Cooking to the Image: A Plating Handbook offers readers a fascinating perspective of a culinary Art that demonstrates taste as not simply a means of creating flavor, but also a cultural context larger than the Professional kitchen. It provides future chefs with the prerequisites to cultivate a professional viewpoint of plating by considering the different ways a chef looks at food. Its goal is to provide a map of how a chef creates a plate of food by considering such questions as: Where in the menu is this food item to be placed? What food is selected? How is the food prepared? How will it be served? How is it presented in relationship to other food on the plate? How much will it cost? Plating exposes a chefs deepest beliefs about what food is, and how food should be. Structured as a design process, Cooking to the Image: A Plating Handbook outlines how personal creativity and professional traditions fuse to create successful plated presentations of food.