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

I think the best shortcut is to choose really simple recipes. Because I think you can make simple recipes that are as delicious as complicated ones.

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

If it's a cocktail party, I generally make five or six different things, and I try to choose recipes that feel like a meal: a chicken thing, a fish or shrimp thing, maybe two vegetable things, and I think it's fun to end the cocktail party with a sweet thing.

Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the ultimate comfort meal.

All my life I dreamed of an apartment in Paris where I could cook, and now I have one, on the Left Bank.

I always have music. I love it to be very upbeat. When you're having drinks, I like something like Cesaria Evora. During dinner, I like the much more traditional - old Frank Sinatra and things like that.