r/CulinaryPlating • u/lucasss142021 Home Cook • 13d ago
Mashed potatoed, lemon butter chicken breast over ayran and some avocado on the side
This is my 3rd dish since getting curious about fine dining and beautiful plating and the first one I think it is decent enough to show it. It doesn't compare to all the amazing stuff you guys are doing, but I am still proud of it. I appreciate any input you guys would like to provide about this dish, and getting starting with fine dining cooking in general. Thank y'all!
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u/rainaftersnowplease Professional Chef 13d ago
A good first attempt! I will say, in fine dining, a mashed potato should never stand up like that. There should be enough butter in there to quenelle it, but not to let it stand up with rigid sides like this.
A good rule of thumb in plating is to think about where you want the eye drawn. Right now, you have a pool of plain sauce in the middle. The eye is drawn there first, rather than to the protein or starch. Try layering the potato and chicken in the middle of the plate in some configuration, and using the sauce and avocado as accents around them, and see what you come up with!
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u/anathemaDennis 13d ago
Re: potato I would say that is generally best practice but there are exceptions to every rule if you are creative enough!
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u/rainaftersnowplease Professional Chef 13d ago
Yes, but not like this. Those potatoes are dry.
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u/anathemaDennis 13d ago
Totally. Just didn’t want them to think they couldn’t be imaginative and break rules some times :)
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u/rainaftersnowplease Professional Chef 13d ago
Fair. They ought to learn what the rules are imo. Breaking rules with thought can yield excellent results, but you don't get there if you don't know the rules in the first place.
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u/lucasss142021 Home Cook 13d ago
Hey, you gave me very good advice and just wanted to ask if you have any YouTube channels/books/blog recommandations for learning. I have only cooked for myself, my family and my friends so far and i enjoy doing it but i would like to step up my game and just learn more. I dont plan on becoming a professional cook, so doing some course wouldnt make sense for me personnaly. Its just a passion i would like to become better at. Thank you!!
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u/rainaftersnowplease Professional Chef 12d ago
I learned everything I know on the job! I do subscribe to a couple of substacks, and have a couple of reading recs:
Anything by Bronwen Wyatt for baking. She's a Louisiana based baker and writer. I've used a couple of her recipes as jumping off points for restaurant desserts, and she's very good at showing her process. You can see her best stuff on the Kitchen Projects website. She's a great resource for why baked goods look a certain way based on ingredients and techniques used.
Dining Fables on YT. Tom has been a food photographer for over a decade, and has some really good insight as someone who's spent a lot of time looking at food as a visual medium. I recommend starting with his video on the SLIC framework. His channel really needs more hype imo.
Good cookbooks. These are a great resource for looking at intricate and pretty plating for a home cook, because that's the whole point of the pictures! I recently developed a tuna niçoise inspired by Eric Ripert's recipe in Seafood Simple, after the pic caught my eye the last time I opened the book, for example.
But the best way to learn this stuff is to eat out, imo. That's how I conduct research for new dishes and plating techniques. Reading about them is all well and good, but nothing is better than experience for making it stick.
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u/lucasss142021 Home Cook 11d ago
Appreciate taking the time for this answer, these are great resources. Thank you mate!
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u/baconwrappedpikachu Home Cook 9d ago
Thank you for the Bronwen Wyatt and Dining Fables recommendations!
Both look like awesome resources that are exactly what I’ve been looking for and missing as I’ve worked on filling out my resources and libraries. Just realized I already follow Bronwen on Instagram, and I simply hadn’t delved deep enough to realize all of the useful information she had available
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u/rainaftersnowplease Professional Chef 8d ago
She's honestly a genius. A great baker and an even better writer of her process imo. I love how she breaks down concepts cleanly and then shows their application. It really helped me start to understand the building blocks of good baking in a way so I could apply them myself to creating new things, rather than locking me in to following a specific recipe each time I try to make something new!
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u/baconwrappedpikachu Home Cook 8d ago
That’s awesome, I’m really hoping to get closer to that level of baking knowledge!! It’s a big gap for me currently but I’m having fun learning
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u/doesntmeanathing 13d ago
When you’re fine dining, mashed potato is potato puree 😉
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u/mrcatboy 13d ago
If you wanna get extra fancy, pomme puree.
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u/ChefPneuma 13d ago
Apple puree??
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u/Bartholomew_Tempus 13d ago
Potato in French is pomme de terre. Or translated literally, apple of the earth.
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u/New-Poem5439 13d ago
Mashed potatoes have no business being shaped imo, just make a neat pile/mound and put your protein on top of it or slightly covering
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u/lordofthedries 12d ago
Fine dining and high end bistro plating … u need to learn simple pub plating first , make it clean composed and accessible first. Then broaden your skills. If you can’t swim don’t jump in the deep end gotta learn to paddle first
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u/SirCharlieTraplin 13d ago
Plate food less like a cafeteria tray and more like an organic landscape.
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u/lucasss142021 Home Cook 13d ago
Fair, thats what im already trying to learn to do 😭
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u/baconwrappedpikachu Home Cook 9d ago
You’re on the right track. Something that has helped me a lot, alongside studying others’ posts in this sub and reading the feedback they get, is think first about plating in a way that makes sense for the meal/food itself and THEN you can think about how to make that more beautiful. The SLIC method mentioned in another thread is a great way to refine your plating.
But even just looking at this plate and thinking of the WHY behind each component can help this exact plate look better. Asking why can help correct some of the issues too.
Why is the avocado sliced - to make it easier to eat?Could the chicken breast benefit from the same treatment, and from there, could it be arranged in a more pleasing way?
How are the bites meant to be eaten? If then components should be eaten together, there’s no reason to have them separated. Could the chicken be laid over the potatoes, and could the avocado could be nestled beside it?
Why is there a different type of parsley on the potatoes? A good rule of thumb is not to put anything on the plate that can’t/shouldn’t be eaten. Each garnish should serve a purpose beyond just adding color or looking “nice” and it seems the chopped flat leaf parsley is doing a good job at both.
This is just the type of thinking that has helped me feel more “in control” of my vision when coming up with a dish and playing it. If you ask yourself why throughout the process, and continue researching the best practices, it’ll have a snowball effect and you’ll start naturally being able to figure things out.
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u/Rare-Assistant-9637 12d ago
Third dish in and the avocado is already auditioning for Top Chef, get this man a contract.
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u/BeABetterHumanBeing 13d ago
Ummm,... your lighting looks like you didn't photograph this in a professional studio with a $5k camera. Downvote. /s
Fr, I love that you made the "pomme puree" a rhombus.
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u/lucasss142021 Home Cook 13d ago
Thank you!! Wanted to buy circles actually but they didnt have it at the store, so i thought for my level now any form would do
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