Everybody approaches cooking in their own way. Some of us love recipes, and follow them to the letter, rarely veering off the printed word. Some of us apply our inventive nature to cooking, creating new dishes on the spot with whatever we have on hand. There are those of us just want to get dinner on the table, better yet if it can be done in 30 minutes or less. There are those who relish the feeling of taking the time to do as much as we can by hand. Some of us even go as far as to grow or raise our own food.

It’s all cooking. And it’s all good. My father? He’s a recipe follower. My mother, taught herself to cook from recipes in cookbooks 50 years ago and never looked back. She made the leap from following recipes to just knowing what to do, knowing what seasonings work with what, how to achieve the right balance of flavors, understanding the basic proportions of things. Some of us (my dad) will never abandon our recipe books. But some of us, having mastered our favorite recipes, long to be able to cook like those we think of as “intuitive cooks”. If you, like me, are trying to become a better cook, one with a more innate understanding of what works and what doesn’t, then I highly recommend Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, as a place to start.

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