Bay Scallops Dashi, Chive Oil & Pineapple

Here’s the challenge: a dish with bright, clean, appetite-whetting flavours. It has to be made with impressive haute cuisine precision, but it is not an occasion for involved, multi-step à-la-minute cooking: it’s called an amuse-bouche and it’s the first bite that’s given to a customer at a fancy restaurant. Amuse-bouches were one of my responsibilities when I was working the canapé station for Andrew Carmellini at Café Boulud.

When I worked there, amuses were typically little bites