Easy entertaining [antikvár]

INTRODUC Throughout my cooking career I have travelled extensively, worked as a chef in some of the best restaurants in London and Sydney, run my own catering company, set up award-winning restaurants and presented food to celebrities and international royalty. In this time I have picked up many ideas about how food can be presented. I have found that regardless of the style the best tip is to keep it simple, and this is often the way of ensuring beautiful food that you wiU want to eat. In this book I have chosen 30 recipes that I wiU take you through step by step. Each recipe has tips and presentation points that will enable you not only to make restaurant-quality food but to present restaurant-styled dishes in your home for your friends and family. You will be amazed at how simple some of these elegant tips are, yet how easily they wiU transform the food on your plate. Your food and your dinner parties will be the talk of the town and soon your guests will be asking 'How do you make things look so easy, and what are your top tips for decorating the plate so elegantly?' Good food wiU stimulate all the senses — it is not just the aroma and taste that make us appreciate food. From the very beginning the visual appeal of food draws in the potential diner. Our eyes lock on to how something looks, long before we smell or taste it. Our brains are then activated and we are interested by the stimulating prospect of how good the food will taste. The cake shop or cheese shop window is a perfect example. You are already salivating at the prospect of the good things to come before you've even tried the tasty morsels. The presentation of food goes such a long way towards the overall contentment of the diner. We are like birds and butterflies; we are attracted to bright colours and beautifiil things. This is why overcooked vegetables that have had their pigment leached away are not appetizing, but bright green garden peas and lots of fresh herbs look great on the plate.