Our last element in our Translation family is called deconstruction. Simply put, Deconstruction is taking the individual elements of a dish apart, transforming them and serving them together so the original nature of the dish is preserved. The process frees the chef to focus on the individual elements of the dish and be able to change things they wouldn't be able to do if the elements were combined. From our previous Translation experiences we can play with texture, form, methods and the rest of our culinary arsenal and because the elements are separated we have the freedom to use different temperatures if we choose. So we could have a dish that is both hot and cold. I have further broken deconstruction into two sub-groups, elements and integration. Elements refer to breaking down the dish into it's individual natural divisions, changing those elements and plating those elements separately. Integration is where the chef keeps some elements that they do want to separate together or recombines some elements before plating. This might be referred to as partial deconstruction. Unfortunately many deconstructed dishes fail because of two main reasons; the first is the original nature and taste of the dish does not match the original. A deconstructed eggs Benedict should still invoke the unique taste and feel of the original. The second point of failure is that the new dish has nothing new to offer the diner. Why change something just for change's sake? There should be something new or exciting that advances the original in some way.

One of the major shortcomings of a novice chef is to disreguard the importance of texture in the creation of a dish. A interesting textural component gives increased interest to a dish. For a great example, think about the French fry. Imagine the fry without the crisp outer coating; it just doesn't cut it. Or how about a creme brulee without the brittle sugar topping - boring! How many cooking competition shows have I seen where the judges lament a missing textual element that would have made the difference between winning and losing? And don't get me started on a perfectly grilled steak or chop. Texture and mouthfeel is what separates the mediocre from the exceptional. Breakfast has its accepted textural elements; crispy bacon, creamy oatmeal with a bite, soft custardy scrambled eggs, the snap when biting into a hot moist sausage but there is always opportunity. Now that we are clear on the importance of texture, why would we wish to change the texture of an existing component? First let me state I am not saying to change the dish for changes sake, but to fulfill the chef's culinary vision. The change has to make sense. For example, I am always searching for extra crispy hash browns that retain their crispyness when mixed with eggs. I think that will be the subject of my next post, crispy hash browns prepared two different ways. Pancakes and crepes can benefit with techniques that change their texture.

Next we will look at new techniques that introduce new textures. In the avant-garde culinary world chefs are using innovative new ways to create new dishes utilizing creative new techniques. While not for everyone, I want to look at some of these ways that are easily accessible to the home chef. Spherification and foams are great ways to add interesting textural elements as well as adding a great visual appeal to your dish. Let us look how we can add these interesting techniques where they willmadd a new interesting twist to breakfast.

The next subject of inspirational cooking I want to touch on is Methods. This important subset looks at taking advantage of new culinary techniques, changing a cooking method to take better advantage of an ingredient and finally exploring alternative dining methods to enhance the dining experience. I am constantly learning new techniques and refining how I cook to take better advantage of these new techniques. Great cuisine brings together a chef’s skills and with knowledge of the ingredients to create something special. New ideas drive new dishes. Many times I will envision a new dish and have to come up with a new technique or modify an existing one to make it possible. I will introduce a meat pie and quiche where the two layers are distinct and separate. Also I will give an example on taking two techniques and combining them to create a stuffed waffle. The creative use of techniques I have learned will allow me to manipulate an ingredient into something that fits my vision. My bacon cannoli is another great example using a mold to create a new dish.

Using an alternate cooking method sometimes dramatically changes a dish. For example, in  keeping with the theme of breakfast, I think how many different ways I can cook an egg. I can fry, poach, bake, boil, deep-fry,  scramble, coddle, sous-vide, soufflé, stuff; make frittatas, quiches, omelets, custards, ice creams and so on. It is said that each of the hundred folds in a chef’s toque or hat represent a different way to cook an egg. I can change the cooking method in a dish to creatively alter how I want a dish to turn out. Oven "frying" French fries is a well-known method to create a healthier option then deep frying. We might choose to add a cooking method such as smoking to add a new flavor to the mix. We can sometimes take advantage of new equipment. I recently purchased an immersion circulator. Using it, I  add a new cooking method to my culinary repertoire. Many of the dishes I traditionally braise, poach or roast are easily translated to this method , giving me consistently superior results and allows me to cook at a different level. 

Changing the dining experience is another method used by many chefs and restaurants to create a new experience for the diner. In fine dining, an artfully prepared plate, starched white table cloths, good china combined with great service somehow just seems to make the food taste better and command a higher price. I personally prefer to coordinate the plating style, menu, service style and mood to dramatically enhance my diner’s culinary experience whether it be casual, elegant or something else. Tasting menus showcasing multiple small plates are an increasing trend in many of the world’s finest restaurants. Internationally, Spanards enjoy tapas, Chinese have Dim Sum, French visit Cafés, Italians has their Osterias and the Swedish the smorgasbord. Sometimes serving food family style, or using a more rustic or traditional plating style may be used to invoke "comfort" and bring the diner back to their childhood or important past culinary memories.

Inspiration can come from anywhere; your experiences, observing nature, tasting other people's food, cultural influences, items currently in season or what's new and interesting from the market. All things may be the catalyst that combined with experience, talent and hard work allows many new dishes to be created. Many times I want to create a dish based on a theme. My wife and I love watching the old Monty Python  television series and I was inspired after watching the episode with the spam skit. Why not create a egg dish featuring spam done three ways? The result - spam, spam eggs and spam! What's next, Star Trek or Doctor Who? With the holiday season coming up I also want to create some special dishes for Thanksgiving, Christmas and where ever inspiration leads me. Starting with a theme sometimes seems overwhelming, but a good idea is to focus on what makes the theme different or unique. For example, Thanksgiving brings to me images of pumpkin pie, turkey dinner, dressing, green bean casserole and large portions. Since I have been featuring examples for breakfast or brunch, a turkey hash might fit the bill. Combining the theme with other translation techniques might lead to an omlette with Thanksgiving flavors or we could do something with form or use a new cooking technique. Stay tuned!

Many times a theme  is not needed at all; a chef puts an new idea into action and creates a new plate. As I started out, the idea can come from almost anywhere. How can I as a chef increase my chances of creating new and creative dishes? First, experience is key. The more dishes a chef knows about, the more flavor combinations I am familiar with combined with a willingness to experiment provides the fertile environment for creative cooking. Thus, a creative chef must sample new cuisines and flavors, study and perfect new and classic techniques and continuously try new things. Not everything will result in a great new dish but the key is to create the proper environment to nurture the creative effort. I recommend reading A Day at elBulli to see the steps Ferran Adrina took to create the ultimate creative environment at what many say was the best restaurant in the world. I believe that creating a environment condusive to the creative process plus allocating the time to experiment and perfect new dishes was his key to success. Study the work of other chefs to jump-start your own creative processes.

In the world of fine art, form has been recognized as one of the major cornerstones. Along with color, line, proportion, balance and the other elements that define the visual world, form and color are synonymous with great cuisine. How food appears on the plate has been shown to enhance the perceived taste of a dish;  a great chef makes his food look as good as it tastes. Many chefs start with a rough vision how they want their plate to look, while others make it up as they go, balancing the white space of the plate with the major elements of the dish, then adding garnishes to finish and balance the plate. I like to study different cookbooks detailing the plates of the world's great chefs to pick up ideas for my own dishes. Many modern chefs use edible flowers or micro-greens to add interesting visual interest along with organic forms. Using the form subset of translation empowers the chef to fit the major elements of the dish to his culinary vision. Sometimes, I want to go beyond the natural form of something to add visual interest. For example, a jelly roll is simply a thin cake topped with a filling but rolled up it is something special. It is the form that sets it apart. Next time you are eating out, look at your plate and ask yourself; how would this look if I ...?

 Form can be divided into two parts, simple and complex. Simple shapes have long been an important element of cooking whether it be plating or making precise knife cuts to ensure even cooking times. Manipulation of the ingredients or components of a dish into desired shapes reinforce a desired look or vision of the dish. A precise dice or julienne gives a dish a professional look while imprecise knife cuts make a dish look rustic. Complex refer to more complex forms such as we see in Thai and Chinese cuisine, where vegetables and fruits are painstakingly carved into small works of art or building a form such as the jelly roll I mentioned before.

The form can simply look good or mimic something else. For example, one of the dishes I will present is a breakfast cannoli where I use bacon for the cannoli shell, filled with a egg and cheese mixture. This illustrates the concept of mimicking the form of something familiar and changing it to suit the dish. I'll add shaped accompaniments of bruschetta and polenta to add complementary forms to complete the picture. Cooking French toast in a waffle iron gives the toast a waffle shape for a surprising twist. French toast is not new nor waffles but putting them together is unfamiliar to many people. In modernist cuisine, an other example of changing form is spherification, which is a process of creating spheres from a liquid. One example is making faux caviar using a flavorful liquid that complements the dish. Using different methods such as the sodium alginate or the gelatin in oil method, drops of the liquid are encased in a skin that resemble caviar. These flavored spheres burst in your mouth when you bite into them surprising the diner. In another example of using form, I often bake shredded of hard cheese such as parmesan and shape it into a basket or another form while still pliable. This technique is a great way to help me when I am designing a great presentation because it gives me control over shape and scale.

Speaking of scale, the size of a dish can be scaled up or down to create a new form. One common example is scaling down the size of a standard hamburger and roll to create a slider. Many main dishes are scaled down to create an appetizer size suitable for hors d'oeuvres.

Many years ago I remember taking a course in linear algebra as part of my computer science degree. I was taught the process to transform change one object defined by series of numbers into another object similar yet different, a technique often used in 3-d computer graphics. Although I do not remember the specifics on how to do the math, I remember there were processes you could use to move, reshape or resize something into something else. Similarly, in cooking  you can use different techniques, methods and processes to transform any dish. Thru this chapter I am going to name this, Food Translation or just simply, "Translation". I can take any dish and translate it using many different translation techniques I will expand on. Change is fine but without the inspiration to create something new and exciting it is just creating something different. I encourage you to study the following principles, experiment and come up with your own new dishes. Good chefs are relatively easy to find, great chefs combine skill and creativity to expand the culinary realm. Inspiration can come from anywhere. Maybe I am excited about a new flavor profile or perhaps I want to add a new ingredient I have discovered. Perhaps I want  to try a different cooking technique, maybe apply a overall theme or utilize a creative idea that interests me; but I always try to ask myself the question, "How can I make something truly better?." I observe many great chefs trying to change things just to show off their skills and end up with mediocre results. Even a creative chef  need to make sure everything fits together, is balanced and is makes sense. I also believe inspiration in the kitchen can be developed just as any skill. So, let us look into some ways we can bring innovation and inspiration to the forefront. 

The easiest and most common Translation method is straight substitution or just "Substitution". I can choose to substitute or add ingredients, individual flavor elements or entire flavor profiles. The substitution of ingredients is a technique that is familiar to most chefs. I often find myself not able to find a key ingredient in a recipe and thereby forced to substitute something else I have in my pantry, sometimes giving me great results. I will refer to this form of Translation as ingredient substitution. Some substitution choices can be straight forward, such as replacing bacon for prosciutto, red peppers for green or margarine for butter; while others may require considerable thought, such as replacing ingredients to cook a vegan dish or creating a sponge cake using olive oil instead of butter. The new ingredients may present different textures, preparation methods or taste. Another way substitution is routinely used is the movement in which restaurants are using the best fresh local seasonal ingredients possible instead of the traditional fare; many times out of season and difficult to obtain. The chef is banking that the best food is created from the fresh local ingredients. Another great example where substitution is practiced is the food makeover, to recreate healthy versions of restaurant favorites or to compensate for food sensitivities. A great example of this concept is using whole grain products instead of their more processed forms which can be as easy as using whole wheat or sourdough buns for a hamburger replacing the traditional white bread to lower the dish’s glycemic index. In these pages, I will give examples of swapping elements of a classic dish, say, eggs benedict to make new benedict variations. You can then let your imagination take over and create your own fantastic "benedicts".

Second on my Substitution list is flavor substitution: here I take a flavor element or flavor profile and change it to go in a different direction. For example, when I want a particularly intense anise flavor in a tomato sauce, I will substitute star anise for the fresh basil. Another option I could use Thai basil to impart a surprising distinct but
familiar flavor. Continuing with the Thai theme I could use Kaffir lime leaves to replace the required lemon or lime zest in a recipe giving a new flavor twist. Sometimes the substitution can be partial,  for example, replacing half of the tomatoes with strawberries to make a strawberry-tomato salsa. The flavor substitution can be quite striking, replacing the existing flavors with something quite unexpected and different, taking the dish in a interesting new direction. One familiar example is the addition of cheddar or other cheeses to traditional béchamel sauce giving us a Mornay sauce, the base of many macaroni and cheese dishes. I can transform hollandaise into béarnaise with the addition of tarragon vinegar, a component I will use in our steakhouse benedict. Many fusion based restaurants create their signature cuisine by substituting or blending different flavor profiles, using a new different flavor profile with a familiar dish. I could take a recipe with great potential and make something special by changing the flavor palette. For example, I love both Asian food (in particular Thai) and regional American cooking; which might lead me to create a San Francisco cioppino using a Thai flavor profile using fresh Oregon coastal ingredients I have locally available. I will use this method later in a recipe for an Italian style quiche where I utilize distinctively Italian ingredients to create an Italian flavor palette. Using the multitude of distinctively international or culinary regions as my inspiration, I have a complete arsenal of culinary flavor profiles at my convenience. If you want some specific ideas, "The Flavor Bible" written by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg is a great resource to anyone looking for flavor profiles or just getting an idea of what flavors and or ingredients goes with others. It is one of my most important and used kitchen tools.

Third in the Substitution list, is addition and sometimes subtraction. How many times have you found yourself thinking that this dish could really benefit with the addition of... I will explore that direction with a traditional Chinese dish, stir-fries eggs with tomato which I will add basil and five spice powder to elevate the dish.

Many years ago I remember taking a course in linear algebra as part of my computer science degree. I was taught the process to transform change one object defined by series of numbers into another object similar yet
different, a technique often used in 3-d computer graphics. Although I do not remember the specifics on how to do the math, I remember there were processes you could use to move, reshape or resize something into something else. Similarly, in cooking  you can use different techniques, methods and processes to transform any dish. Thru this chapter I am going to name this, Food Translation or just simply, "Translation". I can take any dish and translate it using many different translation techniques I will expand on. Change is fine but without the inspiration to create something new and exciting it is just creating something different. I encourage you to study the following principles, experiment and come up with your own new dishes. Good chefs are relatively easy to find, great chefs combine skill and creativity to expand the culinary realm. Inspiration can come from anywhere. Maybe I am excited about a new flavor profile or perhaps I want to add a new ingredient I have discovered. Perhaps I want  to try a different cooking technique, maybe apply a overall theme or utilize a creative idea that interests me; but I always try to ask myself the question, "How can I make something truly better?." I observe many great chefs trying to change things just to show off their skills and end up with mediocre results. Even a creative chef  need to make sure everything fits together, is balanced and is makes sense. I also believe inspiration in the kitchen can be developed just as any skill. So, let us look into some ways we can bring innovation and inspiration to the forefront. 

The easiest and most common Translation method is straight substitution or just "Substitution". I can choose to substitute or add ingredients, individual flavor elements or entire flavor profiles. The substitution of ingredients is a technique that is familiar to most chefs. I often find myself not able to find a key ingredient in a recipe and thereby forced to substitute something else I have in my pantry, sometimes giving me great results. I will refer to this form of Translation as ingredient substitution. Some substitution choices can be straight forward, such as replacing bacon for prosciutto, red peppers for green or margarine for butter; while others may require considerable thought, such as replacing ingredients to cook a vegan dish or creating a sponge cake using olive oil instead of butter. The new ingredients may present different textures, preparation methods or taste. Another way substitution is routinely used is the movement in which restaurants are using the best fresh local seasonal ingredients possible instead of the traditional fare; many times out of season and difficult to obtain. The chef is banking that the best food is created from the fresh local ingredients. Another great example where substitution is practiced is the food makeover, to recreate healthy versions of restaurant favorites or to compensate for food sensitivities. A great example of this concept is using whole grain products instead of their more processed forms which can be as easy as using whole wheat or sourdough buns for a hamburger replacing the traditional white bread to lower the dish’s glycemic index. In these pages, I will give examples of swapping elements of a classic dish, say, eggs benedict to make new benedict variations. You can then let your imagination take over and create your own fantastic "benedicts".

Second on my Substitution list is flavor substitution: here I take a flavor element or flavor profile and change it to go in a different direction. For example, when I want a particularly intense anise flavor in a tomato sauce, I will substitute star anise for the fresh basil. Another option I could use Thai basil to impart a surprising distinct but familiar flavor. Continuing with the Thai theme I could use Kaffir lime leaves to replace the required lemon or lime zest in a recipe giving a new flavor twist. Sometimes the substitution can be partial,  for example, replacing half of the tomatoes with strawberries to make a strawberry-tomato salsa. The flavor substitution can be quite striking, replacing the existing flavors with something quite unexpected and different, taking the dish in a interesting new direction. One familiar example is the addition of cheddar or other cheeses to traditional béchamel sauce giving us a Mornay sauce, the base of many macaroni and cheese dishes. I can transform hollandaise into béarnaise with the addition of tarragon vinegar, a component I will use in our steakhouse benedict. Many fusion based restaurants create their signature cuisine by substituting or blending different flavor profiles, using a new different flavor profile with a familiar dish. I could take a recipe with great potential and make something special by changing the flavor palette. For example, I love both Asian food (in particular Thai) and regional American cooking; which might lead me to create a San Francisco cioppino using a Thai flavor profile using fresh Oregon coastal ingredients I have locally available. I will use this method later in a recipe for an Italian style quiche where I utilize distinctively Italian ingredients to create an Italian flavor palette. Using the multitude of distinctively international or culinary regions as my inspiration, I have a complete arsenal of culinary flavor profiles at my convenience. If you want some specific ideas, "The Flavor Bible" written by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg is a great resource to anyone looking for flavor profiles or just getting an idea of what flavors and or ingredients goes with others. It is one of my most important and used kitchen tools.

Third in the Substitution list, is addition. How many times have you found yourself thinking that this dish could really benefit with the addition of... I will explore that direction with a traditional Chinese dish, stir-fries eggs with tomato which I will add basil and five spice powder to elevate the dish.