[megous]

What is needed are cooking methods and a general sense of what combines well with what and in what proportions. Once you learn those, you can apply them to anything. Recipes are maybe useful for baking, where precise portions matter somewhat more (but you can get away with a lot there too), or for people who want to reproduce some particular food.

But, it's not like you're trying to create a restaurant that may need good reproducibility of outcomes. Most home based cooks just want to feed themselves and their families and have some variability, and for the food to taste reasonably well.

Buying ingredients also gets less frustrating, because you don't need a precise list, just a general idea of what you want to make that day.

There are even books that help you discover taste affinities for ingredients.