Italy is hard to beat. It's a family-friendly experience, they like to see kids in restaurants, and at dinner you see all the adults at the table and all the kids at the other end of the table. Maybe they run off and go play.

Venezuela is another place I'd like very much to go, which is proving very difficult. I have not been there to make a show and I'd like to, very much.

Having been a chef for some many years, I understand what it's like to work really, really hard to get good at something, only to have someone piss all over it.

I'm not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I'm going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I'm not a foreign correspondent.

We now have a generation of people who in many cases feel that if they become chefs, they'll get a TV show. They have a signature haircut, a year into the business, or a branding arrangement with a shoe company. I don't really relate to that. I guess this is the world we live in now.

I've been cooking for a nine-year-old and her friends for the better part of seven or eight years. It's how I cook today, it's what makes me happy. I tend to overcompensate for my long absences when I'm home by cooking and it's therapeutic to me - it's how I express love for my daughter. It felt good to do.

Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of 'medicine.' That's something you might remind your New Age friends who've gone gaga over 'holistic medicine' and 'alternative Chinese cures.