I have dyspraxia, a condition that affects many areas of my life, but especially when it comes to cooking, I have a hard time following recipes. This is common for people with dyspraxia. Following instructions is one of the biggest challenges we face.
But I love cooking. I love food and I love creating new textures and flavors. A Sunday spent in the kitchen whipping up dishes is a Sunday well spent for me. But it also means accepting that I’m going to struggle to make a dish the way I “should.”
So imagine my delight when I spoke with a chef and kitchen coach who taught me how to cook. do not have As well as following recipes, her approach is actually eco-friendly and sustainable too.
We love seeing it.
An intuitive introduction to cooking
HuffPost UK spoke to Katerina Pavlakis, also known as the “intuitive cook,” about her approach to intuitive cooking and how others can try it too.
Pavlakis actually started cooking intuitively because she had trouble following recipes. “Personally, I think the reason I struggle with recipes is because my brain needs to understand why I’m doing something before I do it. I can’t trust just being ‘told’ (which is rarely explained in recipes).”
“It’s not that I hated cooking, but I felt like I was a bad cook, completely ignoring the fact that everyone always loved what I made (but I was under the impression that ‘cooking properly’ meant following a recipe).”
It’s true that getting too hung up on recipes when cooking can sometimes be like “missing the forest for the trees” and causing more stress than necessary.
Pavlakis explained that she’s not alone in this issue, and that customers in her shop and workshop have also made similar complaints.
“The most common struggles with recipes are that the instructions are confusing or don’t fit real life (it takes too long, there’s always enough ingredients, or there’s something in it that you (or your family) can’t or don’t want to eat).”
So how do you get started with intuitive cooking?
“I think cooking can be boiled down to two principles: making a meal (i.e. choosing the ingredients) and making a flavor (i.e. making it delicious),” Pavlakis said.
She explained that both of these principles are actually based on a pattern of layers, saying, “If you look closely, most recipes are built with layers like that (that’s why most recipes start with ‘cut the onion’).”
“Once you understand the layers, you can safely simplify, experiment, and improvise with the ingredients within them. You don’t need to know a ‘what goes with what’ list or understand molecular chemistry. Common sense and taste are all you need to guide you.”
Are there any ingredients you think are essential for intuitive cooking that you should always have in your cupboard?
Pavlakis said: “In my pantry, I have two types of staples: ‘basics’ foods (obviously ‘shelf-stable’ foods like onions, canned tomatoes, canned beans/chickpeas, packages of lentils, rice, pasta, canned fish, eggs, etc.) and ‘flavour bomb’ foods (intensely flavourful ingredients like olives, Parmesan cheese, tomato paste, feta cheese, soy sauce, anchovies, herbs & spices, pomegranate molasses, etc.).”
She explained that with just a few basic ingredients, a few flavorful ingredients, and fresh produce, you can whip up a delicious meal in no time.
Cooking doesn’t have to be scary after all
Putting the recipe book aside and following your instincts can be scary, but Pavlakis assures us it’s easier than you think. “It takes a bit of practice to ‘let go’ of the fear of ‘getting it wrong’ and trusting what you think tastes good,” she says, “but it works, because we all have intuitions about what tastes good to eat.”
“The great food writer Tamar Adler says, ‘You don’t need to know what it was supposed to taste like. If any dish tastes like what it was supposed to taste like, at any stage of cooking, it’s delicious.'”
Intuitive cooking is good for the environment
“We often don’t realise that food waste from households is a huge drain on resources,” Pavlakis said.
“A fifth of the world’s food is wasted and in the UK around 70kg is wasted per person per year, the highest figure in Europe.”
Instead, Pavlakis finds joy and inspiration in what she already has. She says: “Being able to improvise delicious, nutritious meals with what we have on hand means we can drastically reduce food waste, while also being flexible enough to use what’s currently available, local, in season, cheapest, or sustainably produced.”
“If you buy one stalk of celery for a recipe that calls for two stalks, you don’t have to wait until the next recipe calls for celery — just use it up in your next meal.”
Recipes serve a variety of purposes
But Pavlakis is actually dislike Although she loves recipes, she approaches them differently. “I love recipe books, and I have loads of them,” she says, “but I love the ideas and the inspiration. I prefer to read them in bed, like a novel, rather than in the kitchen, like an instruction manual.”
“I want there to be fewer people. Dependent Get interested in recipes and bring more curiosity and playfulness to the kitchen because it will make cooking so much easier, faster, cheaper and just plain fun.”
I think I’m brave enough to try this.
