The Case for Frameworks: Rethinking Recipes, Reclaiming Creativity

Everything is a salad.

That was the idea that started it all. The sense that, structurally, most dishes follow a pattern. A series of categories. Components. Roles to be played. Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. Cooking, like strategy, shouldn’t be about following a script. It’s about understanding the underlying system, and knowing where you have room to play.

I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with organizing information. Keeping spreadsheets for everything from hiking trails to wineries I visited - and arranging my cookbooks left to right by geography: US to Peru, Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, India, Thailand, China, Korea, ultimately to Japan. Creating mental maps to foster understanding and discovery.

Professionally, that instinct played out in consulting and tech: finding clarity in chaos, naming the pieces of the puzzle, building frameworks that turned complexity into intuition. I couldn’t help doing the same thing in my kitchen.

So when asked, “Why don’t you just follow the recipe?” the answer was simple: because I wanted to understand it. Not memorize, but master. To know what could be swapped, skipped, or scaled, and why.

That’s the difference between a recipe and a framework. A recipe tells you what to do. A framework shows you how it works.

Most cookbooks are built on the assumption that the reader is a beginner - someone who needs to be hand-held through every step. There’s nothing wrong with that - it just creates a ceiling. It reinforces a mindset where the reader is a follower, not a creator.

And yet, outside of cookbooks, everything is moving toward open-world design. Video games. Education. Agile work. The modern era is about autonomy with guardrails, rather than rigid scripts. Why should cooking be any different?

Frameworks: the much-decried tools (or shackles) of MBAs and consultants alike, can actually liberate. When used right, they offer just enough structure to support creativity without smothering it. They don’t just optimize. They unlock.

That’s the heart of CookImprov. Rather than a rulebook - a toolkit, a lens.

So yes: everything is a salad.

• Stir-fry? Hot salad.

• Smoothie? Iced fruit salad blitzed into oblivion.

• Açaí Bowl? Partially blended Smoothie.

• Bœuf Bourguignon? Salad with heat, stock, and wine

  .

Each with its own process, all built on the same principle: understand the categories, then improvise freely within them.

Once you see the patterns, they can't be unseen.