The Onion-Cutting Ninja's Secret Crush

18 To Guide the Eye

"The last dish that is left is the coconut milk jellies. You have probably seen these before. So you will also know that they are just as plain in appearance as the durian pudding. In fact, since they are white they might seem even more unassuming at first glance. So I think that it would be nice to add a bit of color."

He turned around, opened the fridge, and took out yet another tray. The jelly was spread out in one layer, not yet cut into pieces. Xiao Ming put it down on the table and gave Li Shui a second to give the audience a better view before he started to explain his thoughts.

"So, these coconut milk jellies still have to be cut into their final form before we can arrange them. My idea for this part is to do several different arrangements to give you an idea of just how varied your options are. You should keep in mind though that even if I demonstrate several methods to go about this, they will never be the only ones. There might be some go-to options for the plating of dishes but that doesn't mean that you can't try new options. In my eyes, the plating is one of the places where you can really use your creativity to its fullest."

Over on the other channel, Si Shi Wu nodded once again. "I really like this idea of his as well. It gives a good overview but still encourages everyone to come up with their own ideas. I wonder what exactly he is going to show."

He fell quiet and just watched as Xiao Ming picked up a knife and started to cut the jelly and finally transferred the pieces over to a couple of smaller plates that he had already put to the side before.

The plates in question were rather plain, of a slightly darker color but without any further pattern. Motioning at them, Xiao Ming went on to explain. "For this, I'm going to choose slightly darker plates because the color contrasts nicely with the white jellies.

"Now, I've cut the jellies in a diamond shape. For the first plate, I think it would look quite nice to make a bigger shape out of them. For example, we could place them in a way so that the smaller diamonds will make up one big diamond." He picked up four of the jellies and put them on the first plate.

Li Shui immediately zoomed in, giving the audience a better look.

"Now, if we go about it this way, the jellies are rather close together. A viewer might pay more attention to the whole shape rather than the individual parts. If you want to put more emphasis on the individual pieces, you could put them further apart. This way, there also won't be such a heavy focus on the center of the plate." Once again, Xiao Ming demonstrated what he meant by putting four of the jellies on the second plate.

"While the arrangement on the first plate makes up a new shape and focuses on the middle and the second one looks a bit arbitrary in where the jellies are placed, you could also play around with direction. For example, if your plate is a rectangle, you could place them in a straight line from one side to the other or even organize them around the middle axis by putting them alternatingly a little more to one side or the other."

He pulled the last two plates toward him and then motioned at the middle. "I'm not going to measure exactly where the middle is and will just eyeball it." Saying so, he picked up the first jelly piece and then placed it toward the top of the plate, roughly in the middle. Then, he first placed the other jellies on that plate in a straight line before switching to the other plate and following the steps he had just talked about.

Li Shui zoomed in on the two plates one after the other and then zoomed out again, giving the audience an overview of the four ways that Xiao Ming had suggested.

"Well, these are just four ways that I have come up with to arrange these jellies. Other than this, you could naturally also stack them up similar to how we have done it with the deep-fried milk. For that, I probably wouldn't cut them into a diamond shape though because it will not be as stable as it could be if you used rectangles or maybe small dice."