For fifty years Larry Lipson was the food critic for the Los Angeles Daily News and now reports from Florida weekly with his thoughts and favorite picks for Food & Wine. His lovely Wife Lillian is also on hand at the Lipson Institute for advanced wine studies.
JAMES BEARD AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR KAREN PAGE - NEW BOOK, KITCHEN CREATIVITY: UNLOCKING CULINARY GENIUS—WITH WISDOM, INSPIRATION, AND IDEAS FROM THE WORLD’S MOST CREATIVE CHEFS
KITCHEN CREATIVITY: Unlocking Culinary Genius—with Wisdom, Inspiration, and Ideas from the World’s Most Creative Chefs is filled with secrets and strategies from more than 100 leading culinary minds—including José Andrés, Dan Barber, Rick Bayless, Daniel Boulud, Amanda Cohen, Kyle Connaughton, Curtis Duffy, Emily Luchetti, Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, and Joshua Skenes. Beyond a cookbook, KITCHEN CREATIVITY is a guide to a more inventive and intuitive approach to cooking (without recipes!)—one that will inspire readers to think, improvise, and cook like the world’s best chefs.
Anyone who’s ever dreamed of walking into a kitchen and creating a dish from scratch, knowing exactly how to season it to perfection, will find the book’s three-stage process a godsend:
In Stage 1: Mastery, a cook copies the masters—their dishes, their techniques, their seasoning—to develop a knowledge and skill base. Here, Page recommends essential books for the chef’s library, explains the difference between enhancing flavor and adding flavor, lists trusted food sources for the best-quality ingredients, and demonstrates how to learn time-tested flavor pairings and affinities.
During Stage 2: Alchemy, a cook integrates and applies new knowledge and experience, converting ingredients and classic dishes into something fresh. This section overflows with examples of converted classic dishes, chefs’ sources of inspiration, and the thought process behind reinventions. Page also breaks down the principles behind the creation of individual flavors, especially those that contribute to the taste of familiar dishes, showing how to apply such principles to the invention of something new.
By Stage 3: Creativity, a cook connects and combines elements into a new creation. Page teaches you how to take a look at the cooking techniques you know, and the dishes you love, to play with different combinations and create dishes without recipes, using your informed imagination. You’ll also find countless proven techniques for enhancing creativity through both stimulation (including travel, reading, and dining out) and stillness (such as lowering brain wave frequencies via meditation and yoga).
The book’s A-to-Z section prompts starting points for creative inspiration, from flavor pairings for marijuana, to Damian Sansonetti’s idea of grinding Italian rice to make gluten-free gnocchi, to the dishes top chefs cook on Super Bowl Sunday. With only 1 in 10 Americans reportedly enjoying cooking today, this incredible treasure trove of information, featuring more than 275 four-color photographs, will inspire readers to fall in love all over again with the creativity and fun possible in the kitchen !