Makenna Held isn’t interested in cooking by the book. In fact, she wants to set it on fire (metaphorically, of course). As the steward of La Peetch—the former home of Julia Child turned immersive french cooking school—Held is on a mission to liberate home cooks from the constraints of rigid recipes and reconnect them with the joy of intuitive, ingredient-driven cooking. To her, the kitchen isn’t a place of perfection but of play, where mistakes are as valuable as successes and where waste is just an opportunity waiting to be transformed into something delicious.
Her approach, Courageous Cooking, is exactly that—a bold reclamation of instinct and improvisation, a philosophy that encourages people to trust their senses and, perhaps, challenge everything they’ve been taught about following step-by-step instructions. And it’s not just talk. Held has turned her vision into a movement, blending traditional techniques with modern innovation, including her latest venture, RecipeKick, an AI-pow...