Mario Batali Quotes

You learn to cook so that you don't have to be a slave to recipes. You get what's in season and you know what to do with it.

A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.

You can't fake being able to cook well.

So many of the recipes that I come up with have a story. I'm a blogger. It flowed very naturally out of me, but I also knew this was a way to set my recipes apart. A, they are always using interesting ingredients but B, there is always a story behind it.

Mastering one recipe is better than mastering too many. Learn something and own it, and you'll feel so much better about it. You'll have more confidence if you've made it five times, and that confidence adds so much fun to cooking.

When I make a recipe for the first time and it's fabulous, I know I'm in trouble because I don't know exactly what I did, and I can't replicate it.

I love being at home now, improving my cooking. I've got a really bad memory, so my first attempts were a disaster - I'd forget what ingredients to put in. But I do a lasagna that's a crowd-pleaser, and a good lemon drizzle cake, which I take to my mom's for the Sunday roast to fatten the family up.

No matter what the recipe, any baker can do wonders in the kitchen with some good ingredients and an upbeat attitude!

Usually, one's cooking is better than one thinks it is.

What strikes me, the more I cook, is that the best recipes are ones where the basic anatomy is so sound it will survive multiple adjustments. When a recipe has good bones, you can change the seasoning, double the garlic, swap lime for lemon, and it still turns out delicious.

Most cooks try to learn by making dishes. Doesn't mean you can cook. It means you can make that dish. When you can cook is when you can go to a farmers market, buy a bunch of stuff, then go home and make something without looking at a recipe. Now you're cooking.

I'm a good cook, but I can't bake.

Sometimes there is dogma in baking and sometimes there is not - you just have to know when to break the rules and when to follow them.

Cooking is not effortless. To get a recipe that feels effortless is really hard.

When my career in hotels was taking off in the Nineties, I went to work as a head baker in Cyprus, where I was making Danish pastries every day. I can remember that the head chef was always on my back to put more seasonal fruits in with the creme patissiere. I'd even make them with rhubarb.

I've baked more cakes since I've been on 'Bake Off' than I have in my life.

I'd love to cook. It's something I've got into since I've grown older. I'm mates with Jamie Oliver and he's been a real inspiration. I've cooked for Jamie a few times - most people are too frightened to cook for him. Chefs are really easy to cook for. They're just pleased not to be the one who's cooking.

Peter Geye has rendered the Minnesota north shore in all its stark, dangerous beauty, and it is the perfect backdrop for this deeply moving story of conflict and forgiveness. Safe from the Sea is a remarkable debut.

There are two activities in life in which we can lovingly and carefully put something inside of someone we love. Cooking is the one we can do three times a day for the rest of our lives, without pills. In both activities, practice makes perfect.

I already enjoy cooking. I like different flavors and putting different things together and really like taking normal recipes to a higher level.

I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and say to myself "well, that's not going to happen

I became a cook so I could cook and tell stories in wacky ways.

Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.

Be a fearless cook! Try out new ideas and new recipes, but always buy the freshest and finest ingredients, whatever they may be. Furnish your kitchen with the most solid and workmanlike equipment you can find. Keep your knives ever sharp and - toujours bon appetit!

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make.... Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile...then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile.