I think we love bacon because it has all the qualities of an amazing sensory experience. When we cook it, the sizzling sound is so appetizing, the aroma is maddening, the crunch of the texture is so gratifying and the taste delivers every time.
Winter blues are cured every time with a potato gratin paired with a roast chicken.
The best way to learn to cook is to do some serious eating.
Creative risks will always outweigh technical mistakes.
Food is ever-changing and ever moving forward and getting more and more complex.
Food is so heavily connected to memory.
For me no good food is illuminated without acidity.
It's amazing the relationships you forge in a kitchen. When you cooperate in an environment that's hot. Where there's a lot of knives. You're trusting your well-being with someone you've never before met or known.
Give yourself enough time to really learn how to cook.
I don't show just anyone how to crust a sea bass. That's sacred information.
I bent my head over a stove in my early 20s and picked it up in my 30s.
The better the ingredients, the more farmers I can buy from, the closer I feel to the food I want to make that represents what I care about as a chef.
If you want to have a relationship, at some point you have to let yourself get caught. That's what I did. I got caught.
The hardest thing about being a full time chef is leaving my work behind when I go home at night. I'll toss and turn about a menu item or forget to order produce and wake up at 4 A.M. in a cold sweat over some artichokes.
If I want my daughter to try something, I eat it in front of her repeatedly without forcing the issue and, with some trial and error, the world is our oyster!
The hardest thing for me is restraint.
My reasons for becoming a chef are somewhat of a cliche. I always loved to eat but it was watching my parents cook that really served as the impetus for my career choice.
I used to sleep with the phone right by my pillow but I'm getting better. Now it sits on the table a few feet away.
My father always said, 'If you love what you do, you won't mind slogging through it for several hours a day.
I find myself hoping I can get on a TV show, and then people from Oklahoma will come to my restaurant. Then I'll be able to make enough money to open my own place.
I woke up on May 15, 1991, the day of my Barnard graduation, and I said to myself, 'By the end of today you will decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.'
