The Mother of Invention

As Chris Schlesinger previously pointed out, it’s rare that chefs have the luxury—or challenge!—of creating out of thin air. “Getting back to the idea of a chef as a professional, my job as a chef-restaurateur is to run a profitable kitchen,” says Schlesinger. “One of the major realities facing cooks throughout time is that it’s a rare thing that a cook gets to create in a vacuum. I go into the walk-in [refrigerator] in the morning and I look at what I have and what I need to use. Then I’ll call up my purveyors, who’ll tell me that leeks are looking great, for example, or that striped bass season just started. So I’m never starting from a blank sheet of paper—I’m always starting from something. I have all these things to which I need to apply my experience and knowledge in order to tie them together.”