Emeril Lagasse Quotes

When France was the only reference for chefs to learn, you could go everywhere in the world, and they would copy dishes directly because they didn't have much expanded imagination or technique or knowledge.

Many of the things the slow food people honor were innovations within historical times. Somebody had to be the first European to eat a tomato.

I really loved traveling the U.S. and seeing regional differences within the same country and how the same ingredients are used in very different ways. I love how the 'old guard' of cuisine are still pioneering so much of the direction of food today.

There is a history to Italian food that goes back thousands of years, and there's a basic value of respecting food. America is young and doesn't have that.

I can make dressing - or stuffing. Y'all call it stuffing up here, we call it dressing down there. It's really good dressing. That family recipe was passed on, and I love to make that.

My food is Louisiana, New Orleans-based, well-seasoned, rustic. I think it's pretty unique because of my background being influenced by my mom, Portuguese and French Canadian. There's a lot going on there.

We began building this incredible new foundation in this restaurant, and that's what began giving me the left-hand side of tradition and the right-hand side, my new palate.

Almost every culture has its own variation on chicken soup, and rightly so - it's one of the most gratifying dishes on the face of the Earth.

I will eat disgusting things, but only those with long established culinary traditions.

That said, there are certainly still cooks out there who make fantastic historical cornbreads, though the old recipes have often been changed to include modern techniques and ingredients.

With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother's recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations?

Lebanese mezze, Cantonese dim sum and Basque pinchos have all evolved over years and are designed to make sense together.

Some of the recipes in the book have evolved for us. Many haven't.

I don't come from any great culinary tradition - I'm from London!

Near Marseilles in the south of France, bouillabaisse is a cult food. In Toulouse and Carcassonne, the bean-based stew cassoulet is a cult food. Spain has paella and a number of others. Italy has so many, its cuisine is practically defined by them.

The New Orleans I knew ain't no more.

There is nothing like a good old recipe. If it has lasted, then it is good.

I say to my industrialist friends, when you have guests from out of town, I don't care how important they are, you should feed them the essence of Italian culture: spaghetti, bread and olive oil.

You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food.

[Independent Federal] agencies, like other bureaucracies don’t like being transformed.. They have cultures and they want to preserve those cultures.

My mother and sisters cooked Italian food, and I never heard of half of the dishes you see in these Italian restaurants. I just go in and order spaghetti.

For me, food is all about nostalgia.

There are certain foods that are somewhat sacred or you're not supposed to mess with. When you do mess with them, it touches a nerve where you have to compare it to the original, and then that thing you're creating has a loosing change right out of the gate.

My cooking style is exactly like my mother's.

France and Britain have large culinary differences, but one thing they do share is a relatively low tolerance for modernist cooking.