I have a memory of a Masterchef episode where the standard
stringy contestant was being berated for a lack of attention to detail when it
came to presentation. One could make a number of cruel remarks on the irony of
this coming from two men who are clearly somewhat overly concerned with their
own presentation – with questionable results. I shan’t make any such comments. Cruelty
is deeply unattractive (another lesson learned from TV: would you want to go
out with the nasty commentator on ‘Come Dine With Me’?).
Presentation, then, is something to be reckoned with. And I
agree it’s important - up to a point. It’s what separates home-cooked from
restaurant-eaten. It enhances the whole experience if you can not only see but
also identify the different elements of your meal, and know that they have been
individually and creatively christened by whoever is charged with making the
menus in these places (I wonder if it’s a high or low status job? I wonder if
it could be a permanent job? I wonder if it could be my job). If you are like
me, you lack the impulse or patience to take such extreme care in the
construction of your evening’s edible art.
Attempts are made. Seeds are scattered. Salad leaves (when I
splash out on the bagged salad – happy days!) appropriately plumped. Oils and
sauces careless and carefully drizzled. But I’ve found there are some things
that just cannot be made to look nice. Anything that’s a one-pot-stop, for
example, if it lacks the essential useless herb frond stuck on top. I can’t
quite justify buying quantities of basil, parsley, coriander and mint every
week just so that I might have these
fig-leaves of the dinner plate, and so, the one-pot meals do end up looking
vaguely similar and utterly unsophisticated. Or noodles. Unless your stir-fry
has a green in it, it’s going to look like worms. That’s just what soy sauce
does.
As with so much I am in awe of The Great Ottolenghi in this
respect. They have some real challenges when sorting the photography for their
cookbooks. The inside of a grilled aubergine scraped out and mashed up ain’t
pretty. Even hummus – indistinguishable from drywall – needs help, in spite of
its popularity. Yet page after page featuring such aesthetic underwhelmers as
endive, frittata and brown lentil prompt sighs of longing and a rumbling in the
belly after they’re through with them. If you don’t own their books, it’s worth
a trip to Waterstones as long as you’re going directly on to a hot meal.
But I challenge even the great Yotam to make Savoy cabbage
look good on a plate. With one’s eyes shut, the Savoy is irresistible. One of
The Five, and 80p a pop which will get you six servings. But open up and the
aesthetic hunger vanishes. And it only gets worse the further in you go. There
must be something in our DNA that puts us off eating pale greenish yellowy
things. Same goes for blue soup. Never going to look good.
So then, here’s my attempt. Note: salmon artfully and
diagonally placed on airy bed of fragrant rice; skin has been glazed with a
combo of chilli, garlic, ginger, soy and honey. As I tuck in I close my eyes
and feel a peaceful transcendence and the relief of dinner being satisfactorily
compassed. But then I have to open my eyes. A sullen bank of crinkly
yellow-green stares back.
Sod aesthetics – my five other taste-centres are satisfied.
Happiness is in the pursuit of perfection, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment