Italy itself has 21 different micro-regions. You go within each of those regions, there's even super-micro-regions; and the beauty is that when you go from place to place, although there's a common thread of pasta and joie de vivre - in the way that they approach their meals and the simplicity of cooking, celebrating more the product than the chef - there's still so much variety that as you go, it's always an exciting moment.
Didn't know until my rookie year you could buy chicken parts separate, like drumsticks and thighs and breast. My granny always bought the whole chicken and cut it up.
For the Anglo-Saxons, meat was the main meal of the day, which revolved around 'before-meat' and 'after-meat.' But it has ended up as the metaphor for the most basic: 'meat and potatoes' is as far from sassy - from 'sauce' - as you can get.
When I wrote 'Barefoot in Paris,' I wanted to make simple recipes that you could make at home that tasted like French classics.
The greatest dishes are very simple.
If I've gone to the market on Saturday, and I go another time on Tuesday, then I'm really prepared. I can cook a little piece of fish; I can wilt some greens with garlic; I can slice tomatoes and put a little olive oil on. It's effortless.
I had an excellent repast - the best repast possible - which consisted simply of boiled eggs and bread and butter. It was the quality of these simple ingredients that made the occasion memorable. The eggs were so good that I am ashamed to say how many of them I consumed ....It might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can be reasonably expected of it.
Food, like most things, is best when left to its own simple beauty.
I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.
I like food to be really simple but have a lot of technique all the same.
I'm a simple cook, and there's a lot I don't eat. But food is important. It translates so easily into pleasure.
For whom he means to make an often guest, One dish shall serve; and welcome make the rest.
I am the kind of person who really will drive hours for a bowl of chili. I'm not a three-star restaurant kind of a person; I'm just a food person.
Cuisine has become too complicated - this is about subject, verb, adjective: duck, turnips, sauce.
Give me oysters and beer, for dinner every day of the year, and I'll be fine.
I like it when a man puts thought into the kind of restaurant we're going to. That doesn't mean it needs to be fancy - some of the best meals of my life have been having a taco on a street corner.
The rule for hospitality and Irish "help," is, to have the same dinner every day throughout the year. At last, Mrs. O'Shaughnessylearns to cook it to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are well served.
The very common error of young or unconfident cooks is to keep putting more of their own personal ideology into a plate until there's so much noise that you really can't even hear a tune. You can say more in an empty space than you can in a crowded one.
The cooking standards for Italian food are less demanding than for French. All you need are some fried mozzarella and five pastas, and you're in business.
A burger is something anyone can do, just follow the rules.
What I want to do is produce really delicious food. I want it to look nice, because when you see food you should want to eat it. You shouldn't be saying, 'Oh my goodness, isn't the chef clever, he can weave the Eiffel Tower out of carrot sticks.'
Most of all, I love unfussy, unpretentious, simple food made with excellent ingredients. If I'm a snob, it's about quality, not cuisine.
I don't like gourmet cooking or 'this' cooking or 'that' cooking. I like good cooking.
As I mature as a chef, I no longer aim to pack multiple techniques and ingredients into a single dish. Realizing that restraint is more difficult, I find it often renders incredibly beautiful results.
Cake baking has to be, however innocently, one of the great culinary scams: it implies effort, it implies domestic prowess; but believe me, it's easy.
