Creativity, passion, and commitment. like a triangle.

Just the other day, I was talking with one of my instructors (Chef David Wynne), and brought up creativity. At first he sort of rolled his eyes, but as we got deeper into conversation, he shared some really great insight.

Chef Wynne was an artist for near twenty years, which is a good chunk of life if you ask me. The market turned over, or perhaps the economy failed and he had to make a career change. See, for him, cooking is the same as sculpting or painting, only instead of clay and paint, the materials were flour and semolina (that was a terrible metaphor).

Anyway, the point of our conversation was, first, creativity isn’t random. Creativity may start as an idea that just sort of popped into your head, but it takes skill and planning to execute it. Observe the photo below.

Vegetarian “Pot Au Feu”

This is play-dough. We made the play dough of course, but we are also doing more than just screwing around-we are planning out an entire five course tasting menu, without actually making it.

See, without visualization before the execution of a dish, you will get a very muddled, half-ass looking plate or mediocre food. At least that’s my opinion. I’m sure that others share it.

At any rate, the play-dough not only helps us plan what we are going to do and cook, but helps us visualize. I think that this was one of the best lesson plans I have had at the art institute.

Next on the menu, we have the thing that fuels your creativity. Passion.

Some people will say some stupid things, like, “Oh, I’m really passionate about knitting,” “I am so passionate about food,” or, my least favorite, “I am so passionate about [insert political issue here].” The problem with most of these “passionate” people is that, well, they aren’t passionate. Passion takes commitment.

For example, to be truly passionate about wine, you have to commit yourself to learning things like where the wine is bottled, where the grapes come from, what they taste like, what the word terroir means, and many other things that come with a topic as complex as wine. The people that say that their favorite wine is merlot probably don’t know what they are talking about. The guy that says his favorite wine is a ’76  cabernet sauvignon that was bottled in napa valley in ’79 probably knows what he is talking about. He knows about wine and is committed to learning about it.

To be passionate about anything, you have to commit yourself to it. And from passion, comes creativity.

I just thought I would share my thoughts about that with you. Here are some more pictures of the things we are doing for our tasting menu, inspired by (link)Heston Blumenthal(/link).

Licorice Poached salmon with asparagus and vanilla mayonnaise

Raw Oyster on rock salt with lavender gelee and  lace tuile.

Sole with black truffles, parsley foam, champagne gel and crisp parsley and grapes.

Cauliflower risotto with cauliflower cream foam

Thanks for reading. You can check out other, older blog posts if you click on the

archives button on the right middle of the page.

-Tim Chambers

P.S. in a couple weeks, I will be actually executing these dishes with REAL food. Stay tuned to see how they turned out.

Where To Start, Where. To. Start.

I wasn't Quite Sure where to start (as the title implies), So i figured that I would give you a little bit of my background.

I began being really interested in the culinary profession when i started watching the old Japanese version of Iron Chef. It was ridiculously dramatic and over the top, but at the core of it, there were some astounding chefs with amazing abilities. I began looking into possibilities for a culinary education.

I decided to attend a culinary class in high school to get my feet wet. this was one of the best decisions I ever made. I was taught a lot of things about the cooking industry by Chef Instructor Kevin Blaylock (now a certified executive chef), and instructor Tony Poplin, who taught me a lot about life in general, and is still a good friend of mine.

I really excelled in the program there and graduated high school with a huge cooking scholarship and several other awards under my belt.

My first choice of college was the Culinary Institute of America, however, being limited to washington state by my scholarship, and the fact that I was Freaking poor, I chose to apply grants to the Art Institute of Seattle's cooking program (Still expensive, but local, and it was compatible with my scholarships). I also Just finished interning at Rover's Restaurant, probably one of the nicest restaurants in seattle, if not america.

Currently, I am finishing up my last quarter of school and am working as a line cook at BlueAcre Seafood, an upscale restaurant in downtown seattle. I am really liking it there, and am learning a lot from the chef, but I still want more. In posts to come, I will share with you some of the things i have done, am doing, and want to do.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned

-Tim

Welcome

Hey Everyone,

Welcome to my blog. I'll keep this pretty short and sweet. The blog is going to be about food, because right now, that's my life. I live it, breathe it, and create it, and want to share my passion with you.

So stay current! More blog posts to come as soon as I find a good place to start.

-Tim