Food, beautiful food: the pros share their secrets on how to make food look as good as it tastes - includes recipes

Vegetarian Times, April, 1995 by Jeannine Johnson Perriseau

FOOD IS A multisensory experience. After all, we feast with our eyes before our taste buds, and the humblest of dishes can take on elegance when stylishly presented and garnished. We're not talking about nouvelle cuisine, which spawned ridiculously minuscule portions artistically arranged on a plate. And we're not talking about the towering stacks, pyramids and arches that sometimes appear before you at chichi restaurants making you think the kitchen employs an architect full-time. Many chefs and food stylists would have you believe that giving a dish a sense of drama for the eyes is a rarified skill. It isn't. Preparing beautiful food is something you can do with ease--given a few hints.

Most professionals agree that food should not look like the chef worked to make it look good (even though he or she might have done just that). "At Chez Panisse, you don't play with food," says Joanne Weir, a former chef at the Berkeley, Calif., restaurant and author of From Tapas to Meze (Crown, 1994). "You want it to look like it just fell off the tree and onto the plate." Compared to the 1980s, when elaboration was the theme in cooking, today's buzzwords are simple and down-to-earth. "Don't make people feel intimidated by what's on the plate," warns Weir. "Food should be approachable."

Cookbook author James McNair does all the food styling and food photography for his acclaimed books, which include Vegetarian Pizza (Chronicle Books, 1994). After styling hundreds of luscious-looking plates, his philosophy on making food look beautiful is straightforward. "Start with simple china in pretty, basic colors, such as white, aqua or natural clay," suggests McNair. "People tend to use overly ornate dishes with lots of design that end up competing with food. Don't pile up a plate with lots of food. I'm not talking about tiny nouvelle cuisine portions, but there's no need to crowd the food. I never use lettuce-lined plates; I want to see the plate."

"Garnish also is extremely important," McNair continues. "My favorite quick-fix garnishes are red, green or yellow ingredients. These colors make food come alive. But the garnish has to make sense, has to relate to the ingredients in the dish." When McNair looks at a plate, his eye is first drawn to color. "I pay more attention to color than texture," he says, "but there has to be a balance between the two." If a dish looks plain, McNair suggests introducing contrast in color and/or texture. Say a recipe calls for cilantro; he recommends scattering some whole leaves around the final dish.

Internationally known author and cooking celebrity Jacques Pepin also emphasizes simplicity. "Food looks good by itself, the less fussy the better," says Pepin. "Vegetarian food, with its emphasis on many different colored vegetables, looks beautiful without lots of contrivance. When food is made to look like a little Japanese garden or anything that it's not meant to be, it appears too touched, too handled, too manipulated, and I don't want to eat it."

Annie Somerville, author of Fields of Greens (Bantam Books, 1993) and chef of the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, pays close attention to creating visual interest with different shapes of cut-up vegetables, especially in dishes like stew or ragout. "We always cut the vegetables into good-sized pieces so people know what they're eating and so each vegetable stands out among all the others." In salads, for which the restaurant also is well-known, Somerville goes for combining dense and light textures (potatoes and onions mixed with escarole) and vivid color contrasts among the greens. For garnishes, she relies on what's in season: lacy fennel tops, lush cilantro or Italian parsley sprigs on main dishes; flowering rosemary branches and rose geraniums on desserts.

Somerville says that making food look beautiful is not always as easy as restaurants make it seem. "One cannot be complacent," she explains. "I see new standards set every day; they aren't always ones I aspire to, but I pay attention to them. I have to be vigilant in every step, paying attention to each and every dish that leaves the kitchen."

Carol Cole understands that vigilance. As a food stylist she is always creating new looks for food; witness her works in Hugh Carpenter and Teri Sandison's latest book Fusion Food Cookbook (Artisan, 1994). "The first thing I look at is appetite appeal," says Cole, whose job is to make readers want to cook the dishes photographed. "It's the little things, such as red pepper flakes or a sprinkling of fresh chopped Italian parsley, that give a dish appetite appeal. The simpler the better." Cole likes to work with one palette of color in dishes and accessories, and prefers whites, creams, greens and yellows over dark colors or any dish with an intricate pattern. "Heavy patterns are too distracting," she says. "When it comes to desserts, people love to have their breath taken away with a tiered chocolate fantasy creation, but for food, I prefer a natural look--nothing that appears overworked."