Creative Recipe Development in cooking

1. Welcome | Introduction: Knowing 1,000 recipes is not going to make you a great chef. But mustering calendar techniques and understanding the thinking process behind those recipes development. Well, my name is Natalia, also known as Schaeffer the cola. I'm a professionally trained chef, catenary artists, a YouTuber. And as you might have already noticed at calendar instructor in today's class, I'm going to share with you the step-by-step, easy-to-follow guide to creative recipe development. Instead of making canola, we actually go into make a little darker. You might find yourself sometimes looking at those amazing fine dining dishes that Michelin star chefs post on their social media. And you tell yourself, Wow, how did she come up with this? Like it looks incredible, but also, I'm achievable. I wish I could create such dishes as well. Well, if that's you, you're in luck. Because this is exactly what this recipe development class is about. After taking this class, you'll get yourself from the point of someone to silently admires the works of payments shifts to position of a person who can develop your own unique, beautiful, and most importantly, delicious dishes. Dishes that tell your stories. 2. Case Study & Class Challenge Overview: I'll share with you today One of the most common approaches to recipe development and explain it to you in details by taking you behind the scenes of the recipe development from one of my most recent dishes that you might have already seen on my YouTube channel. But what you haven't seen there is how did they come up with this dish and therefore, how to replicate this process to create dishes of your own. In this class, we'll go over together each step that I follow in my process of developing new and modernistic dishes. Thinking behind the ingredients selection, the theme restriction, the footplate in and testing of those recipes and you, my friend, will have an opportunity to also create a dish of your own. Finally, I'll also share some extra tips and tricks that will hopefully inspire and help you out. You continue your journey and create your first standalone chef worth the dish. In the next chapter, I'm going to brief you on the initial dish steam. We will start the thinking and planning process. Then we will continue development across all the following chapters. With recipe development, you can take it as far as you wish to reel it. Most of the shares, they continue tweaking and improving their dishes with each season. Sometimes it's done to improve the taste and flavor to the chefs likeness. Sometimes it's based on the guest feedback and sometimes it's done for the sake of seasonality and to improve the workflow. All of this we will touch on in today's class. What's important here and what would be adviced from you to do in order to get the most benefit out of this class is not just to listen to me and follow along with me, but also start making notes on your first dish. As I explain each step and ask questions, the chefs usually ask themselves when they develop a dish, apply the same to yourself and start developing a dish. So by the end of this class, you will have a first draft of the dish that will be unique to you. This is actually your challenge for this class. Create the first draft, the description droplets in and test. Share your notes and findings with us by submitting them to the project and resources section here on Skillshare. If you have any questions on how to improve your dish, you also drop them down alone with your projects submission. I'll make sure to give my feedback to all of my students. 3. Where to start?: There are many ways how you can approach recipe development. As a professional chef, you'd be usually restricted or narrow down to a theme of your restaurant, e.g. if you work in an Italian restaurant, you'll be required to create dishes that are true to Italian cuisine. But if you're just starting out, you have no restaurant run or you're a home cook. Where should you start? Well, that's easy. You should also start by narrowing down your focus, just as professional restaurant chefs do when it comes to recipe development or actually any major task completion. First thing you should do is to break down this huge and seemingly unachievable goal or task into smaller size puzzles. So step number one would be to choose a theme or a restriction for yourself. In our specific case, I, as a professional chef, specialize on fine dining and modernistic dishes. And there'll be also creating a dish to share with my YouTube audience who loves learning more than coloring techniques and molecular gastronomy. So my restrictions for this dish would be for this dish to be modernistic and must incorporate molecular gastronomy elements or elements. These are two main restrictions that they have right now, still pretty broad. One fun thing that I'd like to do with my dishes is to create an illusion. So why not do the same for today's dish? So the third restrictions that we're going to have is to create an illusion with my dish. Finally, let's pick a dish. One comfort ease that had been wanting to modernize for years already is punished payer erase uses native to Valencia region and Spain. To sum up, today, I've chosen a common dish to base my recipe on by earlier. And I've also chosen three restrictions for my recipe development. Create some sort of an illusion with a dish. Incorporate molecular gastronomy culinary techniques and give the final dish presentation and more than look. In other words, I'm trying to create a remixed version of the classical period that will represent my unique approach to cooking and food philosophy. Now, it's your turn to sit down, take your notepad out and write down restrictions for your first dish. For the sake of this exercise, I'm going to advise you to stick to the same restrictions. Just pick another comfort casual dish. So it will be easier for you to follow along each step with me through the whole class. But if you feel adventurous, you can of course, choose your own restrictions for your dish. I'd love to see all your projects at the end of the class. 4. What do I know about the theme?: Next step would be to ask yourself, what do I know about this dish? What do I know about biophilia? Do a preliminary research, make sure that you know the traditional recipe. It may be the most common variations. Google the recipes, watch a YouTube video on how to make one. Search for the traditional, the OG recipes to really understand what makes this dish truly unique. If you don't have any experience with this dish at all, then definitely without any excuse, first, cook the traditional recipe. Makes sure you accelerated. Also, many chefs, when they tried to modernize classical recipes, they serve a portion of the classical dish on the side of their modernized version. So remember this, it might be a cool place, an idea at the end. So step two is do your research. And while you're doing this research, create two columns in your recipe development node bird or notes app, as I do in the first column, include all the most important the integral parts in descriptions of the recipe that trying to modernize things that are non-negotiable in a good dish preparation, like in our paella case, I'm going to write in first column things like soccer. So Frito bomba rise and arguably, but still I'm going to include this in my version of paleo seafood. In the second column. Slowly start noting down things that are allowable to play with, things that you can change and modernize. So in the second column I'm going to write the seafood texture, portioning and thinking to make it. Moreover, biter will allow em use bush style dish and so corrupt presentation. Now you can take a moment, pause and write down the notes on your first dish. What are the things you know about it? Which things are non-negotiable, and which things you can allow yourself to play with. 5. Inspirational Board: Once we got our initial nodes on the dish done, it's time to loosen up and create the inspiration board. You can do it in an old fashioned way. Print and cut out images from the magazines. But let's face it, you probably won't have time to do it. So I'm going to show you what I do and you might be already doing it as well for your other projects. Open up Pinterest. Yes, the pin app and create a new board. I'm going to call mine Skillshare, recipe development class, paleo in brackets. Start opinion. They're images that inspire you when you think of this dish. Things that I advise to include here are photos of a traditional paleo, blatant ideas. Photos of how those must have elements of paleo from the first column look like and maybe some variations of them. And very importantly, color themes and combinations. You can also include some aesthetical images on your board. If you want to translate a certain emotion or mood to your guests through your dish, images that represents this mood or emotion. At first, everything that you like and would like to show in a dish. When the moodboard is done, go through each image and revise the ideas that you had when you paint them. Here is the mood board that I have for this class. I've been there a little bit, a couple of more pictures here as well. Like this. Color schemes with actual picture representation of it. I really like how it looks, such golden colors and then play it on something simple and maybe dark colors. And I also like the idea of using this technique of making this a quadratic here and then molding it into shape, overcome Nolli. So there'll be a great illusion, something that looks sweet, but then it's savory. And for the edges, I'm going to use the fish or fish career like instead of the cream here. And maybe incorporate some molecular gastronomy and maybe pearls. Like here we have pistachios and instead I'm going to make e.g. fresh P pearls. These are very common in YLLs. I think it's a great idea. And we will play it on something, maybe like a gray dish or something like that. So I think this is a preliminary idea for our dish. Now I'm going to draw it down. As a result of this exercise, you will definitely have some concise ideas about your dish. So write them down. Make sure that you understand the flavor profile that you're going for, the cooking methods, the way you would like this used to be presented and would like to look like. And most importantly, the colors. It's time to make your own mood board. 6. Creative Plating: I have a whole class here on Skillshare dedicated to footplate. And so today I'm not going to go into much details about different plating techniques and put presentation. But if you want to learn more about it, take a class, it's worth it. However, what I'd like to discuss here is that no matter what other people will tell you, the way you present your dish is extremely important. Full stop. Footplate in is the first impression your guests have on your food. If they don't like how your food looks, they automatically fallen the impression that it doesn't taste good either, and vice versa. If you absolutely killed it with food presentation, you're already on a good start. Therefore, I'd recommend you to brainstorm your foot plate and ideas right after you've restricted yourself to a theme and before you start any cooking at all, why? Because footplate, not always, but often enough, significantly influences the whole dish development. To illustrate this, let's think about our paella dish. If you remember, the restrictions were to create a modernistic illusion dish with molecular gastronomy elements. From my mood board assignment from the previous chapter, I got an idea of presenting the Saqqara to start with, with by alien inside and cover the ends with a seafood, but there are bred and decorate with some fresh P pearls. So at first glance, this dish would look like a sweet canola, but in reality it's going to be epithelia bite. This whole idea is based on the plating aspect. It changes up the whole dish preparation and cooking completely. If I haven't thought about the plating upfront, I would never ever be able to come up with the same dish on the spot. So this blatant idea changes up the whole cooking process. Now that you have some food place in ideas for your dish, draw them all in your recipe development Notepad and I highly recommend to use colors. Color palette is very important when it comes to food presentation. It often makes or breaks the whole dish. So plan your color choices before cooking. 7. Socarrat Tuile - Test, feedback & development: Here comes the part of the recipe development that you've all been waiting for. Now we are actually going to cook. I heads up, this is the most tricky and probably would be the most time-consuming part of these Paleo recipe development. Luckily, I've personally already worked with this rise to the king before, so I don't need to test the execution of this technique in general, I already know the work in recipe, the bacon settings, the times. If you've however chosen a technique for your dish that you've never, ever tried before. Then step one for your testing would be to test the technique of execution itself on a small batch of food. Makes sure that you really understand how this technique works, that you can replicate it and what are the tricky parts, e.g. in this Socratically, I already know that in order to create a crunchy real, first, I need to cook the rise to the food doneness and then pureed food processor, not too much. So they can still see some of the whole race granules and the rest is pre-read to create starchy texture so that the whole race granules can actually stick to each other when they're being drained out in the oven. From my previous test, I also know that the most tricky part is to move this rise to illustrate specific shapes. So this is the major part that I'm going to test out today. I'm going to test different shapes, sizes, rolling methods, and assembly. Maybe something else comes along. We will see how the desk and goals. So first, I'm just going to flatten out the rice bread with my hands, dried halfway through in the oven and then molded directly onto the cannula mode and drive further. This is the method that I've used before. Let's see how it performs today. This is the end product of this method. First and foremost problem with this method is that the shape is irregular and I want the M shape for my dish to be very neat. So maybe what am I going to do in the second test is tried to roll out the raspberry and then cut it with a cookie cutter to create some identical and uniform shapes. Second problem is the same. I don't like how it looks like, especially considering that this would be the side that will face my guests. So in order to solve this problem, the solution that they can think of right now is to try and move the right spirit directly onto the canola molt while it's still wet and flyable without draining out halfway through and then just try to flatten out the seam completely. So this is the second thing to test out. Finally, there was a huge problem with stickiness. The rice can only get completely stuck onto the mode. One thing that I can test out is to try and cover the mold itself with a parchment paper or foil. I have my doubts about this method, but let's try. After the second test, we got these results. The idea of using the rolling pin to rollout the right spirit was a great idea. It worked very well and to use also the cookie cutter, I'm going to stick with that. What was not great or actually a complete failure was the idea of using foil. I could easily get out the rights to use the mold, but I couldn't get the foil of the rice fields. So what I'm going to do in the next test, I'm going to try and use rice flour and spread it, or just on one surface of the rights to use, the one that touches the mold so they don't stick onto them. In order to preserve a beautiful golden saffron color. On the other side, rice flour might also solve another big issue that we have right now. When the rice bread dries out on top of the moles, it shrinks in size and creates this all full cracks. This is a no-go and it doesn't match the needs. Look that I'm going for. Also some of the tweets, they just fall off the walls and just got completely destroyed like that because of those cracks. So let's see how the rice flour helps us. The rice flour was yet another great idea. It definitely solves at least one of the previously discussed problems with stickiness. The cracks, you see less off but they still appear. This is a no-go for me. Also, there is another problem that still remains for us. The problem with seems they appear irregular on each canola and also they stick little bit to the mold itself. We've done at least three tests by now. We found some success, but not complete. And as a chef, I need to look at the time now and evaluate if it's worth for me to keep on testing or it's time for flexibility. I personally think it's the second. I can probably work on this recipe for a couple of more days. Test out and come up with the perfect tool shape and the cooking methods. I'd say I'd rather adjust my initial idea and adapt. Remember that arts or arts, where you're the chef and you are the artist. Normally, you know how your dishes supposed to look like at the end, many great artists created their best works of art by accident. They didn't mean for the results to look like how it did at the end. And yet, this is the creative process. Go with the flow and do what feels right in the moment. As Bob Ross used to say happy accidents. In my paella example, I'm thinking of the two problems that I have right now, seems and cracks. And it simply decide to change up my initial canola shape to a smaller taco shape. I believe that it will solve both of my problems. There won't be any seams at all. And potentially there won't be any cracks either as there will be a space for the right tools to shrink. But I will need to rethink and draw another version for the plate in. Here it is. And I think it looks even better. Okay, Finally, as expected, this is a perfect and easy to replicate cooking methods. Just look at all of those media taco shells. They look perfectly identical. There is no stickiness or cracks, just perfect. Also, the size of the portion size is much smaller than initially intended, which makes it even more suitable for the amuse Bush one byte dish style that was going for happy accidents. 8. Seafood Pâté - TF&D: When it comes to the seafood in our modern Bailey and use bush, we already know that we will need to pipe it out. And the shape of piping became even more important to take into account the new version of the plate in that we came up in the previous chapter. So taking this into account, I've decided to go for a seafood. Instead of just the prereq, erase my God, keep a shape as well as water featuring buttons. So let's go for the Petain step. It will also give a more sophisticated wipe to the whole dish pairwise. For this effect selection, I'm going to go for just protons and add a little bit of fish sauce to accentuate the seafood flavor a bit. One of the reasons that I've chosen specifically prompts for this button is to hit two targets with one bullet. I will use the pronoun meet to puree in the potato itself and the prom shelves to make protein fused button to give my part. So far we've considered mostly only the looks of our Bailey and use bush. But this one is for the taste. Once the party is done, I'm going to test out different piping shapes. I actually didn't know the shape and look that I'm going for, but I need to test out different piping tip sizes basically. So I'll test it out on the side of the scraper. Smaller size would look much better since our dishes so small. And that's basically it prompt, but there was the easy one. We'll have to see how it looks in the final assembly. But so far, so good. It's approved for the next stage. 9. Fresh Pea Pearls - TF&D: Last element of our modern paleo is the fresh P pearls. We're going to make them from their fresh pea juice mixed with agar, agar using the direct verification technique from the molecular gastronomy, agar. Agar is the natural derived hydrocolloid that will help us to create this small spheres are pearls from the pea juice. In terms of the techniques, It's one of the simplest molecular cuisine techniques. All you need is a liquid mixed with anger, anger, and then IS called oil. However, what I need to test for this recipe, the pearl shape. Ideally, you'll need to use a special dropper for this method to create perfectly shaped and identical pearls. But I'm going to show you two alternative methods. First one is to use a squeeze bottle. This is the easiest way, but then it's hard to control the size of shape of pearls. You'll end up with very silicon pearls wireless for the recipe, we need all of them perfect and neat. Second method is to use a pipette, which is much more precise way, although more time-consuming. Looking at comparing the results, I'd say with definitely need to go for the pipette methods. Now it's your turn you guys to test, get feedback, adjust if necessary, and test again elements of your dish. This might take some time, maybe even a couple of days. So don't forget to have fun. Don't stress out. If one way doesn't work, research for the solution online, maybe drop a comment, maybe I will be able to assist you. But in worst-case scenario, just take a deep breath and adapt your dish to the new reality like I did with the right tools. Remember, it's your dish. You are the artist. And only you know how it's supposed to look and taste like. You got this. 10. Plating, Taste, Eating Experience: The last part of testing is to test out the actual plating, taste and flavor and the eating experience. And that's also the part when you might want to get some external feedback from your friends and family or colleagues. In our case, disassembly came out just a splint drawn in my notes that there was nothing to adjust here. It came out to be just perfect. One teaspoon of paleo rise with the Frito fitted perfectly inside the so-called at-will brown. But they're piped out and stayed in place just perfectly as well despite my initial doubts due to the temperature control, the fall in place as well. So there was nothing to correct here. As for the plating, I've initially was planning to go for a dark medium size plate like this one and play the dish on top of some black rice for some texture. However, since we've changed the dish shape and size in the course of testing, they appear to be no way to play the pale attacks without touching the rice. And when it touches the rice, rice sticks to it in place. There is one rule of not including any node edible items on the plate, especially not sticking them to the edible parts. Therefore, I had to get rid of this idea of seven Paley on Blake rice. I could have went for a special construction or special plate, but instead, I decided to go for a more simple and classic way of plating. I've just picked out a thin line of Patel on the plate and attach the taco shells on top. This serves two purposes to keep tacos in place and prevent them from rolling. And you avoid the non-edible elements from the plate. It's also a much easier and less expensive way in comparison to create some special constructions are purchased or purchasing special shape plate. Finally, let's taste it. The flavor is perfect. Despite quite pronounced buttery flavor in there, I can still taste all the must have elements of a tuple alien, disaccharide, the rice with so Frito, the seafood and of course the fresh peoples. Flavor wise, I think we've nailed it. Also the eating experience turned out to be much better than the initial canola version that goes a much smaller in size. And therefore they could truly be eaten in one bite. Like to amuse Bush should be when it comes to testing your recipes, it's important to note here that this stage of recipe development is very important and should not be overlooked or underestimated. Even if you are a professional chef with years of experience, you should always test out your recipes. When you're just starting out. There are many factors that are known to you and unexpected in your cooking. Test out your recipes as many times as you need to. But also don't overcomplicate it. The best, the most delicious and the most enjoyable recipes and dishes, often the most simple ones. So follow your heart and instincts and it will show through your cooking. Now, it's your turn to test your first recipe version and get the feedback. 11. Bonus Tips!: Apart from everything that we have already discussed before, there are a few more things to consider for your recipe development. Two very important things at time and workflow. Think how much time realistically do you have for your dish to be fully cooked and served? No one wants to wait for their food for hours. And some foods takes hours and sometimes even days to be cooked. Is this the case for your dish? It is for mine. So make sure that you plan your workflow ahead and prep as much as possible. Let's have a look at our paella dish in this recipe, I'll definitely prep the Kodak cartwheels in advance and store them in air-tight container until needed. I'll make people a day before and refrigerate them. And they'll also prep the proton potassium in advance while it's the traditional paleo for staffing would be cooked just before servant and kept warm so guests can enjoy a warm dish like a paleo should be engineering service. All I'll have to do is to assemble the paella tacos. Now think what you can plan and prepped in advance for your dish. 12. Final Thoughts: Alright, so we're almost at the end of this recipe development class. It was packed and I didn't blend to include so much in this class. I hope it wasn't overwhelming for you guys. Here is the step-by-step guide to recipe development that you can follow to create your first unique and truly yours dish. Step one, narrow down your focus. Pick a dish and restrict yourself to 23 characteristics. Having to create an illusion with a dish, incorporate some molecular gastronomy culinary techniques and create a more than look for the final dish step to do the preliminary research. Learn how the traditional dishes made. Maybe research some variations and make sure that you can actually cook it. Step three, create two columns. The first column with the most important and integral parts and descriptions of the recipe of the dish that you found through your research. And fill the second column with things that you think you can play with in your dish interpretation. Step four, make a mood board that will inspire you. Make sure to include there some place and ideas. Photos of how the must have elements of the dish look like. Some color themes and combinations, and also includes some aesthetical images as well. Then go through the Moodboard images and come up with a dish idea, flavor, and fleeting. But you think that would work best based on your moodboard. Joy down, using colors and write down each element of the dish with its cooking techniques. Step five, test, get feedback and develop each element of the dish. This process can take as long as you want it to over-complicate it. Huge though, simplicity is kink, but also don't underestimate this tab. Or God forbid, omitted at all, destined is crucial to any recipe development. Sometimes things that seem obvious to note, not a splint. Step six, danced and get feedback from your dish assembly, plating, taste, and eating experience. Step seven, no down your time constraints and plan your workflow accordingly and prep as much as possible. Hungry people, they don't like to wait and they turn into hangry pretty fast. And then said, here are seven steps to successful recipe development. I'm not saying seven easy steps. But now that you have this big recipe creation undertaken, broken down into smaller tasks, it's much easier to take the first step. So now you have no excuse. If you've been following me through the whole class, you should already have some nodes and ideas written down. Now it's time to take action on them. Do the class challenged project and share with me your results by submitting them here on Skillshare to the project and resources section, you can also share your creations on social media. Write down what you've cooked and tag me in description. I can't wait to see what dishes you come up with. 13. Before you go: Here are a few more things to mention before you go. First of all, thank you for taking this class. It's a pleasure for me to have so many people taking my online classes and helping you guys to advance yourself in your career journey. If you've enjoyed this class and you've learned something new today, please take a moment and write a quick review. Also follow me here as an instructor on skill share and subscribe to my newsletter. There should be a link in the description. Don't forget to check out my other classes on my profile here, like cardiac education, footplate in and French sauces. And they said, congrats on completing this class. You're one step further in your career journey and where most of the home cooks who had never thought of recipe development seriously and never took this class. You're the best Yeoman calorie hero. Now go and create some beautiful and delicious dishes. Now it's time to paste it. Oh my God, this is so good. Periods.