Well put, Andy. I almost feel sorry for people when they say that they never use recipes - obviously, they could not try some of the best dishes in the world of food! Who's going to come up with a recipe for a Thai curry, or a Mexican mole just "winging it"?
CWS raises her hand. I won't say I never use recipes, but more often than not, I don't unless I am baking, and even then, if I have made the recipe many times, I don't need a recipe.
For example, when I was working for the food photographer, I decided that the steak we were photographing the next day needed a sauce to tie the dish together.I made that decision based on the recipes for the dishes to be featured. I often can made those kind of decisions on how to tie flavour profiles together or how to bring a complimenting flavour profile to set off the main.Anywho, there I was at the commercial kitchen pulling together a sauce that would marry the flavour profiles of the sides. I roasted red peppers, toasted almonds, added some lime, tomatoes, tasted it, jigged it around, brought it to the gluten-free baker across the hall around midnight (with the sides), tweaked it some more, had him taste it again. Declared it perfect. While I was developing the recipe, I was writing the ingredients on the whiteboard so we could print Ingredient labels for when it was time to package the recipe. I took a pic, and months later was able to duplicate the recipe. Two things: I have an extremely good memory so didn't need to include how I created the sauce, just what I used to do so.
Was I able to do this because of training and experience or do I have an innate sense of flavour profiles or is it because I developed and tested recipes or because I devour cookbooks for pleasure? I don't know. I just know that my way of cooking is without a recipe unless I am developing it for someone to recreate. This drives the KN (a/k/a my Dad) crazy. "What's this called?" Me: "Ummmm...well, I don't know." "Where'd you get the recipe?" Me: "My head." "Can you make it again?" "Me: Probably. Now I don't have a whiteboard in is kitchen, but I do scribble the ingredients on a piece of paper. My maternal grandmother would do that. No instructions, just the ingredients, most often without quantities.