How to learn the creative freedom to use spices? There must be

>>8282720
I base a lot of it on what I know goes into tried and true dishes. You can also look up what spices and herbs are considered to compliment certain meats (tarragon goes well with chicken, rosemary with lamb).

Example, today I made a pilaf with some fresh grated cinnamon, star anise, and saffron. Aromatics were garlic and shallot. I knew this would taste OK because this is part of the spice combo for biryani. It's mild but still interesting.

For this to work you have to have eaten food made by someone other than you of course.

>>8282746
http://www.spicesinc.com/p-510-what-spices-go-with-what-meat.aspx

>>8282746
Yep. I add equal parts cinnamon, cloves, cardamom to my chicken sautee cus I know it's the main spices in my mom's chicken curry.

Also fennel in sauteed vegetables is pretty good. Apparently cumin is good with veg too but I prefer fennel.

Its the current best way to learn how to cook. Listen carefully because this is very important advice. Lots of people think cooking is all about complicated recipes, big cookbooks and arduous effort. Really it's more of an innate thing.

Learning to cook is much more simple, so pay close attention to what I'm going to say. Are you listening?

Fry an egg and experiment with various seasoning. This will give you an idea of what flavours go well together which is the most important quality in cooking. Fry an egg, cut it in quarter, season each quarter differently. Try one with cayenne and, I dunno, chives? Just experiment with lots of seasoning combinations.

Then fry another egg and repeat the process. Keep frying eggs and experimenting until you get a good idea of what works. You can eat 3-4 eggs in a day, heck you're from /fit/ so probably 6+. If you eat 6 eggs in a day, that's 24 egg quarters, 24 seasoning combinations in a day. You're talkng about 1000 seasoning combinations in just over a month.

At this stage you'll be a spicemaster and what/how you cook wont matter because you'll be better at seasoning than 99% of professional chefs, and this WILL make you a good cook

>>8282746
Anise and cinnamon in pilaw... Only thing that goes in there is cumin, chili to taste and maybe, maybe barberry... (Not counting garlic, onions and carrots, those are basics of pilaw)

>>8282720
Basically, try sth to get an idea of the flavour, then put it in whatever YOU think it'll be good in. Recipes are only general ideas, and everyone cooks them to their taste. Disregard what I said in >>8285181 , thats just my pilaw-sense tingling.
But if you do cook it, look up "ferghana pilaw" recipe and follow it to the letter. Beware, sheep meat (not lamb, grown sheep!) has a persistent odour, it'll stink up your kitchen for a week (which can be a good thing, if you like it). Cook on a fire outside if you can, smokey flavour is great