Appearance isn’t everything, but it sure means a heck of a lot when it comes to food. Presentation can be one of the biggest factors in determining the price of a meal- think about it, are you more likely to feel ripped off by a $10 sandwich that looks like your childhood lunchbox PB&J, or a beautifully arranged, carefully plated one that contains exactly the same ingredients and feels special to eat?

This morning, we started with a class on composed salads. While mixed salads are the typical tossed kind people eat for light lunches or casual dinners, composed ones are what you’ll get when you order an appetizer salad at a nice restaurant. First, the class prepared the mise-en-place for each recipe, then we all got to take a shot at plating the individual salads.

This cabbage, cucumber and watercress salad was difficult to plate because of the goopy, thick, tofu-based garlic and dill dressing. It was good enough that I would have eaten it off a spoon, but my attempts to arrange it artfully failed miserably.

The greens with cucumber ice and raspberry vinaigrette was today’s most unique recipe. That green ball is actually a cucumber “sorbet” with tequila…odd choice for a salad, but on its own it was really good. Of course, the fact that you can taste the tequila way more than the cucumber makes it extra fun.

This “Gado” salad was composed of cabbage, sprouts, cucumber, blanched green beans and a peanut dressing, all topped with fresh peanuts. I thought I did a decent job arranging it, but something still looked off to me. I don’t think I have much of an eye for design, to be honest.

The beet, watercress and endive salad only contained three ingredients and a dressing, so it was easier to figure out. I love the pop of color beets add to salads!

I really loved the celeriac salad- just braised celery root atop Boston lettuce with walnuts. Simple, but it worked.

I helped mise-en-placed the watercress, orange and fennel salad by supreming oranges. We used every part of the fennel in the salads, from the roots to the fronds.

This buckwheat noodle soba salad was the least “salad-y” of the bunch, but people still did a great job of arranging them. Time ran out before I had a chance to try my hand at this!

Personally, I enjoyed arranging the poached chicken and vegetable salad the best. Though chef remarked that my plate was a bit crowded, it was fun having lots of different colors and items to play around with. Using a protein as a centerpiece was also a bit easier than using vegetables, too.

After our lunch break, we came back for round #2 of pretty food: garnishing. Did you know that some upscale restaurants have an entire person devoted to those little things that decorate your plate?

We learned how to make tomato roses:

Mine was okay, but look how beautiful my classmate Jordana’s was!

Lemon crowns and twists:

The crowns are actually really easy to make, yet look impressive.

Sliced strawberries (I love when my dessert plate is garnished with one of these!):

Fleur de lis cucumbers (another one that looks harder than it is):

There were also a few other items that didn’t turn out well enough to photograph, but one of my classmates got everything just about perfect. Talk about attention to detail:

In addition to all of this, we also made some fried garnishes…aka potato chips and “carrot” chips.

These were 100x better than anything I’ve ever had from a bag. Worth the time it takes to do them yourself!

Do you pay attention to the presentation of your food in restaurants? What about at home?