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. Itprovides 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 chef’s 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.

Chef Sikorski took her first chef position at the Courier Café in Urbana Illinois. After cheffing two years, she went to the Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park and graduated in 1984.
Returning to Chicago, Chef Sikorski worked at a five star restaurant, Le Perroquet, becoming their chef in 1985. She then spent 6 years cooking in France.
Chef Sikorski holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Dominican University, and is a certified executive chef?and culinary educator. She is a member of Seafood Choice Alliance, Ocean Conservatory, and the American Culinary Federation.