig of parsley in your bowl of butter chicken, the lemon slice on your martini glass or chocolate shavings on your vanilla sundae, it’s these little additions that make all the difference. You might have cooked a fabulous 3-course meal but if you’re going to dump all the food on to a plate and expect your guest to plunge in it with delightful ecstasy, you couldn’t have got it more wrong. It’s all about presentation!

Here’s how to make food look its best even though you might have got the cooking bit all wrong.

All white

There are plenty of fancy dinner plates being imported from countries like Italy these days, but when it comes to presenting food, nothing flatters it more than a simple white plate. The stark white sans the colored designs brings out the colorful ingredients of the dish, making it more appealing.

Parmesan cheese

Stop using that silly grater to garnish your soup or pasta dishes with cheese that more or less ends up resembling sawdust. Take a vegetable peeler instead and shave off little curlicues (a fancy twist or curl) of parmesan cheese - a hard, dry and sharp Italian cheese made from skim milk used for garnishing.

Herb shower

A bit of green leaves here and there never did anybody any harm. It actually makes the dish look more fresh and flavorsome. Mince a tablespoon’s worth of herbs or if you’ve used some in cooking, keep a little aside and sprinkle these over the plate just before serving - very dramatic against a white plate.

Angle the food

Don’t just lay your food all round the plate. Remember flat is boring. Give it a bit of elevation. If you’ve made mashed potatoes and grilled some pork chops, don’t just lay them side by side. Mound the potatoes a little higher and place one end of the pork chop on the middle of the potato mound. This will prop up the chop on an angle. Place the rest likewise in a semi-circle so that it looks like a flared fan. A little height and angle can go a long way toward a professional-looking presentation.

Clean the plate
Transferring the contents from your cooking pan onto the plate can be a daunting task. If you’ve got some gravy or saucy, it’s bound to splatter around the plate. Right before you head out to place that plate on the table, wipe the edge with a clean dish towel. No, this is not where the red sauce looks pleasingly dramatic when it’s flecking the plate’s edge!