Making Ingredient Connections with Steve Drake

Surrey based chef Steve Drake has 1 Michelin star at his restaurant Drake's at The Clock House. In our latest video he talks about the restaurant and how his dishes are created.

Watching a dish coming to life from idea to completion is always an exciting thing. Many chefs use different methods to achieve this but I found Steve Drake's method of outlining the connections between each of the ingredients on paper first to be very interesting. 

In the film above Steve delves into the ideas behind his latest beef creation and shows how he reached his conclusions on paper first. He is not one to draw the dish and work out where each ingredient should sit on the plate. That, he feels, is a bit old hat. Instead, what he and his head chef Mike like to do is sit down away from the hectic pace of the kitchen and plot the connections between ingredients until the dish feels done.

What they are looking for are food pairings that work and then add new combinations by exploring relationships between other ingredients that could be added as well. Thus the already trusty combination of seaweed and broccoli is successfully married to beef with seaweed being added to gnocchi as an accompaniment that also contains parmesan, that also goes well with beef. Parmesan also contains the umami taste that is backed up by seaweed. Tomatoes and marmite complete the ensemble.

From that point on the dish goes into production and where each ingredient sits on the plate can be more closely worked out. This method of working has served the restaurant well and all the dishes on the menu are worked out this way. So much so that Steve's office is now strewn with pieces of paper with connections between ingredients.