Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Creativity Versus Technique Ep. 11

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Creativity Versus Technique Ep. 11 · Chef's PSA Podcast

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Hello chefs, you're listening to chefs, PS a podcast on today's
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podcast. We're going to talk about
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technique versus creativity when I'm hiring a cook.
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Which one do I deem more important?
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What do I think? Is more important for a chef?
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And at the end of this, I'll give you my process when I'm
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trying to be creative and what I do to get into the zone.
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So first, let's talk about technique and when it comes to
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technique, I do feel that technique is superior to
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creativity for the majority of your career and probably for
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about 90% of the jobs out there, and I'll tell you why.
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Because when it comes to creativity, either have it or
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you don't, a lot of people are born with natural creativity.
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There's ways that you could boost up your creativity but
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techniques and proper technique can get you very far through.
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Your career to a very high level, even if you don't have
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creativity to go with it. So if you don't have creativity,
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you could always fall back on technique and as a chef and what
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I use to hire people, you know, the truth of the matter is
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you're not going to get your dish on the menu right away
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especially when you're right out of culinary school, like let me
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be honest no Chef is like going to.
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They're very green culinary school students and saying you
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know what, what dish ideas that you have, let me see your
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creative food. The fact of the matter is that
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doesn't happen, but what they need.
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From a cook when they're just starting out.
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As what, are your technical skills?
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Do you know how to dice? Do you know how to brunoise?
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How are your knife skills? You know how to set up a proper
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station? Do you know how to saute?
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Do you know how to braise and all the other cooking techniques
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that go with it? And that is what I look for.
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When I'm hiring someone is, do you have a strong grasp on the
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fundamentals? Which I deem more important than
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creativity when you're the head chef for the sous, chef for the
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chef de cuisine. Whoever is really riding the
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menu. The last thing that you need
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really is a Person that's going to take a spin or R if your food
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and not do it the way that you want it.
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So sometimes creativity can be a double-edged sword when you're
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not in a position that allows you to be creative.
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But you know is unfortunate because it does push a lot of
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creative types out of the industry.
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When it's it's like equivalent to you know you have all these
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great ideas and you you of what you want to do with your art but
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you don't yet know how to paint. So it could be discouraging
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early on in your career when you're not allowed to express
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your creativity, but the fact of the matter is and Fact of the
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matter remains that when you're a chef you're looking for people
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that can execute your vision and your creativity.
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That's you know, you've worked all these years.
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You finally made it to a place where you're able to put your
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ideas forward and and create your own food.
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And unfortunately the last thing that you need is someone
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changing a dish. When you're not looking, which
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by the way, is like, in my opinion is like a huge culinary
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sin. You should never change your
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chefs dish. The only person that should
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change the chef's dishes, too. Have.
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So that's, that's always been a rule that I've had in.
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The kitchen, is no one changes, the chefs dish, but the chef
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that is like culinary 101 because you put a lot of effort
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into a dish designing a menu. And it's like a huge slap in the
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face when someone comes in and says, oh, I could probably do
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that better than that. Chef.
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Let me, let me change it up because I have all these really
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good ideas. And it's like coming from a
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place of ego because the chef needs to be able to put his food
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out for guests. They want to come back and make
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sure that they're getting the same dish and if it's different
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every time it's like, well, it hurts the reputation of the
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restaurant or hurts the reputation of the chef.
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It's going to hurt business. All because someone wanted to be
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creative and take creative freedoms with with another chefs
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dish. So people, if you're listening
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to this, if you're not the chef, you should never change a chefs
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dish without speaking to them first.
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And I'm not saying you can't do it, but you should always The
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conversation. First, you need to go up to the
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shelf and say, I think this might work better.
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I think this would work. Would you mind if we try it?
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And the answer might be, no, get back on your station or the
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answer might be, you know what, that's a good idea.
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Let's discuss it. And look at it, it all depends
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on where you work in the type of Chef that you're working for.
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But as a general rule, never change your chefs dish without
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asking. But anyway, so let's talk about
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technique for a little bit. Why do I think technique is
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important? Well, because if you have solid
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technique and there's a wide range of skill levels of
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techniques, like, if you go to like a three-michelin-star
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restaurant, the brunoise is perfect.
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You know, where their brune wine tarragon and, you know, the sear
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on the fish is perfect, and the pasta is cooked perfectly.
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Like, there's a high level of technique, and when you have a
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high level of technique, you could really go work anywhere.
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You could be a sous chef anywhere because, you know, that
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you're confident in whatever, whatever realm of cooking that.
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Puts you in. But if you have a low level
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technique, it's only going to take you to a certain a certain
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level of position of restaurant that you want to work in.
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So I would focus early on in my career is really Master the
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fundamentals of cooking. Really master your Technique the
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way that Trends change, you could look at an Instagram feed
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and you could look at food from five years ago.
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And then look at you from a great chef and then you can look
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at their food today and you'll say, wow, it's unrecognizable, I
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wouldn't I wouldn't do that. That now and that's because
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Trends evolve. So rapidly plating Trends, the
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ingredients that people are using it changes.
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I mean, you I've seen Instagram trends like I don't know if
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everyone remembers like there was this like a stamp where you
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use like at the bottom of a cup and it would make this like
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beautiful, you know, stamp. And then it was the comb and
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then it was the paintbrush and then it was the spiral.
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And you know, all these things evolve And regardless of what
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the trend is or the creative plating, like what doesn't
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evolve? Well, I shouldn't say it doesn't
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evolve, but it involves much slower as the technique.
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And here's, here's something when it comes to cooking
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techniques, like let's just say, for the sake of this
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conversation, thousand years ago, people are cooking with
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fire water. That's pretty much it right?
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So they're boiling things in there, cooking things over Fire
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fast forward. You know thousand years later,
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we're boiling things Cooking things over fire, does it really
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change that much where you saw a great evolution in technique was
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I'd say probably the early 2000s when Ferran Adria came out and
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he started cooking things differently.
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He started approaching food differently, you now we're
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working with liquid nitrogen, no one was working with liquid
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nitrogen 50 years ago in The Culinary world.
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You know. We're cooking sous vide we're
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using anti griddles we're using alginates food for the first
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time since you know No, the dawn of cooking, with fire and water.
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Saw this great jump in, technique, creativity and
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evolution. So that was like a pivotal
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moment in time. I would say like the next big
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thing was when Rene redzepi started doing all the forging
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and fermentation and not that, that hasn't been around, but it
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wasn't ubiquitous. And now you see it?
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Pretty much at any top restaurants, they're doing some
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form of foraging or fermenting or even even if they're not
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foraging and they're just saying To get more sales or to add to
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The Narrative of the restaurant. But the fact of the matter is
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that now you see the more advanced techniques that you
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would see, like, in a obscure, world's 50 best or three
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Michelin star restaurant. You see it like in your
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neighborhood restaurant. There fermenting just like, just
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like Renee there. Hopefully, they got everyone's
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going to have reindeer dick on their salad soon, you know,
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according to Rene redzepi or I'm sorry, it's in his new book if
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you don't get the joke. But anyway, long story short, I
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focus on technique when I was opening up a hotel, a couple of
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years back and we were delayed. So I had all these culinary
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people on my team, all these culinarians and we had about a
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month to get ready for opening, but the building we couldn't get
8:06
in it. So I had everyone on board.
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What am I going to do with them? I said well I'm going to run it
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like a culinary school and what I did every day is every day.
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We're going to brunoise and we're going to do it again
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tomorrow. We're going to learn how to
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tornado. We're going to brunoise.
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We're going to learn how to cut. Chives perfectly working to make
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French omelette. And I really just focused on
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making sure that they knew how to work in that they had really
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strong fundamentals, and technique and fast forward that
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to a couple months later when we opened, we opened up strong, all
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my Cooks were good and I would say, I remember having this
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conversation, with one of my, with one of my Cooks, shout out
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to Lauren Pogue. If you're listening and I
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remember having a conversation with her, she was a culinary
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student that the time. And I said, when you're done,
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Done with working here and the training within a couple of
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months, she was still a student. I said before before, we're done
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your knife skills will be better than your instructors.
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And so, months later, I went back to her and asked her.
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I said, hey remember, I told you this and she said, yes, I said.
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I'm so how are your knife skills compared to your instructors?
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And she said, yeah, they're better than them.
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They're asking me how I do it. So, anyway, point being is like
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technique will carry you very far in your career, but now,
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let's talk about creativity. And when it comes to creativity,
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like I said not everyone has it. So if you don't have it you
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could always fall back on your Technique but true creativity.
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You know, I would argue that almost everything is not really
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original, you know it's some form or fashion of something
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that's already been done. You know the Chinese did it, the
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French did at the Italians, did it someone's already done it and
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usually chefs are saying oh I'm putting my spin on something.
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It's like well you're not putting that big of a spin on
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it, you're just taking ideas from other cultures that have
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been invented. I haven't really seen Chef's
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come up with something original that doesn't exist the way they
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combine. It might be original but you
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know the the fundamental techniques are not.
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And I would say the the only two chefs I could think of and I'm
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not knocking any chefs, but I'm I could only think of two that I
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don't think they stole from anybody because all Chef steal.
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Like, you know, I did a PSA once like if you're going to steal
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the dish, you know, make sure that they're not next door to
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you, or make sure your Chef doesn't have the same cookbook
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where you stole the dish because the The matter is all chefs, get
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inspiration, there's nothing wrong with it, we all do it.
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But there's two chefs that I could think of that.
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I don't think that they stole from anybody or got inspired by
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anyone. I shouldn't say stole because I
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don't mean it in a negative way but Ferran Adria, you know, El
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bulli I don't think he got inspired by another Chef.
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I think all those ideas were original that like to me that is
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true creativity like you can't pinpoint where they got there.
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Ideas from and it's completely original and he set the trend
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for so many other chefs to follow.
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You know, Grant Achatz Wylie, Dufresne, you started to see all
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these types of restaurants pop-up, even even me I mean back
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in 2006 I was in California and we had a restaurant that was,
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you know, doing the bubble food. I like to call it, you know, the
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Foams and that you know the Spheres and whatnot and I wanted
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to be the first chef in California to do it and you
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know, I was like I'm going to get some some clout copying food
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directly out of LA. Lead 2003 or whatever version I
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had of it. But the fact of the matter is
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like everyone was stealing or borrowing from Ferran and the
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second Chef I would say that was completely original that I had
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never seen this style before would probably be Rene redzepi.
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You know I like to talk trash on his reindeer salad but all jokes
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aside the guy's brilliant and no one else was doing the foraging
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for men. Eating food on the level that he
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was doing. I would say, like, to me.
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That was true creativity. I never seen anyone do food on
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that level until he did it and then everyone did it.
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You know, when the Noma cookbook came out and I want to say this
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is like maybe 2010 when the first book came out, I might be
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a might, be off a little bit, but I remember when it came out
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it was like, boom, everyone was doing, you know, that sort of
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Nordic style plating and you know, everyone had Nasturtium.
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Somewhere on their menu. I was even growing nasturtium
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because I thought I didn't know where to buy them at the time
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and because it was such a fringe ingredient, you couldn't really
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find them anywhere as like well I went to, you know, to the to
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the store and I bought nasturtium seeds and I started
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growing nasturtiums at home just so I could.
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So I could have some nasturtium somewhere.
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So everyone wanted to be like Renee at the time and I was, you
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know, I was no exception to that.
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I highly admired the food that he was doing at the time but to
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again back to the point that to me was True creativity chefs
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that we're not borrowing for anybody.
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And you know, I would even actually I should go back and I
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should say you know what Thomas Keller was doing when he first
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opened up the French Laundry and the salmon cornets.
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And the oysters and Pearls like no one was playing with food the
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way he was at the time. You know, you see these these
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great chefs, you know, the Thomas Keller's the Charlie
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Trotter's. The Ferran Adria as you know,
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the Rene redzepi 's and what's amazing about them and their
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creativity is When they move everyone moves and so they have
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a they have a huge responsibility.
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It's like having anything that they say is a loaded weapon,
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they put out a cookbook and they say this is great.
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Then everyone's going to do it. Trust me every every single sous
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chef in the wrong restaurants, putting out food that doesn't
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belong. Because, you know, Renee did it
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or for on, did it back then or whoever, right?
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So it's interesting to see how creativity works, but long story
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short, creativity can get you. To a certain level of food.
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But I would caution chefs, especially new chefs when you
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get your restaurant to be careful with the creativity, my
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rule of thumb was always 70/30 on menus.
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So 70% of the menu was always dishes that I knew would sell.
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I had to call him fastballs but I'm you know, I'm not talking
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about strictly fastballs but you know, things that people could
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wrap their head around was about 70% of my menu, and then 30% of
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my menu is always the experimental things that I
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wanted to. Okay.
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Let's, how are people ready for this, you know, in this
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particular market and a lot of times, you know, when the Noma
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book came out, I'll give you an example.
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If you were doing no more food in the wrong market, like, I'm
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just making this up, but if you're a Nebraska trying to do
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the food, that Rene redzepi is doing, people might not be ready
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for that. So it's important that you
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understand your Market to, because, you know, I've been the
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victim of that like, maybe, you know, trying to trying to punch
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up and and People just aren't ready and then, you know, people
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think what the hell are you serving me or this food doesn't
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make sense, you know, it's the chef's ego on a plate.
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So by the way, going back to a chef's PSA that I did a while
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back Cooks. If you're going to put a new
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dish on the menu at that, you invented make sure the chef
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doesn't have the same cookbook and that's because, you know,
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everyone always says, oh I got this like Chef, I want to do my
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food, I want to have all these dish ideas and it's like, okay,
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show me and they think that you don't have the same cookbook and
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it's like I have that book. That's not your You stole it.
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That's okay. Everyone does it, but don't say
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it's your dish. So anyway, that's just that's
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for people that don't think that you're the only one in the
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kitchen reading books. Like this is the business that
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were in your Chef is reading the same books that you're reading.
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He's watching the shames. Same shows, you're watching her.
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She and they are also following the same chefs that you're
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following on social media. So, don't be surprised when they
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already know where that dish came from.
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Anyway, long story short don't do that.
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So I'm going to wrap up, but I want to tell you how I would use
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the creative process when I was a chef and I was writing menu.
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So I've gone through several different methods to get
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creative and I'm going to go through all of them with you.
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Now, keep in mind a couple years back, I was the chef of a
16:05
restaurant. We worry did tasting menu, so
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the food had to be pretty high level.
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And, you know, I was trying to compete to be the best
16:13
restaurant in the city. So you know that type of food,
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right? So you know again, Ten years
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ago, it's tasty menu, Ferran Adria style.
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Everyone wants to copy him and Renee.
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So that's kind of where my head was at years later.
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I think I pulled it back a little where I'm not doing that
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type of food again. Now, I'm trying to do just good
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food but not necessarily tasty menu style.
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So the creative process for both was slightly different.
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So the generic way when I need to get into creative zone for me
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is I will usually put on like Classical music Bach, whatever,
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something like that. So, are by Bach.
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I'll put that on repeat and I just let it go.
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I put my headphones on. I'm listening to that.
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If I don't have headphones, I'm just listening to it.
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You know, slightly low in the office.
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A lot of people like to use binaural beats when they're
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studying or whatever helps put you in a in a brainwave state,
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which will accelerate your creativity and you know, if you
17:13
have, I Enter whatever you could find binaural beats that will be
17:16
good for study or creativity or whatever.
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So, putting that on is good. I don't like to listen to music
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with lyrics because I end up singing the song in my head.
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So if I'm listening to only Built 4 Cuban Linx by Raekwon, I
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just, you know, I start banging out glaciers of ice or something
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and I'm like, oh no, I need to be banging out recipes.
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Not hip-hop lyrics, so no lyrics for me, I sit down.
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I usually sip something caffeinated, in my case, I'm
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usually writing menus in the afternoon.
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So it's usually like a green tea.
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I drink coffee in the morning. Green tea in the afternoon, so
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I'll drink something, caffeinated, put my headphones
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on, I like to chew gum. I've read before, that chewing
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gum stimulates, you mentally mint gum in particular is what I
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like. And I've also heard that
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peppermint or spearmint is good for creativity and memory and
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then I have this other thing that I do which is a recent
18:05
thing, there's these things called, I think they're called
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boom, boom sticks, and they're like scented sticks that I will,
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you know, smell and taste. Like there's some that smell
18:15
like spearmint or whatever cinnamon and I smell them and
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I'd like puts my brain, okay? It's time to focus and the
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reason I have all these anchors is because it reminds me that,
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okay, you need to be in the creative Zone.
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This is what you need to do. And so every time I'm doing
18:28
that, my brain just, you know, it's switches.
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Okay, you're in creative mode and then I just start writing
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ideas. I just I just think.
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And I just write, and I just think, and I just right?
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So that's what I do to get creative.
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Now, I've had other methods in the past where you might go to a
18:43
museum to look, Look at different art.
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I might say, okay, I need to get inspired by different colors.
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So if I wanted to create a red dish, what would I do or a blue
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dish? Or I might go by the color
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spectrum, red orange yellow, green blue indigo, violet white,
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whatever, something like that. So I'll follow the color wheel.
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Then I might do food. And again, these are things that
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I challenge myself with Jose. How do I do food with inverse
19:08
colors? So like purple and yellow or red
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and green. So, Let's let's make a dish of
19:15
inverse colors. Then I'll think how do I add
19:18
texture and contrast to the dish.
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So, how do I make the dish, hot and cold?
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How do I make it, you know, crunchy and smooth.
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So, I will start thinking, you know, some of these things is
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there is there some sort of inverse correlation on the dish
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that, that will make it interesting.
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Other things that I will think about is I will think about the
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season and a lot of people will think, okay, you know, you know,
19:43
five seasons. So spraying, you know, summer
19:47
Indian summer fall winter. So if you go through the five
19:50
seasons and then, you know, okay and spring we're going to morels
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and asparagus or whatever, but I try to say, okay?
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No. Let's let's get past the morals
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and asparagus, like, what else is spring spring is like,
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renewal rebirth. I think pastel colors like
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Easter temperature, change transition.
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Okay? Now those are the things that
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are going through my mind like how do I create a dish?
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That will Encompass more than just morels and asparagus or
20:12
spring lamb. It's like okay.
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Yeah that's that's the Obvious. But let's go deeper.
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How do we go deeper and think about spring differently.
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And then I used to challenge my team and this was a good
20:22
exercise when I would get into a creative process with a group.
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So let's just say there's four people in the group, I would say
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everyone has to come up with 10 dishes and and I would assign
20:34
them all different. I would say.
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Okay, you're assigned spring and the color green, your assigned
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spring and the color red, and your assigned.
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Spring and I want you to think cold and hot so I would give
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them very specific parameters and then they'd come back and
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say, okay these are the dishes that I came up with and that
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would that would help because if you have again let's just say
20:57
you have four people and maybe myself included.
21:00
So let's say it's five. Then at the end of it, you'd
21:02
have 50 dishes, right? If everyone just comes up with
21:04
ten at the end of it, you have fifty dishes and maybe you only
21:06
need 10 for the menu. So we have 50 dishes and then we
21:09
just sit in a room, it's like, okay, what do we think about
21:11
this? Yes, no, that would be good, but
21:13
let's do it with this. That and so we all start
21:16
bouncing ideas off each other. It was, it was really great
21:19
brainstorming when we would approach things that way.
21:24
And then one of the last things I'll talk about when I would
21:26
think about creativity that would help me.
21:29
And this was something that when I just started something that I
21:33
learned but also started noticing patterns in cooking is
21:35
like, you've heard the expression.
21:37
If it goes together at grows together, that used to be on a
21:39
voicemail for one of The Voice. Gordon.
21:44
I should say, for one of the places that I worked for, they
21:46
said, oh, Chef Andre. And I Tara says, if it grows
21:48
together goes together as like, everyone's always used to
21:51
associate that with me. It was like, I didn't invent
21:53
that. I think that's been around for
21:54
years, but someone quoted me saying that somewhere, so, that,
21:57
that became the thing. And every time I'd bump into a
21:59
friend. Oh, you're the goes together,
22:01
grows together guys. Like no, I don't think that was
22:04
me. I think that was like, you know,
22:07
every Chef that came before me, but whatever.
22:09
So anyway, long story short I would look at dishes, so let's
22:12
just take sushi, for example. So if you look at the seaweed in
22:16
the sushi and then you look at the fish and then you look at
22:19
the Wasabi, like all these things grow in the dark.
22:21
So it's okay, let's try and pair things that grow in the dark or
22:25
let's try and pair things that grow on bushes or let's try and
22:28
pair things that grow high up on trees and the things that would
22:30
eat. Those things high up in trees.
22:32
So I would, I would start thinking about that.
22:34
So it's like, okay, what would a rabbit eat?
22:36
And I don't really know if rabbits eat carrots.
22:39
I think they do, but it's like, okay, if we have a rabbit dish,
22:42
I imagine like a rabbit. Carrot and what else would they
22:45
have? You know, they might be eating
22:46
some lettuce. Okay.
22:47
So how do we combine that onto a dish?
22:49
And then I would also sometimes and this is this is no longer
22:53
relevant. But at one point I had an
22:54
exercise where every dish needed to look like something and that
22:58
was like there have to be certain shapes on the dish.
23:01
There would have to be certain textures and there had to be a
23:04
focal point. So I'll just give you an
23:05
example. Every dish had a main focal
23:08
point and that was the star of the dish where there was a
23:10
protein or vegetable or whatever.
23:11
But let's let's just say in this case it was Lamb for whatever
23:15
reason, and so it's okay. Lamb is the focal point and then
23:18
we needed to have to vegetables. So let's just say that lamb had
23:23
carrots and asparagus for the sake of conversation, so it'd be
23:28
like, okay, it's going to it's got to have carrots and those
23:30
carrots need to be prepared, at least two different ways.
23:33
So I might do a cooked carrot and then I might do a carrot
23:36
puree. And then the other vegetable I'd
23:39
say it needs to have a raw preparation and a cooked
23:42
preparation. So I say okay, There might be
23:45
like shavings of asparagus and there might be asparagus tips
23:50
that are cleaned up on the plate.
23:52
So it's okay, we have a raw preparation, we have a cooked
23:55
preparation, two different vegetables and then we need to
23:57
include some sort of herb. So we were talking about
24:00
nasturtiums earlier with maybe put some nasturtiums on the
24:02
plate or whatever and then it would have a sauce.
24:04
So every dish had to follow this similar format where I was like,
24:07
okay, two types of vegetables, two different preparations on
24:10
each vegetable and herb sauce and a focus and That was like, I
24:15
picked that up from a cookbook and I won't say which one but
24:19
actually there's probably several you could notice a lot
24:21
of cook books that were written in a certain era.
24:23
That all kind of had that similar style is like, okay, I'm
24:26
picking up and then there was the same shapes like circles.
24:29
So you know, shaved coins of carrot, radish, whatever
24:33
footballs, so you know, that was the canal or, you know, the
24:36
dollop on the plate and then what I used to call like
24:40
branches. So there was always like
24:42
straight lines or branches of stuff.
24:43
So Those shapes were always on a plate.
24:45
So maybe it was like the slice of lamb tenderloin, that would
24:48
look like a circle carrots that were sliced into coins, you
24:52
know, football shaped like a canal of carrot puree or
24:55
whatever you get the idea. So I would check all these
24:58
things off. So, anyway, long story short,
25:01
that was my creative process, that's how I did things.
25:04
So hopefully you could take some of what I said.
25:06
If you don't have a creative process and may be incorporated
25:08
into yours, Maybe not, maybe, I don't know, maybe you don't need
25:13
one, maybe you're super creative.
25:14
I've already anyway that's going to be it for the show today.
25:19
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25:30
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but I just want to do one final glance before I publish you
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26:00
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26:37
Anyway, thank you all and hit the porno music.
26:39
We'll see you next week.