Featured Table: Fire and Ice – A fresh take on spicy Indian food
Ashish loves to tweak and update traditional Indian comfort food.
Ashish likes to update traditional home cooked Indian comfort food with ingredients that aren’t typically Indian. Tonight one of the big tweaks was to the traditional Indian dish called Mattar Paneer was using a spicy almond puree as a base instead of a tomato base. To highlight the creativity he puts into updating traditional Indian comfort food we put those updated tastes and combinations in an unexpected setting.
Placing table runners across the table is a visually simpler than place mats at each place. The spaces between the runners signal a place for serving pieces in a table much less chaotic.
Here’s a little tip. Pick a flower color that foreshadows the colors of the coming meal. Tonight’s meal is a shrimp curry rich with the same orange color.
Place a gift of a single feather (sterilized craft store feather of course) at each place setting.
Enjoy the little details.
The soft but tailored table setting here would be nice but somewhat expected for a subtle cleanly styled meal like a seabass, scallops or tuna steak but pairing it with the fiery colors and wild textures of contemporary Indian cooking both the table and the food brings both the table and the food to life.
Ashish describing all the dishes he’s made and how he’s changed them up.
The bright hot colors of the India food are a great contrast to the cool table setting. I always recommend picking flowers that pick up on the color of the food rather than the color of the table setting. Photos by Alice So.
I designed this dessert carrier a couple of years ago. It’s great for presenting the small dishes and plates used for Indian sweets. Photos by Alice So
Debates over carbs…. whatever.
No dinner would be complete without the obligatory selfie!
A nice way to finish the evening.