> Cooking is hard

I strongly disagree here. Or rather, I disagree that one sort of cooking is hard, and that's "normal" everyday cooking. Cooking restaurant dishes is probably hard, but that's fine because you probably don't want restaurant food every day. I certainly don't.

Sure, if you've never done it before it may seem difficult, especially if your expectations are that you're going to be eating something equivalent to takeout or restaurant meals, but it's easy to get started as long as you keep it simple. For instance the following 5 dishes are all pretty simple to make, the pasta dishes can all be made within 20 minutes with practice too. I've made all of these (except the carbonara) within the last week.

- Tomato and Basil or Parsely pasta (I leave out the mozzarella): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabecxMhJlE

- Proper Carbonara: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/gennaro-s-...

- Coq au vin (easy, but takes a while): https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/books/the-delia-collecti...

- Pasta with prawns: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/spaghetti-...

- Three summer antipasti: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/06/antipas...

> requires a lot of hardware to do

Again, disagree. I could make all of those dishes with two pans, one knife and a wooden spoon, all cheap. There is a lot of kitchen equipment out there, and better quality stuff will make your life better, but for most stuff YAGNI. Spiraliser? YAGNI. More than 5 knives* ? YAGNI. Stand mixer? YAGNI. etc. etc.

* I could survive with one knife, though I regularly use about 3. You don't need to spend a lot, my favourite knife was about $25.

I think a good rule of buying kitchen equipment would mirror the rules of optimisation:

1. Don't buy it

2. Don't buy it

3. Maybe buy it if you repeatedly find it would make your life easier/food better.

> is an acquired skill that takes a lot of blunt learning

I'm not sure what you mean by blunt learning, but sure, you learn over time just like anything else, but if you start out simple (avocado on toast: good bread, good avocado, salt, pepper, olive oil) and work from there you can start winning in the kitchen straight away. This isn't a process where you produce crap for a few years before you suddenly start making something edible at year three. Work up to the complex stuff.

> a lot of minute details about how certain ingredients interact

Again, start out simple. Follow simple recipes (Jamie Oliver's Italian cook book is a pretty decent starter). You learn how ingredients interact over time as you're doing it, especially if you're thinking while you're cooking.

It's pretty rare (unless you're massively over stretching your abilities) to create something inedible, so as your experience and confidence grows you can experiment with flavours more with little consequence. For instance the other day I threw in some rosemary I had sitting around into my bread dough. It didn't work, but the loaf was still totally edible, and it got eaten. It was OK, just not great.

> In the same way you don't ask everyone to learn to repair car engines or diagnose medical issues modern society puts a lot of pressure on specialization of hard work like cooking.

No, but you can certainly change the wipers on your car or self-prescribe over the counter painkillers. Start simple.

Tips:

- Start simple

- Buy quality ingredients where you can. Buy flavourless tomatoes, your food will be bad. Cheap beef in a burger? Bad burger.

- Buy and make what you need. Don't try to make restaurant portions, especially with good ingredients, you'll go bankrupt. 85g of pasta might not seem like an actual adult portion, but it really is enough.

- Yagni. Don't buy equipment unless you really worked out you need it.

- Learn when celebrity chefs are mucking about with simple food to make it seem more complex, they all do it. Learning to recognise the unecessary flourishes will make stuff simpler.

- Practice. You will fail, you learn from it, but at least you can eat the failures. Most of the time.

- If it tastes good it is good