Second this. I spent a lot of time focusing on trying recipes with new techniques or new ingredients when I was in graduate school and cooked dinner for my wife and myself every weeknight. When I started, I viewed recipies almost as magic spells that had to be followed just so (or maybe for this crowd, code to be copied verbatim from a Stack Overflow answer). But once I learned some basic techniques and the properties of ingredients, I gained the confidence to experiment and create new dishes. Recipies and cookbooks are now sources of inspiration and not rigid rules.

except for baking—-precision and reproducibility are key there.