Where did the concept of twelve courses, which actually ended up being thirteen, for a menu come from? We approach food with methodical spontaneity. In doing so, we have filtered our thoughts on an ideal meal and arranged a twelve, perhaps slightly more, course approach to a great meal. Sure, not everyone is going to cook twelve courses. The progression and evolution of ingredients and techniques in such a menu focuses the cook and diner upon not just the food but the entire experience. We have only occasionally had the opportunity to serve a menu which involves all twelve plus courses. That is alright, because as we continue to cook and work with food and people we are able to polish our approach.
In fact, as we continue to learn, we are able to fine tune the methods which first helped us structure this approach to a meal. In order to share our ideas broken down in the format of Twelve Courses I am linking to another writeboard. The document is about double spaced pages, progressing from an amuse bouche to the farewell mignardise. Here is the Twelve Course Notebook. The password is twelve.
