Wow, for your first game this is great! I liked the art style a lot, and I love the idea of getting unique skills from each enemy. I think increasing your maximum health by the amount that it does is too OP right now - towards the end I stopped using skills altogether because it was more effective to just attack over and over and get my health super high. Also, I felt like there wasn't much incentive to use strategy, and the easiest way to play was to pick a single enemy and attack them nonstop until they died. To add a strategy element in, maybe (since the game is about a cookbook), you could award a single skill at the end of the stage instead, where the skill you get is determined by the *order* that you defeat the enemies in - like a recipe!
All that being said, I really had a ton of fun with the attack timing mechanic and that never got old! I absolutely appreciated that your place is saved, I died on the second stage and was happy I didn't have to start over completely lol! Also, I'm a sucker for simple controls especially for a gamejam. Overall I really liked this game and can see it has a lot of potential! 4.5/5