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.

The planning is everything. Deciding which dishes you're going to prepare can turn into the make-or-break decision five days later, when you actually serve the meal.

If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.

I measure everything, because I always think that if I've spent so much time making sure this recipe was exactly the way I want it, why would I want to throw things into a pot?

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 that I had a very clear vision when I started writing cookbooks what I wanted it to be, and that you would open the book, that you would look at the photograph and go, that looks delicious. And then you would look at the recipe and say, I can actually make that and I can make it with ingredients I can find in the grocery store.

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.