Food Presentation Secrets: Styling Techniques of Professionals [Hardcover]

 

 

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I bought this book because I wanted to start learning about food presentation. It is one thing to make outstanding dishes, but if you mush everything in the same corner of the plate, it's bound to look terrible, and terrible looking food does not, by any means, look apetizing.

One of the better points of the book, is that it's very well illustrated, to accompagny the clear instructions given to you. It makes understanding everything so much easier.

The book starts by telling you a few basics about food presentation, and what will affect it. It gives a few guidelines for the choice of a serving vessel, some equipment you'll need to achieve the techniques (nothing complicated), they discuss about different table settings and give you a few easy tricks, talk about ligthing, etc.

Each page is constructed in the same layout. You'll have the name of the item on top of the page. Then, the left column will show you what is needed to achieve the technique, suggested presentation and a tip section. Sometimes, you'll also get alternatives to the technique or ingredients used (for exemple, for a purée, they also suggest using potatoes, turnips, broccoli, etc.). On the top right portion of the page you'll find a quick description of the item, along with a small diagram indicating the preparation time, and the difficulty (indicated by chef hats). The space below that is dedicated to the steps of the technique (along with the pictures).

You'll have a few basic sections to choose from for your garnishes and / or presentations, which are: Pastry presentation, Purees and strips, Vegetable garnishes, Fruit garnishes, Baskets, boxes and croutes, Leaf garnishes, Dairy garnishes, Sugar garnishes, Chocolate garnishes. One good thing, is that the index shows a small picture of each technique (simple to spot !) and show the diagrams for time and difficulty with it too. The highest ranking for difficulty is three chef hats. The most common seem to be the intermediate difficulty. Most of the savory dishes garnishes tend to be easier and more forgiving, when the chocolate and caramel ones almost all score the highest difficulty.

For example, something they rate as being one chef hat, are the "vegetables bundles". Basically a long vegetable such as green beans, cut to the same lenght, and linked together in a bunch by something else, like a long herb such as chives.

An item which is classified as being two chef hats, are the "parmesan baskets". Those consists of grating parmesan, making disks with them, to cook. Once the cheese fused together, you have to push the disks in muffin pans, so that they will take on the form of a basket.

An item which is classified as being three chef hats, are "chocolate cups". You have to melt chocolate in order to paint small individual muffin cups, forming chocolate cups to present desserts in.

Some items seem to be a bit repetitive (like parmesan basket, and potato basket), but I liked the book in the end. Showed me some techniques, tricks, and gave me inspiration. It's not Ritz-class garnishes, but so much more than you'll be encountering nowadays. Your guests will be impressed !

I got this book from amazon yesterday, and I've already tried a couple of things from it. The instructions are well-organized, detailed and in a stepwise fashion. Even a complete novice like me was able to create some of the complex-looking items from it.

I can't wait to try out more and more of the ideas presented here.

This book is a must if you want to take your cooking and food presentation from a mindless, mundane task to a creative and fun pursuit.

I should begin by saying that I will probably never try a lot of the techniques in this book; many are more labor intensive than I would wish and a few require equipment (such as a CO2 siphon flask) that I am unlikely to acquire. Still, that fact did not diminish my enjoyment of this very nice little publication. I got a great deal of pleasure just looking at the illustrations and learning about how certain things were accomplished. The book is not lengthy. It covers a handful or two of different techniques each gathered under 9 separate headings and the organization is pretty good. There are plenty of pictures of the step-by-step variety which are very helpful and well-executed. Some larger images, full page or half-page, would have been nice but that is more of a casual observation rather than a serious criticism. Prospective purchasers should perhaps be aware that the focus of the book is very much on French and French Nouvelle-Cuisine. Those interested in Chinese Garnishes, or Japanese food presentation techniques will need to look elsewhere. However, most cooks with wide interests will enjoy this book.

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