Currently, it seems like cooking consists of 3 phases:
1) the grind.
Just gather ZOUNDS of food, any food, doesn't matter. Cook for hours on end
producing garbage. You can eat it, its probably useless, who cares, just stick
to it. Keep cooking, succeed or fail, your skill will eventually rise to 50%
so you can start the next phase.

2) The masterchef quests
Supposedly fun, dunno what it contains yet, but heard that its more fun, more
sensible atleast. More discovery!

3) masterchef! iron kokkoroo!
I guess its fun! If not fun, atleast useful. Find recepies! meet chicks! Cook
awesome foods that boost stats/regens/whatenot.

My main problem is 'the grind'. Why must it work that way. Mindless grinds
just promote roboting. What if 'the grind' was more of a discovery type of
phase. Find out different recepies for foods, try out stuff, try to get
allsorts of food items, explore the culinary arts! If there is some artificial
need to keep the process slow, make a limit. "You need to let your culinary
discovery sink in, you don't think you will be able to discover and understand
any new recepies today." Boom, there you have it. Artificial way to slow down
progress, without making it begging for roboting and promoting angst.