Geoffrey Zakarian Quotes

Undercook swordfish, and you get rubber. Overcook it, and you lose the fat and succulence.

Depending on when vegetables are picked, they might take different lengths of time to cook.

Always deep fry in a nonreactive, heavy pot with high sides, like an enameled Dutch oven. A heavy pot ensures even heating which means more even cooking.

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

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

The key to great fried squid is 'flash-frying' in hot oil for only a few minutes, which keeps it tender.

Preparing and cooking squid is easier than most fish. The only thing to remember is not to cook it for too long.

Pressure cookers are relatively inexpensive, they're in every kitchen store, your grandma probably had one, but a lot of people don't. A pressure cooker is interesting because by pressurizing the vessel, you're able to cook much hotter than the boiling point of water, and still have water be present.

Then, as the day progresses, depending on how the product is coming in - for instance, the fish man will fax us and say black bass is great - throughout the day, we'll also make judgment calls and adapt to what's available.

A great ratatouille is one in which the vegetables interact with each other but are still discernible from each other. The trick is to cook them just right: not over, not under.

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.

Having sharp, great knives will enable you to cook very precisely. Knife skills are essential in cooking.

The key to good grilling is to recognize that you are setting yourself up to cook in a whole new environment. This is actually one of the main purposes of grilling - to get yourself outside.

The physics of water is central to cooking, because food is mostly water. All steak that you cook is actually boiled on the inside.

I like to cook with the philosophy of using great ingredients and not altering them too much.

If you start with a great peach, there's nothing you're ever going to do that's going to make it any better than when it comes off the tree. In 1970, that was a revolution.

In any sauce you make, start with a concentration of flavors with great acidity. You then re-dilute the sauce, but the proportion of liquid you add should not be so high that you wash away the extracted flavor you're aiming to create.

I cook a great fish, a great salmon. I grill it, get the skin nice and crispy.

The difference between a bland tomato and great one is immense, much like the difference between a standard, sliced white bread and a crusty, aromatic sourdough.

In certain European cuisines, vegetables are cooked a long time. I take the term 'al dente' and use it for vegetables.

There's no way I'm going to stand up for bad ingredients. We love seasonal ingredients. It's a false dichotomy to say that modern cooking is at odds with that, but some people want to have a great ingredient and no technique.

I don't exactly know what it means to be ready. A cake when the oven timer goes off? Am I fully baked, or only half-baked?

I don't care what anybody says: Nothing is better than a tomato you grow. There's something about it that's different than a tomato you can buy. It's a great thing.

The taste of any simple tomato-based salad is dependent on the quality of the tomatoes.

One of the things that's great about doing a show over and over again... is that you have to find ways to make it spontaneous, as though everything is happening for the first time... to continue to mine the material and find new things.