There is a moment in everyone\'s cooking life when you stop being impressed by a recipe library and start being impressed by a working repertoire. The former is a collection of possibilities. The latter is a collection of dishes you can actually make without thinking.
Twenty is enough
A good home cook doesn\'t need five hundred recipes. They need twenty they can cook well — five breakfasts, five lunches, five dinners and five things for guests. That is enough to feed a household forever.
Repeat until automatic
The way a recipe becomes part of your repertoire is repetition. The first time it is a project. The fifth time it is a recipe. The fifteenth time it is part of you.
Choose dishes that flex
A stir-fry, a curry base, a roasted tray of vegetables, a one-pot chicken. Recipes that take whatever vegetables you have and become themselves anyway.
Don\'t chase novelty too hard
Every week experimenting is exhausting. Variety in the cuisines you cook is wonderful; variety in tonight\'s dinner being a complete unknown is just stressful.
Keep notes
Once a dish enters your repertoire, write down what you actually do — not what the recipe says. The two are not the same.
A repertoire is not a limit; it is a foundation. With twenty dishes at your fingertips, you eat well always, and you can still try new things for the joy of it rather than the pressure.
