Pearl Bailey Quotes

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.

I'm a cook, and I'm like, "a dash of this, a pinch of that." I cook with a lot of passion and instinct. So that's the hardest thing - to put an actual recipe together.

I love to cook when I have the time. I don't cook French or Mexican food with exact recipes. I just go to the supermarket and buy things that look good, and I mix it all together and invent something. Ninety-five percent of the time, I'm lucky. Sometimes not so lucky, and I say, 'Let's go out to dinner.'

I've never gone to culinary school, but I do love cooking.

I found that preparation is everything when you cook.

I never learned to cook, so I've got no rules. I'll put things together just because I think they belong together.

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.

I had a passion for cooking, and I was a very bad student.

A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.

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

Don't be afraid to adapt new ingredients into your own techniques, and traditional ingredients into new recipes.

Cooking is like love. You don't have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It's the same thing with food.

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.'

To have a basic ingredient that can be prepared a million different ways is a beautiful thing.

A recipe is not an exact formula, but it does need a certain structure. When the bones are right, you can dress it in many ways.

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.

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

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 always have homemade chicken stock in the refrigerator. I'll reduce it, maybe add a little cream and a few shallots. Before you know it, eureka! It's the best.

Cooking is about the ingredients and responding, but risotto, specifically, is about the technique.

I'm really boring. I think about cooking all the time. I have a little book, so when I go out or see something, I jot it down and try to include it in a recipe or do a variation of it. I even have a notepad by my bed, which is usually saying we're running out of mango chutney.

Like music, cooking and more specifically, barbecuing is one of my greatest passions and my sauce is a celebration of these simple pleasures in life. I am thrilled to have my original BBQ sauces featured on Hard Rock's menu, as both embody the true meaning of rock 'n' roll flavor.

Generally, I cook from the soul and measure by eye, throwing in this and that along the way. But I want to be a certified chef. That's one of my goals.

Music is like cooking for me: you mix the ingredients together in one big pan and see how they end up. Through experimenting, you find what you really like and stick with it.