Gil Marks Quotes

My mom's collard greens. No one else in the world can make them like hers. I'm not just saying that because she's my mom. She's got some Mississippi secret. I could seriously eat them every day.

My grandsons really love my apple cake, which is from my grandmother's recipe.

If baking is any labor at all, it's a labor of love. A love that gets passed from generation to generation.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

When I was a little kid, it was not uncommon for a cousin or an uncle, before they would even say 'Hello,' to gush, 'You know, your mother's brisket is just incredible; it's so good.' That was an inspiration for creating a love song in that well-worn terrain of the relationship between a Jewish boy and his mother.

Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.

When I cook certain dishes, I smell my grandmother's kitchen, my grandmother's smells. I thought, 'What a wonderful way to tell a story.'

My mother made wonderful cheesecake. She loved cheesecake. She ate it every day of her life.

People come to Nashville where I live and they say, 'What's a great Southern restaurant?' Well, you got to know the right grandmother, because there's a lot of magic to good Southern cooking.

I've always liked home-cooked meals.

My grandmother used to make the most incredible chicken divan, and my mom has carried out that tradition. It's my comfort food. It's amazing how you can almost taste the memories with a dish like that! And the more leftovers, the better.

I grew up in a typical Ashkenazi household. My bubbe actually lived with us. She'd make us the traditional colorless, beige, heavy foods: chicken soup, kreplach, gefilte fish, tzimmes.

A lot of my recipes I take from foods my grandmother used to cook, things she prepared for family reunions.

My father, he made chili; that was probably his favorite dish to make.

My favorite thing is when I go back and my mother cooks for me. Because it just throws me back the same flavor. And I try to modify things: I say, "Why don't you do this and that?" My mother is older, but she cooks a lot, and she doesn't want to change anything. She's a very good cook, and my grandmother was an amazing cook.

Food is a way to explore culture and ground the story in a specific time and place. I still remember the meals and snacks from my first novel, 'Shug': pork chops and applesauce and Coca-Cola and peanuts, which are very Southern. When a character has roots elsewhere, food is a way to connect with home and another culture.

A Jewish food is one that is almost sanctified, either by its repeated use or use within the holidays or rituals. So food that may have not been Jewish at one point can become Jewish within the cultural context.

I'm a fan of the hand-me-down recipes - friends, family, bake sales, community cookbooks - those are the recipes that have withstood the test of time and fed many hungry fans.

My mum made the best roasts.

All of my dishes kind of have the same thing going on - I'm always going to give you the same things that I grew up with or that my mom used to make. I'm not going to use nitrogen in my tacos.

My great-grandmother taught my mom to cook and she passed down the recipes to me.

I love anything paneer! Our family favorite, however, is 'Dal Dhokli,' a quintessential Gujarati dish of bread dumplings and lentil soup. That's the big meal of the week typically prepared by my mother on Sundays.

A chef's palate is born out of his childhood, and one thing all chefs have in common is a mother who can cook.

There's just something about fresh tortillas.

It's some chopped liver. That's Jewish soul food.