Artistic Fruit Designs Culinary Style

Maybe you are a self-confessed artist with a sharp mind for detail and beauty, but do you consider food preparation an art? Culinary art and skills is not just about making wonderful tasting meals, it also includes the service that is provided by restaurants or possibly if the horrible hospital food we never like to eat. Creating chocolate carvings and ice sculptures is all part of culinary arts.

However it doesn’t stop with just those things. Fruit designs are also part of culinary arts. They have been around for a few centuries and have become famous over the past few years. The use of culinary art in fruit design all started in Thailand and the carvings were limited to just the royal family. It was the chef’s responsibility to make sure that all meals prepared were not just pleasing to the palate, but also to the eye. Fruit and vegetable carvings, the art which is known as “kae-sa-lak” has become popular world over today. Thailand still holds the best of the culinary arts when it comes to fruit designs or so it is believed.

Known world over for its rich culture and arts, Thailand boasts many crafts which include the art of fruit and vegetable carvings. Once restricted solely in the preparation of the royal families meals, it is now used for food offerings to the monks, special occasions like weddings and even for ordinary every day people, and impacting the dining scene all over the world.

The culinary art of fruit designs can be broken into two categories. The categories consisted of working with hard fruits and the second is soft fruits. Hard fruits are used for the intricate design of flowers and animal designs and allows for great detail. Soft fruits are used in the culinary art for fruit designs that do not require a lot of detail, and these fruits are the banana, mangoes, and the papaya. Even though these fruits are used to form less detailed designs, they are more difficult to carve due to their consistency. They tend to get soft or mushy and lose their juices before a shape can be formed and they should require less time for carving into culinary arts of design, but because they require more skill, they cannot be done as fast as the harder fruits. So when it comes to the categories of soft and hard fruits, it takes a more skilled carver to form a fruit design from a soft fruit and make an art form of culinary excellence.

Experts in the culinary art of fruit and vegetable design do not just use the inside to create their design for presentation purposes. The whole vegetable and fruit are used including the peeling or skin. It is used to garnish the dishes and can be just as much an artistic design as the fruit or vegetable itself. Culinary professionals and most of the inhabitants of Thailand don’t require a box full of tools. As a matter of fact, most only need a sharp carving knife to create a life like masterpiece made solely from fruit and vegetables. It is amazing how some people are born with the talent for creating true culinary works of art out of simple fruit. Some attend school to learn how to achieve this talent. What about you?