Bring gourmet cuisine to your home and find out what you should bear in mind if you want to arrange amuse-bouches to perfection on spoons as a starter for your menu.
To create great gourmet appetizers, sometimes all you need are small, refined porcelain spoons, which offer enough space to create a lasting impression – not only in terms of taste but also appearance.
As with every dish the taste is paramount, including when served on a spoon. A perfectly crafted spoon boasts a balanced mixture of all taste nuances: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami – each taste needs its counterpart. There should also be a certain amount of sharpness.
The same applies to textures: a delicious appetizer spoon should feature something creamy, something crispy and something crunchy. Potentially also something pickled, fermented, smoked or flambéed. The taste of each ingredient should go with the rest. And above all: the proportions have to be right, so that one element doesn’t overshadow the others. The best way to get the proportions of the individual elements right is by trial and error.
Even more so than on plates, arranging the various elements on spoons calls for plenty of dexterity. In fact, tweezers are even better than fingers when it comes to showcasing fine foods. Other handy accessories for creating attractive dishes include a piping bag and a mini squirt bottle for dispensing just the right amount of stock, dressing or sauce. Feel free to expand your culinary works of art upwards.
Be creative! For example, you could roll up a wafer-thin strip of courgette into a decorative swirl or use a bread chip as a sail. The golden rule is to always make sure that whatever you put on the spoon can be eaten in one bite. No matter how appealing your spoon-art is on the eye, it mustn’t be too big for the mouth.
Whether you serve them as an amusebouche, a small starter or part of a larger buffet, you can make many dishes looks stylish by serving them on spoons. As a rule of thumb, make sure that you have enough spoons for all of your guests. At any rate, arranging food on spoons is an unusual presentation method that offers guests a special gourmet experience and a guaranteed taste explosion.
Spoon-cooking also lends itself perfectly for cooking evenings with friends. Why not make an event out of it? Prepare the ingredients for various spoon dishes with your guests, try out various compositions, experiment with the right proportions and taste the mouthwatering morsel (or rather morsels) at the end.
When arranging a mini dish on a spoon the rules are slightly different than when serving food on plates. The proportions of the individual elements must be carefully chosen so that all of the flavours work well together in one bite.
Even though spoons look so small, arrange the various elements in such a way that they can all be seen. That way, the interplay between the eyes and mouth can work properly and the full flavour can unfold during tasting.
Be bold with your seasoning. After all, each spoon should go off like an unforgettable firework in your mouth.