The Mind of a Chef

Part 1: Creativity, Perspective & Approach

Greetings Fren, 🏝

Feedback on the Pizza Guide that dropped for the Paid Subs was very well received [LINK]! Already received many responses from the community and I’m glad to know you’ll be eating delicious pizza 🍕 now! I’m betting a lot of you will have a weekly pizza night added to your schedule and it’s incredibly fun to try new things. If you haven’t yet… upgrade now for amazing recipe drops and culinary alpha.

One question I am consistently asked IRL and on the Inter-webs is “how do you create new dishes/plates?”. Many cooks came to work for me specifically because my menus and techniques were innovative and trailblazing. When I would plate a new special to run, I usually plated the first one up for the kitchen crew to taste first, and offer feedback. This was always important time for me, because you learn through tasting. Plating for the kitchen first doesn’t happen in many kitchens, and having been in some of those, I always remembered what it was like to be a cook wanting to learn and taste more things. 

The feedback was usually “Chef, how did you come up with this?”

There is no simple answer to this question. Trying to distill many years of learning and mastering a craft takes more than a few sentences. So today, I’m going to let you inside the “Mind of a Chef” and steal some nuggets to help your mindset and execution when it comes to all things culinary. 

Creativity 

Many people start here first, and it’s a mistake. Some people are very creative, others not so much. Some of the best cooks I’ve met didn’t have a creative bone in their body, but were master technicians. In my experience, creativity can be expressed in a singular way, only after you establish a firm foundation of technique. This applies to any discipline or pursuit.  

There’s a saying I heard years ago “The Ladder of Logic should only be abandoned, after it has been climbed to the top”

The world 🌎 has a collective obsession over “creatives” and their processes. As I told every eager cook who came to my kitchen seeking to expand their creativity, “learn the basics first… master them… then you’ll find out if you have anything unique to say”. You can’t skip the line of mastery.

Perspective

This is the lens through which everything is filtered when I am cooking now. The macro issues that provide a foundation and springboard to make my own approach. Some examples:

1. I don’t use seed oils. You cannot avoid them when you eat out, but because I’m cooking for myself 90% of the time (shoot for 80% as a good minimum), my body’s sense of well being will be substantially better than most. 

2. Low sugar. Not “no sugar”. Sweetness is an important flavor and helps provide a lovely “roundness” on the palate in the presence of acids. The problem is most people consume foods that are pumped up with sugars and fillers. These are cheap to produce and also will DULL your palate over time. 

3. Carbs are good. If you’re a Keto-Maxi that’s fine. Most of the cooking I do could easily be lo/no-carb. In moderation, I think Rice and Potatoes are perfect blank canvases for displaying culinary wizardry. As an avid baker, making doughs is a love which I do less frequently these days. Pasta I would rather make than eat out, with a few exceptions. 

4. Substitutions. Many people have adapted diets as lifestyles are severely restricted in certain macros (this tends to be carbs). There are some legitimate conditions (auto-immune, allergies, etc) that require a drastic lifestyle change, however I am in the camp of “I would rather have the real thing, or not at all”. 

5. Marketing. You’ll see labels like “organic”, “all natural”, “Certified Angus Beef” just to name a few. What most people don’t know is that there a huge dollars being poured in behind these campaigns. I attended a 1-week Beef Sciences workshop years ago at a leading Institution. I was surprised to learn that a lot of what I had been told over the years was just not true. In many cases those stickers you’re paying extra for, are the exact same product as the “cheap inferior” product. Make no mistake, the Organic industry is about making money, and using peoples emotions to guilt them into spending more. (I am not anti-organic, I’ve just seen the inside workings and unplugged from the Food Matrix).

6. Quality over Quantity. I would rather eat 5oz of well cooked steak than 2lbs of Hamburger Helper. I’d rather buy 8oz of an expressive EVOO over the supermarket 32oz jug that is flavorless. 

Approach

Once you have a defined perspective then you can really develop an approach that is specific to you. There are certain chefs that I can identify just by a plate of food, because they have a specific and unique approach. 

In many cases you will see an approach morph over time. When I opened my first restaurant I can still remember the rush. I was unencumbered and could explore/create any dish I wanted. Having this amount of creative freedom was exhilarating, coupled with a state of the art kitchen that had equipment most cooks at the time would have dreamed to work with. 

I recall this as my “mad scientist” phase. I think most driven-creatives go through this phase. I pushed the technique on the plates to the max. Manipulated every ingredient possible and matched flavors with reckless abandon. There was some amazing creations in that time, and a lot I look back on now and laugh (maybe cringe a little, too 😂 ). Some of these plates had over 10 components, the cooks at the time enjoyed the creativity but it was, admittedly, a grind. 

At that time I was competing with myself, mostly in an unhealthy way that was driven by a perfectionism that could never be attained. I was also competing with the culinary world. At the time I wasn’t aware of any chef doing what I was at the time. This led to carrying a giant chip on my shoulder. There were some immense highs, and some really deep lows that come with that perspective and POV. 

Over time my approach distilled. This was crucial. Having the knowledge and experience of what worked and vice versa, gave me the framework to efficiently and masterfully construct beautiful and delicious food. The most important thing I learned, was that what was left off the plate, had just as much impact as what went on. Just because an ingredient can be manipulated, doesn’t mean that it should be.

Combining my knowledge of flavors, technique and my love of art (which played an important role on aesthetics), I learned that:

Less is More 

In Part 2 we will walk through:

Technique 

Flavors

Aesthetic

Improvising 

Paid Post this weekend is gonna be a stupid simple and totally delicious EZ-Bake Chicken. Get on it 😉