The idea of having dinner together every day with your family removes the pressure from trying to explain everything. You tell us the good parts about your day, but you also tell us the bad parts about your day. And at the end of that, because you're in a ritual, you remove the pressure of admitting you had a failure that day. And it also takes the wind out of having a great day. I mean, it makes you a little bit more normal all the time. That moment of therapeutic sharing is something that happens in food, that doesn't necessarily happen when you're watching TV.

I'm a big fan of featuring all of the local shellfish and seafood provided.

Passion is what adds so much value to life. And if you think about the things that you do, there's so much juice potential for them if you do it.

When you add just a little bit [of Tabasco] at the end, what you taste is the spectrum between the cooked chile flavor and the kind of nearly raw, just kind of fermented chile flavor at the end.

If I hear something's not quite going right, then I'm there quicker than if I hear something's going wrong.

Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.

The perfect recipe for a margarita is 2 ounces tequila, 2 ounces fresh lime juice, 1 ounce Cointreau, and a tiny splash of some kind of an agave or orange juice.