cooking @ home

I wrote before about where cooks get their inspiration, and it comes from a variety of different sources. Sometimes you just look at one simple item and think of it as an ingredient and say what can I do with this that’s different than I’ve done before. I recently did that with London broil. (Yes, I know London broil is actually a method of cooking and not a meat, but the super markets do not know that.) I thought, I can do the broil thing, I can do the mini roast thing … Hmm, it’s a slab of top round, I know, I’ll make braciole.

Often it’s two ingredients: If I were to put this and that together, what other things would highlight those, or in what varying ways can I make things with those. I have mushrooms and I have wild rice. I could make a pilaf, I could stuff the mushrooms, I could add veal or chicken and it becomes something else yet again; and this way of thinking continues until you have more ideas and then finally settle on which one to do that day. (And remember the others for the future.)

On another note there a couple of pairings that I’ve found out are fantastic. And they are not two normal ones. For instance pork and apple is a familiar duo, but I found something else that goes as well or better with pork. Another example might be chocolate and orange or chocolate and raspberry. That’s actually two duos, well known. But I came across something long ago that goes as well with chocolate and yet one rarely sees the two ingredients together. No, I won’t say what at the moment. (I know, I’m a spoils sport.) Only because I want to “play” with these in different combinations. When I come up with dishes that really rock, trust me, I’ll let you know via my recipes.

But, there you go, that’s another kind of inspiration. These two go well, but there are few or no recipes (instead of hundreds), and so I need to figure out myself what’s the best way or ways to bring the flavors of these out with my own recipe ideas.

Sometimes it’s someone else’s recipe and what you have on hand. “Hmm, I just saw Emeril make this Hawaiian dish using seaweed, well you know, I don’t like that part of it, but hmm, fish and maybe spinach instead. Yeah, that sounds good. Now how would I proceed would be like this…” That is how the process works.

Lately, I’ve been staring at five pounds of red bliss potatoes and five pounds of russets and going. There’s a million things I can do with these I’ve never done before … and yet I keep doing the same 12 or 14 things. I run over to the Food Network website and it tells me there are 3,346 recipes involving potato in one form or another. Funny, sometimes it’s when you have too many options you end up drawing a blank. In this case, I’m either going to just go through a few hundred til something hits me or I’ll think of a style (deep frying?) or another item (carrots? garlic?) to go with it to help me narrow down my options a tad.

Sometimes you want to really taste something, especially something new to you, in a basic form. Few ingredients, no “lost in the sauce” or have it fighting with or masked by other ingredients either in number or in their strength of taste.

Recently I finally after a long search got my hands on some mascarpone, that creamy Italian cheese, and then, with thousands of ways to use it, from sweet to savory, I “stood still” not knowing what to do with it. Yet again, too many choices. I boiled them down to wanting something simple enough that I could actually taste it. In other words, after such a long time finding it, I didn’t want it smothered or lost. I wanted something “basic”. Few ingredients. I picked puff pastry with a mascarpone-apricot filling. Three ingredients. Delicious! (And I could see why cooks like mascarpone so much, finally. It’s as versatile as ricotta in that it could be used for sweet and for savory, but less grainy, almost a butter. Whereas with American cream cheese, one tends to only think of sweet connotations.)

I did the same recently when I finally got a hold of pancetta. I could use it in tons of dishes, but now that I had it, I really wanted something basic so I could get a good taste of it. Wrapping it around shrimp was my answer there. Mmmm.

Other times cooking inspiration works when you take something you have, and something you know, but you do it differently. Hmm. For instance, Thanksgiving and a ton of leftover turkey. What to do with this? My thinking went this way. What, other than turkey dinner, does one usually see turkey as a part of? And from there, what ingredients therefore go well with turkey? My first thought was turkey soup. It’s noodles and it’s mushrooms. Ok, but I don’t want to do turkey soup, what else — now that I’ve pegged two ingredient combinations that go with it — can I come up with instead? And this eventually led me to my Turkey Mushroom Pasta thingy.

I’m explaining this thinking process because maybe this will help you get inspiration on your next dish.

What else do you often find turkey in or with, I asked myself. The only other item that came to mind was the turkey club sandwich (sometimes known as a triple decker). Ok what are it’s ingredients? Turkey, bacon, tomato, lettuce, cheese, toast, and mayo. Now, as I did with the pasta dish, what knowing those various elements of a turkey club might inspire you to make? In a moment I’ll tell you one of my thoughts, but before then, stop and think what you might do.

I can think of a few interesting and somewhat unique variations knowing those flavors go well together. To me, a pizza with turkey and bacon might be a winner. It’s got the toast (the pizza dough), the tomato (in the form of the sauce), it has the cheese. Hold the mayo. Now it can stop right there, or, if I want to keep the original lettuce in mind, I might say fresh basil or even wilted spinach. (We also already know from Florentine cooking that spinach works with cheese.) Now, I haven’t made this — yet. So I cannot say from experience that this tastes good. But, in theory, breaking down the component flavorings and whipping them into something totally new, I’d bet a “turkey club pizza” should taste marvelous!

Remember when I said come with your ideas, pick the one you’ll do today but don’t forget about your other ideas for the future. Well turkey club pizza is on my list for the future. Now how about you? What is going to inspire you today? A single ingredient, a combination, someone else’s recipe, trying to take several normal ingredients but putting them together in a way you never have before, or getting something from the market you’ve never eaten or cooked and looking up recipes on what other folks did with it? Doesn’t matter what inspires you as long as you’re inspired, and the only way to be inspired is to allow yourself to be, to be open to it and say I’m going to try cooking something new today I never did before.