Think about your menu, and if you're not a skilled chef - which I'm not - follow a recipe. You can't go wrong if you don't cut the fine print.
I love to cook for my husband and daughter. I enjoy going to the market for fresh vegetables.
At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workmanlike regard for knives.
Less than two weeks before my 34th birthday, I bought pots. Most people were amazed that I did not previously own pots, but that was before I explained that I had never used my oven, and used my stovetop for my dishrack.
Nobody who cooks does it with full hair and makeup in front of a TV camera.
I learned how to handle myself in the kitchen - where to stand and how to be out of people's way and how to function like a machine.
When the urge to bake strikes, it strikes hard and fast. You want to get in the kitchen and start breaking eggs right away, so it can be real buzzkill to find out that the recipe you're using calls for room-temperature butter.
Great cooking favors the prepared hands.
I can do basics, but I'm not a proper cook. I can do a roast. I can stick a chicken in the oven with vegetables.
If you bake all the time, just leave your butter on the counter so it's always ready.
That being said, I often write into recipes techniques I learned in the restaurant kitchen. There are ways of organizing your prep and so on that are immensely useful. Those are woven into all the recipes I do.
I love my squirrel and dumplings, but you can make it with chicken and dumplings. I love making the dumplings. I think I just like to roll out dough.
One of the Sunday newspapers asked me to make my favorite dish, and they photographed me holding it in the kitchen. It was roasted salmon with roasted vegetables. That's not cooking; that's putting things in a pan. It looked quite nice, but I'm not saying it was good.
Getting into the habit of switching a timer on will, I promise, save you from any number of kitchen disasters.
I really enjoy making dinner for my kids and my husband - chopping ginger and marinating the tofu.
