Day 185: An Old Dog Learns New Tricks!

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I absolutely suck at plating.  It's a bummer because normally my food is quite good but you'd never know it by looking at it.

Last week I went through my blog photo album with a friend, who offered up some keen observations about the differences between my plates from the ones eaten at restaurants:

1.  Restaurants often slice the protein into large chunks, which they then stack

2.  Sauces or other ingredients are offered drizzled or sprinkled about the plate

Tonight I incorporated both strategies into my dish and voila!  One of my best plated dishes yet!!

As you can see, our meal featured seared tuna.  All I did was pat it dry, season it on both sides with S&P, and lay it down in hot olive oil in a stainless steel pan.  After a few minutes, I used tongs to pick the steaks up and turn them over.  Remember - proteins like tuna, chicken, and pork chops will always let you know when they are ready for flipping.  They should lift easily from the pan.  If they don't they aren't ready and you shouldn't force them.  If you do, you risk losing a good chunk of them as part stays with the pan when the rest gets forced out.

Once the tuna was ready, you can see that I followed the first part of my friend's advice and cut it into two pieces, which I stacked.  Beautiful.

The bok choy side dish I prepared was based on a Gourmet recipe that I tweaked:

1 lb. bok choy, trimmed and cut horizontally into 1/2 inch slices

1 orange (or red or yellow) bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 T low sodium soy sauce

1 T fish sauce

2 T water

1 T unsalted butter

2 T canola oil

Heat canola oil on medium-high flame until hot.  Add bok choy and pepper and saute for 3 minutes.

Mix soy sauce, fish sauce, and water in a small bowl.  Add the mixture and the butter to the vegetables and saute for another 5 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the veggies and continue to fast simmer the sauce until reduced to half.  Pour sauce over veggies when it's at the desired consistency.

I'll be honest - my husband did not care for the sauce at all.  So, he doused it in hot sauce and then everything seemed to be okay.  I, on the other hand, quite liked it.  Try it and decide for yourself.

Once the side was done and plated, I followed my friend's second piece of advice and scattered toasted sesame seeds about the food and the plate.  They added some visual pizzazz and tasted great, too.  Sesame seeds are good but are even better once toasted - just sprinkle them into a pan, place over medium-low heat, and watch carefully and toss often.

As you can see, I am open to advice and can learn from my mistakes so please feel free to leave any plating or other related topics as a comment!