Plating

Can anyone teach me how to pull sauces like the ones in the photo? They're quite similar to the ones I've seen in the EMP cookbook and I've never been able to replicate them at home. If there are any general plating tips, I'd love to hear them as well

One that I can contribute from the little time I've spent in a French kitchen is to plate with odd numbers as opposed to even numbers, I've asked the reason for this but they haven't been able to tell me. A google search seems to indicate that even numbers tend to make the viewer try to segment the dish into symmetrical halves and symmetry is 'boring'

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Johan_Edstrom_5586

Great post.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

The sauces looks like they are almost set with something like Metocel and piped.

ren_74229

instead of dropping with the tip of your spoon...drop it with the side as if it was a quenelle. Keep the spoon sideways and pull it to make the tail. The viscosity of the puree determines how much force/speed you need to use.

Lennard__34626

Things that I find useful as well:

Brushes are an interesting way to put a sauce onto a plate. My issue with this is that you rarely ever get much of the sauce to really taste it in the dish, so it's quite an aesthetic thing for me only

Ring moulds are incredible and probably my most used item when plating. Really useful for punching even sized discs as well

I also find that tweezers are crucial when plating with finicky herbs like thyme precise placement onto a plate.

An example of the last two techniques:

Johan_Edstrom_5586

@Ren, thanks!

Johan_Edstrom_5586

I'm really on the edge with brushing, much for the same reason as you @Lennard, you don't taste it.

It also seems to me overly I dunno.... Pointless.

ren_74229

make the sauce really intense, then you can use less of it (brush it).

tweezers aren't used to plate this dish:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42434086@N08/5554722473/in/photolist-9sRpt8-7G24Xr

Johan_Edstrom_5586

@Ren, sure - I get that, I still am on the fence. It is something I've debated before. I think Kimbal Musk was the one that I have seen having the strongest opinion on it

Lennard__34626

@ren in your experience, for the first sauce(yellow one) how fast did the chef pull it?

I like tweezers for the precision and sometimes if you're not careful with your scatter, it can looked clumped together. Of course in a restaurant setting during service where speed is very important, you simply have to train yourself

Brendan_Lee_56950

@lennard with regards to the pulling of the sauce, the speed will be determined by the viscosity of the sauce itself. So for a thicker sauce the sauce will fall off the spoon more slowly so you could draw it like a pencil line and still be ok but with a thinner sauce you will have to work more quickly to keep it uniform and get the desired length.

I like to use tweezers because the tips of most of my fingers have been mangled or cut up in some way that it makes it hard for me to feel whats at the very tip (i.e. tiny herb pieces). Touchscreens also hate my right index finger.

trev_teich

The chestnut puree in this pic is something to learn. Drop the puree on to the plate with the tip of the spoon facing down. Instead of "pulling" the puree "push" away from you. At the end of the line dot the the plate holding the tip of the spoon down.

trev_teich

http://vimeo.com/30188568 At 27 seconds in this EPM cookbook vid you will notice that Chef Humm dose it the same as I was saying but, with one major difference. He moves the sauce towards him. The tip of the spoon is facing the plate. Still think push as you move the sauce towards you.

adey73

Other great videos on that link, thanks!

(is that just maple, salt &pepper on the duck? And what powder they using on the seared foie?)

Matthew_Snyder_68770

@Ren, I stumbled onto that technique a couple months ago. I was home just sort of dorking around with a sauce I made of mustard thinned out with some water, trying different ways of approaching the plate, using different size spoons, different drag 'strokes' (i.e. twisting my wrist while dragging), dragging with different parts of the spoon or with the spoon at different angles, etc. It was a fun afternoon.

trev_teich

What duck and what foie are you talking about?

Lennard__34626

I think we need videos more than anything, allows us to see not only the method of pulling but also the viscosity of the sauce

ren_74229

@Matthew that's the best approach...just keep trying stuff out. Never know how much time you can burn with some ketchup and a spoon/fork/spat etc.

Yitzchok_Bernstein_88575

@Lennard- That Saucing style is all over the "Fat Duck" cook book. You can see Heston do it in many of his videos online. You are essentially putting the sauce spoon down on its side (similar to placing a rocher.) then pulling it.

Lennard__34626

Pretty helpful video I found. Really like the look of the first sauce she plates(thinnest)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_idk-BDeal4

Brendan_Lee_56950

If you browse through this archive http://www.youtube.com/user/wbpstarscom/videos there are hundreds of videos of chef's plating dishes. They're not instructional by any means but give you some nice perspective on how they do things like sauce and garnish and arrange plates.

For example, in the beginning of this video he does a nice drag similar to what you were asking about initially @lennard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2i5_UcCWys

DiggingDogFarm_65362

They do some interesting tricks with these spoons.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2942JmTi4U

Two piece set $19.90 at JB Prince.....

http://www.jbprince.com/utensils/spoondrop-decorating-spoons.asp

~Martin

Thaddeus_37740

From what I observe, photographs of beautifully plated food always look nicer when the brightness of the photo is almost brighter than it is realistically. Could someone kindly share some tips with us on Food Photography.

I understand that is thread isn't the most appropriate of all places to pose this question, but nonetheless I still thought it would be relevant!

Johan_Edstrom_5586

@Thaddeus that is actually a great question!

We had some photo tips coming up way back when but I don't think we've discussed

composition that much.

Thaddeus_37740

Johan Edstrom Yes the way the plates seem to almost glow in the photos look pretty unrealistic to me but it's the reason why the vibrance of the food stands out so much! I usually take all photos of my food simply using an Iphone 5 camera and the results are never as glorious.

Do the others here use the Iphone 5 as well? Or is everyone else using more technically advanced cameras?

DiggingDogFarm_65362

HDR (High-Dynamic-Range) imaging.......

http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdrfood/

http://deviantmonk.com/hdr-food-photography-tutorial/

It's my understanding that HDR can be done with some iPhones.

~Martin

Lennard__34626

HDR images look very 'fake' and cartoony in my opinion. If you want to improve your food photography, I suggest:

1) spend some time researching post processing. You don't have to go overboard, but a certain level of enhancement is great. At the very least you should at least correct the (1) brightness and (2) white balance of your pictures. The easiest way I've found is to use photoshop 'curves', simple hit the curves option and then select the white point on the picture. This tells the program that this point in the photo is supposed to be white, immediately it makes necessary adjustments, most notably to brightness and white balance to correct this. It's not always accurate(you might have to fine tune color balance) but its a great starting point

I generally don't like filters, but if you have brightness and color balance down, then you can start to play with saturation and contrast. These determine how much a picture 'pops', I try not to play around too much this because its easy to go overboard, but this is pretty subjective. Do note that most digital cameras have a certain amount of built in automated post processing, unless you are shooting RAW images

If you don't have photoshop, the best app for photo adjustment on the iPhone is snapseed. Really powerful app and you get to adjust basic stuff like saturation and brightness, as well as cooler stuff like 'ambiance' which I believe affects shadows and highlights

2) you don't need an expensive DSLR, but if you want to improve your food photography drastically, invest in a light setup. This can be as expensive and complicated as an off camera flash shot though a diffusing umbrella, to as simple as buying a lamp that gives you beautiful light and using that to illuminate your photos

3) Take many pictures and angles. If you're home and not pressed for time, take multiple shots so you can select the best looking one. If I'm eating in a restaurant I rarely take more than 3 photos because I personally think its a bit rude so that's a personal constraint, but I go crazy at home, usually anywhere from 6-10 photos of the food I cook so I have multiple angles. My two favorites are the top down angle, and the regular slanted angle as if you were a diner and the dish was placed in front of you

That's all I can think of for now

Lennard__34626

^ always have problems with paragraphing when typing on CS on my phone. Sorry!

DiggingDogFarm_65362

Some HDR looks fake, some not so much.

~Martin

Brendan_Lee_56950

I post-process almost all of my photos through Lightroom. A few clicks and the brightness and shadows are always balanced and I can then highlight maybe a certain hue or saturate the picture with a certain color that is central to the plate.