When Ranjan was driving me back home from an outing last week, we passed a permanent market where I used to shop for fresh meat, fowl vegetables etc in the good old days before all these were available closer to our home. I became nostalgic for one butcher in particular who used to get volubly welcoming every time he saw me to ensure that I did not take my custom to one of his competitors in the same shed. I casually mentioned this to Ranjan and said that it would be nice if I could come over one morning again just to buy some freshly slaughtered mutton and he promptly suggested that I do so quickly and also make one of his favourite dishes that he remembered me cooking from my pre vegan days.
I came home and found some of the ingredients missing and sent the youngsters to shop for them and they came up with something totally different. So, I took matters into my own hands and went ashopping I did and got what I wanted.
To cut a long story short, the mutton korma dahiwallah was duly cooked and was much appreciated by both Manjiree and Ranjan who polished the dish off much to my delight. I was quite pleased with myself because I did not have Ranjan to taste while the cooking was going on as I normally ask him to when I cook meat or fowl dishes. So, I just cooked the dish up without tasting at all and that it came out well was very satisfying.
What has this got to do with creativity which is the heading for this post? I remembered reading about creativity in Roman Krznaric’s The Wonderbox, and I went for the exact quotation to use in this post and finally found it in an interview that he had given. “Rather than originality, I think creativity is more about self-expression. Cooking can be creative in this sense – it’s not about inventing some amazing unknown dish, but just putting something of yourself into it, even if it’s simply adding some extra topping to a frozen pizza so it resembles a Jackson Pollock painting.” I flatter myself that the finished product looked much better than a Jackson Pollock painting. And that it tasted better than its looks would have suggested was icing on the cake!
And a Jackson Pollock painting?
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