designing from symbols: the yin-yang

The yin-yang is already a symbol derived from life – following the yearly patterns of the sun and moon – and has an obvious balance to it. When we design things, we want to find a kind of balance to the design as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to talk to you about the yin-yang as the Chinese representation of the celestial universe. I needed an easily recognizable symbol that we can talk about, and we’ll be talking about it from a food design perspective.

sweet strawberry salad with balsamic scaloppini

When I start talking about food, there are two distinctions here: balance in appearance, and balance in flavor. Flavor has all the nuances of a painter’s palette; it’s just that we see all the colors and tones with our tongue rather than our eyes. The methods of design are also similar: choosing colors that harmonize as well as colors that contrast is what will intrigue us and keep us interested.

It’s also a simple way of working with meals – choosing dishes in pairs - with each complementing or contrasting the other. Keeping them separate also takes away the worry of trying to blend complicated flavors. Choosing something with color-contrast as well as flavor-contrast will be sure to get all of your senses going. That’s it for the theory, let’s take a look at some ideas:

Sweet strawberry spinach salad yin-yang-ed with balsamic vinaigrette chicken scaloppini

Salt pork cutlet yin-yang-ed with avocado bean sprout purée and Chinese cabbage

Cucumber cod fillet yin-yang-ed with spicy-hot red bell pepper soup

salty pork with avocado bean sprout purée

Basically, you just want to let yourself be creative; thinking about groups of flavors and colors instead of constraining yourself to the names of vegetables. You might be concerned about melon with lamb, but if you thought about caramelized brown with a deep rich green? You might be afraid to put grapefruit with honeyed chicken, but would it bother you to put sweet with sour? Free your artistic palette as well as your sensory palate. Oh yeah, recipes for the dishes pictured here soon!

simple is most probably best

yeah, it turns out they're not

The old adage “simple is best” is one that chefs and cooks - as well as designers - can often be heard saying, but follow irregularly. I remember many instances of falling into this trap myself. Once I spent all this time working out a new steak sauce, and I was so excited about it that I ended up putting it on thick on some burgers I had just made for some friends. To my horror (although in hindsight, not surprisingly) the reaction ended up being a lackluster, “it’s ok, but I wish I could taste the meat more”. Covering up the main ingredient in the burger – the patty – I’d sort of killed the part that should have been speaking for itself.

Ken over at www.onlyknives.com made this travesty

It’s important to let ingredients that can already talk say their part, and pick out things that help flavors along rather than smothering them out. I think in the current generation we’re all working to get better about this. Fancy techniques and special effects have never been able to beat good solid basics, but it seems like everyone's been realizing that in a big way lately.

Photoshop filters proved this one a long time ago. I’m also pretty sure the Star Wars movies proved it (and a lot of recent movies besides); layer after layer of special effects with less and less meaning behind each one. We all have to ask ourselves – is what I’m doing adding to the situation? Whoa, sounds like one of those motivational speeches.