We like to cook a lot and experiment with it. That said i think that failures can make the evening a bit miserable so i would recommend following basic methods

We like to cook a lot and experiment with it. That said i think that failures can make the evening a bit miserable so i would recommend following basic methods from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt or Daniel Gritzer. These are very scientific in their approach and you will have many many small successes which will motivate both of you to keep on going, instead of not understanding what went wrong and being disappointed even if you say you won't be :) I recommend Kenjis book "The Food Lab" and just going through the recipes and learning the science behind them together