Being someone who loves to have things look good though I pride myself on creating attractive presentations for my food. Today I’ll try to explain how I create one of my favorite garnishes – a spring onion.

The process is quite simple if you’ve ever taken a ribbon for a present and made it curl. It’s the same concept.

First, take a spring onion and cut down the center of it’s stalk, making the outside layers split. Just take it down half way or so.

Then, take the back end of the knife and run it up the inside of the cut layer, from the bottom to the top. You’re going to be rubbing the stalk with a finger on the outside and the knife edge on the inside. Move steadily and gently.

As you let go, coming up off the top of the onion, it should curl up. Practice and you’ll get it.

Then, take your creation and let it sit in a bowl of cold water. Place a few ice cubes in the water. This will keep the onion fresh until you’re ready to place it on your plate.

When you are ready, take the time to arrange the food and allow the garnish to frame or support the great tasting meal you’ve created. I swear good looking food always tastes better.

A great site to learn more about fruit and vegetable carving is www.simply-thai.com. They talk about a lot of the traditional ways to carve, but I enjoy creating as I go.

Many people will think that carving fruit takes a ton of time, but that really is not the case. Don’t carve every single piece because then no one will be willing to eat it. Instead carve just a handful of decorative pieces and cut the rest as you would in any case.

Here I show how you can take an onion, which was an ingredient in the curry I was serving, and turn it into a flower. Sure, the first couple of times you attempt to do this it will take a while. But pretty soon, it’ll only add a couple of minutes to your preparation time and it’ll be a world of difference in your presentation.

Art can be anywhere. Even in an onion.

Yum.

Pineapples are already one of the most beautiful fruits out there. With their crazy skins and rich deep yellow centers, there is nothing like a pineapple. But carving pineapples can not only help to make them even more interesting on a plate, but they also can be a lot more inviting to eat with a little preparation.

Step 1: Cut the pineapple in half the long way.

Step 2: Cut away the bottom and top of the pineapple. Don’t be afraid to cut a little way in because both the base and the top of pineapples have pretty hard cores so they’re not really good to eat anyways. Also, cut out the core that runs down the center of each of your halves. I like to cut this core out with two cuts so that you end up with a triangle shape.

Step 3: Cut each of your halves in half again. You now have four long pieces of pineapple. Then skin the pineapple and cut away the “eyes” of the pineapple. This is a little difficult and will take some practice. When doing this, work on a bit of a diagonal down the pineapple.

Step 4: Make some decorative cuts lengthwise down the pineapple. In the picture below one slice uses one larger cut down the middle and the other slice has a couple of cuts, adding a little more decoration.

Step 5: Cut up each of your lengths of pineapple into nice bite size pieces and arrange them decoratively on a nice plate.

Step 6: Hold off from eating too many before you can serve them to your guests.

Let me know what you think. Don’t they taste better this way?

Sapparot Aroy.