Sunday, October 21, 2012

The visual side of cooking

Some say that Americans as a people are obsessed with food. We either eat too much junk or we spend too much time planning and making gourmet meals.

I do become obsessed sometimes. I don't know if I can really justify it, but it's one way to express creativity while serving a common need at the same time. 

A beautiful summer salad!
Since being pregnant and having a baby, I've had to have other family members do the cooking quite frequently (dinner time= fussy time!). I've been spoiled in a way, but I've also missed my kitchen experiments. So I look for ways to either make simple food more special, or to dress up food that's been precooked.

Here are some garnish ideas I was looking at. This is going to sound like Martha Stewart, but have you noticed how even some chopped green onion makes a bowl of soup look outstanding? I'm inspired by the photo compositions on food blogs such as this one.

Fun food garnishes:

You can also do a search for "plating" to learn how the professionals do it.