Pork Pate with Pickled Brandy Cherries, using Marquis de Villard VSOP French Brandy The Recipe Development By Katherine Puzara
As an aspiring chef, it is my job to be creative and inventive in everything I do. Following the recipes of somebody else can certainly be an excellent teaching tool, but I believe in order to be truly successful as a chef, you need to be able to reinterpret and create your own recipes, relying on intuition, experience, and your own personal tastes. The creation of my recipe for Pork Pate with Pickled Brandy Cherries using Marquis de Villard VSOP French Brandy is a major stepping stone for me, because it is the first time that I have taken the time to write out a recipe that I have developed, and really think about the process of creating a recipe, and making it accessible for other to use, and be inspired by. In my own kitchen, I hardly ever break open a recipe book, preferring more to browse the grocery store for the freshest ingredients and let them inspire me to be creative. When I decided to go to Stratford Chefs School, I began to realize that although my creative approach was admirable, there were some things that you need a recipe for. If you start with a good solid base that others with more experience than you may have, you are able to build upon that base and once you are more comfortable and make changes to suit your style. This is what I have done with my recipe.