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

I'm really a scientist. I follow recipes exactly - until I decide not to. And then I'll follow something else exactly. I may decide I could turn this peach tart into a plum tart, but if I'm following a recipe, I follow it exactly.

My favorite fall or winter lunch is big steaming bowls of soup. I usually invite people for around 12:30 and have two hearty soups like shrimp corn chowder and lentil sausage soup, which can be made a day or two ahead.

When I thought my professional career was over, it hadn't even started yet.

People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance.

The dirty little secret is that I grew up in a household where there were no carbohydrates allowed, ever. No cookies, no bread, no potatoes, no rice. My mother was very extreme in terms of what she served. Since I left home more than 40 years ago, I've been making it right for myself.

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