Fruit & vegetable carving as... competitive sport?!
- by Diane Rixon (RSS feed) on May 14th 2008 8:00PM
- Filed under food, art, crafts, gardening and plants
Think you're handy with a knife? Fiercely competitive? Sounds like you'd fit right in with this crowd of entrants in the Salon of Culinary Art, an annual fruit and vegetable carving competition held in New York. It's sort of like the Olympics...but with lots of produce and sharp cutting implements. And less exposure of gleaming, muscular flesh.
Saxton Freymann's books, especially Play with your Food, helped popularize this hobby/art-form. Freymann is known particularly for his fetching broccoli poodles and Brussels sprouts pigs. That's the kind of cutesie stuff that even I could probably master.
Leaders in the field, however, don't play around with such whimsies. Check out this New York Times slideshow to view the most intricately carved entries in this year's competition. Golden beet butterflies and rearing taro root stallions, anyone?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-15-2008 @ 6:15AM
Thanh T. said...
Cool Food Art…
Carving ice sculptures, fruits, and vegetables is a handle skill to have…especially if you like to entertain guests a lot.
Learning how to carve ice, fruits, and vegetables...is a lot fun. Be careful with those sharp cutting/carving tools.
A lot of great Chefs use fruits and vegetables carvings to make their dishes unique and give a creative plate presentation.
However, in today’s busy restaurants environments, I do not often see it. (Perhaps, fruit and vegetables carvings are mostly use for banquets and buffet settings these days.)
Interesting slideshow and book on food carvings “Play with your Food”
Reply
5-15-2008 @ 9:29AM
Diane Rixon said...
Thanks for your comment, Thanh! It's pretty amazing what they do. I would not have the patience!
Reply
5-16-2008 @ 6:46PM
Anna Sattler said...
Not only would I not have the patience to carve the sculpture, I just don't think I could go without eating it...I love and live on fruits and veggies, though I am not a vegetarian. Gotta have my meat!
BTW, great post Diane!
Reply
7-16-2008 @ 6:46PM
Gary Van Nguyen said...
hi my name is Gary Van Nguyen, I am a culinary student from the Los Angeles Trade-Tech college. This regard is for my benefit on more information upon fruit carving competition. I have been carvign for about 9 months and seeking for experience in competition. If there is any information upon my request please respond.
Reply
8-12-2008 @ 11:48AM
Alfred said...
Excellent grade the close-fitting fruits, he is an art, but as they do it, here you have a page that responds to this question.
He has videoes of once was carved step by step:
http://www.talladofrutasyverduras.net78.net
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