The Notorious NFG

The 90s called and they want their mint back.

At some point last century someone decided that every single restaurant dessert needed to come with a sprig of mint on the plate.

I assume it was a colour thing: a pop of bright green on the plate is a contrast to the darkness of the chocolate cake or the golden crème brûlée. 

But yet….

Does anyone actually eat the mint?  Of course not.  In fact, you pick it off before you pick up your fork.  Why? Because eating it would completely alter the taste of the dish and not in a good way.

Mint isn’t the only offender.  Sad curly parley and dry orange slices on every brunch plate,  spiky rosemary sprigs sticking upright, parsley all over everything. These things have to be removed before you start, get left on the plate, or do absolutely nothing for the flavour of your food. A lot of stuff that that lands on your table at a restaurant is garnished by rote not by flavour; those handfuls of chives thrown on plates and the showers of icing sugar on desserts.

These are “non-functional garnishes” or as any culinary student knows: “no f*cking good”.

So how do you actually choose a garnish for your plate?

A garnish needs to be edible and in some way correlate with the food, either by hinting at the flavours in the dish and/or by providing a texture or flavour enhancement either complementary or contrasting.

A sprinkle of green pumpkin seeds (pepitas) on a squash soup works; the seeds hint at the flavour of the soup, add texture, and provide colour contrast. Puffed rice noodles are a texture and shape companion on a Thai-inspired salad. Bitter cacao nibs contrast texture and flavour with a rich and sweet chocolate cake.  Fresh cilantro freshens a rich coconut curry and even point to the coriander in the masala.

A garnish can also give you visual clues about how to consume the dish.  A lemon wedge on the rim of a glass suggests it should be squeezed into the drink, whereas a lemon wheel suggests it should float.  One allows you to add a punch of acidity, the other to give a more subtle hint of lemon.

Now, anyone who were to deep-dive back into my social media will no doubt find food pics where I have grossly violated these rules.  I freely admit to my mistakes and my ignorance, but in my defense in at least a few of them I was just following the rules set out for me.  Garnishes are an easy way to make food look fancy.

I give a bit of leeway in one area though.  Platters from which diners serve themselves are, in my mind at least, a bit different.  A bit of edible but superfluous decoration on a platter is passable but should be used with a little care. You can bend the rules a little, but you ought to know the rules first.

The swooshes and splatters of plating trends may come and go but edible and delicious never go out of style.

And the cake above? A semolina cake flavoured with orange zest, orange blossom, and coconut. It wasn’t that great so I won’t recommend the recipe. But the garnish? The coconut worked and the almond slivers added a little crunch. The blueberries added a needed hint of acidity and made a nice colour pop, but didn’t match the flavours. A slice of candied citrus peel next time perhaps? And the mint? Notoriously bad and almost always wrong.