I love a mix of recipes I know by heart and recipes I’ve never made before.
I have so many things in my weekly repertoire whose recipes I don’t even look at anymore – I bake and cook from memory many times a week.
But life gets stale if you’re only cooking from memory, and not trying new repertoire.
On the other hand, if I was cooking something new every single night, I’d get the opposite of stale – I’d be exhausted. The concentration is more intense, and the process is longer, the first time you make a recipe.
It’s when there’s a balance that I’m most happy – new meals balanced with familiar flavors.
That’s the same balance I’m going for as I program a year’s worth of material for my groups. I want new, I want familiar. I want easy, I want challenging.