Alain Ducasse Quotes

The simpler the food, the harder it is to prepare it well. You want to truly taste what it is you're eating. So that goes back to the trend of fine ingredients. It's very Japanese: Preparing good ingredients very simply, without distractions from the flavor of the ingredient itself.

As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery, the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.

I've taught myself how to use good, fresh ingredients and to prepare them as simply as possible by cooking only to enhance their intrinsic flavors.

It's my belief that cooking is a craft. I think that you can push it into the realm of art, but it starts with craft. It starts with an understanding of materials. It starts with an understanding of where foods are grown.

'Iron Chef America' is so real. Imagine putting on television the whole process of making that food, the technique. It's all about technique. It doesn't even matter if you show the faces sometimes.

If you don't use good ingredients, the outcome is never going to be excellent. But if you buy the freshest ingredients that are in season, at their peak, and you cook with them, you can't really go wrong.

Chefs don't use white pepper just to avoid spoiling the whiteness of pommes puree or bechamel. It has a more peppery aroma, with sharpness and sweetness, too.

All the great chefs I know - Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten - they are technicians first.

Cooking is about presenting flavors and other aspects of food in a way that makes best use of them and makes an engaging, satisfying meal. Taste necessarily comes into it along with technique. Some ingredients require cooking, cleaning or otherwise denaturing them, some are fine as they are.

I've always been fascinated by chefs and the worlds of chefs - what they do is incredibly cinematic.

If you can't think like an onion or a carrot or a tomato, you may be a technician, but you won't understand what you're doing, and your dish will be flat.

I enjoy watching talented cooks bringing together ingredients into a fabulous dish.

I love how Jamie Oliver makes seasonal, local foods in a rustic way, without a lot of fuss.

Maybe one of the only things I do well: I cook like a maniac! I would be a chef if I weren't an actor.

I'm in love with 'pure' flavors, things that are natural and delicious, minimally fussed with, that showcase the season.

I really like cooking according to the season. I like to get creative with what's fresh.

If my cuisine were to be defined by just one taste, it would be that of subtle, aromatic, extra-virgin olive oil.

Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful technique, and use clear exposition to bring you up to speed.

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect.

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

I do a lot of recipe creation. Translation: cooking tempting dishes that must be eaten.

I remember loving food tech because of the precision and the creativity, the weights and measures, the tiny glimpses of flavour.

I just love food and the art of it. There's such an art to being a good chef and the way you present food and the different ingredients you use. It's like music - you get inspiration from different genres. It's the same with art, too.

I believe that a cook in a kitchen isn't producing an entree: he's producing a reaction. The product is the reaction; the entree is just the vehicle.

Eating is the secret to good cooking.