Gross!?

Sometimes food combinations just don’t work. Even if the taste is ok, the colors or textures of different foods can make a dish completely unappetizing. I bring this up because I made a dinner last night that tasted good, but looked really strange. I combined scallops, with purple Peruvian potatoes, fish stock, charred leeks, micro greens and caviar to create this:


I was kind of shocked (in a bad way) when I took the first picture, so I tired the dish again without the micro-greens and it looked like this:Not much better. It looks much more like a strange futuristic swamp than something I would put in my mouth. If someone served this to me at a restaurant, even a really good one, I would be a little freaked out, and that is not something that happens easily.

The scallops tasted ok, but this is something I will probably not make again. Perhaps next time I’ll use regularly colored potatoes and not purple ones. I was really hoping to create Thomas Keller’s dish, but have it be cool and purple. The end result was more horrifying and lavender than cool and purple.

I suppose I learned that when you are thinking of assembling a plate, you really need to think artistically. Just because you find a neat ingredient like purple potatoes, doesn’t mean that the food will look good. Colors and shapes are very important. I should have known that in art and on the plate, lavender and brown just don’t mix.


A few quick links:

Spring is in the air and this is a nice short piece on what to look for in the markets.

The Post reports on the not so benign shenanigans of NYC kitchen staffs.

A weird combination, but for some reason, the logic is strangely appealing to me. Then again, I also really like the taste of Pepto Bismol.