Tom Douglas Quotes

I cook a great fish, a great salmon. I grill it, get the skin nice and crispy.

Undercook swordfish, and you get rubber. Overcook it, and you lose the fat and succulence.

They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.

Preparing and cooking squid is easier than most fish. The only thing to remember is not to cook it for too long.

Whenever possible, buy a fish whole. With tuna, this isn't practical; with smaller fish, it is.

It's not good to thicken sauce with too much butter because it can cause heaviness. You don't want to avoid butter, but you also don't want to put too much - add it slowly.

If you salt a chicken the day before cooking, it starts to break down the cell structure of the meat and allows it to take on more flavor and actually helps it to stay more moist. Same goes for a steak, a pork chop. A lot of people brine; we preseason.

Cooking a piece of fish and cooking it right. Knowing the fish, knowing the properties of the fish. That's a hard thing to do rather than covering it with a lot of sauces and foams or other cooking methods that might be high wire acts and look good on the outside.

Poaching white fish in moderately hot oil guarantees soft-textured flesh and allows you to prepare a sauce calmly, without the usual panic about overcooking the fish.

I don't show just anyone how to crust a sea bass. That's sacred information.

Ling cod is a mild-flavored and somewhat delicate fish that takes well to poaching, braising and pan-roasting.

Steaming is a great way to cook any firm fleshed fish, but it's often overlooked by the home cook.

Another way I like to barbecue king salmon is as a whole fish stuffed, literally to the gills, with sweet onions, sliced lemons, and summer sage.

My own favorite way to cook and eat razor clams is to simply dredge them in a mix of seasoned flour and cornmeal, then pan fry them in butter until crisp and golden. Be careful not to overcook them so they stay tender, not tough and chewy.

On the weekends, some people garden; I slice salmon.

People are very phobic about fish. And if they do cook fish, they fry it, which kills all the flavor.

I have managed to conquer my fear of fire one fish at a time. I've gone from eating sushi to prawns, to baking sea bass fillets.

No vegetable exists which is not better slightly undercooked.

[Vincent Price] taught me how to cook fish in my dishwasher.

I'm a big lover of fish. Cooking fish is so much more difficult than cooking protein meats, because there are no temperatures in the medium, rare, well done cooking a stunning sea bass or a scallop.

If you have never tasted a braised vegetable, you'll find it is a revelation.

Chefs hate desserts. The smartest thing a chef can do is hire a great pastry chef. Cooking savory food is all about feel - you season something, you taste it, you go back in and adjust, more butter, more olive oil, more acid, whatever you want to get it to taste the way you want. Pastries are like a science project. To me, the greatest chefs are the ones who have the greatest feel for food, while the greatest pastry chefs have to be people that are extremely precise.

Of all the jobs I've had, sliming fish was pretty good preparation for life in Washington.

Hands are our earliest tools. Cooking starts with the hands which are so sensitive that when they touch something they transmit messages to your brain about texture and temperature.

I'll slow roast ya, got no holster