Gourmet cuisine is not reserved for a small portion of the population. With a few high-quality ingredients, a good recipe and a dose of artistic inspiration, you too can prepare your dishes like a world-famous gourmet chef and surprise your loved ones. Let's learn how to plate a plate beautifully from some of the most famous chefs in France!
The eye eats too
Don't worry if you can't afford truffles if youno products of animal origineat or your usual cooking skills consist of chopping lettuce, toasting a slice of bread or frying an egg. The following ideas and practical tips apply to every situation and every level of knowledge!
A few tips for beginners
The first thing that every beginner needs to understand is that a recipe does not have to be complex, expensive, or require hours of preparation and work to make the result exquisite. In fact, there are numerous recipes from gourmet cuisine thatin 30 minutesor less can be prepared.
Once the recipe is selected and the ingredients are at hand, you just have to carefully follow the steps of its preparation. Towards the end of the culinary process, you will inevitably ask yourself the question: “How do you properly arrange a plate?”. This is exactly when we come to the rescue with our tips and tricks!
Regardless of the dish, experienced star chefs agree: you should always follow a few “golden rules” when preparing your plate. Below we will try to summarize some of them.
Find the perfect balance between the components
Here, as with every other aspect of life, perfect balance is the first step to success. This means your plate should never be overloaded with food, but it shouldn't look empty either. So, when it comes to serving, you start with the question: How much to serve?
If it is a standard shape plate, it is recommended to leave its outer edge empty. However, today this food styling rule is not 100% mandatory, since more and more often you can see design plates whose free form does not correspond to the proposed idea.
Highlight the main product
Star chef Alain Ducasse relies on oneminimalist menuand prefers to make wild, original cuisine. No complexity or artificiality. He concentrates on the essentials and wants to see this as a kind of provocation. Alain Ducasse is the only chef to run three restaurants with three stars each. So, showcase your main ingredient properly on the plate.
Add color accents!
You must always aim to present an interesting contrast on the plate. There are many ways to do this, but playing with contrasting colors is among the simplest and most attractive ideas that always work flawlessly.
Red, green, yellow or orange foods, often in the form of vegetable side dishes or sauces that accompany meat or another type of main ingredient, are not only very pleasant to look at but are also known for their ability to stimulate the appetite.
Play with texture contrasts
The textures of the ingredients can also be coordinated aesthetically and imaginatively. For example, a fish with crispy skin and a velvety sauce, noble and rich in taste, form a harmonious combination in several respects.
Tips from star chef Emmanuel Renaut
The same applies to the size of the elements that make up your culinary masterpiece and their orientation on the plate. In short, let your imagination run wild and don't be afraid to contrast big and small, vertical and horizontal, soft and hard, light and dark!
Christophe Bacquié: “Forget symmetry!”
Ultimately, if you want to understand how to arrange a plate artfully, you simply have to forget about symmetry and overly neat compositions. Asymmetric shapes, even completely abstract decorations, are welcome if you want to break the stereotypes and stand out from the crowd.
Similarly, if you must serve chicken skewers, meatballs, or shrimp, use an odd number of these components to plate. This will seem much more interesting to your guests, even if only subconsciously.
Inspiration from Eric Frechon – holder of 3 Michelin stars
This appetizer is served in Eric Frechon's restaurant. It's an impeccably presented dish of green asparagus - glazed with hazelnut oil and served with a mixture of truffle mayonnaise, finely chopped egg yolks and egg whites, breadcrumbs, black truffle crumbs and fresh herbs such as coriander and dill. An extremely elegant flavor combination. The egg-truffle-mayo mixture perfectly complements the sweet and grassy asparagus. You can enjoy the asparagus in all its glory.
Alain Passard is voted Chef of the Year 2017 by his colleagues
When Passard removed meat from the menu at his Paris restaurant L'Arpège in 2001, he caused a furore. He has earned three Michelin stars for his exquisitely tender, slow-cooked meat dishes. But “la cuisine animale” no longer inspired him. “There's a creativity with vegetables that you don't have with meat,” he explains. “La cuisine végétale” offers the chef “a lot of surprises, because everything is possible with tomatoes, carrots and eggplant.”
In 2002, he bought a property 220 kilometers from Paris and devoted himself to learning about pioneering agriculture and growing more than 500 varieties of vegetables. He has since bought two more properties in France. Every morning he brings the harvest to Paris for lunch. These “grand cru” vegetables, fruits and herbs require little manipulation in the kitchen.
Once other chefs recognized the importance of the chef's relationship with the land, Passard was labeled a visionary. His reverence for nature and the soil from which his ingredients come and his improvisatory freedom in the kitchen have now become an ideal.
Passard's principles can inspire us too. Seasonality in fruits and vegetables plays an important role in Passard's philosophy. “If you really respect the seasons, it works naturally,” he says of his compositions. What grows together really fits together - this also includes the combination of fruit and vegetables. “I love peaches and red peppers,” he says dreamily. “I love cucumbers and strawberries, zucchini and figs. And my favorite is tomatoes and pears in early September.” Shocking? Just try it out!
