What does seasonality have to do with skincare? In this conversation with Chef Shannon Lawrence, we explore how in-season ingredients deliver peak flavor, potency, and nourishment, and in our next part we discuss why the same principles should apply to what you put on your skin.
What Is Seasonality - Really?
Think of your favorite childhood memories of food and your favorite food experiences as an adult. More often than not, you’ll realize that seasonality lies at the core of these experiences.
· A flaky strawberry-rhubarb pie prepared using freshly procured fruit from the spring farmers’ market.
· A bright and zesty summer corn salad with a flavorful, herby dressing.
· The first pumpkin spiced latte of the year as the mornings turn crisp and the leaves start to change color.
· Apple picking and buttery, cinnamon-y, apple crumble in the fall and winter months.
· A steaming bowl of butternut squash soup with a crusty, buttery slice of sourdough bread.
To delve deeper into this thought, we decided to speak to chefs with experience curating menus spanning cuisines and countries. We wanted to learn where a chef’s sense of flavors comes from, and what importance do chefs and by extension, their restaurants, accord to incorporating in-season produce in their menus.
In our first conversation of this series, we spoke to Chef Shannon Lawrence, a graduate from the Culinary Institute of America with 15 years’ experience. Chef Shannon was the youngest Senior Sous Chef at the prestigious Bombay Canteen in Mumbai, India. He moved to Berlin a couple of years ago to head a restaurant with a vision to bring lesser-known culinary experiences from India to a European audience.
Below, we share some highlights of our conversation with Chef Shannon:
TDP: What inspired you to become a professional chef?
CS: I’ve been immersed in the world of cooking and flavors since my childhood. Growing up in India, food was the heart of our home. We would frequently have big family get-togethers at our house and celebrate all our festivals together. I often found myself in the kitchen while meals were being prepared for those gatherings and somewhere along the way, those experiences, flavors and passion for food stayed back with me along with the memories of enjoying seasonal and festive foods with my family.
TDP: What are some of your favorite childhood memories related to food?
CS: Something that always takes me back to my childhood is the taste of tamarind. We have a tamarind tree in the backyard of my family home in Mumbai. The tree doesn’t bear fruit anymore but it always takes me back to my childhood when we harvested the fruit once a year and made sweet and salty tamarind candies with it. Tamarind was also a very distinguishable flavor in a lot of the gravies I used to eat as a child. Even today, whenever I eat something with a tamarind note it brings me back to that childhood memory.
Another early memory is learning to brighten rich or overly sweet food with acidity - a squeeze of lime, a dash of vinegar. Think of using orange zest over dessert, mango or pineapple salsa in summer, tomatoes to cut through fat - simple additions that lift a dish.
TDP: Where does your sense of flavors come from?
CS: A chef’s sense of flavors comes from experience, trial and error, and listening to how your body feels.
So for example on a hot summer day, you’ll gravitate towards something zesty and light - fresh herbs, citrus fruits, fresh tomatoes, maybe a nice mango salsa with seasonal mangoes. On the other hand, you might crave a warm soup with a nice grilled cheese on a chilly winter day.
TDP: What is your thought process for curating a menu at your restaurants? What role, if any, does availability of fresh and in-season produce play in the process?
CS: You need to be constantly curious about what ingredients are out there, what unique seasonal produce is available to you, and the willingness to experiment with different flavors. Another factor you need to be cognizant of is cost. There’s often a connection between the two because when you use something that is seasonally abundant, you’re not only getting the maximum health and taste benefits, but also lower ingredient cost. It’s also important to keep your ears to the ground, ask a lot of questions and build strong relationships with suppliers you trust will adhere to your quality standards.
TDP: At a time when most foods are available throughout the year in some form or the other, how important is it to you as a chef to prioritize using seasonal ingredients in your menu?
For a restaurant, there’s a constant balancing act between creating dishes that guests love, incorporating seasonal produce into the menu and deciding what NOT to put on a menu. You need to be very clear about why you’re including a certain dish in your menu. Are you including an ingredient in your menu just for the sake of it, or is it actually adding value to your guests’ experience?
Let’s take the example of mangoes. In India, you only get fresh mangoes for 3 months of the year. No matter how hard you try, you will not get good mangoes outside that window. Yet, a lot of restaurants will include mango dishes throughout the year just because guests enjoy them. That is something I personally wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t use preserved mango puree to serve mango mocktails in the winter when mangoes are clearly not in season. Yes, I might be able to procure mangoes that are in season in other parts of the world, but if they don’t deliver the same taste and experience, it’s not worth it to me.
As a practice, I always support using in-season ingredients because they are the tastiest, freshest and also most potent with nutritive value. I think we need to re-learn the idea of certain things only being available for certain months of the year, and let go of the expectation that everything should be available to us all year-round.
TDP: What are your thoughts on using processed foods at your restaurants?
CS: In an ideal situation I’d avoid using heavily processed items altogether. However, in trying to run a successful business you must take into account how to optimally use your limited resources. For example, I would always refrain from buying pre-made spice blends, but I might be willing to outsource, say, pickled cucumbers from a supplier I trust, as they are not a core ingredient in my food but will take up a fair amount of time to prepare. As a restaurant, you need to be cognizant of what it is you specialize in, and focus on that.
TDP: We’re seeing a cultural shift towards minimalism in recent years. Are you also seeing this translating into your guests’ food preferences where there is a greater appreciation for simpler, but ingredient-forward meals?
CS: I think it depends largely on the ingredient. Highlighting a certain ingredient without a lot of fanfare can be powerful, especially when people rarely taste it in its pure form. For example, I’ve seen many people who love seafood but don’t actually know what it tastes like with just simple salt and pepper, without additional flavors to mask its’ inherent taste.
A few years ago, I briefly worked in Australia with Chef Ben Shewry at Attica where we would serve a dish that exclusively celebrated potatoes. Each potato had to weigh between 40-42 grams and I would go to the market each morning and individually weigh each potato to be used in the night’s dishes. Selecting potatoes that met the chef’s criteria for look, texture and weight of the potato was crucial because the potato was the entire dish.
Having said that, not every ingredient needs to be highlighted as an individual hero. Some ingredients possess an inherent flavor that shines when cooked the right way, while others work better as an ensemble.
TDP: How do you strike a balance between standardizing quality and accounting for variability in your raw ingredients, such as fresh produce?
CS: You need to implement standardized protocols at your restaurant to test each batch for pre-determined quality standards. Take the example of dishes using freshly harvested green peas in the winter. You’ll need to work with a reliable supplier to get the highest quality peas, then ensure that each batch is tested for crunch and sweetness when it comes into your restaurant before being incorporated into a dish. Some variability is to be expected, it is paramount that you have the integrity to not serve a dish if the quality on a given day doesn’t meet your standards. When in doubt, throw it out.
TDP: Do you believe that less is more when it comes to food?
CS: I think less is definitely more when it comes to certain dishes. Some ingredients naturally command attention. Truffle, for instance, becomes the hero of every dish it is used in. When you’re working with something like that, restraint is important. You use fewer supporting elements so the truffle can stand out..
At one of my restaurants, we used to make our own house-churned butter. We would serve it simply with a slice of bread and a pinch of salt and nothing else. The intention was clear: let the butter shine. Not as a side, but as the focal point of the dish.
Seasonality isn’t just about availability. It’s about peak freshness, ingredient potency, and choosing seasonal ingredients when they are most alive. It’s about recognizing when an ingredient is at its peak in terms of flavor, nutrient density, and potency. In the kitchen, chefs wait for that moment. In skincare, we rarely do. In our next piece, we explore what seasonality means for skincare.