A meringue is really nothing but a foam. And what is a foam after all, but a big collection of bubbles? And what's a bubble? It's basically a very flimsy little latticework of proteins draped with water. We add sugar to this structure, which strengthens it. But things can, and do, go wrong.

I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient, I could be qualifying for, like, the lunch food job at my daughter's school.

I want to bring things up to room temperature, especially poultry, before I cook it because I want it to cook faster so that there's less moisture loss.

A home cook who relies too much on a recipe is sort of like a pilot who reads the plane's instruction manual while flying.

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera

Recipe writers hate to write about heat. They despise it. Because there aren't proper words for communicating what should be done with it.

Cranberries contain a massive amount of natural pectins. They will gel all on their own, which is why you can basically make cranberry sauce out of filling.