Chinese Food Presentation

Food presentation is also a form of expression. Feel kind of sick? The food is probably more plain. Feeling hungry? You can probably see every single colour in the dish. Feeling adventurous? You will see a lot of red from the chili peppers. Food presentation is also one of the very few ways of allowing your imagination to take control; it is a form of art. And this is kind of what my take on food presentation would be. 

In this course, I have learned that Chinese food culture not only emphasizes on the tenderness of the meat, the idea behind the wok, and the search for freshness in ingredients, but also how the dish is presented itself 卖相. In Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure, Dadong is the master chef in one of Beijing’s five star restaurants. Whenever he completes a dish, he doesn’t just simply lay it onto a plate. In fact, he adds flowers, green onions, gold dust, and other accessories to decorate the plate in order to tell a story. In the video we watched specifically, he made a dish called “Sweet and sour duck balls” 酸甜鸭. And looking at the picture below, you can tell that effort is not only put into making the food, but also its presentation. Dadong said that there are ducks, and this is the nest. And falling out of the nest are the "eggs" (duck balls). He said that this tells the story that the spring season is coming. To Dadong, food presentation is a form of story-telling. 

酸甜鸭 This dish is decorated with the nest and some flour-dough ducks.

China use to be an extremely impoverished country, especially after Mao's Great Leap Forward has failed. And now that it is on the rail again and flourishing incredibly and quickly in all fields, I think it is acceptable for them to show some pride; and one way of doing that is through food, food presentation. After the Great Leap Forward, land was destroyed, food was scarce, and millions of people died. It is considered to be one of the worst famines in history. So now that China has enough food for everyone, people "flaunt" what they have now and also to show how far they have come since then. Gradually, this form of expression and art became what we call as Chinese food culture. 

冷面 Cold Noodles

Food presentation can either be the artistic version of "short and sweet," or it can be extravagant (like the "Sweet and sour duck balls"), or it can simple yet time consuming. And by that I mean this porcupine bun (shown below)! Isn't this crazy? Anyone can think of this idea but can ANYone take the time to actually make it? Because of the time that would need to be spent on making this dish, it shows the gravity of food presentation in the Chinese culture. Every country also have their ways of presenting food. But I have yet to see one like the Chinese who devotes into food presentation. To them, it is a ritual, it is holy, and it is sacred. Food presentation insinuates survival. And only those who have suffered the worst would show so much appreciation and thankfulness to the food they have now. 

And a side note, I know that food looking good doesn't have anything to do with what it tastes like. For example, ice cream is just a ball of sugar and milk and sometimes cream. But for some reason, whenever I see something presented well in Chinese food, it just tastes better (for the most part). It tastes more savory, more delicious, and more expensive. Is this something that you would also agree with? I don't know. This is just what my background, my education, and my experiences tell me. 

I hope you all now have a gist of Chinese food presentation! Thank you for reading :).

Evann