Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
That's what we do on "MasterChef," on "Junior." No school teachers, no parents, let it go. You're going to go on a challenge. We're going to go to hell and back, and we're going to have some bumps.
A lot of people say I look like a rock star or a designer punk. But I swear it's the job that has carved my face. It's the hours, the stress, and the pressure. It's not me trying to look like this.
People come up to me all the time and ask how I stay the way I am, and it's no secret. The first lesson a chef needs to learn is how to handle a knife; the second is how to be around all that food.
I think the kitchen is the new garage. And I think for a guy that wants to go out and be an evolved person, he should know about his local favorite restaurant. He should know how to cook something.
We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.
There are pockets of great food in Spain, but there are also pockets of very mediocre food in Spain, and the same in Morocco and the same in Croatia and the same in Germany and the same in Austria.
When you use it in cooked foods, it changes [the Tabasco flavor] a little bit; it loses a little bit of the bright acid that you love on it, but you get that more cooked heat and chile flavor down.
I can't imagine Japanese food without dashi, a broth made with kelp and dried bonito flakes. It has the aroma of the sea, tinged with a subtle smokiness, and adds a very important, distinct flavor.
My chefs don't apply for 'Top Chef'. They all know that there is no way. At the end of the process I look at the resumes of the last 25 options just to make sure they've never worked for me before.
You can buy a box of low-fat macaroni and cheese made with powdered nonsense. I'm not worried if I'm using four different cheeses and it's high in fat. It's real food. That's what's more important.
When I cook a meal, I like to serve things one by one and keep them separate. I get that from my father - he's such a purist. Some people even put their desserts on the main plate. It's just wrong.
The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you're going to the grocery store, you're voting with your dollars. Support your farmers' market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.
25 years ago, when I started in New York, I had the pleasure to cook for Andy Warhol. At the time, I could have traded art for food - I should have done so, because I could get his work for nothing!
Chestnuts are my favorite ingredient to use in the fall, especially for the holidays. I always find that they are meaty, hearty and have a mysterious refinement when cooked or roasted over sea salt.
I'm a big lover of fish. Cooking fish is so much more difficult than cooking protein meats, because there are no temperatures in the medium, rare, well done cooking a stunning sea bass or a scallop.
Like most of the other teachers, I'd done a bit of teaching and we all think we're great at what we do, but you realize that normally you have an audience who are all onside, who all want to listen.
Many of the delicious soups you eat in French homes and little restaurants are made just this way, with a leek-and-potato base to which leftover vegetables or sauces and a few fresh items are added.
I look at each one of my restaurants, and I want my personality to come out. Some are serious, some are intense when it comes to food and wines, some are meat masters supreme. I enjoy all my guests.
I love doing demonstrations. I think to be a great chef you have to be a great teacher. I love doing classes with people who love food and enjoy food, bringing them all around one table so to speak.
I have a lot of secret uses for sour cream, which is the magic ingredient in my mac and cheese. It's an old-timey, Southern version, and the sour cream makes it that much creamier. Oh, it's so good!
Learn how to cook a (effing) omelet. I mean, what nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast? You look good doing it, and it's a nice thing to do for somebody you just had sex with.
Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.
Anything that improves people's expectations of a meal is good for the world. Anything that weans even one kid or one adult away from Chili's or T.G.I. Friday's is definitely a win for the good guys.
There are very sophisticated, very time-consuming dishes to prepare; always from scratch, and always in excess of what you could possibly need. You tend to kill your guests with kindness around here.
You'd have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I'd probably want to die in San Sebastian.
My two sisters were always cooking. I wanted to be in the police force, but I didn't get in because I just so happened to procrastinate a bit, and I hadn't gotten my application in at the right time.
There's something about fall that very much translates into those nurturing, nostalgic food flavors. It's the season where you can really make the marriage of fresh produce with spices and aromatics.
I think D.C. has always been very, very vibrant for food. Like Boston in a way. Boston and D.C. were really the two cities that were the most active with their local chefs and their local food scene.
I am an audiophile. It's almost like a virus. I'm completely crazy about the quality of sound. It's interesting and painful at the same time; you have to really spend a lot of money on the equipment.
I think Isambard Kingdom Brunel would be a good chap to have supper with. Anyone who builds a railway and then builds a steamship when he gets to Bristol and can't go any further must be a good chap.
I think tripe is maligned. It's wonderful stuff, but everyone goes 'urgh.' You have to wash and then cook it, very gently braise it, for eight hours. It uplifts you but steadies you at the same time.
There's nothing like a home-cooked meal - nothing! When people ask me what the best restaurant in L.A. is, I say, 'Uh, my house.' It's more intimate. Food can connect people in a forever sort of way.
To me, every kitchen appliance is useful and nothing's overrated. When I look at my little espresso machine, I don't see coffee. I see a steaming valve as an opportunity to make amazing creme brulee.
The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into 'I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish.
My mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.
There is absolutely no substitute for the best. Good food cannot be made of inferior ingredients masked with high flavor. It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing.
In Cleveland, I'm so fortunate that we're surrounded by farms with an endless variety of beautiful vegetables. For me, I always eat very tightly with the season, even if the season is only six weeks.
I really didn't have an interest in being in the kitchen until after I was married, when I was 18. It didn't take me long to realize that Mama was not going to show up at my house every day and cook.
Hopefully, imparting what's important to me, respect for the food and that information about the purveyors, people will realize that for a restaurant to be good, so many pieces have to come together.
To be treated well in places where you don't expect to be treated well, to find things in common with people you thought previously you had very, very little in common with, that can't be a bad thing.
Any sauce whatsoever should be smooth, light (without being liquid), glossy to the eye, and decided in taste. When these conditions are fulfilled, it is always easy to digest, even for tired stomachs.
I think about food all the time. It's my passion; it's my profession. But some people think about food all the time because they're hungry. We can put an end to this if we join forces and lend a hand.
If eating out, order your meal and ask the server to wrap up half of the portion to take home with your for the next day, keeping your portion size in check, and stretching your dollar into two meals.
The 'Momofuku Milk Bar' cookbook is rather technical. I wanted it to feel like you were walking into the doors of our kitchen, it was your first day at work, and we were going to teach you everything.
For me, if there's anything that would represent me and my style of cooking, it would be a seafood platter. Maybe a perfectly shucked oyster with a bit of lemon and cocktail sauce or mignonette sauce.
The smell of coffee cooking was a reason for growing up, because children were never allowed to have it and nothing haunted the nostrils all the way out to the barn as did the aroma of boiling coffee.
The cool thing is that now that people have made this evolution where cooking is cool, people are doing it on weekends, they're doing their own challenges. It's back to cooking. And it's real cooking.
Just walking in the kitchen (and we have three kitchens at Le Bernardin), I exercise quite a lot. I also walk in Central Park for 50 minutes from my house to Le Bernardin every day, rain, shine, snow.
When you talk about avant-garde cuisine, the surprise factor is really important. For example, I love looking at blogs and the photos, but I'm not that keen on other people taking photos of my dishes.
I suppose I might be a player-coach nowadays. I'm a great teacher, and I enjoy teaching. But I'm glad I got injured and ended up turning to cooking. It was an accident but the happiest one of my life.