It does need to be simplified a bit. Either limit the actions to maybe 10 max, or cut the ingredients to 4 or less for anything.
Many of the higher level cooking recipes take 20+ ingredients, which eat up bag space, and take hours to gather, especially if you want to make HQ stuff.
And, food items last only 30 minutes, after spending 5 hours gathering the mats for a batch of them. They should last at least an hour, and persist through death given the time it takes to craft or the extreme gil needed to buy them.
Plus, if you're at max level CUL, the buffs should last 4 hours.
