To All,
Being an atrocious cook (even animals turn up their noses at some of my dishes), it's always a hassle to figure out what I can bring to a dinner other than black-eyed peas. With the advent of fruit exploring, however, a solution to this chronic problem presents itself--I bring a fruit plate. Here are some of the plates created by the Fruit Explorer in the role of culinary artiste.
The Fruit Explorer came out of the closet with his initial fruit plate for Thanksgiving 2014 at Pepe and Maria's. Since this was my first, I had not yet learned the virtue of simplicity; my fruit plate was so elaborate that I had to provide a map to keep from being pestered with questions about what the various fruits were. (I purchased the platter featured in the first picture at an antique store not far from Pepe and Maria's Lake House about fifteen years ago. Maria galvanized me into buying it when she said that if I didn't buy it, she would.)
My next outing was Neil Night, 2 Dec 2014. Striving for simplicity, I perhaps overdid it when I produced the kiwi plate shown below. I did tart the photo up a bit with tricky lighting. (The kiwis are resting on a plate that is part of a complete set of plates, dessert plates, saucers, and bowls that Mei-Mei that gave me when I moved into my current residence exactly forty years ago.)
Realizing that the pure kiwi plate had overdone the simplicity thing, I created a kiwi and navel orange plate for a dinner hosted by my neighbors Rob and Julee on 12 Dec 2014.
Still striving to find the right balance between simplicity and complexity I took a pomegranate, kiwi, and navel orange plate to Pepe and Maria's for New Years Eve 2014.
To allow a comparison of the nuances of four different oranges--large navel, mandarin, cara cara, and small navel--I provided a citrus taste test plate for puzzle night on 13 Mar 2015 at Pepe and Maria's. The fruit map below provides a guide to the oranges represented. The last picture shows the Fruit Explorer, Mike, and Pepe huddled around the fruit plate. In this last picture, to the right of the fruit plate is the fruit map, which is laid out close by for ready reference. In the foreground is some found art, namely Maria's fruit bowl, which appears in the picture by accident. (These three pictures were taken by Rik.)
Your party tip is in fact a series of tips about preparing and serving a fruit plate.
- Don't decide up front what fruits you want to include. Go to the store and see what looks good.
- Diversify your fruit plate. Not every guest will like every fruit, so give your guests some choice. Also, diversity of fruit gives you more artistic flexibility.
- Put some effort into presentation. Since this is a weak point of mine, I have nothing to say except that effort will be rewarded.
- Keeping in mind that the frame makes the picture, get yourself a nice platter to hold your fruit. Don't just dump the fruit into a dented tin pie pan that originally held a Mrs. Smith's frozen cherry pie.
- Just as Salvador Dali thought that any painting could be improved by adding some ants, I think that any fruit plate can be improved by sprinkling on some blueberries.
- Since your fruit plate is inherently a transient work of art, take a picture of it so that later you will be able to study it, compare it to other fruit plates, and critique it.
- If your fruit plate is at all complicated, prepare a map of the fruit and set it in plain site. This will allow you to avoid being put into a bad mood by having to answer the same questions over and over.
- If you serve your fruit plate before dinner when your guests are ravenous, they will devour it immediately. If you wait until after dinner when they are replete, they will only pick at it.
Rick
