Breaking Free from Recipe Jail: Discover Intuitive Cooking

Music. LaHolly. With many years' experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food.

Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing. This week, I have a guest all the way from the UK, which is my old stomping ground, so it'll be interesting to talk to her. Her name is Katerina Pavlakis. She is an intuitive cook and an irreverent kitchen coat on a mission to get you out of recipe jail. She helps everyday cooks trust their taste, cook with confidence and fall back in love with real food, which is what we're all about.

So I'm glad we've got her here. Now, you might have to use me as a one-person case study because I am not a culinary goddess. It's not something that I've always said to people, I'm not a good cook, but that's not true. The fact is I don't enjoy it. So is there hope for me if I don't actually enjoy the process? I definitely think there is hope for everyone. And I think it has probably less to do with the culinary skill as such, as you just said, you're not even a bad cook.

It has more to do with, well, all these ideas we have in our head about what a culinary goddess even is, and all the musts and shoulds and perfectionist tendencies that get in the way of just making something good to eat.

Yeah. Okay. So what is an intuitive cook? I came up with this word. I mean, actually, if you go out in the internet, I'm not the only one talking about intuitive cooking, but I was trying to find a way to describe the way I cook and the way I saw my mom cook. And, you know, I do run into people who cook like that too. And you probably know someone too, you know, the kind of person that just throws this and that in a pot and somehow a delicious meal appears seemingly out of nowhere.

Yes. Yeah. And was that your inspiration, your mum? Well, I must have soaked it up from her because this is how I've always been cooking. And I don't remember learning to cook as such. I only remember making a three-course meal for my family when I was eight. Because I wanted to. So I must have been interested in this. And I think this has something to do with how cooking and sharing food was happening in my family.

So she definitely was an inspiration, but not in this kind of the big icon kind of way. And did you also, I mean, were you surrounded by sort of aunts and uncles and cousins that all had these skills as well. Not very obviously, just because I grew up in a sort of bilingual, multicultural family. My mom is German, but my dad is Greek, and we were growing up in Greece. So the big family is on my German side, and so we didn't see them that often.

And on the Greek side, there wasn't such a big family. So I wasn't necessarily surrounded by this Greek big family that people might imagine. But this kind of carefree, just normal kind of cooking is certainly much more part of Greek food culture than it is in the UK now that I live here.

And back then in the 70s it was even more like back then even restaurants even tavernas would be the kind of place where you walk into the kitchen and look into the pots to choose your meal you don't really do that very much anymore even in Greece but this kind of relaxed kind of home cooking style was everywhere.

And it was only when I moved to the UK in my 20s that I suddenly found myself in this very different food culture where it was the cult of the recipe and the celebrity chef. And I found myself in a food culture where it wasn't your mom or your grandmom that was your role model for home cooking, suddenly your role model was, you know, all these celebrity chefs.

So, you know, Jamie Oliver at best and Gordon Ramsay at worst in the way, I mean, at worst as, you know, some sort of fancy kind of chef-y thing. And I mean, since when... Has restaurant cooking anything to do with home cooking. But we all now seem to be aspiring to, well, to be a culinary goddess, to be a chef, to be Gordon Ramsay, to do it the right way. And this is kind of souring our relationship with cooking because we never feel good enough.

Yeah and I do think it is it's a lost skill because I know you know everyone's background is different but I know when I was growing up with a working mother which would when you think about a few generations back you know our mothers had all the time in the world to produce these wonderful meals but when your mother's working a long day I grew up with what I call can cooking which was she got in and she opened about three cans put them

all into a big bowl heated it up that was dinner so it was you know a can of peas a can of corn and a can of potatoes I remember canned potatoes everything was was convenience everything was out of a can or microwaved and And to be honest, I didn't grow up with skills around cooking or inspiration. So when I talk to people that come to see me about cooking real food, which I do at home, but it's a skill that's just amazing.

I think a whole generation of working mothers who don't have time to do this have kind of wiped it out. Would you agree or am I getting a bit too? No, I would totally agree. But I think it is so mediated, that loss of the skill is so mediated by this culture that keeps trying to tell us that convenience is everything.

You know, my mom was a working mom too. And on weekdays, what she cooked was very simple. It was the kind of, you know, potatoes and peas, not from a can. But, you know, but then she would throw in some herbs and a bit of carrot, and somehow it was super tasty. And then it was at the weekends when my dad was back, when cooking became this kind of family adventure where we would discuss what we would cook for Sunday lunch and sort of trying out new flavors.

And if we ever went to a restaurant, we would always guess, you know, oh, what's that flavor and how could we? So there was this sense of adventure with food, even though, you know, I didn't grow up with all this amazing food being cooked all the time. Not at all. It was really simple stuff on weekdays, but still the sense of that, oh, adding a bit of flavor can be really exciting. What you describe, though, sounds like a real passion for food in the family.

Yes and no, because again, you know, when I came to the UK and the kind of people who were writing the cookbooks and were describing themselves as, you know, passionate for food, it seemed to be like, you know, they were describing things where, you know, you're obsessing about food. You're always thinking about flavor combinations and techniques and this and that and the other. And that is not how I grew up either, because it was just a matter of fact thing.

We're just going to cook something nice. And when I'm cooking here at home, I definitely don't have time for complicated things. So do you have like a set of standard ingredients, a baseline of what's in your pantry, what's in your fridge at any particular time? Yes, I think. And that is probably... An important thing to, you know, get away from this idea of ingredient lists and start seeing ingredients as components.

And I really like sort of to get people when they work with me to think of a meal built in layers. So get away from this idea of it's one ingredient after or the other, but start thinking of a base layer and a main layer and a top layer. And I always have ingredients at home that fit into these layers and those that are not perishable. I always have onions at home. I always have some cans of beans and chickpeas and tomatoes at home.

I always have a few spices and things like vinegar or soy sauce. A few lemons, some herbs in the freezer, some herbs in the spice rack. So if you have those basics, you can then use your fresh ingredients, whatever it may be, whatever either you just bought from the supermarket or the farmer's market or even what is just lurking in the back of your veg drawer or your freezer.

So then you have those staples like the scaffolding and then the fresh ingredients as the extras and once you start thinking in layers and you also apply common sense to what does an ingredient do a potato or a can of chickpeas is providing the volume and the substance and the greens are, you know, providing the color and the goodness, say. The spices and the onions provide the hit of flavor.

So, once you start thinking like that, it all becomes interchangeable to a degree so that it's easy to say, well, I don't have potatoes. I have a can of chickpeas. I don't have a can of chickpeas. I have a can of beans. You know, I want to add some liquid to my curry. I don't have a can of tomatoes. I'll add a can of coconut milk. Or I'll just add water.

You know, so if you... It's really... About seeing that recipes are all a handful of concepts, you know, the concept of a soup, the concept of a curry, the concept of a tomatoey, cheesy pasta bake. And once you start thinking in concepts, then you can take whatever, you know, five standard meals you know how to make and you feel comfortable with making them and start playing with the details. And you'd be surprised how playing with the details gives you a completely different

eating experience. So you're still cooking, you know, say a tomato sauce. Maybe you're familiar with a tomato sauce you put on pasta and you're putting some Italian flavorings in, say olives, whatever your recipe says. But if you put in kind of Moroccan-style flavorings and a can of chickpeas and you served it with couscous, you suddenly have a completely different... It's still the same tomato sauce. Or you add some curry spices and some chicken and you serve it with rice.

It's the same tomato sauce, but now you have a chicken curry. I see. So how do you, is it trial and error to know what flavors go together? A lot of it you already know because you've been eating all your life and there have been meals that you've really enjoyed. And maybe you haven't been paying attention, but somewhere at the back of your mind, you know that certain things taste good. To you, right? You have your favorites.

And there is also the classic combination, say tomato sauce with olives. They're classic combinations for a reason, but they're only classic combinations because a lot of people think they taste great. It's not because some chef said it should be so. So that is one way to find out what goes with what, just kind of rummage in your memories. The other way is to trial and error and recipes definitely are an inspiration.

I mean, why is it that you flip through a cookbook or you scroll through recipes and then you find a recipe where you think, that sounds delicious. I mean, it fascinates me. Why did you stop at that recipe and not the other? For me, it's normally the picture. Well, but there is something about the picture that makes that picture more delicious to you than the other. And it's worth paying attention to that. You know, what is it that makes something delicious?

And then also, yes, it is trial and error because, you know, you can't learn to cook better or to cook at all by not cooking. And that trial and error, I always would suggest that you start where you are, you start small, cook what you always cook or even get your takeout, your takeaway and just change a little thing.

Add some extra herbs, add a squeeze of lemon, add a drizzle of cream, add a knob of butter and see what happens, but really notice how that kind of little addition is changing the flavor. That is the kind of trial and error, not the kind of trial and error. And let's throw all these random things together. Because when I cook, it may look like I'm throwing random things together, but actually I don't.

There is this dialogue going back on in the back of my head all the time, like, ooh, should I use dill or should I use parsley? Oh, this dill and yogurt sauce with this courgettes was really nice.

I ate like five years ago. It suddenly pops into my head and then I think, okay, that dill and courgette was really nice, so I'm going to put dill in my courgettes now. And this happens, you know, happens in split seconds because I've had the practice. But if you practice that to think about what it is that you like and then trust that or taste it and then think, oh, I think it needs a bit of zing. What zingy do I have in my kitchen? Maybe I have some vinegar.

Maybe I have some lemon. Maybe I have some yogurt. It's all a bit zingy, right? So if you start thinking in these broader concepts like saltiness or zinginess or sharpness or sweetness, and you play with those flavors with whatever ingredients exist, may come to mind that represent sweetness or zinginess. This is how, you know, you start playing and you stop taking it so seriously. And this is when you start enjoying it. I mean, this is the trick.

And I keep hearing it all the time from people who, you know, work with me. It's just a moment of letting go this idea that if you change a little thing, because you want to, or it sounds delicious to you, rather than someone told you like the recipe or the chef, it's quite a step to let that go. But this is what makes it enjoyable because this is when it becomes creative, when you think like, oh, what could I add here?

And talking about trial and error, let's talk about error. Have you had any disasters, anything that you've tried and it's gone so horribly wrong that you haven't managed to salvage it? I think that cooking is a lot more forgiving than we're being told. It's really hard to make something that's not edible. Really i mean how many times in your life has it happened, I remember a very memorable occasion where I had to rinse a chili once because it was so hot that I just couldn't contemplate it.

So I took it to the sink and I rinsed it under the tap to try and get the hotness out and to try and get the sauce out. So I was just left with the beans and the mince and the onions and things like that.

And then I tried to salvage it by adding back in like a tomato base and and trying to kind of but even then even then I still had remnants of this unbelievable spiciness that was just too hot for anybody to eat but it just I mean those things stick in your mind because that was that was something that I just remember us laughing so much so regardless of the fact that the food was a disaster. The experience was actually quite joyous because we were just literally tears running down our face.

Tears because of the hot food first and then tears because I was standing there at the kitchen sink rinsing actually to try and get the spice out of it. But that's the only, apart from burning things, I've burnt things a few times and had things that have just welded themselves to the bottom of the pan. But you see, if you consider that you eat every day several times a day, over a lifetime, one complete disaster and a few burned things isn't a lot.

And we tend to think of these disasters as this big looming proof that we are a bad cook whereas you know there is countless nice meals you've made and you're somehow discounting them, just because and, There was this one occasion where too much chili powder fell into your pot, which, you know, happens to all of us. But, and, you know, the thing about burning things, I've burned things too. The thing about burning things isn't that you're a bad cook, it's just that you were distracted.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and that is the other thing. When we stop seeing cooking as this thing that has to get out of the way, it's almost like cooking is the obstacle to eating, which is what all this marketing is trying to sell us, right? It's trying to sell you convenience food so you don't have to cook.

Yeah and and and we're buying that message making cooking this thing we're trying desperately to avoid or get out of the way or you know chop down to five minutes and a half rather than say you know for me cooking is and you know i don't spend hours i want my dinner on the table half an hour after I come home. But for me, it's a thing, okay, put down the bags, take a deep breath, okay, and now we're making dinner. And that's my time to just be with myself and just make dinner.

And I'll, you know, when, you know, that Zen, you know, when making dinner, just make dinner. It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to take hours, but being present with it so that you can notice. You know, take a moment to actually taste what it's in front of you and then adjust, you know, taste and tweak to your own taste, not to whatever the recipe writer says. Because, you know, your taste buds, you are the expert in your own taste buds.

Nobody else can be that for you. So, you know, trusting that is... It's the secret, really. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I suppose that's the word, trust, in that if you trust your own intuition, that's the good word, then yes, you are going to be able to sort of develop your own approach to your cooking, which is something, I must admit, I've fallen into that trap of cooking for me being a means to an end. I love to eat. I love to go out to restaurants. I love to eat a good meal.

Love to have friends around and and have that social aspect of eating but the cooking part just seems yeah like like you said it gets in the way of the the end part the eating and enjoying myself part there's there's the cooking to do beforehand and i suppose i've never had the passion for it before so i do have to get over that but you you have the passion for food I do, very much.

You see, so I think there is something about letting go of this idea that cooking is a test, cooking is a performance, cooking is just making something good to eat. Yeah, keep it simple. So keep it simple. And, you know, I'm sure that neither your family or your guests will ever say, oh, that is too simple. You know, we have this idea that simple meals somehow don't count. I mean, I've heard this so many times.

Yeah, I can, you know, I can make a nice salad. But, you know, I'm a bad cook, but I can make a nice salad. For example, oh, I just made this roast chicken. It was just simple. It doesn't count. Well, why does it not count? If you make something nice to eat, a nice salad, it means you already understand how to layer flavors. Otherwise, it would be a bland salad. You know, if you can make a nice roast chicken, why does it not count if it's not complicated?

Again, this is this kind of concept that has been instilled into us by using celebrity chefs as our role models, and that if somehow we don't kind of reach the heights of the culinary goddess, it doesn't count as good cooking. And I'm really passionate about demolishing that myth.

So what do you do? I know you offer things like workshops. What's your offerings as far as how people can engage with you? Yes, I do either sort of short workshops, like an hour long, where I kind of share these sort of basic concepts, like I talked about earlier, kind of layers. For example, how do you start seeing the layers in your recipe? Or how can you start, you know, simplifying your favorite recipes by looking at the concept behind the recipe?

Or, you know, like pulling out concepts like, you know, how do you make flavors work? So these would be the shorter workshops. And then I also do kind of like cook-along sessions where I say, well, let's take the concept, say, of a curry and we'll all cook a curry and I'll make a chart to make it easier to understand how it's a concept, not a recipe. And then we'll just all cook together with whatever we have in our kitchen and it works. So you do that online, do you? Yes. Right.

So everybody's in their own kitchens following along. Exactly. Wow. And then I'm just starting that next week, actually. For the first time, I'm doing like a longer four-week kitchen reset, kitchen journey, where we're going to pull in all these concepts over a longer time. So there is more time to do the trial and error thing and do it together and have weekly cooking together sessions.

Yeah, just do it over four weeks so that it helps people to get further along the way with the support and the encouragement, because in the end, I'm getting these messages where it says, oh, I'm here making soup without a recipe and Katerina in my head telling me it's okay. And it turns out the more I do this work, the more the important thing that people take away is not the skills, it's the permission. Right.

The permission to trust and the permission to experiment, be adventurous, and I suppose as well, the permission to get it wrong. Because if you get it wrong, most things are salvageable, and you're just learning by those mistakes. Exactly. And getting it wrong doesn't make you a bad cook. It's just, okay, now I know that I don't like this combination, or now I know, I mean, I do this, what you may have done with your too hot chili.

You know, now I know that if I have a jar of spice, I should not do it like this because too much, you know, better use a spoon. So, and this is why being present while cooking is so important because then we can notice all these things. You know, sometimes there may be a big disaster, but sometimes there may be just a little thing like, oh, I added some lemon and suddenly my whole dish came to life.

And this is important because eating real food, and I've done podcasts before about all the ultra-processed food that we have in our food chain, and we know the sort of the addictive quality of a lot of that food. So cooking is something, it's a skill we really need to get back to. A lot of people are spending hundreds, thousands of dollars on their health, joining gyms, buying vitamins, doing all these health-related things.

And just the thing that eludes them is this idea of just eating real food and knowing what to do with it.

So the skills that you are teaching are really valuable and people underestimate, I think, The value of having those skills is. And I also think that that current food culture, at least, you know, Western food culture, makes those skills seem overwhelming and intimidating. You know, maybe they understand that it would be a good idea to learn the skill of everyday cooking, but it seems so intimidating that, you know, they leave it for another time.

And it doesn't have to be difficult. you know, simple food can be really tasty and really nourishing. And that's what we need. You know, everyday cooking isn't about making the best meal ever every day. Everyday cooking is about making something good to eat. Yeah, absolutely. Now, how can people get hold of you? So most of the things I do are on my website, including sort of a lot of blog posts and a weekly newsletter that I call your weekly dose of kitchen confidence.

So that's on theintuitivecook.co.uk. And I sort of also post little, you know, things, stories from my kitchen, simple ways of cooking on my Instagram. That's intuitive.cook. Right. Fantastic. The newsletter sounds good. I might do that myself and see if I can get myself into the brain space that I need to be more adventurous and more intuitive. So thank you so much. As I say, this is important stuff. I know it sounds simple. Cooking sounds simple.

It's a skill that people have had for generations.

But I think we're losing that intuitiveness around cooking. As you say, where we're relying on cookbooks and YouTube videos and influencers, don't get me started, don't make me go there, to tell us what we should be eating rather than us going out and sort of almost foraging for the tastes that excite us and the textures that we find interesting and being, as you say, more intuitive. Yes. And, you know, it's all simpler than you think. You just need to get started and trust yourself.

Excellent. Now, I will put Katerina's contact details in the episode notes for this episode. Do sign up to her. Is it a weekly newsletter that you send out or a monthly one? Yeah, it's a weekly one. Most weeks, not every week, but most weeks.

Beautiful sign up to her newsletter it couldn't hurt just to get some inspiration in the kitchen so thank you so much katerina for joining me i know it's really early for you you've got out of bed to do this so bless you for doing that thank you thank you so much for having me kyla that was a great conversation i enjoyed that no problem at all and i will put katerina's details in the notes.

So please have a look at that. Next week, it will be me on my own and I will be talking about something which is, again, really important, which is getting in touch or connecting with your inner child. So please enjoy that and come to see me next week. Thanks for listening today and I'll catch you soon. Goodbye.

Don't forget to check the links in the episode notes to our six-week Change Your Relationship with Food course and to the Change Your Relationship with Food workbook and journal, which is available on Amazon. Music.