Have you ever wondered how great chefs take notes on their recipes? Just like the artists, they do it by drawing sketches by hand, in order to imagine the dimensions and above all the aesthetic rendering of the dish they will compose. Depicting the recipe is part of the creative process and some of these author's “sketches” have been collected in the book “Chef's Design. From the pencil to the plate: the preparatory drawings of the great chefs” (Nomos Edizioni), which accompanies the reader in the backstage of the recipes to tell a little-known ritual that goes far beyond the classic list of ingredients.
“I need drawing to visualize everything and not to forget it”, explains starred chef Tommaso Arrigoni for example. “I was looking for a key dish to enhance an excellent caviar that I had just tasted”, and from there a sketch was born that gave rise to the Ragusano Cream, with hazelnuts, eggs, tomato extract and precisely caviar. Making a sketch also has an operational value, namely the repeatability of the recipe. “Through drawing – reveals in the book Cristina Bowerman, one Michelin star – I understand what the dish will taste like before tasting it. And I show it to the team to give precise guidelines ”.
Among his most famous dishes is the Honeycomb Tripe menudo style, in which the tripe cap, called honeycomb, mixes with the intense flavors of Mexican soup, with coriander, habanero pepper, lime and mead. “I don't know how many versions of the dish I've tried, until one day I sat down, drew it and said: it must be like this, just like that!”.
