One of the most intoxicating aspects of being in a kitchen for me (besides, of course, being intoxicated while in the kitchen) is the vast opportunity for creative common-sense problem-solving. It seems that everyone who loves being in the kitchen has a little bag of ‘tricks’; things meant to make our work easier, more-efficient, more-exact, etc. The Alinea cookbook is rife with examples of this, both literally and between the lines.
An example: when lining a sheet tray with plastic wrap, they often recommend lightly-spraying the tray with cooking oil, to give the wrap something to adhere to so it’s less cantankerous to smooth on the tray. I love this little trick; I use it constantly. Anytime the book (or any recipe) calls for a sheet tray lined like this, I almost-unconsciously reach for our can of Pam sitting in the cupboard.
Yesterday, a coworker shared this video with me. It’s largely about cooking something en sous vide using plastic wrap (which was great enough on its own), but there’s a brief moment where the chef lays down some plastic wrap on a countertop. To get the wrap to stick, he uses water rather than spray oil.
This one tiny moment highlights something that is a huge struggle for me. When I think about laying down plastic wrap now, I think “I need some spray oil”. I don’t think “I need something that’ll make this plastic wrap stick to the surface better.” There’s a subtle distinction to be made there; in the former case, I’m just aping something someone else has shown me. In the latter, I’m thinking critically and creatively about solving a problem.
I’m pretty confident in my abilities to replicate something; I follow directions well, and can compensate for error in small but significant ways. This entire project, for example, isn’t much more than me following directions. This extends to other areas in my life as well: at work, I can learn something taught to me by someone, tidy it up, and internalize it. But in most cases, I need the seed of this idea to be planted in my head before I can expound on it. It’s very often that I’m taught something, internalize it, and then assume that ‘this is the way it’s done’…I stop critically-analyzing it. Such is the case with using oil to hold down plastic wrap — I learned it and now I just default to ‘this is the way you do this’ rather than ‘this is A way to do this’.
The past several nights, I’ve had vivid dreams where friends have left work to take jobs elsewhere. The pervasive feeling I have is desperation and sadness, that because I’m not moving on too I’m ‘behind’ them and need to ‘catch up’ somehow. The friends in the dreams are specifically people to whom I look as a source for inspiration; they are innovators, clever people who have taught me much over the years. When I wake up, I feel sad, as though the dream is an acknowledgement that they can think in ways that don’t occur to me.
Clearly I’m able to recognize innovation when I see it. I’m inspired by it, and I yearn to have it myself. And therein lies a great paradox for me: is innovation something I can learn? Or is it an intrinsic thing, like a chemical reaction or hereditary attribute? Is the best I could hope for just being able to replicate someone else’s innovation?
And if I can’t teach myself to be innovative, can I be ok with that? It’s so, so frustrating to stand right at this threshold and feel unable to cross it. It’s like a sheet of impenetrable plastic wrap; I can see and recognize other people being innovative all around me, yet it never occurs to me to think critically about everything myself.
i’m willing to bet rory herrmann uses water because that’s what thomas keller told him to do. and that thomas keller uses water because his mother (let’s call her thomasina keller) (i don’t know why her maiden name is also keller) showed him that way. that doesn’t mean they aren’t innovative, just that they don’t need to derive everything they do from first principles.
being inspired by someone else doesn’t mean you can’t inspire them right back. it just means you’re paying attention, which is really all you need to innovate in the first place.
I’m pretty sure this post is a great example of thinking critically.
I am down right angered by people who don’t use resources available to them before embarking on a project. You, Allen, are wise/humble enough to respect prior knowledge; yet you are open enough to see and adopt new methods. That is a big deal: your awareness that there isn’t ONE way. In every post you are *aware.* You notice the distinctions in mushroom smells, the ever-so-slight different between this batch of sauce and that. And you respond. It does’t tell you to do that in the cookbook, Allen. You invent in every post I’ve read. You problem solve and think critically and fix. That is exactly what artists do.
I recently wrote in my own blog about the revelation that great artists like Matisse and Picasso were constantly studying and even imitating their predecessors at the beginnings of their careers and even later. Obviously they did their own thing too. If Matisse intentionally making a bronze sculpture much like the one he saw from 1500 years prior is being uninspired then we are all doomed.
Having kids is great example where I struggle, like you I think, with wanting to feel AMAZING about my work. I tell new parents all the time, “Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Read how-to books, ask around, immerse yourself in magazines and blogs, surround yourself with friends who are doing it to.” But I often wonder, “Am I doing enough. Are these children just going to be regular old people?”
That is some pretty knucklehead thinking on my part since I put as much effort into parenting as you do this cooking.
Allen, recently you posted a recipe that you made yourself. So I know that you know you *can* create. But it sounds like you want to invent something totally and amazingly unique and never done before. I hope you get to do that and have that feeling in your lifetime. In the meantime, I hope you can remember that your amazing friends, the ones who inspire you, are missing the things that make you uniquely you. They very well may be sitting at home wishing they had the ability to reflect upon their personal attributes. They may well be wishing they had thought to make a kick-ass blog in tribute to Alinia.
I think it’s totally amazing that you took this to the end. I collect cookbooks and love the ones with “pretty” food but that’s as far as it goes. Job well done.
I like these reflective posts you write on occasion. I’m sure that innovation comes naturally to some people, but for the rest of us, I think, it has to be a matter of mastering certain basic skills–getting familiar with the practical territory, if you will–which then opens up your practical space in a new way. You see problems and possibilities in a way you couldn’t have before. Imitation at some point becomes skill. This is the way things have to work. It doesn’t mean that one day you’ll wake up and be Grant Achatz–genius is genius–but you could be good, very good and an innovator.