What to cook?

A lot of people tell me that they always are having problems coming up with new things to cook. This is a common problem for most of us, and when I was involved in the food business day to day I found that even professional feels the same a lot of the time. I cannot count the number of times when chefs confessed to me that they had problems completing a new menu due to lack of inspiration. The worst thing to do is to get into a routine, with pre-planned meals always on the same days. That totally kills inspiration. Since we have moved here to Mexico a few years back I have tended to suffer from the same problem for two reasons. First the kitchen in the small condo where we used to live was very small and it was a real pain to do any type of cooking, so I tended to enjoy it a lot less. Luckily the new place is still small but we organized it to make cooking fun. Second, and most important, due to our schedule in recent times we used to go food shopping only once a week, and this was normally on weekends when things were very crowded. It is difficult to enjoy food shopping when you cannot get to the food. That was compounded with not having any decent shopping in our area and no car to move around. Luckily the new place has lots of decent shopping nearby and a large street market (tianguis) once a week with a huge amount of fresh produce. Normita tends to be extremely organized and likes to plan things ahead. I am at the opposite and I have no idea what I will feel like eating tonight, let alone next Friday. I have found that the best way to get out of a food rut is to go food shopping either daily or every few days. In a way it might be a pain to do so, but it creates an environment that is conductive for variety. When I used to do this on a regular basis, we had something different on the table every day. Normita used to ask me what I planned to cook, and I could not tell her until we looked at available fresh ingredients. I like to look at fresh produce, meat, fish, poultry, etc. and what looks appetizing changes every day. I get inspiration from what is available when we shop, and at times you find new things that you have no idea how to prepare, and then I normally spend a short time on the Internet researching the background on a specific new product. I then try to improvise something in the style I am in the mood for that day. I rarely follow a recipe, but normally get inspired by a few of them, then add something based on my own experience. In this way ideas tend to be fresh and inspiration always challenged. Another important point is that it is always good to have reliable favorite dishes and the main ingredient to make them at hand, so when somebody drops by unexpectedly or you do not feel inspired due to time or mood, you have something reliable to cook. An example of this is that lazy mushroom pasta recipe I posted recently. We always have dried pasta, cans of mushrooms, and a jar of tomato sauce in the larder. In this way we are always ready to make that dish if we do not have anything else handy. One of the most rewarding pleasures of cooking is to look for new things and experiment with them. Also the sight of fresh products in a good market always inspire me to try something new, or something old in a different way. The next time you ask yourself ‘what are we going to eat today?’, either make one of your old standbys that you have all the ingredients at hand, or go food shopping with an open mind and see what inspires you. Try to experiment with something new, or a variation of an old favorite recipe with whatever ingredients that inspires you that day. Lucito