Cooking advice from me

Look, you don't have to use a whole bunch of spices when you cook a meal. In fact, unless you know what you are doing, you shouldn't use much spices. Spices are something you have to get good at with experience, and there are only two ways to do that. One is the apprenticeship method, where you cook with someone who already knows what they are doing, and figure it out. The other is with recipes that tell you specific spices. After making a million recipes, you will have a good idea of what spice goes with what food, and you will be able to take a recipe and say, "I bet this would be better with this spice."

Cooking is like any art, in that you first learn the boring rules, and then you start having fun. It is like a big science experiment where the product is something delicious. This brings me to my main point. The idea of food is that it is delicious. So do not be pretentious with food. If you like red wine with fish, drink red wine with fish. If you like your fillet mignon with ketchup, use ketchup. And when you are the one preparing the meal, keep in mind that different people like different kinds of food. Let people eat what they want to eat.

Back to spices, when cooking, do keep in mind that there is a reason that salt and pepper are on every table on the planet. It is because they are the two best spices. For some reason, many people seem to think that they are not spices, and think of them as inferior to, say, cilantro. These people are wrong. Salt and pepper are superior to cilantro, basil, oregano, turmeric, and any other spice you can throw my way. Not to say less of other spices, but they are not as versatile at all. You can put salt in almost anything. Even cookies use salt.

Pepper is less versatile than salt, but still a great crutch if you aren't sure of the best spices. Just throw in some pepper and people will think that the food you made tastes good. The idea is that salt brings out the actual flavour of the food and makes it "tastier," while pepper gives the spiced feel to food, making it "spicier." Use these two wonderful spices in everything you make, and you will be a god among chefs.

Not to say you shouldn't use other spices. I'm just saying to not underestimate the power of the top two. When you first start cooking, it is exciting to see all the millions of spices you can use, so by all means, use them. However, you will inevitably realise that your food is tastier if you just use salt. Totally use a bunch of salts and figure out which ones taste good. Sometimes, you will taste some of your food and think to yourself, "something is missing." 99.9% of the time, you should add salt, but sometimes you need something different.

To summarise, use salt and pepper a lot, don't use other spices if you don't know what you are doing, and always make non-pretentious food that has a delicious taste that you love.