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Being Touched by Inspiration
Appears in
By Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page
Published 1996
A dish represents the resolution to a dilemma How can I satisfy this craving? How can I use up this particular ingredient? The creative process leading to a successful resolution can be sparked by anything—flipping through a book, traveling on vacation, eating something at a restaurant, strolling through a market—that sets the imagination in motion.
“Inspiration is difficult to talk about, because it’s nonverbal,” says Jeremiah Tower. “But it usually comes sometime between the first and the third glass of wine, at that point of relaxation. You might be skimming through a great cookbook and have some kind of reaction, or be looking through a nineteenth-century cookbook thinking ‘I can’t do it that way—so how would I do it?’ Or you could be flipping through a bad cookbook, or a magazine, or some old menus—it’s one particular stimulus, usually.”