For anyone who cooks often, chances are you’ve gone beyond perfecting your recipes and have played around with food presentation, trying to find ways to make your dishes visually appealing, particularly to the world’s pickiest eaters: children. Beyond flavors and aromas, cooking can be a real art and presentation can make all the difference in overall culinary experience, something Ohoud al-Hamed knows too well. This young Saudi Arabian woman has been creating fun and creative plates of food that appeal to kids.
In an interview with Al Arabiya, Ohoud al-Hamed explained that her interest in food art was actually inspired from her childhood, a period in her life when her mother often used art to get the young al-Hamed to eat food she didn’t like at the time such as rice. Her mom’s creativity and patience remained with al-Hamed and the young cook now uses this approach to cook up food kids love.
She explains that the idea for every dish she creates begins with choosing nutritious ingredients that are colorful and fresh, saying, “Food art is not complicated, every housewife can decorate different meals through very simple steps. With cucumbers and tomatoes, we can draw a sun and some trees.”
Earlier on in her efforts, Al-Hamed created food for specialized schools and this is how she started garnering attention. Today, she is working towards getting a contract with one of the country’s most-popular pizza restaurants, and she continuously gets offers from several companies in Saudi Arabia seeking her talent in creating visually appealing dishes for different cuisines.
