Eating With Your Eyes

Featured Pro: Curtis Stone
Category: Cooking
Time: 2:27


CURTIS STONE: To me it’s the little things in life, those small details, that makes us a huge difference. And you’ll see what I’m talking about in the kitchen with my next GMC Trade Secret. I’m Curtis Stone. Come on inside.

Have you ever heard the expression eating with your eyes? It’s really true. And if you make something look beautiful, it’ll taste better as well.

Now, I know we’re all in a rush when we get home from work, and the last thing you want to do is fuss around a plate and spend too much time over it. But it’s not necessary. You just need a couple of little tools and it can make life a lot easier.

Here I’ve got two things I’m going to show you. This is a ring mold. And this is a squeezy bottle. These two little implements are going to make my plate of food look delicious.

Now, down the front here I’ve got a Cobb salad. So think about it. We all eat them. We all love them. You can put any ingredients you want into them.

Now, I’m going to just change something slightly, because over on this side I’ve got all the ingredients that made that salad. I’m going to grab out my salad leaves right here. Okay, so you chop up your salad leaves a little bit finer than normal, pick them back up and throw them straight back into your bowl. Then take some of your dressing, your vinaigrette, and cover it. I’m just going to pick up my lettuce leaves and just pop them right there into the center.

So then pick up your tamper and apply just a little bit of pressure. You don’t want to bruise your leaves, but you just want to pat them down a tiny bit so we get a nice shape. We’ve got some beautiful little tomatoes that I’ve just chopped up really rough, so I’m going to pour those in as well. Just tamper them down, then the avocado. That goes in; same deal – just gently tamper that down.

I’ve got some of these egg whites, egg yolks and bleu cheese. So I’m going to put in my bleu cheese next. Spread that around; a little bit of my egg whites. You take your tamper again, gently squash that down. Then I’m going to save a little bit of the egg yolk for a little garnish which I’ll just set up there on the top; pull that out.

Okay, so you end up with this beautiful-looking salad. Then in comes to play your squeezy bottles. You give it a good squeeze and a drizzle all the way around the outside of your plate. You can do this with any sort of sauce, dressing, vinaigrette. Beautiful. Lovely. A couple of pieces of bacon set off the front. I’ll tell you which salad I’d rather eat.

I’m Curtis Stone, and that’s your GMC Trade Secret.