i'm very curious, what's culinary composition? there's nothing very deep in search results
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Basically: how do you compose a dish? Say I want to feature some beautiful snap peas in the context of a refreshing first course. What makes it a good idea to, say, pile them on toast smeared with ricotta, then to top them with meyer lemon zest, roasted almonds, and mint?
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Andy what do you think of ChefSteps? (Could @ but will leave the org unmentioned for now)
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nahh, i think andy's asking how to Play Food Jazz w/ intention. big design writing void too, b/c this part is all about process process process, everyone gets there their own way, either through research, play, aesthetics, etc i.e. this g&t vid
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Hah, yeah! Gosh, I love all of Achatz's videos. Yes, food jazz, but also more prosaic music: what should I put in my salad tonight?
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i think unless you're doing it as a job/student it's hard to justify the amount of product/food cost to do enough trial/err to build this intuition. even w/ breakfast sandos which i make a _lot_, at one point i say "ok, gotta mix this up" but it'd be diff if it were my _job_.
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Yeah. But books really do help: you read a few hundred dishes, cook a hundred of them, and you start to understand what a "California-style vegetable course" is.
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If you did the same thing with "recipe sites" online, I don't think you'd really accumulate much understanding.
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that's true for allrecipes &c, but i don't think i agree in general! there's a lot on the internet about cooking that would be very hard to get from books. cooks have instagram accounts now! where you can just *watch them cook*, or see the day's menu
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youtube's great for learning things, because video conveys subtle details about technique that you can't get from writing, even from well-written books that don't leave stuff out. it's possible to watch a 10-minute promotional YT documentary about a restaurant and learn a *ton*
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Yeah, I totally agree. I’m nitpicking specifically on composition because I’ve struggled to find good online media around that. But lots of good stuff about various other domains in food