Goodness, how much there is to learn about food!

Hands are our earliest tools. Cooking starts with the hands which are so sensitive that when they touch something they transmit messages to your brain about texture and temperature.

The kitchen, reasonably enough, was the scene of my first gastronomic adventure. I was on all fours. I crawled into the vegetable bin, settled on a giant onion and ate it, skin and all. It must have marked me for life, for I have never ceased to love the hearty flavor of raw onions.

Good bread and good butter go together. They are one of the perfect marriages in gastronomy, and they never fail to cheer me.

There is absolutely no substitute for the best. Good food cannot be made of inferior ingredients masked with high flavor. It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing.

I'm really enamored of the potato in all its guises.

If I had to narrow my choice of meats down to one for the rest of my life, I am quite certain that meat would be pork.