Nobu Matsuhisa Quotes

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.

I've been making sushi for 38 years, and I'm still learning. You have to consider the size and color of the ingredients, how much salt and vinegar to use and how the seasons affect the fattiness of the fish.

The fine art of preparing sushi is something that you watch and learn.

Taste as you go. When you taste the food throughout the cooking process you can make adjustments as you go.

In Japanese, sushi does not mean raw fish. It means seasoned rice.

Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance - of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you'll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.

I prepare my style of biriyani by sauting sliced onion, tomato, green chilli, ginger garlic and add required water and rice. If I end up adding a tad too much of salt, I used to add curd to balance it.

You always want to walk a tight-rope of flavor

There are very few chefs both in Britain and the States that really identify the secret of being consistent. And combine consistency with flavor.

As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery, the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.

Pastry is different from cooking because you have to consider the chemistry, beauty and flavor. It's not just sugar and eggs thrown together. I tell my pastry chefs to be in tune for all of this. You have to be challenged by using secret or unusual ingredients.

It's not good to thicken sauce with too much butter because it can cause heaviness. You don't want to avoid butter, but you also don't want to put too much - add it slowly.

There are people who claim to be instinctive cooks, who never follow recipes or weigh anything at all. All I can say is they're not very fussy about what they eat. For me, cooking is an exact art and not some casual game.

You know how kids dream of being soccer players or actors? Well, my dream was to be a sushi chef.

Don't dunk your nigiri in the soy sauce. Don't mix your wasabi in the soy sauce. If the rice is good, complement your sushi chef on the rice.

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.

A chunk of seared albacore tuna, salted and peppered, then seared rare in a little oil in a hot skillet for just a minute or so per side, is the perfect addition to a savory plate of fried rice. Just slice the tuna across the grain and fan those mild, meaty slices over the top of the rice.

I can make things, but I don't cook them, exactly. Like salmon, I can stick that in a pan. Or the other day I made noodles, but they were hard. It never occurred to me to check them; I just stopped cooking them when I felt they were ready. Really, I'm too absentminded.

For me no good food is illuminated without acidity.

I love using rice as a flour; I'll grind roasted rice and dip fish in that. It gives a beautiful, crunchy texture.

If you don't treat an ingredient and its flavors with respect - if you drown it in oil, for instance - you'll spoil it.

This sounds like a brag, but I know how to make good fried rice. I learned in college. There are two secrets - take the rice after you cook it and let it get cold in the fridge. Then cook the egg like you're making a fried egg and just before it's done, dump the rice and veg on it and swirl it around.

Yoghurt cuts sweetness and richness, tempers spice, and makes a dish sing.

It's like spicy food - sometimes you have to tone it down so more people can enjoy it.

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.