We love cooking new recipes, whether our own creations that we have thought up or ones we have found while exploring online. Something we love getting to do with our weekly clients is selecting a new region to inspire meals for the week. With the world being a tapestry of cultures and flavors, there is an almost never-ending amount of unique culinary experiences waiting to be explored. Some of our recent menus have been French, Thai, Cuban and Caribbean. While we have not gotten to physically explore all of these locations, we utilize research into the flavors and recipes of the culture. This allows us to learn, experiment and eventually throw our own spin on the recipes. In this post we will go into a bit more detail on the steps we take when planning these menus out. We will also share some of our recipes created from these inspiring locations.

Research

Yep, we said it. Even as culinary professionals we are always growing our knowledge and continuing to learn. Before we select menu items, we make sure to do our work through researching online. We learn the flavors and main ingredients for the region of theme. This also includes looking through some of the top dishes to see if we find inspiration on a creating a new dish inspired by the place or if we use a traditional recipe. Along with our online research, we utilize our mass number of cookbooks to bring in inspiration and more information. Some of our cuisine selections also come from our own travels and experiences throughout different regions. We try to understand and learn as much as we can to create our menus.

Recipe and Development

From here, we select the recipes that we want to utilize for our clients meals. If we are making more of an inspired meal we select the inspiration recipe, flavors and/or ingredients that we will be focusing on for each menu item. While cooking meals we may have to adjust to more local ingredients, allergy and restrictions, and client preferences. Below are some of the recipes we have made recently. The sesame stir fry is a recipe that we utilized flavors and ingredients to make a quick stir fry of our own selections. The Thai crunch salad is inspired by the flavors of Thailand while the Coq Au Vin is very much a classic French recipe.

Creativity Time

This is probably our favorite part (which makes sense as creatives). This is where we get to put together all the research and recipe testing into coming up with and creating inspired recipes around the ingredients and flavors of world cuisines. As we grow our knowledge, skills and comfortability with regional and world cuisines it allows us to continue to grow our culinary muscles to implement them in menu planning, recipes and meals to share with you whether we are cooking them or putting them together in a meal plan for you. These menus and recipes get shared into Two Chef Mission Meal Plans where we provide you with easy-to-follow recipes from around the world, handpicked to represent the essence of each region.

We do all of this to continue offering deliciously exciting menus to not only our personal chef clients, but also all of you cooking at home. We have found in our own home that adding in new recipes is not just fun, but it also changes up how we do things and helps us grow. It also means meals that are truly never boring, since it’s a constantly growing list. We’re here to help you grow your confidence in your kitchen, that’s why we do all the research so that you can enjoy a variety of meals around the table making memories together with a little less work.

Are you ready to take the plunge into meal planning? Join Two Chef Mission Meal Plans and gain access to exclusive menus, tips, recipes, and support for your weekly meals. (For Those with Allergies: Two Chef Mission Meal Plans is for you if you are very comfortable with your allergies or only have one of the top 9, if you have more extensive allergies, we recommend the course or an allergy consultation which you can get more info on HERE.) Want to get to know us better? Join Meal Planning for Busy Parents, our Facebook community where we talk about cooking, meal planning, and all things food! That is where you will find us doing weekly lives and coming soon some monthly live demos.