A restaurant has a pantry just like you do at home. The key to success is limiting the amount of ingredients in this pantry as much as possible. The reasons for this are reducing waste, increased control over costing and quality. Reduce waste by reducing loss due to spoilage or not utilizing all aspects of ingredients. An example would be making stocks using the vegetable scraps and bones from proteins as opposed to throwing these items out our paying premiums for further processed items such as fileted fish versus fileting inhouse. When I work with restaurants I look at their menus and build a pantry of ingredients that they are currently utilizing and try to use these ingredients and our crab (or other seafood item) and as few new ingredients as possible. SO working on new recipe ideas and how can you use one (or maybe two) central ingredients and build a wide variety of menu applications or recipes with the addition of just a few other ingredients. The started with the idea for a classic Spanish style crab croquette with some Spanish style chorizo sausage added kick. Besides our crab meat, the base of the recipe is a béchamel cream sauce with some Spanish Manchego cheese and a sauté of minced chorizo, with roasted peppers, shallot and garlic. So what else can you make with these 3 items and the addition of a couple other ingredients, some creativity and a little cooking skill? I stopped at 20, however, there are many, many more.
