It was immediately apparent that it was full of tricky ingredients to balance. In fact, I found it very intriguing. What held me back from saying yes to the producer was that I wasn't sure who could play Truman.
A lot of people have this misconception that Indian food means heavy curries and complicated procedures.
The dish that changed my life was tom yum kum. You start with a pot of water, add lemongrass, lime leaves, lime juice, coriander, mushrooms, and shrimp; ten minutes later, you have the most incredible, intense soup.
What I love about the term 'salad' is that it can appear in so many different forms and says a lot about the cook. It could be a simple as fresh green lettuces tossed with a basic vinaigrette, or it could be as hearty as a couscous salad with grilled shrimp.
I'm going to scream this from the mountain top, there's no such thing as 'a curry.' There's six kazillion different kinds of curry. When someone asks how to make chicken curry, I have to ask 'Which one?'
Asian food is very easy to like because it hits your mouth very differently than European food does. In European food, there may be two things to hit - maybe sweet and salty, maybe salty-savory, but Asian kind of works around, plus you have that distinct flavor that's usually working in Asian food.
A lot of people think Japanese food is difficult, a lot of work. But you don't have to buy the knife I have. You don't have to train as long as I have. You can do my cooking in your kitchen.
Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.
The trouble with some cooking is that the real flavours get cancelled out by the wine, cream, and butter sauces.
I make a really delicious eggplant and squash curry that's inspired by Vij of Vij's Restaurant, a great chef and restaurateur in Vancouver. I like to cook that dish because it's really simple, but the flavor is so pungent and intense that I feel like I'm a real chef whenever I create it.
Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance - of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you'll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.
A great pinot chases its own tail. You drink it and you just keep finding new tastes that go with it. My dream was to make a world-class pinot and learn more about other wines as well.
I rarely cook traditional risotto, but I love other grains cooked similarly - barley, spelt or split wheat. I find they have more character than rice and absorb other flavours more wholeheartedly.
Tossing doughnuts, fritters or fried dumplings in fennel sugar adds grown-up complexity without diminishing the indulgence factor.
All of these concoctions that we think are Mexican, are in no way reflective of the deep, incredibly old, complex and sophisticated deep regional cuisine of Mexico. Or the new modern Mexican cuisine, which has really been exploding over the last few years. I think we just have a completely misrepresented view of how good, how complex these flavors are. I think we could learn a lot more. It's a great cuisine that's really moving forward, faster than any other.
Chinese cuisine has so much diversity, the area it covers is so great and so is the taste.
Beaujolais is so underrated.
