If you're old enough to remember Julia Child, you'll know that her cooking failures were never cut out of her shows, and people loved her for that. Why? Because she kept things real. She demonstrated that even the most experienced cooks have failures in the kitchen so we shouldn't be put off if a recipe doesn't work out exactly to plan. Practice makes perfect, and we all learn by our mistakes.
The great thing about making mistakes in the kitchen is it gets us thinking about what went wrong. Was my oven too hot or too cold? Did it have too much or too little seasoning? Why did the cake sink in the middle when I took it out of the oven? We can then hunt down the solutions and try again, next time with greater success and that's how our confidence builds. And then building on our successes we start to think about how we can improve a recipe: Next time I might try it with a different spice, swap out the raisins for some apricots, use less sugar, make it with a different flour, use a different cut of meat ... the list goes on.
It's this experience in cooking that creates the ability to then think about what we can make out of what we have on hand. For instance, if you have some leftover roast veges and some eggs that need to be consumed, you might think about making a frittata and adding any other bits and bobs left in your fridge. Before you know it, you've created a meal from food that could have ended up on the scrap heap and in turn, you have saved money and reduced waste.
Learning to cook like this is not only a valuable life skill, but it also brings a real sense of satisfaction; just like that of an artist painting a masterpiece. And remember, it's not a matter of life or death when things go wrong. Most of the time it's still edible!
