Kitchen Wisdom Quotes

When I was growing up, my grandmother cooked every day. She is the best chef ever.

My family truly believes they are better cooks than I am. They see me as Giada, not as a celebrity chef. To them I'm just me - their granddaughter, niece, etc., and they're older and wiser. I like that because it keeps you grounded.

I've always been very open about how my mother taught me to cook and how I'm delighted to share my family's recipes.

But, lady, as women, what wisdom may be ours if not the philosophies of the kitchen? Lupercio Leonardo spoke well when he said: 'how well one may philosophize when preparing dinner.' And I often say, when observing these trivial details: had Aristotle prepared vituals [sic], he would have written more.

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, and the wisdom of cookbook writers.

You look at the Barefoot Contessa or Lydia Bastianich, and it's just like watching your mother cooking.

My abuela was an incredible cook.

I credit my grandmother for teaching me to love and respect food. She taught me how to waste nothing, to make sure I used every bit of the chicken and boil the bones till no flavor could be extracted from them.

My mom, who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years, is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.

The culinary tradition in my family is very strong. My mother, a very wise woman, spent the better part of her life in a kitchen. It's a very strong part of her identity. I grew up there next to the fire.

My grandmother was the genesis of my connection and passion to food.

I come from a line of women who can bake, so I think I've inherited a bit of family knowledge.

I love cooking for the sake of understanding how people before me used to feed themselves, used to feed their families.

I feel that if Jacques Pepin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That's God talking.

My great-grandmother taught my mom to cook and she passed down the recipes to me.

If you can't think like an onion or a carrot or a tomato, you may be a technician, but you won't understand what you're doing, and your dish will be flat.

We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen.

I grew up in the kitchen, mostly with my grandfather, my mother and my aunt Raffy.

We have friends in Italy who have these old stoves, and they turn out the most beautiful food. All you really need is time, the best ingredients, and love.