Chef Ray Wyatt joins us with a simple Saltimbocca recipe that will taste like you spent hours in the kitchen for your next dinner party.  Chef Ray says when planning your next party think about a few things.  Plating the dish is the most important part – use ice cream scoops and ring forms for presentation.  Create a visual impression on the plate with height.  Think about color and texture when plating.

Tips for enhancing your dinner party experience

• Be prepared, the more that you can do in advance the less pressure you have to do at the party.

• Don’t be over adventurous; worrying about if a dish will turn out adds extra pressure.

• Clean as you go, mess is stress and being neat and organized will not only make the event go smoother but will also save on those dreaded dishes at the end of the night.

• Have a visual in your head or on paper of what you want the food to look like on the plate or platter

• Think about color, texture and height. Remember you eat with your eyes first. Herbs, salad leaves, diced tomatoes or peppers and even edible flowers go a long way to heightening the look of food.

• Consider portion size, a good balance of flavors is more important than large portion sizes plus an overloaded plate just doesn’t look good

• Ice-cream scoops and ring-forms not only aid in speedy plating of food but also aid in the uniform look and size of each portion (use for mashed potato, wet polenta or anything that will hold its shape!)

• Height!! You will notice a lot of restaurants stack food on top of itself. The purpose of this is to create a visual impression, to allow the diner to get a small amount of each flavor by simply cutting through all of the layers and it gives the illusion of a larger portion size without being too filling

• Relax, have fun and read rule number 1 again!!!