Abstained from cooking: chew seed! (8)
I believe the answer is:
eschewed
'abstained from' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'cooking chew seed' is the wordplay.
'cooking' indicates an anagram (letters cooked up into a new form).
'chew'+'seed'='chewseed'
'chewseed' with letters rearranged gives 'ESCHEWED'.
(Other definitions for eschewed that I've seen before include "Avioded or abstained from" , "Shunned or avoided" , "Steered clear of" , "Deliberately avoided - chew seed (anag)" , "Shunned, kept away from" .)