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A teacher's boast
One of my macrobiotic teachers once boasted that his wife cooks different dishes every day. I was so impressed... until I made that creative breakthrough and realised that it is no big deal.
Now I create "new" dishes everytime I cook. You can do the same. Easily. All you need to do is learn some basic cooking styles. Then vary the ingredients.
In this section, I'll show you how. I will introduce same basic techniques, share a few recipes and then you take over.
Breakthrough
First, a short sharing about my breakthrough...
My friends and I were planning a macrobiotic pot luck party and I was assigned to cook the soup. I discussed this with my friend, Genevieve, and went through all the soup recipes that we knew. For some reason, they all seemed boring!
Finally, I said, "OK, I will make a soup that I never made before!"
We went to the supermarket, I picked up four different types of vegetables that caught my fancy - I cannot even remember what they were! - and made a soup out of them. It turned out delicious!
That day onwards, whenever I cooked, I would tell myself that I would cook something that I had never cooked before. "The idea will come," I would say. True enough, the ideas always came. Usually within a minute or two.
Now, I don't even need ideas. It has become automatic. I simply pick up whatever I like - or whatever is available - and go on from there.
Of course, the results are not always fantastic. Some days, I produce quite delicious dishes. Some days, my creations turn out quite plain or even lousy. But always, they are different.
One of my recent less successful experiments was a jelly made with kukicha (twig tea) and grated coconut, and without any sweetener. It wasn't very palatable! Oh well, we had a good laugh over it!
To be creative, you must dare to experiment. And dare to fail.
With practice, however, you will roughly know what works and what doesn't. Your chances of failure will therefore be reduced. That's when you might want to experiment more boldly!
OK. Enough said. Let's start cooking!
Sorry, no photographs yet. I will upload them later.