Whenever Katerina Pavlakis had friends over for dinner, it was not just the food that her guests would comment on. It was also the fact that she seemed so unflustered – “that I was cooking up all these things, and I wasn’t even stressed,” she says. Only then did Pavlakis realise that not everyone shared her experience in the kitchen – that, in fact, even people who enjoyed cooking and were good at it could find it a source of frustration.
That made Pavlakis curious: what made cooking so effortless for her, and so frustrating for others? After talking to friends and customers in the shop she runs with her husband in north Wales, she worked out where many were going wrong: they were trying – and struggling – to follow recipes. There, she could relate.
