Marlo Thomas Quotes

When I walk into a market I may see a different cut of meat or an unusual vegetable and think, ‘I wonder how it would be if I took the recipe for that sauce I had in Provence and put the two together?’ So I go home and try it out. Sometimes my idea is a success and sometimes it is a flop, but that is how recipes are born. There really are not recipes, only millions of variations sparked by someone’s imagination and desire to be a little creative and different. American cooking is built, after all, on variations of old recipes from around the world.

I love food and am very good at improvising when preparing it - it's a really creative experience for me.

I do like to cook; I'm sort of a mad scientist in the kitchen.

Your idea of that dish has evolved, and if you're a cook, you can start thinking in different ways about it, maybe even a different way than I think about it.

I'm a very improvisational cook. I sort of like to make things up as I go along. I'm quite creative in the kitchen.

I think people make it too systematic in a way, like it's a chemistry formula. Food is not like that; food is very forgiving. Connecting and making do with a lot of the food elements can be fun and exciting.

I enjoy experimenting with food and dish out innovative food items as well.

Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist.

I would try doing a dish 30 different ways.

Once you know the fundamentals of cooking, then you don't need to follow a recipe - you just know what herbs go well or what meats, or what combination of what goes together, and then you can just branch out from there. But if there's something specific that I want to make, I work on the recipe and tweak it to my own.

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.

I'll read a recipe but then decide, 'Well, it's sort of like this, then.' Or I'll go to the fridge and think, 'I'll see what I can put together,' and I'll combine beetroot and sausage and prawns with goat's cheese sprinkled on top and think, 'I like that they're all slightly pink. It looks fine and... actually, it is fine.'

I find cooking very therapeutic. As a creative person, I relish cooking because it's such a creative process. You can cook anything out of anything.

I'm always changing my work, as there are endless ways to think about food.

The 'Maverick Chef' is one concept that I would really want to do again because I am traveling from country to country taking from what is in that country that is iconic, special, funky, weird and doing it my way. That is something I really enjoy.

Spaghetti is good with ranch, and spaghetti is good with sugar. You put all of that together and make a sandwich out of it, and you get greatness. People shouldn't judge unless they try it.

A cookery book should be there for inspiration. Recipes should be a guideline, and they shouldn't be cast in stone.

I love a good challenge of looking with new eyes at a tried and true recipe in my recipe Rolodex.

Cooking may be a creative art, but it's also a wonderful full-time hobby.

I do most of the cooking in my head.

For years, I've felt that there's an inner cook in me just waiting to be unleashed. But I have to confess I'm having an awful lot of trouble finding her in real life.

We can use all the scientific tools, but it will never replace the palate or the talent of the chefs who are in the kitchen.

You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food.

Breakfast today, horse sausage. Lunch, minced mule and curried locust. All well.

Cooking is an art form, a creative thing.