I'm not a particularly good cook. Part of it is that it is the kind of cooking anybody could do if they bothered. It's improvisational. I cook with whatever I have laying around.
If you have acid in food, you need to sugar it. At a high temperature, the acids are changed to sugar.
I can make things, but I don't cook them, exactly. Like salmon, I can stick that in a pan. Or the other day I made noodles, but they were hard. It never occurred to me to check them; I just stopped cooking them when I felt they were ready. Really, I'm too absentminded.
A successful shrimp boil requires layering ingredients into the pot so that everything is done cooking at once. A carefully timed choreography dictates the order in which ingredients are added to ensure no one has to eat raw potatoes or chewy shrimp.
The simpler the food, the harder it is to prepare it well. You want to truly taste what it is you're eating. So that goes back to the trend of fine ingredients. It's very Japanese: Preparing good ingredients very simply, without distractions from the flavor of the ingredient itself.
While a pot of boiling water may not offer the char or smoke of a grill, it does give the cook an advantage when it comes to seasoning food.
In food, it's really, like, either you're right, or you're wrong. You know, people's taste buds kind of vary, but there's a technique. Either you do it right, or you don't.
Nobody pours stuffing like you do, my friend.
Eating is the secret to good cooking.
If you think well, you cook well.
There are very few chefs both in Britain and the States that really identify the secret of being consistent. And combine consistency with flavor.
Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful technique, and use clear exposition to bring you up to speed.
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.
No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art. Or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here. Cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering.
I've taught myself how to use good, fresh ingredients and to prepare them as simply as possible by cooking only to enhance their intrinsic flavors.
Grilling is an easy tradition to start at any age! To get started, one only needs a modest investment in equipment and a little bit of outdoor space.
I write in freehand equivalents because measuring, to me, takes away from the creative process of cooking. Two turns of the pan with EVOO is about two tablespoons.
It's always a good idea to chill your crab cake mixture for a few hours, or even overnight, before frying because they'll hold together better.
Baking is too precise for me. I cook with a pinch of this or that.
I'm brilliant at cooking my stepmother's scrambled egg recipe. The secret is to put eggs, butter, milk, and seasoning together in the saucepan, and to keep stirring with a wooden spoon under a low heat until the preferred consistency is reached.
I'm a rather crude cook.
At some point during every cooking class I teach, I do my signature move: dramatically add handful upon handful of salt to a large pot of boiling water, then taste it and add even more.
Manage the heat, let the meat cook, and you'll get fantastic results.
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.
I make really good pasta sauce. The secret to getting it right is just patience and love.
