Alexandra Guarnaschelli Quotes

A lot of people are kind of snobby about garlic powder and onion powder. I happen to love them.

Spices, of course, are essential.

I use ginger like garlic. I love it for steaming fish and making barbecue sauces or roasted chicken.

The star of oil and vinegar and the oil and vinegar of the stars.

There are two proper ways to use garlic: pounding and blooming. Neither involves a press, which is little more than a torture device for a beloved ingredient, smushing it up into watery squiggles of inconsistent size that will never cook evenly or vanish into a vinaigrette. If you have one, throw it away!

Parsley goes really nicely with everything. It adds a nice lightness; it wakes up a dish.

I love fresh citrus and always keep lemons, limes, and oranges on hand; they come in handy for spritzing up quickly grilled meats, seafoods, and vegetables, especially when followed up by a quick drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.

In order to have good fried chicken, you should wash and season the bird the morning you're preparing it for dinner. Don't wait and do it right before you start cooking. Throw it in the refrigerator, seasoned, that morning, and give it a chance to soak up all the salt and pepper and goodness.

Orange blossom water would make a magical addition to your store cupboard.

My secret with kale is to add lots of sweet or sharp flavours to offset some of that grassy intensity.

When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.

Garlic oil is one of my favorite things on the planet. You can roast 20 cloves of garlic in oil and use it in everything - you can even slide those soft whole cloves into a dish of hot mashed potatoes.

A splash of red wine vinegar can pull things together like a pinch of salt.

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.

My biggest nightmare is that something doesn't have enough salt.

I can make a mean Kachchi Biryani, and sometimes I bake it, too.

At some point during every cooking class I teach, I do my signature move: dramatically add handful upon handful of salt to a large pot of boiling water, then taste it and add even more.

A perfect chutney needs patience. If you are cooking it, cook it on a low flame; the flavors come out the best that way.

I love cooking and eating - I'm a total foodie. It started off as a survival thing as a student, when cheese and potato pie was all I could afford to make. My most successful results come from concocting something with leftovers. Any chef will tell you that you should taste as you cook, so I might make it a bit more spicy, yogurty or eggy.

For rave-worthy soups, skip the store-bought stock. You can extract a cleaner, stronger broth from a combination of water and several pantry ingredients. It's all about layering powerful flavor-enhancers that you probably already have on hand - bacon, tomato paste, herbs, peppercorns, a Parm rind, and, of course, kosher salt.

Be simple. Be honest. Don't overcook and don't undercook, but it's better to undercook than overcook.

You can add things to savoury dishes as you cook, but sweet dishes are more challenging.

First and foremost, food needs to be delicious. It should pop and explode with flavor. Food should please all the senses.

I used to be a chef.