The Importance of Food Garnishes
Well-placed food garnishes can really make the difference when it comes to a dining experience. These days one is much less likely to come across food garnishes in a restaurant or at a dining event than one used to in the old days. Many newer chefs feel that food garnishes are nothing more than an unnecessary embellishment to the eating experience, but if you want to really give your diners a top notch eating experience, you should be sure to include food garnishes.
Garnishes Help Make a Meal Feel Like an Occasion
When you are entertaining guests or just having some close friends over for a brunch, garnishing the plates helps make the visit feel like a special occasion. Even if it is just a regular Saturday afternoon, your guests will feel as if they have experienced something unique if you prepare them a meal complete with specially arranged food garnishes. The garnishes need not be complicated, but if they are well prepared and thoughtful, your diners are sure to feel honored that you took this extra step just for them.
If it is a special occasion, such as your daughter’s graduation from college or a Thanksgiving meal, food garnishes give yet another indication of the unique nature of the occasion. In a sense, a food garnish is that special little touch (like the use of the special China or the lighting of candles) that can indicate this is not just another meal, but also a date to be marked.
Garnishes Help to Highlight Flavors
One of the most important reasons to include garnishes with a meal has to do with flavor. A touch of sweetness—like a curl of orange—can really help bring out the flavors in meats or poultry. Sweetness often goes well with salty delights simply because the contrasts can really awaken the taste buds.
Garnishes Help Make the Plate an Aesthetic Delight
Although it has partly fallen out of favor in recent years, there is a lot one can say for presentation. The plate is to a conscientious and creative chef like a canvas. How you place the items on the plate can give your diners a sense of the care and forethought that you have put into preparing their meals. Garnishes allow you to balance out the main course and they allow you to add color to and otherwise dull plate. Red radishes, yellow banana wheels, and the white and green of apple wedges—you can place all of these in such a way as to create a sense of balance and composition.
Sometimes one of the more thrilling compliments to hear at the dinner table is the joke, “I don’t know whether to eat it or take a picture of it.” Remember that the great dining experience is always more than just ingesting food—it is more than just the taste buds. It is about the smells, the textures, and even the very sight of the arrangement of the food on the plate. Of course, like an ice sculpture or a castle in the sand, it is made not last long—but it is this very ephemeral quality that makes the art of plate arrangement so wonderfully suggestive.
Garnishes Can Add Humor to a Meal
You can also add humor to meal with playful arrangement. A face made from the food is always a favorite for children. If it is near Halloween and you have a daughter that is into the Twilight series, you might use carrots for fangs and apple slices for eyes and give your daughter a little morning breakfast plate that playfully jokes with her obsession while she is back from college for the weekend.
All of these little gifts we give one another are the touches that both make life full and creative and are the reminders that when we eat together we are actually filling not just our stomachs but each other’s hearts.