As the semester came to an end this year, I knew I wanted to cook more. The previous months had been busy and the summer would finally offer an outlet to all my vaulted projects. Then came an idea:

How can I use this time to actually improve my cooking skills?

Cooking is primarily just a hobby for me, so I tend to enjoy more complex projects. But despite having made many of the intricate foods I’ve wanted to, from croissants to hand pulled 油泼面 noodles, I’ve never been able to truly unlock kitchen freedom. While I think I've been able to develop some good techniques, I’m definitely not skilled enough to just make something interesting. So I made a plan—my “Grand Scheme”—to apply to my cooking this summer, with a major goal: Rely less on recipes

Recipes should be an invitation to something new—flavors, cuisines, ingredients, techniques, etc. However, I tend to use them as a rulebook, which has me buried in the measurements more than I would like.

For a long time now, I've been inspired by a framework-based approach rather than a recipe approach to cooking, strongly because of work by Ethan Chlebowski and J. Kenji Lopez Alt. I've implemented many skills from these two, but now I want to thoroughly embrace the process of being my own recipe-creator.

My strategy at the moment is to research what I want to make from a bunch of good sources¹. By understanding what ties together many different variations of a dish, it gets easier to understand what is fundamental and what is up for interpretation. Then, you can start stringing together your own interpretation without the need to be so precise (A.K.A. freedom). This is why most chefs stress the importance of ratios and tasting your food as you go.