In this issue, there’s a soup that helped to launch a career; a roasted chicken that earned a CMC designation; a bouillabaisse that symbolizes how much support one chef gets from her membership; and an artichoke hummus that epitomizes teamwork.
Last year, the president of the media company that owns Club + Resort Chef (as well as a number of other brands in the medical, engineering and robotics industries) challenged every member of the WTWH team to come up with a big idea for any of the brands in the company.
We then had to pitch our idea to the entire company.
Wagering on how valuable we thought a dedicated recipe issue might be, I stood up in front of my peers and gave it my best shot.
Thirty more pitches were then made by those representing other brands in the company, and then the voting opened. Our colleagues used Slack, an instant messaging platform, to vote on the ideas they thought had the most potential.
Our idea for this special recipe issue came in second with 34 votes. (The winner, with 41 votes, pitched a “myth-busting” video series geared toward the engineering industry.)
With so much support from the team, we decided to go for it.
One year later, that “big idea” is a now a published reality—and one that is much more beautiful and useful than I could have ever imagined.
When I called each chef who contributed to this inaugural recipe issue to request their participation, I asked them about the dish they were most proud of. Thanks to the suggestion of one of those chefs, I also asked for the story behind that dish. I asked about the inspiration, about what makes it special, and about why, of all the recipes they’ve written, it should be the dish we featured next to their picture.
The answers to those questions added depth to each recipe. There’s a soup that helped to launch a career; a roasted chicken that earned a CMC designation; a bouillabaisse that symbolizes how much support one chef gets from her membership; and an artichoke hummus that epitomizes teamwork.
Collectively, these recipes offer more than just a list of ingredients and procedures. They present dishes that radiate meaning and are deeply delicious. And we hope that they’ll inspire you to create more recipes that we can feature on our recipe site, recipes.clubandresortchef.com, in our newsletters, and in C+RC’s future cookbook issues.