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.