Cooking may be a creative art, but it's also a wonderful full-time hobby.

In the 1970s we got nouvelle cuisine, in which a lot of the old rules were kicked over. And then we had cuisine minceur, which people mixed up with nouvelle cuisine but was actually fancy diet cooking.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

You have to eat to cook. You can't be a good cook and be a noneater. I think eating is the secret to good cooking.

Ye gods! But you're not standing around holding it by the hand all this time. No. [...] [T]he dough takes care of itself. [...] While you cannot speed up the process, you can slow it down at any point by setting the dough in a cooler place [...] then continue where you left off, when you are ready to do so. In other words, you are the boss of that dough.

I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up.

...nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.