ONE thing I know is that no matter how healthy a food is, no one will eat it if it doesn’t look appealing. As a dietitian, I often hear this from clients — including caring mums who are trying their best to get their children to eat better but is facing a losing battle from junk food targeted at kids.
On the other side, there are also patients who have to follow special diets and find certain foods cooked by their well-meaning spouses unappealing. This boredom eventually makes it hard for patients to stick to their health resolution.
Don’t be disheartened! Let’s play smart and draw inspiration from food stylists.
Their key role is to make foods look amazing — like what you see in glossy magazines and cook books. Here are some tips on how to make your next nutritious, healthy meal absolutely sizzle off the plate:
PLAY WITH SHAPES
Keep in mind that different sizes and shapes add interest to your dish. For example, a square piece of chicken fillet would look better with side vegetables that are sliced long and thin instead of in large chunks. The contrast in shapes piques one’s curiosity to savour each food on the plate.
I find that using cookie cutters ( I have an assortment of large and small cookie cutters) is a very simple way to create shapes to a variety of foods such as fruit, vegetables and breads.
Involve your children in making the shapes like a hands-on play session. Trust me, they love it and will be more apt to want to eat it since they made it. Picky eaters? Not in my vocabulary!
LAYER ON TEXTURES
Contrasting textures of the food on your plate will heighten their appeal. For example, instead of making a boring-looking bowl of fish porridge with all the ingredients boiled to smithereens, serve it differently. Why not boil the rice into porridge using the fish bones to add flavour to the stock.
Then lightly pan fry the piece of fish fillet to give it a firm, crisp form. Top with matchstick sliced ginger, toasted sesame seeds and Chinese parsley.
And then lightly drizzle the condiments of sesame oil and light soya sauce. The various textures give you a stronger impression of the impending flavours rather then having them lost when they’re all boiled together in the pot.
BRING OUT THE NATURAL COLOURS
Add a sprinkling of baking soda to the boiling water when you blanch your vegetables. This nifty trick helps to make the colours of your blanched vegetables more vibrant. Additional benefit of blanching your vegetable instead of over-cooking them is that you retain more of the water soluble vitamins such as Vitamin C, which is lost when exposed to prolonged heat.
CONSTRAST YOUR COLOURS
Speaking of colours, food stylists always advise to have various colours of different foods in your plate. When the colours contrast, it adds instant interest compared to dishes that are all of similar colour. The added nutritional benefit of having different coloured foods on the plate is that you get a wider variety of antioxidants, which are natural compounds found in plant-based foods such as fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds. So start thinking rainbow the next time you fix yourself a plate of food!
DEPTH AND DIMENSION
Notice that when you see fancy chefs plate a meal, they always stack them to add height. Visually, this gives the meal an interesting form rather then when the foods all lay flat and separately on a plate. Now, you don’t have to be a cordon bleu chef to do that. Just be inspired by their arrangement style.
HERBS, SPICES AND AROMATICS
Using a liberal amount of herbs and spices is a great way to add robust flavours and added nutrition to your cooking. You can also include them as garnish to add visual interest. For example, you can grate or curl some orange or lemon rind, slice up some fresh onion as rings or finely chop some spring onions. The suggestions are limitless.
NATURAL COLOURINGS
There are many foods that you can use as a natural colouring to change the hue of certain foods, to make them look more fun to eat.
For example, you can colour a hard-boiled egg (shell removed) with beet root juice to turn it into a lovely pink hue. Or use saffron or carrot juice to colour your grains. Check out the internet on interesting tutorials on how to make natural food colouring using real foods.
HANDY FOOD GADGETS
Look out for inexpensive, handy kitchen utensils and accessories that you can use to create a multitude of shapes and textures to your foods. For example, a grater can be used to shred and slice.
I personally like using a little scoop to make fruit balls. Earlier I mentioned cookie cutters to cut shapes. Use plastic skewers to decorate chunks of food. There are also gadgets you can use to thinly slice vegetables into noodle-like strands. Trust me, it’s not just children who like these visual surprises. Even adults find it charming. Who can possibly resist cute and healthy?
Indra Balaratnam is a consultant dietitian who believes in simple, practical ways to eating well and living healthy. She can be reached at indra.balaratnam@gmail.com