On imitation and innovation
I've already shared one of the principles I swear by, "imitate, then innovate".
The main "imitation" highlight this week was replicating a dessert by Cedric Grolet. He is famous among pastry chefs for many things, but the most beautiful is the series of so-called "fruits".
In this particular case I was making an orange, which starts with simmering orange peels and pith for a week, and then freezing it into spheres with some orange and lime gel. The spheres are dipped into whipped white chocolate ganache and are frozen again: