Michael Pollan Quotes

If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything.

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

'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.

I think anybody can cook if they take the time.

Molecular gastronomy is not bad... but without sound, basic culinary technique, it is useless.

A chef is a mixture maybe of artistry and craft. You have to learn the craft really to get there.

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.

It's very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it's merely about combining ingredients, but that's something you can do with your eyes closed.

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.

Know how to garnish food so that it is more appealing to the eye and even more flavorful than before.

Being a cook doesn't necessarily mean you are a competitor.

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.

I don't know if I am a good cook, but I am a dedicated cook.

I do all the cooking in the family. I cook Italian, mostly, pastas and roasts, and bit by bit, I'm learning how to bake. I think cooking is a gift to other people.

I love cooking shows! I'm not a bad cook myself, but I must say that I admire the creativity of those young chefs. It makes me jealous... and hungry.

I don't have any specialties. Anything I cook, I just make it special.

The secret of good cooking is, first, having a love of it… If you’re convinced that cooking is drudgery, you’re never going to be good at it, and you might as well warm up something frozen.

The way you make an omelet reveals your character.

When she goes about her kitchen duties, chopping, carving, mixing, whisking, she moves with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer, her fingers plying the food with the dexterity of a croupier.

There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?

Eating is the secret to good cooking.

Cooking is one of the oldest arts and one which has rendered us the most important service in civic life.

Cookery is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body. Prehistoric man may have lived on uncooked foods, but there are no savage races today who do not practice cookery in some way, however crude. Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.

As far as cookbooks go, I think Joy of Cooking is a classic. I've used it over and over again. Julia Child frustrates me. By the time you get all her herbs together, you're exhausted