Isn't following a recipe to make food exactly the definition of cooking? Maybe they meant that a chef has to invent original dishes but I think the whole cooking metaphor fails to map to programming since its mass production vs programming being essentially always custom one off.

If I dictated every ascii character of Romeo and Juliet to you, would you then call yourself a playwright?

I would call you a good typist.

EDIT: I never cook with a recipe and do everything by taste, feel, and instinct.

Then you should have used Romeo and Juliet example instead of cooking example.

Following receipt is in fact cooking. You can go by feel, but you don't have to. Majority of cooking is following receipt, whether written or not.

what happens when you burn the food because you have no concept of how hot is too hot?

what happens when you get a null pointer because you have no concept of exception handling?

Did the recipe say "burn the food"?

Ok, then you didn't follow it.

"Did the programming tutorial say 'watch out for flipped bits in your hello world'"

What happens is you learn, and next time you have a concept. That doesn't mean you stopped using recipes.