Cooks can get ideas from numerous sources (and sauces - so sorry, couldn't stop myself). The cooking of one's childhood; travel; books; TV programmes - the good ones (so IMHO forget anything with Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, Too Fat Bikers and The Hairy Women survivor, and generally the artful Jamie Dodger - a bit woo, a bit wah, a bit wey, know what I mean? amen); meals in restaurants; seeing fine ingredients...
Two recent meals have been inspired, if that is the right word, by my shopping shortcomings: risotto is hard to make without risotto rice; and a potato gratin for three needs more than a spud each. So what was to have been turkey risotto turned into chunky turkey broth (hence lack of spuds next day); and the gratin to accompany lamb chops became savoury (basmati) rice.
The rice thing was of course not any sort of innovation, indeed it's a real standby (though the quantity we had would have required about six of the packet varieties). But it was satisfying to produce something that met our needs, was tasty, and actually looked lovely (a handful of corn kernels, another of peas, some fried onion, green pepper and a red chilli for colour).
Without blowing my own trumpet (I have neither the wind nor the flexibility) the near seamless change was because I know how to cook. One of the few sensible educational measures introduced in recent years has been funding to teach kids cookery. Again, not exactly an innovation. But it will, we can but hope, inspire a generation of home cooks rather than another wave of self-adoring chefs, and mean that the hypnotic power of the ready-meal is broken.
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