Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Any decision that I make, anything that I do, every single consideration of my day goes through the prism of what my former experience has been.
We will, as Americans, inhale another culture on a fork before we try their music or their art or even, God forbid, hang out with the actual people.
A well-seasoned and properly cleaned wok will always have micro-pores in the metal that hold some oil or food particulate, etc. - that's a good thing.
The jambalaya of the American South owes a lot to the cuisines of the islands and western Africa, and it's my favorite of this type of one-pot cookery.
In everything I do, I want people to get the message of acceptance, to learn not to practice contempt without investigation. I have an obligation to do it.
I have a tremendous platform and responsibility to talk to people about these issues about sustainability and about health and wellness when it comes to food.
Way back in the day, I used to cook for Thomas Keller at Rakel in New York City. Keller is a down to earth, kind, supportive person. I wish people could see that.
I love cooking Japanese food at home. It's so easy to make an easy fry, a saute, or a quick braise and serve it over a bowl of rice with pickles and a side salad.
I'd dreamed of being in the food business from the moment my globetrotting parents introduced me to the foods of the world during childhood trips to Europe and Asia.
After attending The Dalton School and then Vassar College, I began cooking in New York City restaurants helmed by Anne Rosenzweig, Joachim Splichal and Thomas Keller.
I'm no saint, and I don't want to come across like one, but there is not a day that goes by that I'm not doing something for someone else with a very large chunk of my time.
Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what's right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.
In 2012, I launched Andrew Zimmern's Canteen. Inspired by visits to street stalls and markets around the world, Andrew Zimmern's Canteen reflects the intersection of food and travel.
In a world that is defined by what separates us, sharing a meal with someone from a different country, showing what we have in common with the people, it's very powerful and important.
Don't pile your tomatoes in a container that doesn't breathe. I like my baskets or grass mesh plates, and I layer them single deep, stem end down to prevent bruises and premature rotting.
Here's the lines I draw: I never say something I don't believe - ever, ever, ever; and I won't endorse a product I don't like and use. When the cameras are off, we are who we are when they're on.
The food stamp program is the largest piece of the Farm Bill, it's a massive amount of money, but not only has it been good for families that need it, but it's been fantastic for local economies.
I think right now the focus of people involved in food issues have to be legislative resolution at the county, city, state, and national level. I just don't think we can run away from it anymore.
I was born and raised in New York. My family has been in New York City since the Civil War. I have a ton of N.Y.C. in my DNA, from both sides of my family. I had a wonderful childhood in the city.
I serve on a lot of charitable boards - the areas of mental health parity, services for those that are underserved, and certainly children's rights are things that I believe in very, very strongly.
When I go into a steakhouse and order a steak, I'll order the cut of my choice, and I'll order it black and blue. And I'll ask them to bring it with my first course, and I'll just let it sit there.
There's a great book by my friend Nate Garvis called Naked Civics that was very important in my development as someone with a social conscious and that has become, I guess, something of an activist.
Good vinegars come in all shapes, sizes, strengths, and viscosities and are probably my most often used seasoning agent in the kitchen after the other major acids we use in solid form: sugar and salt.
People forget that in early 1970s, there were 3 sushi bars in New York City. Three. Three. Think about that. Now, there is sushi in... I've eaten it - there is sushi at gas stations in Middle America.
In tribal Botswana, I received some woven necklaces and a handmade bow with three poison arrows. It's framed and hanging on the wall in my living room and is, without a doubt, one of my favorite possessions.
Don't ripen picked tomatoes in the sun. Put underripe tomatoes and stone fruits in a paper bag in cool, dark place, and magic happens. And never, ever store them in the fridge: they turn mushy and flavorless.
The food to me is just a hook, it's a button, it happens to be the social construct and the cultural totem that I'm most familiar with. So of course I built the show around food because it's where I'm familiar.
The big mistake people make is eating their grilled beef hot. I prefer room temperature or cool. When the meat rests and starts to get cool, all of that fat goes back into the muscles and becomes much more tender.
The summer after college, I got a job as a chef at Conscience Point Inn in Southampton. I spent the summer on the water and cemented my expertise with seafood. I've always gravitated toward places that do seafood.
I've spent time in the coastal Carolinas and have seen what small business development has done to maintain the wetlands and reestablish the fisheries and secure jobs for the people that make their living off the water.
Sometimes I have to shake my head at how much work it can take to track down a handful of food. Perfect example: I spent a whole day in the Amazon rainforest, in Ecuador, scouring the trunks of dead palm trees for grubs.
I am grateful to have my life back and for the friends and family who never gave up on me, for a God who was there when I was ready to find him. I am grateful for so much, that every day, one day at a time, is Thanksgiving.
I famously tasted shark fin soup many, many years ago before we understood exactly what was going on with the harvesting of sharks. I've consequently come out against it. I make personal choices in my life and stand behind them.
We currently reside in the wealthiest and most powerful civilization in the history of the world. The idea that someone should go hungry or be without the bare essentials of life is, to me... It's not shameful, I actually think it's criminal.
If there's one thing I've learned after a lifetime of dining on delicacies like blood pudding, sea squirts, and camel kidneys, even folks who wouldn't come within 100 yards of a Cambodian tarantula want to hear what it's like to chomp on one!
I don't like being at food festivals and have someone from some weird cable access show that's all about lifestyle get in my face with a microphone and wants to know which party I'm going to later... That just is pointless kind of stuff to me.
In the frequently-asked-question category, the question I get asked almost as much as 'What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?' is 'What's the best pair of pants to travel in, work in, trek in, and use on the road for the most activities possible?'
I have a bigger problem at food events when I turn over a wine glass and people insist on pouring me a glass of wine. I have a bigger problem with drunk wine representatives, drunk wine salesmen at food events who keep trying to push a glass in my hand.
Be aware of what you cook tomatoes with. The high acid content of the tomato slows down the cooking process of some other foods. Dried beans cooked with tomatoes added to the pot can take up to 20 percent more cooking time than beans without tomatoes added.
The biggest thing that I learned is when you're building something - especially a project that requires partners - you have to make sure that there is a lot of overlapping desire and a lot of overlapping alignment with the people that you're doing work with.
I find that most home cooks don't get vinegars. They're misunderstood, mostly due to the factory-made red wine vinegar that everyone commonly cooks with... that, and the giant gallon of white distilled vinegar that we all use, mostly to clean and disinfect things!
Yelp is - I mean, Yelp's not even good for looking up the restaurant's phone number because, you know, on the site, they just want you to read their reviews and look at their ads. They don't even actually want to give you the information about the restaurant or the menu.
A five-pound boneless rolled-and-tied breast of veal, like any other piece of meat fit for braising, can come in many shapes and sizes. So recipe times aren't uniformly applicable. A long and thin tied roast will cook more quickly than its stouter, football-shaped cousin.
Having been in the restaurant business, our job in the restaurant business is to be responsible for our customers' happiness. It's the nature of the hospitality business. You need to take care of people. You take care of customers above all others. Customers are your lifeblood.
For wok cooking, use oils with a high smoke point and low polyunsaturated-fat content: grapeseed oil, peanut oil, etc. Sesame oil and olive oil will burn and taste bitter. Oils with high polyunsaturated-fat contents like soybean oil will also make your food texturally unpleasant.
When I was 13, I came back from summer camp - summer of '74 - and my mother had had an accident during surgery and was in an oxygen tent in a coma. It was so traumatic. My parents had been divorced for six or seven years at that point, and it was sort of the seminal event of my life.
I'm always surprised on my social accounts that people assume that because you have a job in television you don't have a political opinion, or don't have a family, or don't have an interest in the rest of the country. It's just absolutely shocking to me how closed minded some people are.
There's fresh fish, and then there's fresh fish. Samoa is ranked as one of the best places for game fishing in all the world, and runs thick in the waters off the island chain. In fact, it's used as an edible currency in local markets. The day I fished there, we caught loads of yellowfin.
I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to be homeless. I know what it's like to have to choose between breaking the law and feeding yourself. I know what it's like to take meals at shelters and at Salvation Army facilities. I know what it's like to beg for money on the streets.
The corner of the 'food media' that I think is troublesome to me is the shows on TV that don't really have a point or don't have a lesson to be learned. If you don't have a point, or if there's not some part of it that is meaningful and can change someone's life, in my old age, I'm just not into it.