If you follow a recipe book exactly you will be copying something from somebody else, but if you loosely follow a recipe in a book and add your own herbs and spices and alternative ingredients you can make something that you will love and enjoy. However not all people can cook and often what they produce can be rather awful, sometimes they can’t even understand why this is. Well the reason is that you have to feel when you cook and add passion to cooking; if you love what your making and are happy it will show with how you prepare and plan, and then cook the meal, as well as how you present the meal on the plate, even if it’s just for yourself. So if your new too cooking be prepared to make mistakes and get it wrong, as your not going to get it right first time around as your not going to know what feels right for you just yet, so you have to smile take it as it comes, be patient and make cooking work for you. You will find that after a few attempts you would have mastered what you have set out too cook and you can then apply that to most dishes and even seek some help with the more complex dishes and go from there.