Frances Mayes Quotes

I'm a very improvisational cook. I sort of like to make things up as I go along. I'm quite creative in the kitchen.

I think people make it too systematic in a way, like it's a chemistry formula. Food is not like that; food is very forgiving. Connecting and making do with a lot of the food elements can be fun and exciting.

My recipes aren't classic recipes; they're all fusion recipes inspired by all the places I've been to.

When I walk into a market I may see a different cut of meat or an unusual vegetable and think, ‘I wonder how it would be if I took the recipe for that sauce I had in Provence and put the two together?’ So I go home and try it out. Sometimes my idea is a success and sometimes it is a flop, but that is how recipes are born. There really are not recipes, only millions of variations sparked by someone’s imagination and desire to be a little creative and different. American cooking is built, after all, on variations of old recipes from around the world.

The type of cuisine I do, especially after being on 'Iron Chef' for several years, is a lot of global cuisine. My strength has always been Mediterranean cuisine across the board from Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, but I think now I'm doing a lot of very different cuisines all the time.

Fusion food as a concept is kind of trying to quite consciously fuse things that are sometimes quite contradictory, sometimes quite far apart, to see if they'd work.

It was improv that really helped me start coming up with recipes and just believe in my instincts. That's why the first recipe I made up was 'I Ain't Chicken Chicken' because I finally felt bold and fearless in the kitchen, which was an entirely new feeling for me.

One of the things is challenging yourself to do a Rome show when everybody's done a Rome show. To find some aspect of food culture or chef culture that people can look at in a new way.

I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.

Why not mix this and that? If soy goes well with fish, how come no one does beef carpaccio with soy? Why do we have such a taste and not another? It's all about culture. There is something, however, that I really don't like: bell peppers.

There was no Internet, not even many cookbooks except the old reference books. So we would sit down at night, a group of six chefs, and we'd exchange recipes and each talk about how we were doing things. It was the only way to learn new ideas.

For me, it's the unexpected and surprising combinations of produce that are the most exciting and lure me into the kitchen for a little bit of experimenting. Apples and sweet potatoes together? Who knew? Carrots with grapes? Okay. I may not be Julia Child, but I can do pretty well with a simple recipe and a lot of enthusiasm.

Usually I wear my grandma's old aprons, or others I have collected in my travels. When I was young, I would sit and watch my grandma prepare stuff. She wasn't Italian, but she did really good Italian food.

I'll read a recipe but then decide, 'Well, it's sort of like this, then.' Or I'll go to the fridge and think, 'I'll see what I can put together,' and I'll combine beetroot and sausage and prawns with goat's cheese sprinkled on top and think, 'I like that they're all slightly pink. It looks fine and... actually, it is fine.'

Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.

Food is ever-changing and ever moving forward and getting more and more complex.

Your idea of that dish has evolved, and if you're a cook, you can start thinking in different ways about it, maybe even a different way than I think about it.

You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food.

I am driven by ingredients. My Italian heritage and French training inevitably poke through as well, guiding my techniques.

I really loved traveling the U.S. and seeing regional differences within the same country and how the same ingredients are used in very different ways. I love how the 'old guard' of cuisine are still pioneering so much of the direction of food today.

My cooking style is exactly like my mother's.

I enjoy experimenting with food and dish out innovative food items as well.

I am classically trained in French pastry, but I am American and have a natural curiosity and playfulness that comes through in my cooking. I like to present flavors that people are familiar with in unique combinations and forms that may surprise them.

I'm yet to attack French cooking, you know, where it's intense, following recipes and stuff. I'm more of a 'make it up' kind of thing.

I am the MacGyver of cooking. If you bring me a piece of bread, cabbage, coconut, mustard greens, pigs feet, pine cones...and a woodpecker, I'll make you a good chicken pot pie.