ReZoom

Take time to really enjoy your next meal by creating a stunning presentation.

As we get along in years, we begin to understand the need to stop and enjoy the small things.

Food is definitely one of these "small things," and any meal can become an enjoyable occasion if you take the time to savor it. The important thing to remember is that while food provides important nutrition, it can also be a very pleasurable experience when we take the time to enjoy it. We don't have to embrace the concept of "fast food."

Slowing Down Without Stressing

Each meal need not be an ordeal that takes hours to prepare, but if you approach your meals as meditation, even a bowl of cereal in the morning can become a pleasant respite from the world.

Part of enjoying a meal is in its presentation. During the 1980s this emphasis on the appearance of food reached ridiculous heights in the nouvelle cuisine days. Chefs speak (not very fondly) of having kitchen staff spend as long as half an hour just plating a dish. The problem with that is by the time the food was delivered it was beautiful – and a little past it's prime.

Then, there was the era of architectural (sometimes called ‘vertical') cuisine. Architectural food is prepared with ingredients arranged to add structure and height.

Many top chefs are putting the breaks on all this and declaring that architectural food is dead. Even the most strident among them agrees, however, that plating is still a major part of haute cuisine, and most will grant that food should not be placed flat on the plate.

Perhaps the best term for the concept we're stressing is sculptural cuisine. Keeping in mind that the idea is to make the food more pleasing to the eye, the idea of food as sculpture is quite, well, appetizing.

In Your Own Kitchen

For the salad pictured here, we used hand selected heirloom tomatoes, feta cheese, pine nuts and dried cranberries. Added color was achieved by including a few mandarin orange slices. All the ingredients were placed on a bed of fresh lettuce from our friend's garden along with some edible flowers.

Mixing colors is the latest trend in nutrition and this salad includes at least three. The idea, however, is not to copy this salad, but rather to search out new ingredients that you love and combine them to form your own culinary art.

It doesn't take a great deal longer to create a dish that pleases all of the senses than it takes to sling a plate of hash — and it makes your life seem so much more memorable. Even the lowly French fry can be presented in a more pleasing way. Try plating your fries in an elegant cup or wine glass, perhaps adding a swirl of kethcup and a folded napkin.

Flourettes of beef are another simple way to dress up a meal. Slice through beef to create small pieces, about 1.5 by 2 inches each, and arrange them as a fan on the plate. In the center of the fan, place some mashed potatoes, or, even better, some mashed sweet potatoes. Make some small carrot sticks and place them in the potatoes like little banners.

For dessert, fresh strawberries or other colorful fruits add beauty and nutrition to any meal. Pile fresh whipped cream on an elegant artisan shortbread, top it with slices of strawberry, perhaps some wild huckleberries or blueberries and you have a real treat.

When you adopt some of the tenets of structural cuisine in preparing your own meals, you might find that mealtime can become a more reflective and pleasant time of the day. Instead of TV dinners by the television or a combo meal from McDonald's – try sculptural cuisine and conversation in the dining room instead.