You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!

I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.

The most overrated tool: a pasta maker. Why make it when you can buy it? It's a lot of work!

The thing about all my food is that everything is a remembered flavor. Maybe it's something I had as a child or maybe it's something I had in Milan, but I want it to taste better than you ever thought.

I think there are two ways of eating, or cooking. One is restaurant food and one is home food. I believe that people have started making food that is easy that you want to eat at home. When you go out to a restaurant, you want to be challenged, you want to taste something new, you want to be excited. But when you eat at home, you want something that's delicious and comforting. I've always liked that kind of food - and frankly, that's also what I want to eat when I go out to restaurants, but maybe that's me.

Fun is the most important. If you do stuff for money, it never works out.

I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.