Both the shots linked to show the classic mistake of the food photography beginner: taking the shot from directly above the food. It's tempting to do this because it eliminates background issues, but it also means you lose any benefit of depth of field (where things out of the plane of focus blur).

High-angle shots can work in certain situations, for example when you have regular patterns (think cookies lined up on a baking sheet), but generally you will get a better shot of plated food from a lower angle: nearly level with the plate itself. In your examples I would have done precisely the opposite to you, and taken the shot of the peppers lined up from directly above, and the plated curry (looks good btw) from a lower angle.

Take a look at smittenkitchen.com - the front page shows good examples of both low and high angle shots, but note that the vast majority are low-angle.

One thing you have to take into account when taking lower angle shots is the background, which will obviously be more visible. Careful 'set dressing' is important, and shooting with your aperture wide open (f5.6 or thereabouts on your lens) will help to blur the background out and give your shots a more 'professional' touch.

On a slight tangent, you might also consider investing in a 'Nifty Fifty' lens - a 50mm lens with a maximum aperture of f1.8 that not only gives great, shallow depth of field, but also gives you much better quality shots than your kit lens. They are relatively cheap and excellent value.