youtube videos are pretty good here, both for specific recipes and more general skill set stuff.

A lot of the difficulty in learning to cook is that you simply need to know the ingredients. You need to know how to prep it, how it changes as you cook it, and develop an intuition for when you need to adjust the recipe because very rarely are you ever going to follow a recipe word for word and a lot flat out lie about cooking times and expect you to have a basic level of knowledge already. It feels like a lot, because it IS a lot.

My partner was in a similar situation when we first met. She hadn't eaten or heard of a lot of ingredients and got stressed out when I tried to watch or help. A big help for her was to use a meal service, like Blue Apron or Factor. They come with very accurate recipes and all the ingredients are partially prepared and portioned, so no shopping and you have everything you need. I know it doesn't help with the two week period you have, but when you're back home and if it's in your budget it could be something to look into that could really help.

Just remember that learning anything is a process though. You're going to make some burnt or nasty food sometimes, but don't let it discourage you!

Edit: I asked my partner if she would have liked to have done anything different knowing what she knows now and she still recommends using the meal service. She said that specifically a lot of recipes expected you to know what "small dicing an onion" or "mince two cloves of garlic" meant and was supposed to look like, but they included accurate pictures of what they looked like prepped and that it was very helpful to make sure you had everything right before you even started cooking while also working on your knife skills (which is equally as important for cooking and also having it not take an obnoxiously long time).

She also mentioned that since you have roommates, you might be able to gift a week or two of free referral meals to each other to essentially get a month or two of free meals between all of you. It's been a few years though and I'm not sure exactly if that's changed over the years.

As a general tip I'd just recommend you to use all your senses in the kitchen, especially hearing and smell of course. We are so used to doing so much with our eyes, and of course the look of a dish is important, but to get the taste right you need to use your sense of smell while cooking. As for hearing, the difference between a light sizzling and a crackling hot pan will eventually be second nature, but you'll have to consciously listen for it in the beginning. Pan getting silent all of a sudden, even though there's lots of heat? Maybe add some oil, or a liquid before it smells burned.

Contrary to most, I'd stay mostly away from cooking one recipe after the other and instead experiment a bit more, try out general food prep basics (how does ingredient x taste when I salt it before frying vs after, or what difference does temperature make when I roast ingredient y, what's the difference in steaming something vs frying it), try out as many spices and their combinations as you can afford, and just generally go full mad scientist (or eccentric artiste) with it. You can also try and reverse engineer some beloved dish you really like but never really get anywhere, that's also fun. Recipes will always be there, but in my experience developing a critical eye towards them and figuring out some 'universal kitchen truths' or just generally applicable ways of preparation can get you so much further and you'll be improvising recipes from random ingredients in no time.

And here's a little content dump of my favorite Ethan Chlebowski videos. I learned a lot from the dude and I really think it's some of the best cooking content out there, but I gotta blanket CW for meat etc, it's not a vegan channel. Still, it's all perfectly transferable to cooking vegan or vegetarian or however you want.
Spices 101
Spices 102
All about garlic
All about salt
Stir Fry framework - for learning a whole family of straightforward, beginner-friendly dishes that are endlessly adaptable for whatever ingredients you like

another important Maillard Reaction Fact

I mentioned moisture in another comment. This is a reason to not "over crowd" the pan with whatever you are cooking. If you throw a bunch of big chunks of vegetables or meat or anything with moisture content into a pan, they create localized micro climates where the steam gets trapped for a bit, which delays the moisture cooking out and the beginning of maillard reactions (browning). The same is true if you are roasting stuff. When you roast stuff, after it's oiled and seasoned and on the sheet pan or roasting pan, put your fingers into it and physically spread the food out, try to make gaps of like an inch or so between as many pieces as possible.

I'm for real dawg, the #1 thing any aspiring cook needs to do is learn the chemistry and physics promoting maillard reactions

source: i'm a chef and the basic chemistry/physics knowledge I learned before dropping out of school and how it ties into this shit is why I'm the best cook at my job

Are you trying to learn like 10 - 15 recipes to cycle through or are you trying to learn how to look at a quarter stocked pantry and a half stocked fridge and figure out what to make of it, more like home economics basically?

I ask because a lot of people I've taught some cooking get, understandably, frustrated when they're following recipes and are left with like half an onion, quarter can of tomatoes and 3 sprigs of rosemary that just go bad and have to be thrown out. They're not mutually exclusive to each other and either one is fine, but I feel like the latter is a lot harder to learn through generally available online recipes.

my proverbial teachers were Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.

One of the fundamentals I learned before cooking was prep work, which is like the majority of the process. You don't want to start cooking and then realize part way through you've been sautéing the onions that you forgot to throw in your carrots or celery. You gotta do your prep work by groupings of the steps you're gonna take during the cooking process. My fundamental base for almost anything I cook is the Mirepoix - even though I literally call it a soffritto all the time - which is a 2-1-1 of onions, carrots, and celery. Soup? Soffritto. Curry? Soffritto. Spaghetti bolognaise? Soffritto. the strogonoff I made yesterday? Soffritto, even though it actually didn't need it it just adds to the depth of flavor.

Another fundamental is knife techniques. You gotta learn how to use a knife and to use it safely. No matter what you do first when learning knife techniques is that you have to learn it slow to do it fast. You can't rush yourself into it, thats how you end up getting hurt. Focus on keeping your movements smooth and consistent and as you gain experience you'll adjust yourself naturally to your advancing skill level.

Don't be afraid to look for help from others but make sure you look for things that are within your skill range. Don't have that toxic mindset of watching some master chef knock out something like a terrine with ease and go "Yeah I can do that"

Also don't be afraid to spend time experimenting and learning flavors so you can apply them to whatever dish you're making without having to follow a recipe. my days of experimenting involved using boxes of instant mashed potato and making like two or so tablespoons worth of the mash then throwing individual herbs like marjoram, tarragon, or even anise just to understand how they taste individually then start fucking around by seeing what mixes and what doesnt. its also a great way learning how to figure out the ratios of spices for your own personalized curry blend.

the cooking part, don't be distracted when you're actively cooking. a minute of dicking around on your phone is enough time to burn your food if you're using a frying pan. if you're gonna listen to something, set it up beforehand so you don't have to fiddle with it while cooking. if you do want to fiddle with it, wait until you're not doing something that requires active attention like waiting until you moved your soffritto from your frying pan into the soup pot for you to relax and diddle around.

knife techniques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nffGuGwCE3E

onions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaJWqEXaG9Y

garlic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ENOZgEqXg

carrots, chives, shallots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf6sX4DyDFU

leek (soup) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8esRoGQmOP8

eggs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhSspy4t0sI

There's a lot of resources that people have linked or written about here. Most of them are good.

For more some moral support, though, you will cook good food. You will also probably cook bad food. And that's ok. It's part of the experience of learning any new skill. When it comes to cooking, do small batches first before trying to do large batches. The small batch might tell you what you did wrong.

I started by using boxes of mix and following their instructions, then trying to recreate the mix myself. For example, one of my favorite meals growing up: Chili Macaroni Hamburger Helper. It's mix, macaroni, and then you add milk and hamburger and simmer it. Just following box instructions is enough for now if you're truly starting from zero knowledge, because you'll build confidence measuring, setting heat, monitoring, cracking eggs, checking cooking temps, chopping stuff, and so on, the absolute basics of the basics.

Last night I made a stew which is basically the same thing, except I chopped the chilis and other veggies myself to substitute for the mix, and I used TVP to substitute for the hamburger (you could also use beans for this purpose, or both), turning it into a from-scratch vegan alternative. It doesn't taste the same so I wouldn't call it a "replacement", but everything is subbed in for something similar enough so that the end result is well balanced in the same way that the original recipe is.

Food 'aint rocket science, and people have been making it purely on instinct for thousands of years. Granted, your instincts aren't perfect and you're gonna make mistakes, but your instincts are probably a lot better than you think they are and you can probably make more things than you "know" how to make just by putting the ingredients in a pot or pan with medium heat and sending it. Specific things like pressing tofu or safe cooking times you'll still want to look up, but I think getting into the "experimental mindset" is the most important thing of all.

the most important thing about cooking is understanding what maillard reactions are and the conditions that encourage them (lack of moisture, high heat (moisture = without pressure cooking, keeps things around the boiling point of water until it cooks out, this is why recipes for meat will say to dry the outside with a paper towel before searing- less moisture = maillard happens faster, you get a better sear and more browning in less time. Longer time cooking out the moisture = tougher and drier meat))

Soups are a great way to get comfortable in the kitchen! Get some veggies and a carton of veggie stock and cook em all up. Yim yum!

As someone else has said. Ethan Chlebowski is a great source of knowledge. When I was forcing myself to learn how to cook when I was like 28 I watched a lot of Food Wishes because he's very clear and usually shows most of the work that goes into it without cuts. Sam the Cooking Guy used to make his videos like that but they've gotten into more slick editing which I don't like.

Check out J Kenji Lopez Alt's channel and Ethan Chlebowski's side channel for more raw footage of cooking. It was VERY useful to watch the process. If the recipe said chop the onion or dice the onion or mince it... I didn't know what that meant. Seeing them do it explained so much more. Also a great way to learn things that might not be immediately obvious to look up at first. Like which side of the onion to cut off before splitting it in half and making your vertical cuts before making your horizontal cuts. These things may seem obvious to us after we've been cooking for a long time but I remember how it felt to know nothing.

BudgetBytes has some great recipes and sorting options for different diets. Doing lots of simple recipes is going to be essential. If you start to build confidence and want to go off recipe, I find soups and stews are super forgiving for mistakes and late in the recipe swerves. "Oh this doesn't taste how I wanted it to, I'll just add a few glugs of sriracha (or a spoonful of miso paste, gochujang, ghee, some gochugaru flakes, a cup of lentils, some lemon juice)"

Be better than me, don't get upset when you mess up a recipe. It took me a long time to reframe and realize that I learned from the mistake and can do it better next time. I've only fallen in love with cooking in the last 4 years as the sense of self efficacy has developed.

And finally... do all the prep work before you start doing anything with an element of time or urgency. Consider that the recipe author may chop much faster than you or me so if they suggest, for instance, you start sautéing the chicken and THEN chop the vegetables they forgot the chicken might overcook before us mere mortals can finish chopping. I get all prep work done and put everything in its place so I'm ready to work through the cooking steps with ease.

When I first learned to cook my approach was to incrementally substitute premade processed foods with more base materials. For example frozen pizzza > premade pizza dough + sauce > premade dough + homemade sauce, fully homemade.

Stick with breakfast items and following the instructions. Go buy the Test Kitchen Cook book.

Cooking is easy man. Just follow the recipes.

I'd just get some basic cookbook and start doing it. Also cooking shows really do help, I used to watch them and still do. Nigella was my gal back in years when I was still new to cooking. YT has so many cooking videos.

You will learn to cook by cooking. This might sound obvious and could be bad advice, easy for me to say as I started cooking very young and really enjoy it.

But I've burnt stuff, ruined things, failed and still sometimes do. You will however develop the skill as you go. Choose a recipe, follow it the best you can and repeat. Recipes for just basic everyday foods will go far, I used to cook from an old "housewifes cooking" type of book that just existed in our home when I was a kid and there was also other cook books and recipes passed down from grandmothers etc. When I would hit a wall, I'd call my grandma to ask for advice, so you could also just ask someone to teach you for real. People usually love to do it or love to cook together. Promise to chop the veggies for a friend and ask them to teach you how to make something they make that you really like. Ask for a written recipe and go for it.

Also tasting the food as you go is the best cheffy tip I ever learnt.

Basic everyday food recipes should be a few core ingredients and fairly straightforward. If it looks complex and has a ton of stuff, skip those for now. Over time you won't need recipes at all anymore.

extra firm tofu is cheap and works very well in fried rice

Learn to chop onion

Learn to cook onion

Both can be accomplished following Julia Child's French Onion Soup recipe

I learned to cook by watching a ton of food network

Best way to learn cooking is by watching others cook

cauliflower

Super easy, cut off the florets, cut them into bite sized chunks, toss them in enough olive oil to coat everything, salt and pepper to taste, garlic and onion powder, mix it all up to thoroughly coat, maybe add a little thyme if you're feelin' sexy, and then roast it at 425 degrees fahrenheit in an oven for like idk 10ish minutes before checking. Check and see if it's developing good browning (maillard reactions). A little charring is okay, too much charring is bad (bitter flavors, plus carcinogenic stuff from incomplete combustion).

broccoli

IMO roasted broccoli sucks, you gotta get it just right or it's easy to be bitter. Steam that shit, put it into a steam basket over boiling water for like 8-10 minutes. You can eat broccoli raw so really you're just making it more tender to taste. Once it's tender dump it in some melted butter or margari9ne if you're vegan and garlic and onion powder and salt and pepper that shit. E Z.

you didn't mention it but do the same thing to green beans that I said to do for cauliflower and people will trip over their dicks to tell you how amazing your green beans are

Tofu: the simplest base recipe (leaving out seasonings, which I'll address next) for this is to just get extra firm tofu, cut off a quarter to half of the block, slice that into sheets about half an inch thick or so (I just cut down the center of a block and repeat this with the resulting halves and so on to get roughly even thickness sheets), then firmly press each of those sheets between your palms to get the fluid out (you really don't need to do more than this with extra firm tofu). After this you can put these sheets straight in a pan with some hot oil (and when I say "some oil" I mean like half a tablespoon or so, just enough that when it's hot you can swirl it around the pan and get a thin coat on the bottom) on medium high, or you can cube them or slice them into strips, whatever works best with what you're aiming for. Watch the sides of it, and you'll see the bottom edge starting to turn brown and a golden brown color rising up the sides: when that's close to the top you can flip it and cook it for a shorter time on the other side. All in all it's a few minutes of prep and then cooks in ~5 minutes or so once it's in the pan.

Now for seasonings: you can cook it with chopped aromatics like ginger, onions, and garlic while it's cooking, you can toss ground spices on top of it (I like a mix of salt, garlic, and ginger for that), you can wait till its half cooked and splash it with stuff like soy sauce, rice vinegar, and mirin (I like mixing those up ahead of time with ground garlic and ginger to make a half assed, unreduced teriyaki sauce sort of thing for this), etc.

Canned beans: drain and rinse until the water runs clear, and fry in some oil with aromatics like mentioned for the tofu. Season with basically the same sauce I just described. I prefer garbanzo beans for this, although those can sort of pop and jump out of the pan depending on their casings. Black beans or kidney beans are good too, but tend to break down a little bit more and stick a little bit.

Either of these can be mixed into rice or eaten on their own. Fried cubed tofu as described above goes great in ramen as well, especially if you lightly burn a couple of tien tsin peppers (these are a little spicy, I think? I have an absurdly high capcaisin tolerance so I don't actually know if these are particularly hot or not, if you're sensitive to capcaisin maybe don't do this step) in the oil you're going to fry it in and then toss the burnt peppers into the ramen broth to boil with it (fish them out and discard them before eating).

One of my favorite meals because its so easy is what I call scraps.

Sausage scraps: Sausage Onions Whatever frozen veggies are in the freezer Some type of bean

Throw it all the pan (you do need to know when to put what in so you don't end up with undercooked sausage and burnt onions) and cook it hard. Throw some cheese and mix it in. Serve it over rice.

Replace sausage with anything, eggplant, tofu, zucchini. It's all scraps and the leftovers go great in ramen.

Also make sure you season your rice. Too many people just throw rice and water in a pot, throw some salt and cumin in there.

• Follow recipes exactly as they say. If you don't have an exact ingredient or piece of equipment, look for a different recipe.

• When scooping up flour, don't "pack" it by tapping the side of the cup. You want air to remain and for it to be fluffy. If you pack it by trying to shake it so more flour goes into the cup, you'll be adding too much flour.

• Low heat and time are your friend. Cooking something on high heat will burn the outside while leaving the inside cold. Some recipes will want you to do that. But when it says "low heat," it means you have to cook it on low heat so the food is heated all the way through. If a recipe says to bake something for 20 minutes at 200°, you can't bake it for 10 minutes at 400°.

• Start with simple dishes with maybe four or five ingredients tops. Stuff like pasta or soup is a good place to start. Maybe learn to grill veggies one type at a time.

• As far as nutrients goes, microwaving will maintain the most nutrients of the food because it's not actually burning anything away. It won't always taste good, however. Boiling will take out the most nutrients because they get soaked up by the water, which is often tossed out or turned into broth that isn't eaten. Baking, grilling, broiling, etc. are on a spectrum between these two. The more the food is burned/charred/fried/whatever, the more nutrients are cooked off. If you're counting calories, keep this in mind, especially if you're trying to bulk up or gain weight.

I have found that watching ppl cook in a video format helps me learn more about cooking vs reading about it. I have used tiktok for this. Bookmark the videos for later, but sometimes videos are deleted so if you find something you want to try, I recommend saving it somehow.

I use deepseek to put together recipes if I need a specific measurement ie: I can take my ingredients and ask it to configure the portions in a way that makes sense to me, like if I want to make banana bread and have three bananas (add other specific ingredients like cinnamon, shredded carrots, whiskey, etc) I can enter that and it will give me the correct ratio.

Easy recipe that I make for dinner pretty frequently

You take a little oil (around a tbsp), put it in a saucepan and swirl it around until it coats the bottom

Put that thing on a burner over medium heat and get it to the point where it starts to shimmer (it'll look wavy)

Meanwhile, take two standard size cans of black beans and open them up, drain the bean water out of one of them and put them to the side (no need to rinse them)

Add one tbsp chili powder (i like chipotle powder myself), two tsp garlic powder, two tsp onion powder, one tsp dried oregano (Mexican oregano if you can find it) into the oil and stir them around so they don't burn, do that for about 30 seconds

Once everything is fragrant, dump them beans in there, both cans, yes with the bean water from the one can, cook it all together until it's hot

Taste your beans for salt and pepper, add some to your personal preference

Now the fun part, you going to want to take your spoon (or a potato masher if you have one) and you're going to smash the beans until they're a paste

You want to have it be at a spreadable consistency, so if they seem too thick, add a little water; if they're too thin, let them cook down a little

Congrats, you just made refried beans, perfect for making burritos, tacos, nachos, tostadas, etc.

Good cheap easy veggie bolognese/chilli/curry:

ingredients:

• tin of kidney beans, should be around 0.5 currency units

• tin of green lentils, 0.5

• jar of tomato and herb pasta/bolognese sauce(ranges from .5 for budget to 1.50 for more premium brands)

• 1 red bell pepper, 0.65

• 1 large or 2 small onions, usually 1.50 for 3 large

• pasta or rice

Slice the pepper and either one large or 2 small onions into small pieces(doesn't have to be perfect but you can look at videos for various techniques), add a little bit of oil/butter to a pot/pan heat to a medium heat, add the sliced veg and move around with a wooden spoon or a spatula for 5 mins then:

Drain the water out of the tins in a colander, use a pot to heat up the sauce to the point where there are a small bubbles(simmering) but it is not boiling, keep on a lowish heat around 4 or 5/10 if your hobs are graduated in that manner

Add the beans, lentils and veg to the sauce, stir semi-frequently for 10 mins(or set an alarm for 3 times over 10 mins if you're lazy), cook pasta at the same time

Put pasta on plate, use ladle(if you've got one) to add the sauce over the pasta(the entire thing should make 2-3 portions, so I normally eat half, stick half in either Tupperware container if I've got one free or just the pot I cooked it in with a lid in the fridge for the next day

Extras if you've got the money or can use your 5 finger discount: get cheddar or equivalent cheese and grate over the finished dish, salad(I prefer a mix of spinach, rocket and watercress you can usually find for around 1 currency unit per bag) with some salad dressing makes for a good side that rounds out the nutrients of the meal.

If you're a filthy carnist and can get it, instead of the tins get beef mince: get a pan use a bit of oil/butter and then fry the mince with the veg for 5 minutes until it's brown on the outside, before adding the sauce and simmering for 10 mins

• The recipe can be easily converted to chilli by buying a jar of chilli sauce instead of the bolognaise and cooking rice instead of pasta the rest is the same

• The same steps can also be used for curry but use a jar of curry sauce instead of the pasta sauce, replace the kidney beans with a can of chickpeas and use rice(but the extra steps don't apply)

I like the style of America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Country, their recipes are generally pretty accessible. CW animal products https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cookscountry

Of everything everyone has suggested, I suggest: all of them. You're cooking for a lifetime and are not charged with coming up with the one true dish that will rocket you to the stratosphere. Taking suggestions from internet chefs, internet randos and your own mind will all improve your skills.

Of course, I have to add my own:

Very easy mode is to add spices to things that barely qualify as recipes. Habanero pepper in your ramen.

Easy is to add cheese. Ramen (or if you want to step up your game, udon) is still a good starting point. A great ramen variant is to use less water and boil it off until you have a cheesy ramen patty.

Then we have eggs. I don't measure things, so you'll want to mix 2-3 eggs, a decent chunk of cheddar chopped up, and cayenne pepper in a bowl. Heat a pan, throw some butter in and when it's melted, throw your bowl in and stir. You can't overstir scrambled eggs, but you can overcook them. Remember that if the eggs look done in the pan, they'll be overdone on your plate.

Then we have salads, pretty much as low-stakes as you can get but they'll give you a sense of what you like. One thing I really appreciate from corporate salad bars is that everything is already prepared and you can just throw in whatever you want, so if you have the budget, I'd suggest starting with something similar; prep your veggies and combine as you like without having to do any further prep. Remember that there are no salad judges watching over your shoulder. A pile of leaves is a salad. A pile of leaves with dressing is a salad. A pile of leaves with dressing and store-made croutons is a salad. At some point, and there are simple salads where we're almost there, you'll have a salad you can recommend to others. Mine tended to be baby spinach, bell peppers, artichoke hearts, cucumbers, red onions, croutons and some sort of creamy dressing.

Of course, of course . . .

You have to have a bean dish or seven. I'm actually a little worried about posting my recipe here because the odd numbers involved might just uniquely identify me, but I doubt the feds will kick down my door for an ingredient listing: beer, , habanero peppers with seeds and ribs removed, a lot a lot of cumin, garlic, green onions, poblano or bell peppers, tomatoes (skinned and cored or just get a jar), served over fritos with sour cream, the green bits of the green onions and shredded cheese.

Finally, taste as you go.

I mostly learned through fucking around and finding out. Cookbook is a good way of learning if you can deal with that but I get too impatient and start freestyling after getting the general gist. It is also why I'm not great at baking, because that shit requires you to follow the recipie and not randomly add a dash of vinegar on a whim.

If you're starting out, stews are very forgiving. Or soups since it is root veg season.

Since you brought up cauliflower, it goes great as a flavour enhancer in a basic leek and potato soup. The basic recipie is to chop the leek, roughly cube the potato until it is the size of 3x3 cm and chop up the cauliflower into little bouqets (I'd say for one standard leek you go about 6-10 potatoes and a head of cauliflower, none of these measurments are or need to be exact). Start by frying the leek in some kind of neutral oil (canola, vegetable, peanut, sunflower, whatever you have at home). If you like garlic you can also add some of that at this stage, a finely chopped onion also goes well but these are merely extras. You know that the leek is done when it starts getting goopy. At that point you add the potato and cauliflower and top up with water until it covers the entire amount and chuck in a stock cube (recommend veg or meat, fish could also work but that changes the flavour profile a fair bit). Then you bring it up to a boil and let it chug along until everything is soft (pick up potato chunks to see if they are soft enough to mash with a fork). At that point you can add some cream/cream substitute (like a deciliter per liter at most or it gets too much, you can also use milk or creme fraiche here, but it is a bit more finicky) and a bit of white wine if you want to be fancy. After that all you have to do is mash it up. Very easy to do that with a hand mixer or electric whisk while in the pot, but you can also use a potato masher. Flavour with pepper and salt to taste. Then presto, it is done.

The above recipie might look involved, but it is about 20 minutes of active work and it doesn't matter if you let it boil for a bit too long. One of my go to big batch lazy meals. It is also something where you can start experimenting with adding different ingredients (such as the cauliflower). Most root vegetables work in it, parsnips, swede, celeriac, sweet potato, you name it. Only root vegetable that doesn't work that I can think of is beets.

If you want an absolute cheat code for frying stuff to have with rice such as tofu, meat, vegetables you name it, get a jar of douchi (should be available if you have an asian supermarket near you). Just add a spoonful of it to the oil and let it simmer for a bit before starting to fry, it is almost magic.

Sail the high seas and procure yourself a copy of Samin Nosrat’s book, Salt Fat Acid Heat.

One of the better primers on how to cook, as opposed to your typical cook book that is a poorly edited collection of recipes, over-saturated photos, and weepy/saccharine philosophical musings about the author-chef’s origins and joie de gastronomie