Cooking by intuition and instinct

There was a time where holding a recipe book would be a rare moment of secret sharing. A book where you could find magical formulas ready to be transformed into something succulent and delicious to eat.

A time where a perfect recipe would give you the best lemon custard ever. No questions asked, no subtlety, no wondering what the egg yolk had to do with it.
We would just follow the movement of the recipe. From start to finish, following it just like bomb making.

When I started my cooking apprenticeship, I was told that I should know, by heart, every single classic dish that made up what French gastronomy was all about. I should know my Sauce Choron from my Hollandaise. I should know what a Bercy garnish adds to a filet of Sole. I should be reverent to everything Escoffier had said and done. So I learnt it, and without realizing I became another stupid recipe follower.

Then in 1993 I entered the kitchen of Alain Ducasse, and for the next two years I would slowly rediscover the fundamentals of cooking by trusting my instincts and intuition rather than following a written recipe.

First I realised that cooking was all about the original ingredient, something Escoffier had forgotten to mention. There would be no good lamb navarin without the right fatty lamb neck. Touching, feeling the animal was vital to understand how, once cooked it was going to be transformed into something soft and delicious.

Then I came to the conclusion that the best ingredient is always the one that naturally surrounds you. No matter where you are on earth, you usually just have to look around to see what is best. And then the other 'ingredient' of the basic of cooking is : trusting your instinct.

With food, it is inside all of us; we all know when it is good and when it is not.
Just trust your instincts and you will be surprised how good you are at judging for yourself.