Cooking to the Image: A Plating Handbook [Paperback]

Plating exposes a chef's deepest beliefs about what food is, and how food should be. This book provides the prerequisites to cultivating a professional viewpoint, to investigate these deeper meanings, by considering the different ways a chef looks at food. The goal of the text is to provide a map of how a chef creates a plate of food by considering common questions such as: Where in the menu is this food item to be placed? And how will it be served? Structured as a design process, this book outlines how personal creativity and professional traditions fuse to create successful plated presentations of food.PREFACE ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiv

PROLOGUE xvi

1 YOUR FIELD OF VISION 1

Seeing Is Believing 1

An Educated Viewpoint 3

Aesthetics: Art versus Craft 4

Artistic Cookery 7

A Quick Glance 8

Queries and Inquiries 9

Citation and Reference Materials 10

2 THE PLATE IN CONTEXT 11

Repertoire 11

Finding a Focus 12

Sequencing Foods 13

Menu Research 15

Reading a Menu 16

Creativity and Tradition 19

Queries and Inquiries 20

Citation and Reference Materials 21

3 FRAMING CULINARY ART 22

culinary Art history 23

Pre-Plate culinary Art history: The Room Frame 23

Pre-Plate culinary Art history: The Table Frame 24

Moving toward the Plate: The Platter Frame in culinary Art history 27

Queries and Inquiries 31

Citation and Reference Materials 32

4 PLATTER TO PLATE: CLASSICAL STYLE 34

Background 34