Kitchen Creativity

November 15, 2017

At its most artistic, food preparation has the ability to engage the senses and stir emotions with memory. It combines the complexities of taste, the value of the best ingredients, and the motivation not just to be novel but classic. As practitioners of the art, famous and award-winning chefs defined "flavor" in Page's The Flavor Bible, and Parts 1 and 2 of this latest work provide a review of that title. In the third section, featured chefs such as Daniel Humm plumb the wellsprings of what constitutes culinary creativity. Readers of Page's previous works know not to expect recipes. Instead, there are deconstructions and reconstructions of the familiar and the classic, such as tarte Tatin made savory with shallots. There are many lists: "best places for the best ingredients," "classic cookbooks," "foods by taste" (salt acid, sweet, bitter/piquant, and umami/savory). All spur imagination. But it is the broader investigation of inspiration, with quotes from current researchers, that is at the heart of this work. VERDICT Both useful and theoretical, this illustrated resource explores the territory of cuisine beyond the restraints of recipe.--Jeanette McVeigh, Univ. of the Sciences, Philadelphia

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2017
Some cooks, amateur and professional, follow recipes. Others use their kitchens to produce art. The twenty-first century is witnessing the dawn of a new era in eating. Turning impatient with prescriptive tradition, chefs have lost faith in the relevance of classic modes of cooking. Just as Renaissance painters and sculptors refashioned visual art, so contemporary chefs are expanding the definition of what is edible. Today's chefs raise their own food and forage for herbs and vegetables that did not appear in the received culinary canon. Page has interviewed dozens of such visionary chefs around the world. The result is a sort of sensory dictionary and guidebook for this radically new territory. Deconstructing the physical sensations of eating, these chefs concoct novel and startling experiences of sweet, salt, sour, bitter, and savory tastes from hitherto unexplored ingredients that reinvigorate, even shock, their patrons' palates. Aspiring chefs who want to participate in this gustatory revolution will encounter plenty here to challenge their every skill and intuition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)