Cooking hasn't yet been accepted as the art form it is. It should be on the level with any of the other art forms.
I've always loved to cook. It helps me to relax and gives me peace. It's my nourishment.
Cooking is not a craft to get into for money. The money may come, or it may not. But you must get into it for the craft and the culture.
Chefs have the ego of an actor and fashion designer combined.
Creating a meal for somebody, it's a way to show your love.
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.
Everything I do is about Chinese culture. My dishes have to symbolize something because they taste better when people understand.
I have met a lot of top chefs around the world during my travels. Each one of them has said 'Ratatouille' is their favorite movie and the only movie that truly captures what they do.
I think baking is an incredible thing; cooking in general is an incredible thing.
What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake. If you're interested in the cake, you get rather annoyed with people saying what species the real plum was.
Prepared and fast foods have given us the time and freedom to see cooking as an art form - a form of creative expression.
Cooking is a philosophy; it's not a recipe.
Like a musician expresses himself through music and a writer's expression is in his writings, cooking is my mode of expression.
I'm always changing my work, as there are endless ways to think about food.
Before the start of each new series, I go shopping for my 'Bake Off' wardrobe. I've got increasingly confident with my look and now wear much more colour than I did at the start.
My ritual is cooking. I find it therapeutic. It comes naturally to me. I can read a recipe and won't have to look at it again.
It's very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it's merely about combining ingredients, but that's something you can do with your eyes closed.
Cooking and baking is both physical and mental therapy.
When I'm in a good mood I like to cook. But I don't like saying it in public because I find myself being resentful of the idea; "Now you will make a good wife. You can cook, right?" So when people ask me I go, "No, I don't like cooking!"
Cooking for somebody is very personal.
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.
Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors - it's how you combine them that sets you apart.
When I cook, it's something nobody else would enjoy.
The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into 'I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish.'
My food is an extension of my personality.
