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Rule #19 - Copy Don’t Steal

There's a lot you can learn about technique, history, ingredients, and creativity by trying to replicate someone else's cooking. You should do it. You should try to understand what makes the food you love special. And then you should be very careful about your next step.

Throughout Momofuku's history, we've served dishes that were directly inspired by other chefs. Whenever we've done so, we've been careful to note the connection right there on the menu. I feel confident in saying that we've always tried to do right by the cuisines and people to whom we paid homage. If you're 100 percent sure that including someone else's idea is vital to the story you're trying to tell at your restaurant, then acknowledge where it came from. And under no circumstances should you serve something worse than the original. Do not cut corners. Do not do a watered-down version. If it makes the dish better, inject some of your own perspective, but adding cheese to something doesn't make it yours.

- David Chang, To Eat a Peach

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Weekly Blog Post 11/9/2021

The other week I was asked to bring in an inspirational text to share with the class in Creative Studios. When given the prompt, I knew I would choose something from David Chang's memoir. Naturally, I settled on his list of rules in the back of the book and picked a few points that stuck out to share. After submitting this, I questioned if this was inspirational in any way. A list of rules? But to me, it was. This is how I function, following guidelines set forth by myself and superiors. A lot of the rules to being a good chef I already followed from several years of practice and even just the work ethic my parents had instilled in me from a young age. Chang's rules have also made me reflect on how much some of these values go into shaping my craft as an artist/chef, whether it's intentional or not. 

Thinking about these rules also reminded me of a favorite artist, Tom Sachs, and his 10 bullets or code of conduct working in the studio. Again, another list of rules that I greatly admire and had probably seen before David's. The lines were starting to blur for me between these worlds of creatives and their many lists and rules. After all, in the words of Alice Waters, "...they are both reactive and creative, imitating and adapting to each other." I don't gripe with them and hope to find more lists and rules because I find myself walking this line. (Need to revisit Adam Savage's book Every Tool is a Hammer and his spiel on lists and maybe some of his working philosophy)

As cool as it is to look at other artists' practices and worship them, I am my own person, and not all my priorities align precisely with them. No doubt I share values with Tom and David, but who's to say I can't have my list. Almost around a year ago, sadly wasn't dated in my notebook; I started jotting down things I learned working in the kitchen. It was towards the end of the semester, and I thought it could make a fantastic project idea headed into professional practices. Most of what I jotted down were quick blurbs of primarily technical know-how in the kitchen, yet you can synthesize lessons from some of them. Maybe not lessons but rules and guidelines to hone my way of thinking to create projects and food. I want to explore this manifesto idea further and possibly include it as a structural system in whatever food publication I produce.

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Weekly Blog Post 10/26/2021

Until recently, I was almost disgusted with the idea of recipe books, a bit strong of a word, but had a particular perception of them; you get the idea. I grew up in an age where if I wanted to know how to cook something, I could google that shit. I spent a solid chunk of time flipping through the pages of all recipe books that my mom dug out for me. And even then, I was still cautiously doing so because I didn't want to feel like I was relying on a recipe more than the culinary skills I had learned. But having started to collect modern recipe books and reading them, I began to see the value again and why a resurgence in them was happening. 

Flipping through those old recipe books was a bit nostalgic. It's not like I remembered any of the recipes specifically, but it was just reminiscent of a different time. It was amazing to see the evolution of recipe collecting, especially when I got to my mom's recipe box, stuffed with recipes from a great range of time and unknown sources. Some were neatly written on cards that matched the box, some sloppily scribbled on notecards, some typed via a typewriter, some printed on a word doc in comic sans, some from my sister, and many more types. It was insane the range of the recipes and them being shared. You have to be a fantastic friend to personally write out a well-regarded recipe of your own to share with them. I experienced this last year with a family friend. We gifted them a crockpot, ingredients, and two recipe cards (that I made up in illustrator) as a present. It was interesting trying to synthesize what was necessary onto a slightly oversized notecard-sized piece of paper.

Where I'm going with all this recipe developing, gathering, and sharing is the fact that a recipe has been created means that it has been, hopefully, rigorously tested and improved into its most ideal form, ready to be shared with those wanting to learn. Reading Molly Baz's Cook This Book has opened my eyes to the role the author/chef has when crating this collection of recipes.

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Weekly Blog Post 10/19/2021

This past week in my creative studios class, I prototyped a chicken sandwich cookbook! It ended being a kind of retrospective project about my relationship with chickens sandwiches this past summer at work and how they came to be. I inserted my narrative wherever possible in between the recipes with was a new thing for me to try and synthesize. I’m used to cooking and just doing it; taking notes was new for me throughout the process. This process took me roughly 10 hours spread over two days of shopping, cooking, and photography. This project isn’t in its most ideal form but gave me a greater understanding and appreciation for what goes into these publications.

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Bad-boy chef and author Anthony Bourdain goes off the beaten track in search of foods that are rare, highly esteemed and sometimes downright dangerous. The show, which aired for two seasons on the Food Network, was an offshoot of a best-selling book Bourdain wrote in 2001.

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Cool series of videos put together by Joshua Weismann of making household name favorites but better!!

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Weekly Blog Post 10/5/2021

So after last week's class, I had a lot of thoughts during and after drafting the outline, which is by all means still a very rough draft. Still, It got me thinking about my part of the conversation and what I wanted to add to it, and I settled on the same thing several different ways. I want to share my food!  I think it's one of those things I've been subconsciously thinking about but haven't written down anywhere or said (maybe this goes along with building confidence/not wanting to create a lousy ego). But then again, no shit, most passionate people want to share something anyways, so how am I any different what unique way am I adding to this conversation. I still have plenty of research to do and plenty of information I want to share, and I know the form is a long way off from now. Still, a magazine, or similar publication, seems like an exciting route for its versatility on the subject matter, and I can talk about the recipes, stories, and tips on its pages. It also feels like a bit of a cop-out, not narrowing my focus enough. The form will come eventually, though. 

I posted my food vlogs several days ago. I filmed them my first semester in the VA&T program and would love to get more people's opinions on them and what makes them so great. Is it the level of amateur quality that is so inviting, me sharing, for the most part, an unedited view of me cooking, which some may consider in a way intimate, especially for something that is regarded as mysterious or a chore? The act of sharing food, breaking bread, with others over a meal is such a "sacred" act.

When you combine food trucks, packaging, cookbooks, cooking shows, magazines, and fast food, what do you get? I don't know, but I'm here to find out.

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I think confidence is really important in the kitchen, you own the stove, you run the kitchen it does not run you...you have the authority and the agency in your kitchen and no single appliance or pot does and so I think it's important to remember that.

Molly Baz, The Sandwich Universe - Fried Chicken Sandwich

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This week’s sandwich was a panko breaded chicken thigh topped with a chili crunch, red onion, sesame, and cabbage slaw on a sesame bun along with a side of roasted sweet potatoes!!

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Why are chicken sando’s dominating the fast-food game? Ever eaten a chicken sandwich, or any food for that matter, that tasted like cardboard?

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With private label, design isn’t meant to get consumers to pay more for a product. Instead, it’s supposed to make people feel better about paying less.

Rachel del Valle

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/when-did-generic-grocery-brands-get-so-good-looking/

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In response to my knolling picture of my kitchen tools and the fact that, in a way, I am building out my kitchen now took a bunch of stills of different types of essentials and work-in-progress type stuff.

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30 Second Capstone

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Made these family style sheet pan sliders this past weekend inspired by Momofuku’s recipe. Made some steak rub seasoned potatoes to accompany the dinner. Overall a pretty simple/easy recipe that doesn't take too much time. 

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Have followed this chef for a bit now on YouTube, took me a while to get into his videos but I really do enjoy the content he puts out so when I saw his cook book went on sale I bought it and am glad to have purchased it.

He also has amazing authority on the subject matter of cooking especially for being somewhat young so could be not taken in the best way at first but I think that’s been amazing thing about cooking is how much confidence and authority I’ve gotten with learning to cook

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This was a week long vlog series I did for the class: Art on the Internet back in my first semester of the VA&T program. Probably the first project I did in a food related way. I’d like to get people’s opinions on what they like about this.