The cookbooks and recipe formats that we have were never designed for someone in your situation. And if you have a background in a field with standardized parts

The cookbooks and recipe formats that we have were never designed for someone in your situation. And if you have a background in a field with standardized parts and repeatable results, the kinds of instructions cookbooks give can be maddening. Totally understandable. One book that helped me was Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. You may not want to cook vegetarian, but many vegetarians are young people who are also building their own cooking styles from scratch. So VCfE goes through the basics - like what is cubing and what is dicing - with illustrations. While it has complex recipes, it also includes almost absurdly simple ones, like preparing beans with olive oil and salt. But think of them like "kata"; basic exercises, that you can build up to more complex forms. A recent book which I've recently found extremely useful is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. It is a wonderfully readable introduction to the elements of cooking and how they combine, and it is great for complete newbies as well as experienced home cooks. It manages to be both accessible, practical and a little bit technical, perfect for the techie who wants to get better at cooking. It taught me things simple dishes like roasted chicken, which I had prepared like a hundred times before I read it, which have changed how I cook forever.