Practice Plating

During some preparation times for yesterday's competition; one thing we worked on was plating. Plating sometimes falls under the wayside until you are n the heat of a competition, but it is something that is very important to think about in advance. It is best to have a plan for plating, that way you don't start plating the dish and realize you've run out of room, or you should have placed the sauce on the bottom instead of the top. Practice plates do not need to be done with the actual components. Sometimes it is sufficient to draw or sketch the plates - on paper, or on whiteboards so changes can easily be made. It is also possible to cover a plate with plastic wrap and draw on it with sharpies. 

However, it is often very helpful to see the plates in 3-D. This can be achieved by using various objects lying around, such as office supplies, but a common practice is also to make things called 'ketchup plates'. Chefs devise plates using random, common condiments such as ketchup, mustard, stale bread, vegetable scraps, and more to represent the components on their dishes.

Here, we were practicing the dessert plate. We did have the caramel sauce made as we had been practicing it, and we did have some strawberries, but we didn't have any of our other components. We ended up using random bread pieces and such we found near-by. Looks like an award-winning plate, does it not?

Practice Dessert Plate

I've got several competitions coming up, so I have been doing a lot of practicing lately. Planning menus, testing recipes, making practice plates, doing trial runs, and getting critiques from some awesome taste-testers. Here is a plate I did the other day. It wasn't an officially planned menu or anything, just some components I decided to play around with for fun and also to use up some ingredients I had around.
The components are as follows:

• White Chocolate Lava Cake with Blueberry White Chocolate Emulsion Center
• Blueberry White Chocolate Emulsion Sauce
• Raspberry Ricotta Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Swirl
• Nutty Tuile and Tuile Garnish

I've been playing with molten chocolate cakes a lot lately - I prefer dark chocolate, but white chocolate has been lending itself better to other flavors. The blueberry white chocolate emulsion was definitely a delicious hit.