NY Strip with Shredded Brussels Sprouts and Mash Potato

Well tonight's dinner was very similar to my NY Strip post last week, but after some feedback from people on my foodie Facebook page, I had to take another stab at it.  It was a good presentation, but had some people say it looked too crowded.  I have been playing this presentation in my head throughout the day.  I knew I wanted to try to do more of a vertical presentation tonight.

Tonight's dinner featured, NY Strip with a minty chimichurri, mash potatoes, and shredded brussels sprouts.  The garnishes used were balsamic reduction, edible flowers, green onions, roasted radishes, a bundle of chives and glazed carrots and the minty chimichurri.

I had fun with this one since I had a visual in my head of how it was going to look all day in my head.  All I knew is I needed to execute.

First thing was to prepare all the food so when I begin building the plate, I can just focus on that.  The steak was pan seared in olive and butter mix.  The radishes were just quickly pan roasted with salt.  I stir-fried the brussels sprouts with very light seasoning.  The mash potatoes were mashed with milk, butter, onion and garlic.  While I had this all going on, I had my balsamic vinegar reducing.  For the green onions, I peeled it in long strands and soaked it in ice cold water so it would curl.

Building my plate:
I laid down a thin layer of mash potatoes in the middle of the plate and used a ring mold to mold the brussels sprouts.  Then fun part was trying to plate the radishes to the way I had it in my head.  I had quarted them so I would have various shapes on my plate.  To my luck, the radishes did stand vertically.

The balsamic vinegar was placed on the plate in dots and topped with edible flowers.  I love how the balsamic vinegar and the flowers compliment each others colors.  The chimichurri was just added onto the plate for more color.

The moment of truth is to place the pieces of steaks on top of the brussels sprouts without the brussels sprouts spreading all over the plate.  That worked out well!  I topped the steak with the green onions to give it a bit more height.

I sat down and started to take a bite of my food and Crystal asked me what was in the toaster oven.  I was so busy with building my plate that I forgot I had balsamic basil tomatoes in there!  So I had to clean off parts of my plate that I had touched and restarted the presentation.  I was a bit indifferent about adding the tomatoes to the plate, but I did anyways.  I did not know how the tomatoes would look next to everything else that I had used for garnish.  I would love to hear some feedback on which one y'all liked better!

Overall, I was very happy of my plate.  Tonight was more about the presentation since I already made the dish last week.  The plate came out what I had visualized in my head all day today.  Could not have asked for anything more.