Artisanal Cooking Quotes

I like food to be really simple but have a lot of technique all the same.

Simple ingredients, treated with respect... put them together and you will always have a great dish.

I can make dough in a machine faster than I can make it by hand, but I want to make it by hand, because I want to remember the way it feels. It's so important for me to make it by hand - whether it's a pasta dough or a pâte brisée. You become involved in it. You become personal with it. For me it's such a wonderful way to get satisfaction and gratification when I'm cooking.

The cooking profession, while it's a noble craft and a noble calling, 'cause you're doing something useful - you're feeding people, you're nurturing them, you're providing sustenance - it was never pure.

I think all chefs who pursue great flavor have good ethics.

I actually don't think there is any difference between French and American cuisine. French cuisine was always about discipline, about ingredient, about creativity, but also about simple. I see America as very similar in these rights.

For me, the good food starts with good product.

I always say, 'There's a difference between cooked food and McDonald's.' Your mom's homemade dinner - you enjoy this more than you enjoy the fast food that comes along and goes, and I strive to make homemade dinner every time I put out an album.

I feel very passionate about maintaining the same level of standard and respect for the food as an Iron Chef myself.

People cooked with a certain integrity before fast food, 50 or 60 years ago. When the cheap food arrived, and we didn't have the education and deep cultural roots to hold on, we got swept away by fast, cheap and easy.

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.

Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone... Bad food is fake food... food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people's ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives.

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

Cooking is like music: you can tell when someone puts love into it. I come from a place where there was so much attention to detail. The population is smaller in the South, so more attention is given to serving smaller numbers of people.

I think at Le Cirque I learned how to make real food, which is what people crave, not just gimmicky things on a plate.

I travel the world, and I can see in Toronto the cooking is very personal. These people cook with their hearts.

The restaurants express the spirit of the chef, the spirit of the city, the country.

You get a lot of young chefs who have a lot of savoir-faire, a lot of technical knowledge. What's important is to convey to them a cuisine that is made from the heart.

I have experienced some amazing food! Yet when I think about the most luxurious and exquisite meals I have had, visions of simple food made from a few natural ingredients are what most excite me.

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.