If you're buying tomatoes pick them up and smell them-they should have a lovely perfume. They need to be kept at fifty degrees or above, particularly during the growing season, because that's when they develop their flavor.

The problem for cookery-bookery writers like me is to understand the extent of our readers' experience. I hope have solved that riddle in my books by simply telling everything. The experienced cook will know to skip through the verbiage, but the explanations will be there for those who still need them.

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.

Cooking hasn't yet been accepted as the art form it is. It should be on the level with any of the other art forms.

I always try to buy just what I need. You get ideas as to what's in season and what's best. I think if you have a preconceived idea before shopping, that makes it difficult. You have to have an open mind.

How lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.

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.