Kitchen Creativity: Unlocking Culinary Genius-with Wisdom, Inspiration, and Ideas from the World's Most Creative Chefs

Karen Page

Oct 2017 · Sold by Little, Brown

About this eBook

Unlock your creative potential with the world's most imaginative chefs. In this groundbreaking exploration of culinary genius, the authors of The Flavor Bible reveal the surprising strategies great chefs use to do what they do best.

Beyond a cookbook, Kitchen Creativity is a paradigm-shifting guide to inventive cooking (without recipes!) that will inspire you to think, improvise, and cook like the world's best chefs. Great cooking is as much about intuition and imagination as it is about flavor and technique.

Kitchen Creativity distills brilliant insights into these creative processes from more than 100 top restaurant kitchens, including the Bazaar, Blue Hill, Daniel, Dirt Candy, Eleven Madison Park and the NoMad, Gramercy Tavern, the Inn at Little Washington, Le Bernardin, Oleana, Rustic Canyon, Saison, Single Thread, and Topolobampo.

Based on four years of extensive research and dozens of in-depth interviews, Kitchen Creativity illuminates the method (and occasional madness) of culinary invention.

Part I reveals how to learn foundational skills, including how to appreciate, taste, and season classic dishes (Stage 1: Mastery), before reinventing the classics from a new perspective (Stage 2: Alchemy). Einstein's secret of genius-combinatory play-pushes chefs to develop unique creations and heighten their outer and inner senses (Stage 3: Creativity). Part II's A-to-Z entries are an invaluable culinary idea generator, with exercises to prompt new imaginings.

You'll also discover: experts' criteria for creating new dishes, desserts, and drinks; comprehensive seasonality charts to spark inspiration all year long; how to season food like a pro, and how to create complex yet balanced layers of flavor; the amazing true stories of historic dishes, like how desperate maitre d' "Nacho" Anaya invented nachos; and proven tips to jump-start your creative process.

The ultimate reference for culinary brainstorming, Kitchen Creativity will spur your creativity to new heights, both in the kitchen and beyond.

About the author

Karen Page is a two-time James Beard Award-winning author whose books include The Flavor Bible, which was named one of the year's best cookbooks on both Today and Good Morning America, one of the 100 best cookbooks of the last twenty-five years by Cooking Light, and one of the ten best cookbooks in the world of the past century by Forbes.

A former Washington Post wine columnist, she is also the author of What to Drink with What You Eat, which was named the IACP Cookbook of the Year and Georges Duboeuf Wine Book of the Year. She lives with her husband, author and photographer Andrew Dornenburg, in New York City.