How To Get There From Here

Every few months I find it helpful, no, necessary, to do a serious inventory and purging of our corner in dry storage. I'm bombarded with samples on a weekly basis, on top of all the little impulse purchases I make. Add to that the assorted service pieces, demo props, half-executed and thus abandoned experiments, and ingredients that used to be in daily production, but have long since been struck from the menu. Even if it all represents a big pile of possibility, one feels the need to wipe the slate clean, or at least find a home for all this excess baggage.

A recent sorting yielded, among many others, the following random items:

Boiled sea water, Chinese rock sugar, smoked barley, black soybeans, miso powder, birch extract, kinako flour, fig concentrate, falooda noodles, elderflowers, Thai candles, freeze dried peaches, chicory, Minus 8 vinegar, chickpea flour, sorghum, hot chocolate mix, beet powder, black lava salt, instant tapioca, roasted rice green tea, amaranth, lucuma, kola nut, violet liqueur, mastic, truffle honey, rose syrup, coconut milk powder, liquid smoke...

What would you make?

***

Once you have a raw material in hand, and hopefully enough technical skill to manipulate it (or the confidence leave it alone), I guess that's where creativity enters the picture. But then perhaps 'creativity' isn't really the right term to apply to this process. In the world of cooking, there is little that is truly new. Rather, it's the expression of accumulated knowledge; each of us has walked our unique path of experience and education, so I think it's fair to say that some sense of individuality ends up in our food. Ultimately, we're merely adapting what has come before. At any rate, at some point we're presented with an empty plate. What we choose to put on or to not put on that plate- it's form, arrangement, textures, and temperatures- perhaps it is less about creativity and more about personality and maturity.

True, the sparks, the inspiration, they rarely materialize out of thin air. Eating out, reading books, and lurking the blogs are essential activities, but then so is diligent tasting, constant discovery, and these days, for many, a fair amount of scientific research. Over time, I had slowly begun to tune out a lot of this outside static. There is so much information being exchanged and so many 'new' things are happening at such an exponential rate, it can be difficult to keep up. Sometimes culinary 'creativity', or whatever we agree to call it, is hampered by too many options, too many variables. I've also feared that too much outside influence from any one source would show too greatly in my own work. All those hefty, amazingly documented El Bulli retrospectives? I don't own a single volume. And though I have access to them any time I want, I've barely cracked their spines. At this point in my development, it's a personal journey. Of course, everyday there are dozens of chefs all over the world, isolated from each other, and without forums such as a blog or book, working on the same problems, coming to similar solutions. I caught a recent Ideas in Food demo at NYU, where Alex and Aki spoke to this point and shared some poignant stories on this very phenomenon. At some point, 'competition' has to lead to a sense of 'community'.

I've started to become less of a hermit, easing up on my self-imposed embargo of ideas. There has been and will continue to be a steady flow of incredible new reading material this season. I'm not lining up to purchase them all, but a couple of them recently arrived at just the right time for me. Thousands have been anticipating the new Alinea book for months, some of us going so far as to register and participate in the companion website project. Having come so close to experiencing Alinea firsthand, but never, to date, have I so much as set foot inside the place, I'm able to see a lot of the book's content with virgin eyes. True, I'd gotten to know Grant Achatz during his years at Trio, so it's interesting to see the progress and growth from the seeds he planted there. I sense that in the coming months, we're going to see just how influential this restaurant is and will be. I may be wrong, but given the the massive amount of information unleashed in one package, I think we will see more than a few imitators. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think most of them will miss the whole point of what makes Grant's cooking so special: his own personality. And despite all the technique shared, none of us will ever truly be able to tap into that.

Another interesting release is A Day at El Bulli. Both books, by the way, are amazing bargains once you consider how much work went into them. Again, though Ferran and Albert have been on my radar for nearly a decade, I've never had the chance to enjoy their creations. And like I mentioned above, I've fought to ignore much of their recent output to avoid the trap of becoming a clone. This latest book, largely a photo-documentary of a hypothetical day in Rosas, does contain a handful of recipes, which at first glance, I quickly passed over. And much of what you see, at least on the surface, happens everyday in restaurants everywhere. However, what fascinates me the most, is learning about the organization and the process that fosters the work they do.Their charts and graphs, the intense documentation, and most important, the discipline, all point to a very deliberate scientific method, as opposed to merely "playing around" in the kitchen.Granted, they're lucky to operate within a system that allows menu development during half the year, and with time, they've earned complete control over their environment. But indeed, they created that atmosphere themselves. Just a few pages into the book, this quote says it all: "It is impossible to be creative without good organization."

I admire and share this methodology to some degree, at least in spirit if not always in practice. My own processes have surely evolved with experience, but I realize I've been doing it just long enough that a lot of the decisions I make are subconscious. I don't always analyze how or why I came to this conclusion or that. Certainly, I've never been able to put it into words that someone else could easily follow. With my pastry cooks, I try to encourage discussion, brainstorming, and experimentation, always within reason. We are all likely to produce better results when we're given fairly narrow assignments or when clear boundaries are defined for us. Occasionally, lack of focus can work against whatever gains there are to be made. Recently one such side project drifted so far away from the practical into the conceptual, that I felt I had to intervene. Instead of pointing at the flaws in the result, I thought it more constructive to address the process (or lack of) that led to it. Thus I found myself trying to articulate, if not my own thought process and philosophy, then at least some sort of method that a budding young chef could embrace. Though they are indeed guidelines, I hoped they would be taken as a form of liberation. By giving someone less to think about, it can actually free them up to consider more. Under the heading, From Conception to Realization I spontaneously wrote:

• Consider the end before the means; then make sure the means will get you there.
• Focus on no more than three flavors or ingredients at the outset, and keep in mind the balance and proportion.
• Consider the range of tastes (sweet, salt, acid, bitter, etc).
• Place near equal importance on textures.
• Consider the functionality of the dish, both as its own entity, but also as part of a greater vision.
• Make sure that there is a focal point; the remaining aspects must support rather than compete.
• Work within your own knowledge and experience and fully flesh out the process, plus possible contingencies.
• Begin with "what will make it familiar?" before addressing "what will make it different?"
• Work with a subtractive attitude; pare away the unnecessary.
• Consider how well it 'eats', and how to make it delicious.

Only a week or two after I wrote these guidelines for my staff, I stumbled upon some similar lists, or dare I say, manifestos. Both come via the thought-provoking blog, khymos.org, maintained by Martin Lersch, a chemist living in Oslo. The first is attributed to Herve This and is, quite simply, a declaration of the absolutes that every cook should know, or Ten Elements of Basic Kitchen Knowledge. They appear pedestrian at first, but when you really think about them, you might start seeing things differently. In the same vein, but further explored, are Martin's own Ten Practical Tips for Molecular Gastronomy. I strongly suggest following the individual inks to the the original posts.

Molecular or otherwise, I think it's just plain good advice.

Comments

[chadzilla]

Let me know when that garage sale is going to happen. Bargain basement prices on Thai candles.

[H. Alexander Talbot]

just brilliant!!!!

[craig thornton]

wow. i don't think you could have hit the nail on the head anymore than you did.

[cory]

F-foundation
O-of
C-cooking,
U-understanding
S-simplicity

one of our culinary instructors used to drive this home. I suppose there's nothing more simple than a clean oraganized kichen... Simple is tuff

[Ms B]

If you do not know what to do with the truffle honey, you can send it to me. I will broil some gorgonzola dolce on crostini, drizzle with the honey, and accompany with a nice wine, maybe something from the Piedmont. (If you wanted it to be dessert, you could do it as gorgonzola ice cream atop a dessert crostini (maybe from a lightly flavored brioche) with a truffle honey syrup and a sprinkling of pine nuts -- sort of the italian version of the sunflower seed and honey sundaes they do at the Minnesota state fair!)

[Sharon Juergens]

Hi Michael,
I love "From Conception to Realization" I plan on sharing it with my staff. Good thoughts.
P.S. Korn and I finally got engaged.

[Todd Ruiz]

Beautifully written
Thanks for the inspiration