FACTORS AFFECTING FOOD DESIGN CONCEPT-HOW-WHAT-WHERE

Factors in Food Design

How, what, where

 These factors have to complement each other. When combined, they will result in excellent food presentation. You have learned two presentation styles and how to maximize your cooking skills and ingredients used. Sometimes you need to play with contrasting colours when presenting complex dishes (more than three main ingredients)

We learned cooking is the art and science of good eating. In addition, it can be defined as the study of food and culture, with a particular focus on gourmet cuisine.

In Indian cuisine, the cultural influence on food is very high, and as Indians, we have to preserve our cultural heritage.

How

This factor defines the material in which you are going to serve the food. It can be any kind of material, such as metal, ceramic, or wood. However, make sure it does not react with the food ingredients.

Plates can come in any shape or size. You should carefully select appropriate plates. The food placed in the plate should get 100 per cent of the attention, so the plate you select should act as a canvas for your food.

For dark-coloured food items, try to choose white plates.For light-coloured food items, you can try coloured or shaded plates. For saucy dishes, try deep plates with larger rims.

Keep one thing in mind: whatever the plate is, it has to be large enough to leave empty space. We strongly suggest you try the same food on different plates to find the best one.

What

The food you place on the plate should get the prime focus, and your plate will support you to get the result.

When you plan your food, it should be balanced in colour, texture, and flavour. These three factors in food are the first we experience through our senses. They have a big impact on presenting the food.

Colour

The colour of the food is the first element that influences our senses. You can include colours by using natural ingredients alone or combining them, including spinach, tomato, turmeric, milk, and squid ink.

Would you hesitate to eat an orange that was purple in colour? You would probably be reluctant. 

People associate certain colours with certain flavours, and the colour of food can influence the perceived flavour in anything from candy to wine. “Natural” foods such as oranges and salmon are sometimes also dyed to mask natural variations in colour.

Colour variation in foods throughout the seasons and the effects of processing and storage often make colour addition commercially advantageous to maintain the colour expected or preferred by the consumer.

Texture

Texture is the combined effect of physical variation from liquid, soft, hard, or brittle states. Texture/body/mouthfeel is a product’s physical and chemical interaction in the mouth, an aspect of food rheology.Texture is a concept used in many areas related to the testing and valuating of foodstuffs, and it is evaluated from initial perception on the palate, to first bite, through mastication to swallowing and aftertaste.Many people will relate texture to a product’s water content, hard or crisp products having lower water content and soft products having intermediate to high water content. You always have the liberty to provide external textures to your dish, if it lacks texture combinations. For example, you can use tuile, parmesan crisp, vegetable crisp, or freeze-dried fruits. In Indian cuisine, we have an amazing range of dishes that vary in texture. In savoury, we have pappadums, kasta rotis, bujias, and more to give a crunchy texture to our meal.

Flavour

Flavour, or aroma, is the factor that makes us feel the food is appetizing. If we preserve the flavour until it gets to the table, we are successful. In Indian cuisine, we have numerous spices that can influence flavour in a food. Use them wisely; some flavours can stop us from eating the food, whereas some can tempt us into having more.

Your personal liking of flavours will not be the same as your guests’, so keep a common flavour balance. If you are trying something new, ask for the opinions of your colleagues and regular guests before putting the dish on the menu.

Flavour is the sensory impression of a food or other substance, and it is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell. The flavour of the food can be altered with natural or artificial flavourings, which affect these senses.Flavouring is defined as a substance that gives another substance flavour, altering its characteristics and causing it to become sweet, sour, tangy, and so on.

The perfect seasoning also enhances the flavour tremendously.

In Chinese cuisine, they season almost all dishes with salt and sugar, which results in bringing up the flavours that stimulate our appetite.

Of the three chemical senses, smell is the main determinant of flavour. While the taste of food is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savoury (umami)—the basic tastes—the smells of a food are potentially limitless. A food’s flavour, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in artificially flavoured jellies, soft drinks, and candies, which, while made of bases with a similar taste, have dramatically different flavours due to the use of different scents or fragrances.

Taste

Taste is one of the five traditional senses and is received through taste buds situated in the mouth and tongue. Taste is perceived as sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and umami.

Umami

This taste makes you feel like licking your finger after a tasty meal. If we identify those mixtures, we can replicate the delicious umami effect in each of our dishes. In Indian food, knowingly or unknowingly, we use lot of umami-rich ingredients.

One kind of taste enhancer, “chat masala,” has a similar effect. That is why our traditional tandoor chefs dust every kebab with chat masala—it makes you want more. Tomato is one of the natural fruits enriched with high umami content, and we use tomatoes in high quantities.

Where

This is the most important factor that will determine how your food is perceived.

You might have come up with a fantastic presentation, excellent food, and a great plate, but all of this will be worthless if you serve the food in a multicoloured discotheque or dimly lit pub.