Picasso on a plate

Dish it UP!

Imagine a half moon. A perfect half-moon shape. Not in the blue sky but on a white plate. Do not clutter the white. Leave the white sky half empty.” In Pluck restaurant of Hotel Pullman, Aerocity, New Delhi, large watermelon slices threw a shadow on the white table and a green chrysanthemum rested in a brown vase. When chef Ajay Anand, culinary director, began his half-moon tale, I thought he was dabbling in magic realism. I was mistaken. He had just begun his ‘Picasso on a Plate’ lesson — how to make food look pretty. The art of food plating.

The right canvas

To become a Picasso in the kitchen, the half moon will have to wait. You first need to set the canvas right. Stick to white for the entire table setting. It is easier to play around with colours on a white background. No floral motifs, no geometry on the dinner plate. For a table of six, choose six plain white dinner plates, 12 bowls and six clear medium-size glasses. Spurn the table cloth. You certainly do not need to hide the table top if you have a wooden, granite or pastel/white sunmica table. Pick a white table cloth only if you have a table made of technicolour sunmica or a vinyl table top (avoid them like plague, please). Say no to plastic table covers and mats. Buy bamboo/straw mats. Or, plain fabric mats. Wooden spoons and forks add an earthy contrast to the white of the crockery. Do not clutter the table with a gigantic flower vase. Leave enough room on the table to pass the dishes around.

Think of knick-knacks that will add beauty to the served food. Think of them as accessories to complete a look. Anand has a one-word mantra: Recycle. “Don’t buy things needlessly,” he says. “Don’t create crockery cabinet chaos by buying a million trays and platters. Look around, pick up a variety of items and improvise. And remember to Recycle.” Once, Anand picked up a discarded tree stump, had it sawn off by a carpenter to 1.5 inch thickness, got it food-grade glazed and lo! A fritter-platter was ready. (Be careful with glazing, though. All food-grade glazers have to provide a certificate.) Next, he walked into a marble/slate store and turned an unused 10 x 3-inch slate piece into a platter to serve starters.

Do not throw away small glass bottles of jam, honey or other condiments. Use the smaller ones to serve chutneys, dips and sauces. The medium-sized ones can be metamorphosed into dessert servers. Set the custard in a used honey jar. Serve fried garlic or chilli oil in recycled mint boxes. Place forks, spoons and knives in an ancient brass glass that your grandmother had left behind. Turn pretty floor tiles into coasters for hot serving bowls. A dhobi’s old-fashioned iron can look pretty with sizzling paneer/chicken tikka in it. The tea creamer container can be reused as a gravy boat. To perfect the art of food plating, all you need is imagination. Not just to make food look attractive, but also to reuse everyday things creatively.

Use your imagination

With the setting and the accessories ready, it is time to think of the half-moon. Here, we are talking of an Indian meal with rice and gravy dishes. Arrange steamed rice as a half-moon to give enough space on the plate for the guest to mix the side dishes to his taste. To make it easier, neatly top rice with pieces of meat or chicken and let the gravy boat sit on the side.

Rice can be served in different ways. Buy moulds or use the everyday steel katoris (bowls) to serve rice. Layering is in. Layer the rice and garnish it. Think beyond the clichéd chopped coriander garnish. Try fried onions. Julienned ginger. A dash of chilli oil. A rose made out of radish or carrot.

Colourful starters can whet the appetite. If you are serving, miniature idlis, add colour to the batter. Use a paste of peas for green, boiled/puréed carrots for orange or beetroot for shades of red. Lay them on a slate platter and serve the chutney in a mason jar. For khandvi, squeeze mayo blobs and top them with pomegranate seeds. Serve a stack of lamb chops with two tiny phlox. Remember, not every flower is edible. Pair food and flowers well — freeze geraniums in ice cubes, add primrose to salad, throw peonies into lemonades, garnish open sandwiches with nasturtiums, and use dandelion petals like confetti over the rice.

I was listening intently to Anand as he rolled the khandvi, squeezed mayo dots along the borders of the plate and sprinkled pomegranate seeds. A few sprigs of dill and a handful of purple flowers turned an ordinary khandvi into a pretty thing. My lesson concluded with golgappa served on square slate pieces and imitation caviar in a round reused box.

At Pluck, I understood that art can actually be served on a platter.