apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Although I am not a big fan, I would use nouveau cuisine as your food inspiration: David Burke with his bubble gum foam, or his bread sticks in mustard oil that look like a honeyed desert. Charlie Trotter with his over top productions or even Thomas Keller with his salmon ice cream cones. All three of these chefs, along with many others, are modernists in terms of cuisine and tend to parallel the design world. Try to keep your ingredients simple yet good and make it all about presentation.

A teacup with a flavored foam soup
An ice cream cone with a scoop of tuna tartare and a dollop of creme fraiche
etc...etc...etc..

this reminds me of some weird cooking show with lisa loeb from a couple of years ago. i only saw one episode, but it happened to feature a really fun idea: savory food made to look like desserts!

i seem to remember they had little lasagna cupcakes topped with pink-tinted ricotta "icing. that might be a little messy as finger food, but maybe mini-meatloafs instead?

hmm, what else...maybe polenta "cookies" iced with colored sea salt, or little "sundaes" with bay scallops dusted with chopped-veggie sprinkles. maybe easier to make would be savory cheese and veggie danishes (tomatoes, yellow peppers, caramelized onions, anything that looks fruity).

good luck! send pictures of the end results!

I like it! Food in disguise. If you are going in this direction you could also do dessert sushi - do a drier/sticky rice pudding (There is a Filipino dish called Suman which is this consistency) wrapped in white soy paper with some mango or raisins or whatever you can come up with. Or a "chocolate fondue" but use mexican Mole sauce and dip chunks of chicken in it.

i just remembered a couple of other good ideas, courtesy of the food network:

-giada delaurentiis' parmesan cookies
-alton brown's savory cheesecake

that dessert sushi idea is great! i'm going to have to give it a try someday.

For the concept of "designing a party" -- check out Martha Stewart Weddings and other "wedding planning" or "party planning" books and magazines.
Clearly, you're doing a wedding, but "designing" an event, which is the same idea.

As for "wonder" -- hmm, that's a tough one. Alice In Wonderland? Cookies/bread shaped like playing cards (Queen of Hearts?)
I like the "disguised food" idea too.

oops, I meant NOT doing a wedding. dang typing.

one of my favorite "disguised" foods i've ever had was a wild mushroom bread pudding
its totally something you could do for a group too
the resto i had it at made them in tiny little aluminum foil muffin-y type things
they've since stopped serving them, and i found one recipe for something similar once on epicurious, but i've never tried to make it myself
maybe this weekend....

as for wonder, when i first read this, i was thinking of shiny food
maybe you could use aspic for some stuff? its wobbly and shiny and in the tomato flavor, its really kinda tasty too, you can dip things into it to make them glossy, maybe a crudite plate, but everything has been coated in aspic??

clotilde over at chocolate & zucchini published a recipe for egg in aspic recently, it was sooo pretty!

Wow - what an assignment! It seems like the first thing you will have to do (and probably are already!) is define what sort of wonder you're trying to evoke. That's a really tough theme, I think, because it's not well-defined - it's a complicated response to any number of varied things. One definition is, "a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable." So you have the challenge of evoking wonder in a large group of people on a small budget, with food and drink you can prepare ahead of time, mostly.

I really like your idea of unexpected or hidden elements. You could play around, too, with opposites - tiny, tiny chocolate truffles with something shocking inside like a wasabi pea; really tall, lengthened pieces of brittle or cookies stuck upright in fruit. Think candy two feet long. (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/photo/231374 ) I love the idea of presentation in teacups because it's going to invoke Alice in Wonderland, even if subliminally. I love the idea of shiny food, too. Also, pairing colors with unexpected tastes. Pierre Herme does some interesting things here - you could check out his books.

Sugar is a cheap element, and if you or someone you know can learn how to make sugar decorations you could do some interesting things...

http://www.375degrees.com/
http://chockylit.blogspot.com/2005/08/recipe-lychee-coconut-cupcakes-with.html

And one last random, rambling thought: if you want something fairy-tale wonder, you can't beat a croquembouche. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/croquembouche/ )

I was reading the letter again and thought that if you were going for the idea of putting food in layers and not knowing what was in them until you ate them, then maybe you could do wrapped food from around the world like empanadas, spring rolls, calzones, won tons, ravioli etc... with surprising fillings. i.e sauteed Soba noodles with shitake mushrooms in the spring rolls, or plantains w/ brown sugar in the wontons. And you could make these ahead of time.

As for serving them, you could also play with the element of surprise (although that might make your meaning of wonder into " I wonder what's in here?" which you may or may not want ;) ) Put them in covered boxes with openings for hands to reach in or something. Or use toys like tinkertoys or lego to construct your serving "plates". In which case it's almost like the wonder of a child.

i thought about this a lot again last night upon getting home from the office, and i hit upon a different kind of wonder

my first idea was wonder as in "awe" but later i began musing on the wonder as in "gee, i wonder whats in there?" and my idea was more simple hidden things

what about: tiny tomatoes stuffed with cheeses, meats, purees (like pesto et al)
cream puffs not stuffed with sweet cream, but maybe with savory things in various flavors
mushrooms, stems removed, with their gill areas filled with some sort of pate type spread

the key to this idea would be to make really common, everyday looking foods, insert a surprising element in them, mix up the element of surprise to keep people coming back for more.

I was thinking, too, of small containers that would hide the food and be a surprise to open. Things like film canisters, or the little bright colored plastic balls that children get from vending machines with rings or stickers inside, plain white cake boxes decorated with lines from poetry or film - stuffed vegetables or candies or petit fours could be hidden inside each, with no clue as to what they are until the person opens it. Or you could write something cryptic and elusive on the box, slyly signaling what's inside...

Also, I do love the Alinea look, with many different ingredients often presented on thin wire skewers. You could do similar things economically with very long quilting pins, and scatter some sort of pincushions around for guests to stick their used pins into.

I'm picturing a long, severe white table with minimal decorations but long rows of small white boxes, big bowls heaped with colorful little plastic containers and platters with bright, skewered fruit/bacon/vegetables/cheese/gummi bears - something offbeat, like Alinea! This would be strange at first, like, where's the food? Then there would be a gradual unwrapping, unfolding, exposure, as people open portions.

What a fun assignment! It's fun to ramble on about it; thanks for bringing it to the kitchen!

For drinks, you could go really old school/magic show and incorporate dry ice in the punch bowl... :-)

great ideas from everyone...here are a few more tidbits for inspiration:

Here are some other ideas:

* jello fruit: http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/jellofruit.html

* faux sushi:
http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/hostesssushi.html
(inspired by Claire Crespo's Secret Life of Food)

* square eggs: I don't know how this would fit in, but I remember a while back I bought my friend an egg cuber to make square hard boiled eggs:
http://www.kitchenfantasy.com/shopping_cart/egg.html

* marzipan can be sculpted into anything

* artful carved garnishes. I know there are a lot of books out there on how to carve interesting garnishes out of fruits and vegetables like this one:
http://www.sitca.net/fruit_and_vegetable_garnish.htm

good luck--keep us posted.

Thank you so much for all the advice...it's really helping me wrap my mind around this monumental project. I especially love the container, faux sushi, and presentation ideas, I think that these would work well with the theme and have a minimal price tag. The party will happen in April, so I have some time to go beg whole foods, sams club, etc.. for ingredient donations. I will make sure to send pictures of the event, too.

Thanks for all the geat ideas...I knew you guys could help me out-
Katie

a friend once made faux sushi with rice crispie treat stuff for the 'rice' and green fruit roll ups for the wrapping (with whatever color candy filling.) i thought it was weird and too sweet, but funny.

was at a wedding last week where the passed out tiny teacups of soups after the ceremony as we made our way to the dinner. very elegant, but fun and unexpected.