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.
James BeardThere 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.
James BeardLike the theater, offering food and hospitality to people is a matter of showmanship, and no matter how simple the performance, unless you do it well, with love and originality, you have a flop on your hands.
James BeardWhen I walk into a market I may see a different cut of meat or an unusual vegetable and think, โI wonder how it would be if I took the recipe for that sauce I had in Provence and put the two together?โ So I go home and try it out. Sometimes my idea is a success and sometimes it is a flop, but that is how recipes are born. There really are not recipes, only millions of variations sparked by someoneโs imagination and desire to be a little creative and different. American cooking is built, after all, on variations of old recipes from around the world.
James BeardThe secret of good cooking is, first, having a love of itโฆ If youโre convinced that cooking is drudgery, youโre never going to be good at it, and you might as well warm up something frozen.
James BeardI've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. There are few sights that appeal to me more than the streaks of lean and fat in a good side of bacon, or the lovely round of pinkish meat framed in delicate white fat that is Canadian bacon. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing.
James Beard