The roots of creativity of cooking are hungry people trying to figure out how to take something that's not particularly fresh or tender and transform it into it something delicious that everyone will love.
A steak needs fat to taste great.
Everything I do is about Chinese culture. My dishes have to symbolize something because they taste better when people understand.
I always have a good quality extra virgin olive oil. A cheap quality oil will end up cheapening your dishes. And I love sweetening my dishes with maple syrup. It has a bit of a bitter kick at the end that works wonderfully in savory dishes.
SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
Salt's relationship to flavor is multidimensional: It has its own particular taste, and it both balances and enhances the flavor of other ingredients.
Mayonnaise is a lot like men, it can make everything much better, adding flavor and ease to your life. Or, it can just be sticky and gross and make you nauseous"- "Keeping the Moon
Chili is much improved by having had a day to contemplate its fate.
If you don't treat an ingredient and its flavors with respect - if you drown it in oil, for instance - you'll spoil it.
My secret with kale is to add lots of sweet or sharp flavours to offset some of that grassy intensity.
Salt is like good-humor, and nearly every thing is better for a pinch of it.
Adding salt to desserts helps to balance and pronounce flavors. Almost all of my desserts have salt in them. They don't taste salty per se, but if I gave you two of the same item - one with salt and one without - side by side, you would realize something was missing.
The Chinese five-spice works really well in the quantity that I used. It makes it almost imperceptibly just a little bit sweeter without making it really sweet or really even that Asian flavored.
In recent years, perhaps encouraged by competition from McDonald's, the British hamburger has become a credit to the nation. At the time of which I speak, it looked like a scorched beer-coaster or a tenderized disc brake.
Hunger is the best sauce in the world.
It's not the sugar that makes the tea sweet, but the stirring.
Almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon.
The tang of tamarind is a great way both to flavour and lighten up slow-cooked savoury dishes.
Food, like the people who eat it, can be stimulated by wine or spirits. And, as with people, it can also be spoiled.
Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself.
If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.
It took me all my life to learn how to salt a tomato.
It is important to experiment and endlessly seek after creating the best possible flavors when preparing foods. That means not being afraid to experiment with various ingredients.
Peanut Butter M&Ms in the fridge, I always have a giant bag. Every cookie and candy I put in the fridge, it always manages to taste better when it's cold.
It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients.
