I am not totally clear on what you are saying. I will just tell you that I am a big fan of recessed lights. I would have some. You definitely want to have plenty of light in the kitchen. If they are all on diff switches, you will have lots of options.

Add the recessed lighting and put it on a dimmer. You can rarely have enough lighting in a kitchen or enough discrete control over it. You want layers of light. I'm a lighting designer for theatre and I had someone ask me once why we hung hundreds of lights when we could light the whole stage with just a few big flood lights. After I finished banging my head on the stage I explained lighting angles, color temperature, soft vs. sharp focus. All of those things apply in a home as well.

My kitchen is larger than yours (20x10 kitchen attached to an 18x13 dining are) but we have 13 recessed fixtures on 3 switches (dimmers), 6 over the kitchen area, 6 in the dining area, and 1 on it's own switch over the sink. We also have undercabinet lighting, 3 pendants over the island and a chandelier over the table.

We had recesssed lights and UCL in our last kitchen. We renovated it in 2006 and I was thrilled to get recessed lights, but after living with them I'm not a fan. In our new house we skipped recessed lights in the kitchen and did surface mount schoolhouse style fixtures (I like the multi-directional diffuse light) and under cabinet light.

I looked back in our planning notes and found this info. I don't recall the source, but it's how I determined that the schoolhouse fixtures would provide sufficient light:

"8' ceiling kitchen should be lit ~ 35 lumens per square foot from ceiling in addition to under cabinet lighting (UCL)"