Tuesday brunch at home — M decided to plate the Mickey Mouse formation today. The lockdown era’s small joys included food-styling for absolutely no audience other than the two of us.

Today’s plate (M’s design):

Round white rice base (Mickey’s face)
Two smaller rounds of vegetables (Mickey’s ears)
Eggs as additional decor elements
A protein side
Chilli sauce on the side

The Mickey Mouse formation is one of those small-effort plating moves that you can do at home but never bother to do at a restaurant because you’re paying someone else to assemble your food.

M’s setup: hot fluffy jasmine rice scooped into a round mound for Mickey’s face on the centre of the plate. Two smaller scoops of stir-fried vegetables placed at the top of the rice mound as the ears. Two fried eggs flanking the rice, with the sunny-side yolks serving as Mickey’s eyes (you have to use imagination here, the metaphor was approximate).

A protein side — pan-fried sausage rounds — laid alongside the rice formation, slightly off to the side so as not to disrupt the visual structure.

A small dollop of chilli sauce dabbed at the spot where Mickey’s nose would be, completing the formation.

The execution was the lockdown-era domestic art project. We laughed at the formation while eating it, because the Mickey Mouse reading required squinting and good faith. The food itself was the standard Tuesday brunch — rice, eggs, vegetables, protein, chilli sauce.

The playfulness mattered more than the technical accuracy of the rendering. We were six months into lockdown by this point, and the small acts of creativity in the kitchen were the antidote to the routine becoming numbing.

M’s plating game has always been more elaborate than mine — she takes the time to arrange components rather than dumping them onto the plate.

Overall: 4.4 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Playful Mickey Mouse brunch by M — the rendering was approximate but the spirit was right.

Original IG post