you dont need the recipes... just mouse over the ingredients you collected and when you see one that said "let the user walk over water", just drag 3 of those same items(rules for brewing a potion) to brew one potion. Each potion lasts like 4 minutes I think. So I made 2 of those and the funny thing is you can brew potions while you're swimming in the water. lol
Speak to all the people where you started, and also zoom all the way out on the teleport map, i got quests on the next island before i could teleport there, you cant travel there straight away if i remember correctly.