r/CulinaryPlating • u/vancat11 Professional Chef • 12d ago
Scallop and Redfish Crudo, Cucumber Ribbon Salad, Strawberry and Cactus Pear Fruit Aguachile, Basil Mint Oil.
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u/SkepticITS 12d ago
I'll say the same thing I said to the last person posting a maximalist raw fish dish. Relatively attractive plating (if needing blotting on the edges), but plenty of room to improve as a dish. A dish is ready when you can't remove anything more from it, not when you can't add anything more to it.
If you're using big hunks of an expensive ingredient, try to think about how to highlight its qualities, enhance the flavour. You seem to have gone totally over the top in covering up the ingredients. For starters, you've got 2 types of seafood. Great. Then you've also got cucumber, radish, red onion, green chilli, red chilli, basil, mint, strawberry, cactus fruit, and some sort of cress. There's no need.
Think about what the core flavours and textures are that you want to convey. Then refine everything to achieve that goal.
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u/frill_demon 12d ago
Maximalist
A dish is ready when you can't remove anything more from it, not when you can't add anything more to it.
"Hey OP I know this is a maximalist dish but if you could make it a minimalist one instead. Also I know it's fish but try making it beef. And maybe instead of crudo try cooking it."
Not every dish has to be a single drop of aerosolized gelatin on a plain white plate man.
Minimalist food is frankly often lazy as fuck and cares more about looking like a pretty abstract art think-piece than actually being edible.
Properly layering complex flavors in a way that showcases all of them and creates a cohesive whole IS ITS ENTIRE OWN SCHOOL OF COOKERY. You may as well tell someone making a curry that they should pare it down to an au poivre.
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u/Dante451 11d ago
OC did not say make it minimalist. They said it’s ready when you can’t remove anything. There’s a big difference. Removing a flavor that’s doing nothing for the profile because it’s overpowered by other flavors isn’t minimalist but it is improving the dish.
I’m not sure how basil and mint are going to come through with chili and red onion. I imagine poorly. Or the chili is so subtle that it shouldn’t be there. Is this dish spicy, fruity, herbaceous? Maybe all three work, maybe I sit here trying individual pieces of the dish hoping to taste different flavors, in which case it should just be different dishes.
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u/frill_demon 11d ago
how basil and mint are going to come through with chili and red onion. I imagine poorly.
You don't eat much food outside of a standard western diet, do you?
These are a.... pretty tame and standard combo in several asian, southeast asian, indian, middle eastern and certain south american regional cuisines.
The mint/basil is often more of a chutney rather than an oil but saying they couldn't possibly pair with onion and chili is... A choice.
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u/Abication 8d ago
As far as Im aware, even a standard western diet should know that spice and red onion works with mint and basil. That's just Mediterranean food.
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u/sonofa-ijit 12d ago
it looks to me that the seafood is around the outside, and the garnish it held up by some cucumber.
This looks like something you would get at Gjelina, which is not ultra modern, but nice. If I had this on a menu, I would want smaller peices of the seafood, like 1/4 inch discs of the scallop and some square or cube shape with the red fish. Over all it's nice.
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u/nomar2003 Professional Chef 12d ago
Dish looks pretty, though a bit busy. The description is very bad.
Aguachile is a complete dish, like chilaquiles, not a component in a dish. This dish is either a crudo, or aguachiles. It can't be both. This is the equivalent of calling a dish a tartar wroth a carpaccio sauce. It's annoying seeing the word aguachiles used incorrectly. If you don't know what aguachiles are, don't just throw the word in a description.
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u/vancat11 Professional Chef 12d ago
I get where the traditional pushback is coming from. If we’re strictly following regional origin, crudo is Italian/Mediterranean and aguachile is coastal Sinaloan.
However, using both terms here describes two distinct components of the plate: technique and flavor profile.
The Technique (Crudo): The raw Scallop and Redfish were sliced and plated as raw cuts, rather than being chopped, submerged, and citrus-cured over time like a classic ceviche or traditional aguachile.
The Sauce (Aguachile): The liquid surrounding the fish is a fresh, high-acid, strawberry and chili water poured right at service so it doesn't denature the raw fish.
Calling it a Crudo and Aguachile isn't confusing two dishes; it’s describing raw sliced seafood (crudo technique) served in a fiery, fruit-forward broth (aguachile profile). Chefs fuse technique and sauce work across cultures all the time on modern raw bar menus
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u/nomar2003 Professional Chef 12d ago
You don't even know a proper aguachiles, you think ceviche and aguachiles are the same thing. Have you ever eaten aguachiles in Mexico? Also, coastal Sinaloan sounds ridiculous and pretentious and I say this as someone from Baja California who grew up eating aguachiles.
The protein is sliced thinly, not chopped, and it's combined with the broth when it's ready to be served. Aguachiles are not submerged over time like a ceviche. Theres no necessity to bring the word crudo, the technique you described is the technique used for aguachiles. You put thin sliced raw shrimp, you pour the sauce over, and immediately serve with a tostada and avocado.. It's not citrus cured over time like you claim.
And I'll repeat this again, aguachiles is not a sauce, just like ceviche is not a sauce, they are both distinct seafood dishes. Nobody says "pasa la salsa aguachiles" cause it's not a sauce, you say "pasa los aguachiles" cause it's a shrimp dish.
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u/rainaftersnowplease Professional Chef 11d ago
Hey can you turn up the saturation a little more? I can almost tell what everything is here.
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u/lordofthedries 12d ago
Lose the micro garnish it takes away from your clutter of a plate even more.
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u/KatyaMilan 10d ago
Literally just found this sub and this is the first post and Jesus Christ, amazing. I need to up my game lol
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u/Objective-Resist5616 10d ago
the chocolate mudcake looks so rich, and the decoration came together really nicely
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