The Chinese five-spice works really well in the quantity that I used. It makes it almost imperceptibly just a little bit sweeter without making it really sweet or really even that Asian flavored.

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 like anchovies, and I don't tell everybody about them. Almost every time, they don't even notice.

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.

Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.

You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else.

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.