When I got to France I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.
I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.
I have been cooking with preserved lemon for years, using it left, right and centre, but I am still far from reaching my limit.
I've cooked my whole life, and I grew up in a household of cooks.
I've had an untraditional trajectory with food: I was in my mom's home, then I was a college kid making mac and cheese and quesadillas, and then I was a professional cook. I never had that time where you figure out how to cook for yourself at home.
There is a charm in making a stew, to the unaccustomed cook, from the excitement of wondering what the result will be, and whether any flavour save that of onions will survive the competition in the mixture.
When you cook, you never stop learning. That's the fascination of it all.
I don't want to sound too mystical or weird but it's important to know what garlic smells like when it's cooking, or what eggs look like when they're cracked out of a shell.
Before I was married, I had never washed one dish or seen how you fried an egg or baking a potato.
I love cooking. There is nothing I like better than going home and cooking my family a nice meal. Anything with pasta! Pasta with butter! I have a good repertoire, and I can do quite a few different dishes. Sometimes they work out and sometimes not.
I think cooking should be an experience, not a chore.
I was always a good cook from my mum showing me when I was a young lad, but hiring a chef helped me to understand food better.
I am not a chef. I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater.
I loved the experience of going to the farmers' market, seeing where your food is grown, turning it into something delicious.
When I moved to Los Angeles, I was cooking with two guys who became celebrity chefs, if you will. I became their sous chef for awhile. We'd go to all the big names in Hollywood.
I'm a cook, and I'm like, "a dash of this, a pinch of that." I cook with a lot of passion and instinct. So that's the hardest thing - to put an actual recipe together.
Before any exposure on TV, I'm a real chef.
I started cooking 30-something years ago. When I was 14, 15, I was a short-order cook in a snack bar. That was at a place called the Gran Centurions. It was an Italian-American swim club my parents belonged to.
I can chop and peel vegetables but can't cook full meals.
I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.
Preparing food is one of life's great joys, but a lot of times, parents ask their kids if they want to cook with them and then tell them to go peel a bag of potatoes. That's not cooking - that's working!
When anybody is just starting the process of cooking, I always say it takes practice, and nobody got to be a great cook on their first try.
I love jerk chicken. I could literally eat it every single day of my life. I also like curry goat, rice and peas, and ackee and saltfish. For some reason, no one ever taught me how to cook, though. They've always cooked for me!
I've never taken a cooking class. I've never gone to a cooking show. I've never read a recipe in my life.
I've never been a great cook.
