"Notes From a Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession: is the first book of its kind to accurately portray the daily creative life of a world-renowned chef in a visceral, cinematic format. Never before has a cookbook focused more intently on who a chef is as a person and why they place their culinary passion and obsession before almost everything else in their lives."
As I was digging through some notebooks of mine I found some interesting drawings like the one below. I have 1000's of these interpretive sketches. I would rather draw out ideas than put them into writing. Drawing helps me visualize the idea or record a dish I've just eaten. You may ask, "why don't you just take a picture?" well, I do plenty of that but taking pictures is not nearly as engaging as drawing, plus if it's just an idea there isn't anything to photograph.
As I look at this drawing from about 8 years ago I remember it vividly. I was at the Ana Mandara restaurant in San Francisco, the first notes refer to a crispy Vietnamese roll with crab and shrimp served with lettuce to wrap them in, I can still taste the roll and the uncomplicated Vietnamese sweet & sour sauce it was served with. The sketch is depicting a dungeness crab cake that was baked in a split piece of green bamboo on top of banana leaves with radish sprouts, the crab cake was moist with a very slight scent of mint....Food memories are powerful! I will work on publishing some of my culinary sketches in the near future.
Piles of sketches, notes, and preliminary formulations......
