Sitting by the window at La Jolla’s Marine Room (for my San Diego feature in the August 2010 issue of enRoute) and watching the ebb and flow of the Pacific was a relaxing experience, but the food – appetizers of oysters wrapped in tender spinach and smothered in lobster bisque, and a dessert of miniature petit fours that just about broke my heart with their cuteness – was an elating one.

When I came to terms with the fact that the meal would, sadly, eventually have to end, chefs Bernard Guillas and Ron Oliver assuaged the heartache by handing me a cookbook. A brand new, fresh-off-the-presses tome titled Flying Pans, filled with recipes served in this very restaurant and inspired by the duo’s extensive world travels. With recipes adapted for ease of preparation, I saw the possibilities: Would I manage to create such transporting flavours myself? Always one for a challenge, I enlisted a friend as my sous-chef, and set out to discover whether it could be done.

For both of these great recipes, see the last page of this slideshow.