New Book: KITCHEN CREATIVITY: Unlocking Culinary Genius

Anyone who’s ever dreamed of walking into a kitchen and creating a dish from scratch, knowing exactly how to season it to perfection, will find the KITCHEN CREATIVITY: Unlocking Culinary Genius—with Wisdom, Inspiration, and Ideas from the World’s Most Creative Chefs by Karen Page’s three-stage process an inspiration!

• In Stage 1: Mastery, a cook copies the masters—their dishes, their techniques, their seasoning—to develop a knowledge and skill base. Here, Page recommends essential books for the chef’s library, explains the difference between enhancing flavor and adding flavor, lists trusted food sources for the best-quality ingredients, and demonstrates how to learn time-tested flavor pairings and affinities.
• During Stage 2: Alchemy, a cook integrates and applies new knowledge and experience, converting ingredients and classic dishes into something fresh.
• By Stage 3: Creativity, a cook connects and combines elements into a new creation. Page teaches you how to take a look at the cooking techniques you know, and the dishes you love, to play with different combinations and create dishes without recipes, using your informed imagination. You’ll also find countless proven techniques for enhancing creativity through both stimulation (including travel, reading, and dining out) and stillness (such as lowering brain wave frequencies via meditation and yoga).

The book’s A-to-Z section prompts starting points for creative inspiration, from flavor pairings for marijuana, to Damian Sansonetti’s idea of grinding Italian rice to make gluten-free gnocchi, to the dishes top chefs cook on Super Bowl Sunday.