Su Qingluan’s idea was simple—since it was impossible to improve the overall taste of the dish in a short period of time, she should at least put some thought into its appearance and presentation.
Shopkeeper Liang asked doubtfully, "I've traveled extensively and seen many wealthy and luxurious homes. Their cuisine is exquisite, almost breathtaking. However, the ten or so kitchen assistants at Hongfulou can handle ordinary dishes, but if we have to handle those delicate tasks, I'm afraid..."
Such exquisitely shaped dishes would take an hour or even three to five days to prepare. It was impossible for Shopkeeper Liang's small "Hongfulou" to spend that much money to make a single dish.
After all, not everyone has such superb cooking skills.
What's more, how many people are willing to wait so long for a dish?
After hearing Shopkeeper Liang's concerns, Su Qingluan smiled and said, "Uncle Liang, what are you thinking about? I just asked your chefs in the kitchen to pay a little attention to the presentation of the dishes."
The food that rich people eat is so beautiful that half the plate is filled with food sculptures, but the time and money spent are staggering.
She had observed before that the dishes facing the lobby on the first floor, and even those in the private rooms on the second floor, were more affordable than refined.
Fortunately, Hongfulou has a wide variety of dishes, which are delicious and reasonably priced, and the head chef Xu Yuanwei is a great braised food cook, which has allowed the restaurant to remain standing.
However, it’s not that no one has complained that Hongfulou’s plating is too rough - especially some literati and female diners, many of whom are turned off by this “rough” plating.
Su Qingluan explained, "Everyone has a love for beauty. The art of plating doesn't require any complicated techniques, just a little attention—especially for a restaurant like ours."
As the saying goes, the worse the student is, the greater the room for improvement.
Because Hongfulou basically didn't put much thought into the presentation of the dishes, she only needed to give a little guidance to make the guests feel the hotel's "sincerity".
It was only the middle of the afternoon, and the restaurant had just opened, so there weren't many customers. So, while the kitchen was busy, it wasn't as bustling as it would have been during peak meal times, and was relatively quiet.
Su Qingluan looked at the dishes being prepared and thought that she could use local ingredients and categorize them into different ways to teach them the simpler dish arrangement techniques.
She didn't teach too many techniques, but just three things to pay attention to:
Color matching, arrangement of ingredients, and some simple decorations.
"The simplest thing is color matching!" Su Qingluan picked up the plate of stir-fried chrysanthemums in her hand. "For example, if this kind of stir-fried vegetables is served with just a single piece of lush green, it will look too monotonous. You can choose other ingredients with a distinct color contrast to decorate it!"
"What is 'chromatic aberration'?" someone asked below.
"The bigger the color difference from the original ingredients, the better! For example, if this dark green chrysanthemum is adorned with a few light yellow pine nuts, it will be a perfect finishing touch. However, if you add the equally dark shredded wood ear mushrooms, the effect will be greatly reduced!"
As he spoke, he sprinkled a few pine nuts and shredded wood ear mushrooms on the same plate of stir-fried Chinese spinach, allowing the chefs present to see the comparative effects.
After thinking for a moment, she added, "However, there's a big premise for using ingredients as decoration—you absolutely can't ruin the flavor of the dish itself, otherwise it won't be worth it!"
In fact, these young chefs are not really stupid, but they just don’t usually include “plating” in their plans, so they don’t put any thought into it.
Su Qingluan just gave an example, and they immediately drew inferences from it and soon came up with several similar decoration methods.
For example, add orange wolfberries to the plain yam and pork ribs soup, or add sesame seeds to the spinach salad...
Some chefs were even eager to try these methods on the dishes that were about to be served, but were quickly stopped by Boss Liang.
"Chinese Valentine's Day is in two days. On that day, our Hong Fu Lou will welcome guests with a 'brand new' look!"
"What's more," Su Qingluan continued, "this method alone is too limited to improve the presentation of the dish. There are two simple and easy-to-learn methods later."
As he spoke, he walked around and came to a young chef who was about to coat the ribs with batter after re-frying them and said, "Could you please lend me this plate of ribs?"
Anyway, the young chef was still making the sauce for the batter. With his permission, Su Qingluan skillfully used chopsticks to arrange the originally messy plate of ribs in a circle on the plate, and then placed the extra ones in a second circle, and finally placed the remaining two pieces on the top.
The originally messy ribs immediately turned into a "pagoda", which not only looked more beautiful but also made it look like there were more vegetables.
After demonstrating once and carrying the plate of ribs around the kitchen to ensure that everyone present could see it closely, Su Qingluan returned the plate of ribs to the young chef who made the sauce.
The young chef flipped his wrist, and the ribs were dropped into the pot with a "splash". Then with a stir of the big spoon, the brown sauce instantly covered the entire ribs.
Of course, the ribs returned to their messy state after being put back into the pot.
"This type of plating is very suitable for ingredients of a certain size and shape, such as spare ribs, spring rolls, braised pork with tofu, lotus root..." Su Qingluan gave a few examples. "These are all suitable for this 'layered' arrangement. It is not only beautiful, but also easy to pick up because of the clear layers."
On the contrary, those with messy plating, such as Hong Fu Lou, which has a lot of dishes, usually pile the dishes very high. As a result, because you don't know which piece of food to take out, the ingredients on top will be unstable and fall to the floor and table, which is very unsightly.
The young chefs below nodded one after another, saying that such accidents had happened before. Not only did the food get scattered all over the floor, which was very wasteful, but it also even caused diners to get scalded, and they almost got sued.
Su Qingluan watched the surrounding discussion for a while, and when she saw the noise subsided, she picked up another cucumber and said, "Some dishes are not easy to arrange using the previous two methods - for example, mixed vegetables, they are colorful, and it is difficult to find ingredients with huge color differences, and they don't have any shape. Here, we can use a third method."
As she spoke, she cut the cucumber in her hand into thirds and said, "First, let me teach you a simple way to decorate a plate."
So Su Qingluan first divided the one-third and half cucumbers into two in the middle, then placed the two cucumbers with semicircular cross-sections side by side, cut them into thin slices with a few quick cuts, and then arranged them in an arc facing outwards and arranged them in a circle on the plate, and a "lace" was formed.
"Anything that can be sliced like this can be used as a garnish - it's just that courgettes are cheap, so I use a lot of them."
After Su Qingluan finished speaking, someone asked, "That was just the 'simple' method, what about the 'not simple' method?"
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