KC Flavor Champion: Melodie Beal Cary

“Some of my most creative moments are when I’m just playing, having fun with food, taking a devil-may-care attitude if I mess up,” says Melodie Beal Cary, head of sensory and culinary product development, Amazon Fresh Private Brands. “I like to find one or two points of inspiration and then make connections along the way.” Her prize-winning Red Lentil Socca with Crispy Agave Rosemary Lamb and Red Lentil Chili Crisp concept was initially inspired by an upcoming family vacation to Nice, France, but it was actually the plate provided by Kitchen Collaborative sponsor Libbey that confirmed the direction of the dish.

Thus, it was particularly fitting that her culinary creation was selected by Libbey, in a blind judging based only on descriptions, photos and other relevant information, for top honors in Kitchen Collaborative 2025. “I love that this dish was the winner,” says Beal Cary (acknowledging that its name is a mouthful for a server to recite). “Once I knew that I wanted to take the concept on vacation with me, the design of the Libbey plate really took it over the top, reminding me of the Moorish designs that you can find all over the south of France. And while I developed and submitted several concepts, this is the one that my husband and teenaged son were fighting over to try.”

Whether traveling for work or fun, Beal Cary makes a point to research foods that she hopes to taste at each destination. (She’s begun checking out Emirati foods for her upcoming winners’ trip to Dubai.) For the family’s trip to the French Riviera, “Socca was a must. I’d never made it before, but I love street food that can transform to fine dining. Socca is a fantastic vehicle for other strong, global flavors.”

Socca is a traditional thin, unleavened pancake or flatbread traditionally made with chickpea flour. For her appetizer version, Beal Cary subbed the chickpeas with red lentils from Lentils.org, bringing a sweet earthiness that is brightened up with cilantro and green chile in the batter. The socca carries agave rosemary lamb from Aussie Select (“which was fragrant and crisped up well”), more lentils mixed with chile crisp from Lee Kum Kee, a simple herbed Greek yogurt and lemon-dressed arugula.

“I love how fast it was to bring together a restaurant-quality appetizer that would seem to have taken hours,” she reflects, noting that the dish could scale up to an entrée or down to an amuse bouche.

“The Libbey dish was small, perfect for a single appetizer. Its Moorish trellis pattern instantly takes you someplace slightly exotic, casually elegant and a little playful,” says Beal Cary. As a former private chef who often had her pick of tableware, she knows how it can be source of inspiration for a dish. “Having the perfect dishware shows your guests that you have attention to detail, that you care about every aspect of their experience and that they should trust you are taking them on a journey they are sure to enjoy.”

FLAVOR EXCURSIONS

The Kitchen Collaborative recipe development program was launched in 2020 by Summit F&B and Flavor & The Menu. The 2025 iteration refreshed the program with a once-in-a-lifetime prize incentive: Winners will travel to Dubai with Flavor & The Menu and Summit to attend Gulfood 2026 and experience the region’s culinary standouts.

As with most of her fellow winners, Beal Cary will be making her first trip to both Dubai and the Gulfoods show. “What a perfect location to be inspired by grandiosity of world cuisines! I’m most looking forward to seeing some amazing innovation in the culinary industry, although it may be hard to outshine the city of Dubai itself,” she says.

Beal Cary, new to Kitchen Collaborative, was “beyond impressed” with the program, especially the quality and bounty of the sponsored products. “How can we not be inspired? What a joy to just focus on using amazing ingredients to create great food that I want to eat!” She believes that the best chefs prefer working under the constraints of a confined set of ingredients. “Tell a great chef that they have to make a delicious, gluten-free, vegan, high-protein dish, and they’ll say, ‘Watch me!’”

An ethos of culinary world-building undergirds her work in the kitchen. “I want my dishes to elicit a feeling of going somewhere, if only for the time it takes to drink a refreshment or consume a meal,” says Beal Cary. “I had never made a red lentil socca—or any socca—but I knew I wanted to take us to a particular place. And all of those delicious ingredients, and the plate, were the conduits that led to that place.” Bonus: “It was also really fun for my husband and son to see me ‘in the zone’ at home.”

MORE INSPIRED TAKES

A combination of imagination and memories took Beal Cary to other expressions of her culinary point of view. Check out two additional Kitchen Collaborative concepts below.

Watermelon Michelada

Recognizing that low-alcohol beverages are an on-trend opportunity, and creating her Kitchen Collaborative concepts while looking ahead to the summer season, Beal Cary was inspired to use the fruit provided by the National Watermelon Promotion Board to create a Watermelon Michelada, spiked with Sriracha from Lee Kum Kee. “Watermelon is so naturally refreshing and a summertime staple, so it seemed natural to lean into those connections,” she explains. “And when I tasted the Sriracha, I knew they were the perfect pairing. I love sweet, tangy and spicy together—and when you pair that with a crisp, bright Mexican lager? It conjured images of a backyard taco party.”

Beal Cary sought to craft a low-alc drink that was unquestionably watermelon-forward. The mix is 50 percent watermelon puree (blended with mint, lime juice and Sriracha) and 50 percent lager, with a touch of lime juice, served in a glass generously rimmed with sriracha and dipped in Tajin to set. “Every sip has those sweet, spicy, refreshingly fermented notes,” she says. “It has that extra piquancy, that ‘What is that?’ factor.”

The basic formula is easy to adapt, she notes, musing on such fruit additions as yellow watermelon, cucumber and mango for an “over-the-top Michelada, reminiscent of those monster Bloody Mary’s, but lighter, fruitier and more summery,” says Beal Cary. “It would be just as home in a Thai concept with lemongrass, galangal, lime leaf and Singha—they all pair beautifully with watermelon and Sriracha.” Swap the lager with ginger beef for a non-alc version.

“What is so great about fruit-based drinks, especially now, is that you don’t have to compromise flavor, specialness or fun for a low- or non-alcoholic drink,” says Beal Cary. “This truly a chance to make drinks that make you happy just to look at. Then, when you drink it, honestly, nobody cares if there’s alcohol. They just see this beautifully garnished, vibrant, refreshing beverage. Why should Bloody Mary’s have all the fun? Go wild. Fruit-based drinks give you permission to have fun.”

California Bounty Tart

“Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were keenly aware of the bounty of diverse fresh food that was at our doorstep: orchards, vineyards, dairy farms, even wild backyard gardens,” recollects Beal Cary. “We were food insecure, but smack dab in the middle of the city, we had pomegranates, artichokes, avocadoes, limes, oranges loquats and plums.”

She recalls the holidays when her mother “would make these amazing fruit cakes to give away for gifts. They had these perfect dried fruits, home-dried grapes that weren’t quite raisins and walnuts that we cracked by hand from 50-lb. sacks—our fingers blackened for days afterward.” The ingredients were held together with a very lightly sweetened batter, baked and dipped in brandy every week for a couple of months. “When she was being fancy, she would serve thin slices of the cake with a thick slab of blue cheese for dessert,” Beal Cary continues. “We were regularly eating canned soup, so I have no idea where she got this idea from in the 1970s, but it was something special.”

The chef channeled these memories into a California Bounty tart starring Point Reyes Blue Cheese Mousse from Real California Milk, supported with prepared puff pastry rolled in walnuts and grapes glazed with a mix of honey and Sriracha from Lee Kum Kee. That spicy addition makes the dish “a little Alice Waters and a little Venice Beach surfer,” she says.

Beal Cary remembers the early days of Waters’ Chez Panisse. “That joy from celebrating California’s bounty, reverence for the food, its specialness—without being too precious—was what I was going for, creating an ode to the love of those ingredients,” she says. “I wanted to embrace their brazen lusciousness.”

Upon receipt of the blue cheese from Kitchen Collaborative, Beal Cary’s thoughts turned to the perfect cheese course. “It has balanced flavors and textures—rich, buttery, sweet, savory, salty, nutty, roasted, lightly bitter, tangy, crisp, juicy and fruity. I wanted that, but I also wanted to modernize it,” she explains. Her aim was to add some fermented funk and a bit of a kick. So, instead of turning to a balsamic reduction to play up the sweetness in the build, she opted to use the Sriracha to enhance the spiciness of the blue cheese. “Playing with traditionally paired ingredients with something out of the box, something that just happens to be in your fridge or pantry, can be exactly what’s needed to wake up your dish.”

Don’t miss the last three winning concepts still to celebrate from Kitchen Collaborative 2025. Look for these in the weeks ahead.

Kitchen Collaborative Project Management: Summit F&B
Red Lentil Socca with Crispy Agave Rosemary Lamb and Red Lentil Chili Crisp photo: Photography: otysonphoto.com // Food Styling: Peg Blackley
Watermelon Michelada and California Bounty Tart photos: Photography: Garland Cary // Food Styling: Melodie Beal Cary