Culinary Practices Quotes

Good vinegars come in all shapes, sizes, strengths, and viscosities and are probably my most often used seasoning agent in the kitchen after the other major acids we use in solid form: sugar and salt.

The food and culture of any place go hand in hand.

I love working with big flavors like chiles and smoke. Honey is perfect for softening the edges, mellowing them out a bit. I put it in everything - vinaigrettes, soups, stocks, salsas, so I'm always on the hunt for great honey.

I think we have cultural bias and practice some ethnocentrism when it comes to ethnic food in America.

I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it -- and, more important, I like to give it.

Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture.

The only good things I've seen emerge from a steamer are tamales, couscous, and dumplings - maybe the occasional artichoke or delicate fish fillet. But baby turnips with their tender greens still attached should be boiled in water as salty as the sea until their flesh is silky and soft.

I'm not sure that some of the food purists are in touch with what really goes on in American households.

At home in Ghaziabad, everyone is a pure vegetarian. In fact, when I want to cook non-veg there, my mum shoos me out on the terrace where I have my cooking utensils. I'm told categorically that whatever non-veg or egg, etc., that I have to cook, I should do upstairs and not enter her kitchen at all.

With humans it's abortion, but with chickens it's an omelet.

Why would these English explorers search for these spices, yet never use them in their food?

If a lobster didn't look like a sci-fi monster, people would be less able to drop him alive into boiling water.

France eats more conciously, more intelligently, than any other nation.

In restaurants where they serve frog's legs, what do they do with the rest of the frog? Do they just throw it away? You never see "frog torsos" on the menu. Is there actually a garbage can full of frog bodies in the alley? I wouldn't want to be a homeless guy looking for an unfinished cheeseburger and open the lid on that

...Humans were the only creatures in the world that ate their food cooked. You'd never find a Gorilla frying up some bananas for dinner or a lion charcoal-broiling a zebra steak. Cats don't often run to the oven with a mouse or bird they've captured, and a dog wouldn't naturally prepare its rabbit dinner in a stew.

Salt is one of the flavors that makes food taste good - salt, sugar and fat. So it's a natural thing for all chefs and cooks to add salt, because it enhances the flavor of the food. If you go out to eat, I guarantee you're going to be eating a lot of salted foods that you are going to have no idea.

Food is one of the great organizing tools.

Ruthless man: you begin by slaying the animal and then you devour it, as if to slay it twice. It is not enough. You turn against the dead flesh, it revolts you, it must be transformed by fire, boiled and roasted, seasoned and disguised with drugs; you must have butchers, cooks, turnspits, men who will rid the murder of its horrors, who will dress the dead bodies so that the taste decieved by these disguises will not reject what is strange to it, and will feast on corpses, the very sight of which would sicken you.

Chefs don't do ponytails and we shouldn't do them because I guarantee that whenever there's a discovery of hair in the food, it's guaranteed it's from the chef's ponytail.

Offal and offcuts such as head and feet can be picked up for next to nothing, and eating them helps to avoid waste.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

I measure in my palm and use my eyes to estimate amounts; a tablespoon is a full palm of dried spices.

I use those medical gloves that fit very tightly and are disposable for all chopping - peppers, onions, garlic, etc. Very Lady Macbeth, I think.

They do not eat Yorkshire pudding on Sunday in Iowa.

People have been manipulating food ever since they realized cooking a whole animal was difficult. Cows don't come in hot dog form.