Mario Batali Quotes

You don't need a machine to make pasta: a rolling pin and a fast hand can create a smooth, if thick, sheet.

We have friends in Italy who have these old stoves, and they turn out the most beautiful food. All you really need is time, the best ingredients, and love.

I love cooking. My Italian mother is a genius cook, and I picked that up from her. I make my own sauce, which takes four hours, from a recipe that's been refined over many years. I won't tell anybody what it is.

After all these years of cooking and writing recipes, I am still amazed every time I notice how even the minutest of variation in technique can make a spectacular difference.

My father always cooks more polenta than he needs for a meal. The excess he spreads on an oiled surface and chills. Next day, he cuts out chunks, fries them in olive oil and serves with salad.

To shuck oysters, you'll need an oyster knife, a handy tool with a sturdy handle and a short, rigid blade which you can pick up for about ten bucks in a kitchenware shop or fish market. A quick trip online will yield any number of videos and slide shows with step-by-step instructions on how to shuck an oyster.

With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother's recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations?

I make really good pasta sauce. The secret to getting it right is just patience and love.

The best pastas are cut with bronze dies that give them a rough texture and allow the sauce to cling.

Having sharp, great knives will enable you to cook very precisely. Knife skills are essential in cooking.

My mom was Sicilian, my dad was Sicilian. Mom was a great cook, but all the women were.

I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.

I think I can poach a pretty mean egg the old-fashioned way.

I love any excuse to work with a mortar and pestle.

I also want to go to an Italian island and do cuisine properly with some famous Italian chef and, like, his mother.

What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.

In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.

Most men say they can cook pasta, but I think you should find a little bit of an unusual angle on your pasta and make that your signature dish.

I make the best eggplant parmigiana. Except maybe my mother. The way she makes it is delicious. If I told you how, I'd have to kill you.

You are defined by your ingredients, by the way you touch them, by the flavors you draw from them.

No one could touch the home cooking of an Italian woman. French women, they are very intelligent, very sexy - but they don't like to cook.

I do a mean beef Wellington. Gordon Ramsay's is a phenomenal recipe. But that's a lot of prep. The secret to wrap it in Parma ham before wrapping in pastry. I'm so pro smuggling more meat in.

Usually I wear my grandma's old aprons, or others I have collected in my travels. When I was young, I would sit and watch my grandma prepare stuff. She wasn't Italian, but she did really good Italian food.

As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way, and on this subject I feel almost evangelical.

My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen.