Yotam Ottolenghi Quotes

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.

When new cooks come to work for me, they obviously make mistakes at the beginning or there's some messiness to the presentation. What I always say to them is: 'If you were cooking this for your mother or your girlfriend, would you make those mistakes?'

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.

I tell everybody the same thing: You have to make every dish so when you taste it, you should remember it when you go home.

The only thing that counts is if you know how to prepare your ingredients. Even if with the best and freshest ingredients in the world, if your dish is tasteless or burnt, it's ruined.

Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.

I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.

If I'm a great artisan of the kitchen, it's because I don't buy my sauces.

I don't like gourmet cooking or 'this' cooking or 'that' cooking. I like good cooking.

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

If you cook something on the show, and I don't like it, I'm going to tell you. I don't understand how you could watch any of these morning shows, and everything everybody cooks is absolutely delicious. Are you kidding me, man?

Good cooking is good cooking, regardless of the price.

Mum's cooking is still the best thing. It's very healthy.

I don't overcook, because you lose what's good in the food.

Criticism of a dish is not a criticism of the cook.

I'd like a nice piece of salmon that's not too pink inside and yet isn't too dry or crisp either.

For me, thats one of the important things about cooking. What was good enough yesterday may not be good enough today.

It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients.