Thread: randomly inventing meals and testing them on your family..

I love cooking, and I love experimenting in the kitchen - but totally random creations do not surface, no matter how hard I try. I always have a goal, or a main theme, and then create from there. Like, one day it can be a thai curry with coconut milk, another it can be a louisiana gumbo (actually had that today, darn good stuff), some italian inspired pasta concoction or perhaps even some norwegian inspired fish creation. It is always based loosely on some known dish tho.

Totally random to me would mean inventing something never heard of, like perhaps a popcorn soup or a bacon icecream (hold on, that's been done already). A savoury fried fish icecream perhaps? (yikes, where did that come from? that would be a random creation for sure, but alas - thinking about it doesn't make my mouth water)

My kitchen creations are more often adaptations or developments of what someone already made, and I often spot "errors" when I see recipes for some dish - like, how could they propose only 2 cloves of garlic, how come they forgot to add liquid smoke, where's the bay leaf, or how are they totally ignoring umame flavors in some dish. That thing about umame is meant quite literally actually.

Anyways, I find kitchen activities to be as relaxing as honing

I do this often. I have to! I do the cooking in the house, to boot my wife is celiac (no wheat or wheat gluten), allergic to soy and dairy...and is vegan on top of all that. Besides the vegan bit, it's all a recent development. I have to get creative and come up with my own flavor profiles because with those limitations there are only so many bean recipes on the internet and most of them taste the same. It has actually been a really interesting challenge. I find myself researching different spices and bringing home ingredients i can't pronounce just to see what i might be able to make with them. I was comfortable in the kitchen before but this has made me a better cook.