I'd like for people to be able to go to the universities and get a degree in fine arts-gastronomy.

I'm not wild about those twenty-four hour marinades

The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen.

Fake food -- I mean those patented substances chemically flavored and mechanically bulked out to kill the appetite and deceive the gut -- is unnatural, almost immoral, a bane to good eating and good cooking.

Of course I made many boo-boos. At first this broke my heart, but then I came to understand that learning how to fix one's mistakes, or live with them, was an important part of becoming a cook.

You learn to cook so that you don't have to be a slave to recipes. You get what's in season and you know what to do with it.

The dinner hour is a sacred, happy time when everyone should be together and relaxed.