Mi'sen

Let's see what my under caffeinated brain comes up with: - received wisdom would say 'pick up Jacques Pépin La Technique, watch Gordon Ramsey Videos (etc), read about how Tim Ferris learnt to cook to gain some meta-handle on how to learn': all reasonable, and worth doing, but....

- that is a little like showing someone teaching BJJ by sequentially running through a bank of techniques, whilst forgetting to introduce some fundamentals such as weight distribution, how to create/close space, importance of functional pivot/grips....

- I have bought 'Salt, Fat, Acid Heat' by Norsat, for a number of people, it's fantastic because it takes a pretty different approach to learning to cook. Samin introduces some foundational principles as to what makes something delicious, rather than just a pile of techniques.

- Norsat introduces the sort of 'cook's intuition' that you might pick up from your grandmother if you grew up in a kitchen. It isn't magic, but Norsat has given visibility to an aspect of cookery that has mostly been confined to oral tradition.

- I alluded to Ferris' 4h cook earlier. I both hate and love that project. There is an enormous amount of noise in that book, but I really appreciate his general approach to learning, and the demystification of certain things. I think the best thing he introduces is enthusiasm: