I spent a college semester in a small town in Italy - and that is where I truly tasted food for the first time.

Although I don't take myself very seriously, I do take my work extraordinarily seriously.

'Outlaw Cook' was a revelation. Folks like Jeff Smith and Marcella Hazan got me interested in cooking, but John Thorne pushed me into the path that I follow to this day. This is the only cookbook I've ever read that understands how men really eat: over the sink, in the dark, greasy to the elbows.

I'm like a really goofy home ec teacher.

I'm not a slave driver or a yeller. I was yelled at in kitchens and other workplaces.

What happens is that in each clump you've got the gelatinization of starches, which happens very quickly at the surface of the clump and it kind of forms a protective skin around this dry hunk of flour.

The skin is forming because of proteins, just like if you cook milk or anything else that's got a coagulant protein in it.