Julia Child Quotes - Page 5

Forget the cheap white wine: go to beef and gin!

In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear.

The American poultry industry had made it possible to grow a fine-looking fryer in record time and sell it at a reasonable price, but no one mentioned that the result usually tasted like the stuffing inside of a teddy bear.

The main thing is to have a gutsy approach and use your head.

You have to eat to cook. You can't be a good cook and be a noneater. I think eating is the secret to good cooking.

It is the Americans who have managed to crown minced beef as hamburger, and to send it round the world so that even the fussy French have taken to le boeuf hache, le hambourgaire.

In the 1960s, you could eat anything you wanted, and of course, people were smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, and there was no talk about fat and anything like that, and butter and cream were rife. Those were lovely days for gastronomy, I must say.

Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, 'scientific' though. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make.... Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile...then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile.

The problem for cookery-bookery writers like me is to understand the extent of our readers' experience. I hope have solved that riddle in my books by simply telling everything. The experienced cook will know to skip through the verbiage, but the explanations will be there for those who still need them.

Ye gods! But you're not standing around holding it by the hand all this time. No. [...] [T]he dough takes care of itself. [...] While you cannot speed up the process, you can slow it down at any point by setting the dough in a cooler place [...] then continue where you left off, when you are ready to do so. In other words, you are the boss of that dough.

Wine is one of the agreeable and essential ingredients of life

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you “sir” and “madam,” and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of “what is done” and “what is not done,” and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena

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.

Remember, you are all alone in the kitchen and no one can see you.

Animals that we eat are raised for food in the most economical way possible, and the serious food producers do it in the most humane way possible. I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages.

Too much trouble," "Too expensive," or "Who will know the difference" are death knells for good food.

I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up.

If you are going to flip something, you must have the courage of your convictions.

I wouldn't keep him around long if I didn't feed him well.

Just how could a nation often be great if it's bread tastes want Kleenex.

When I got to France I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.

Sometimes ... it takes me an entire day to write a recipe, to communicate it correctly. It's really like writing a little short story.

Fat gives things flavor.