I know this will annoy some readers, but I'd advise you to go to a video library and watch some Jacques Pepin videos. It's not that what he does is so unusual -- far from it, in terms of what he cooks -- but he is an extraordinarily good teacher. What's more, he will get you focused very early on technique. This is important. Once you start thinking in techniques rather than recipes, suddenly it becomes obvious how to cook a vast range of your favorite things. You do it once or twice from a recipe, and you think, "hey, I get it, I just do this and this and this," and you're in business to do it without assistance.
Once you've got the hang of that, which won't take all that long if you don't get crazy about it, set aside one day a week for "fridge cleanout." The rule is, dinner is made from what you've already got. No cheating unless you actually have nothing, like literally nothing. If you can consistently make dinner from random odds and ends, every recipe, however intricate, is within your grasp. Besides, you'll save lots of money and get a warm "I'm so clever" feeling each time you do it.
I agree with the notion that you should explore cooking with your girlfriend. BUT you should both pay close attention to what's going on. For example, my wife likes to bake and she likes to make desserts. I don't mind baking so long as it's bread, and I've never really learned to make desserts. Our unstated rule is that I don't go there: I'm much more serious about cooking than she is, and so I leave a space where she can rule when she feels like it and I'm stuck plodding along with recipes when I have to do it at all. Pepin remarks on this in his memoir, how he and his wife found ways so that she could enjoy being in the kitchen and cooking, which she liked, when her husband was after all a top-notch French apprentice-trained chef. You don't want this to be competition. You want it to be fun together or something you trade off (I cook monday, wednesday, friday, you cook tuesday and thursday, weekends we find other avenues). Both can be great, but it depends on your personal dynamics, and those should have absolute priority. A word to the wise.  |