Plating
There are no hard and fast rules to how our meals at Cacio Pepe are to be plated. Plating food is an artistic interpretation, and everyone has a different sense of what looks good to their eye. Below you will find I have laid out some basic guidelines to how we would plate food in the restaurant. This is by no means how you have to plate food every time, but is a good general guideline to how it should work. All of our cooking instructions come with pictures of what we decided to go with in our plating style, but have fun with it, and create your own masterpiece. Also below I have illustrated some tricks of the trade in creating an artistic canvas, showing different methods of placing your puree on the plate. Please feel free to share your pictures, of your fully plated meals, with us on Instagram at #caciopepemeals
- Place your puree on the plate, in whatever you way you see fit. (See puree chart underneath)
- Place down your starch of the plate.
- Next place your vegetables, in any fashion you would like.
4. After you have placed your vegetables, this is when the protein of the plate goes down.
5. And the final touch is the saucing and the garnish for your dish.
Buon Appetito!
Puree Tools
Spoon, palate knife, brush, pastry scraper, paper towel.
Spoon
Dump the puree directly into the centre of the plate, take the back side of a spoon, and starting from the centre of the puree, make circles around until you have the desired size circle.
Spoon
Place a large dollop of puree on the middle left of the plate, put the back side of a spoon at the far left of the puree, and making a semi circle motion, spread the puree out.
Bag
This method is basically using the bag the puree comes in, as a little piping bag. By cutting the very edge of the bag, pipe out the puree into desired sized dollops.
Bag
This is the same method as prior, but instead of different sized dots, we are just using lines, to cover the plate, and add a splash of colour.
Pastry Scraper
Place a large spoonful of puree on the far left side of the plate, as long at the pastry scraper is. Place the scraper at the far left side of the puree, and spread it across the plate.
Palate Knife
This is the exact same method as the previous plate, adding a large spoonful of puree on the far left side of the plate, and dragging it across with the palate knife.
Glass/Pot
This method is a cool artistic approach by pouring your puree into the centre of the plate in a round circle, then stamping a water glass, or pot on top, and pulling it up creating the pattern.
Spoon
This is similar to the second method, where we use a spoon to put down a dollop of puree, while dragging the spoon in a semi circle motion to create the line.
Bag
Here again we use the puree pouch as a tiny pasty bag, by cutting the very corner. Start by making some large swirling motions to make circles around the plate, you can then go back in and add the dots.
Paper Towel
Here is if you want to make straight thin lines, or fine curved lines. by placing a dollop of puree on the plate, and running a paper towel from where it starts, to where you want it to end.
Spoon
Here we use the spoon method, to place 5 dollops of puree on the plate and drag the spoon across them in a small semi circle to make the desired shape.
.
Spoon
This method at Cacio Pepe is known as the hot mess. Place a large dollop of puree in the centre of the plate, and with the back of a spoon, slap it down on the middle of the puree. Viola! A beautiful artistic plate, and a colourful new paint job for your kitchen.