OK, I need to amend my answer to add that I’ll use variously sized dishers to place hemispherical servings of X into bowls or onto plates. Smaller ones are also great for portioning sherbet, cookie dough, arancini, dumplings, etc.
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Slightly tangential to plating:
For years and years I’ve allowed my ‘laziness’ impulse to rule, and resisted the ‘mise en place in tiny little bowls’ practice, mostly in the name of avoiding more dishes. But now… I’ve come to love them. Esp for things like stir fries where you simply CANNOT ‘chop as you go’. And my cooking in general has improved noticeably since I started. It’s much less stress inducing than trying to slice up green onions or zest a lemon as a dish is finishing, only to mess it up and end up with overdone pasta or chicken because I can’t chop at professional speed.
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I generally prep everything for dinner around 6pm, after I finish up work, and then I go chill with a drink for an hour or so. Breaking up the process makes it seem much more like a fun thing to do and less like a thing I have to do in order to eat.
And yes, I try to plate attractively, but I don’t use any special tools, unless chopsticks and a napkin are special.
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They work great for burning residue off mesh screens for dry herb vaporizers. Just sayin’… hypothetically…
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I grew up on the Dungeness coast and have lived 23 years in the land of the blue crab. I cannot say I prefer one over the other, they are quite different. And to get all the meat out of either is a lot of work. If it isn’t, I bet there is a lot of meat left in the crab joints.
I have friends where one mom hails from the bay area and the other from Annapolis. Their kid is bi. He loves both kinds of crabs!
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I do some plating, but my general rule is to never use any garnish that is not an integral part of the dish or a proper accompaniment. Since all our meals include a fermented component, that can be chosen and placed for maximum color and texture balance. But to me, a beautiful plate is empty after the course is consumed. And our typical meal has a center-of-the-plate protein item, a side dish usually containing whole grains and beans, a non-starchy veggie, and fermented foods, we tend to have a lot of small plates with a single item rather than complex plates. So my plating consists most of picking an attractive set of small to medium plates.
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In a restaurant I find it a pain to chase dots of sauce all over a plate to get the sauce onto my food, so I don’t do any such stuff at home. And I definitely don’t mess with tweezers.
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Sounds nice. We eat a lot of fermented foods as well. Recently we are in love with fermented beet hummus.
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this is my kind of plating
(picture not mine)
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Sounds interesting. How do you make it?
I am studiously ignoring the 2 huge heads of nappa in my fridge wanting to grow up into kimchi.
I agree about mise en place. It just logically makes things so much easier. I was pleasantly surprised when I first came across the term. Turns out I’d been doing it all along, and I had learned by example. Win! Plus time for enjoying that glass of wine, instead of swilling it to calm your nerves when the kitchen disaster looms. I didn’t have the luxury of tiny bowls; I just used pieces of kitchen paper.
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I admit I won’t measure out every little bit of spice into individual bowls, but I do put all the ingredients I need on the counter and make sure I have enough of everything before I start. Then I’ll prep the veggies/meat and make sure I have measuring spoons ready for the seasonings, plates for serving and any other utensils needed for the recipe…
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I’ll used tweezers in cake decorating to place little sugar dragees or other small decor just-so.
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Yeah, I don’t measure out the spices; I just have the containers out. I’m so old I’ve kind of got eyeballing that part down pat. But God help me if I can’t find the jar of whatever, so I corral them all first, unless it’s something like salt or my industrial-sized container of oregano that’s front and center anyway.
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Those of us born in the Chesapeake Bay region all have learned to pick crabs as babies … the real skill is consuming a crab feast without cutting yourself on a shell and then avoiding getting Old Bay or JOs into that cut that you didn’t avoid. 
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I love dishes so much … it’s so fun to use them all on occasion!
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Don’t scratch your… well any place!
So I’ve heard …
Sound nice
