On 'Chopped,' the time goes down a bit and there are several ingredients, usually one that makes no sense whatsoever with the rest of the ingredients. So it gets you out of your culinary comfort zone a little bit. Like we had octopus and cheese paired up with each other.

I was lucky enough to have great mentors both in the culinary world and in the world of chefs who became celebrities. Bobby Flay is one of my dearest friends and a tremendous mentor for me. Mario Batali is the same way. They began doing TV a little before me and they showed me the way.

If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything.

Whats more important than recipes is how we think about food, and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that.

Go to the grocery store and buy better things. Buy quality, buy organic, buy natural, go to the farmers market. Immediately that's going to increase the quality of the food you make.

People come up to me all the time and say, 'Oh, I love to watch Food Network,' and I ask them what they cook, and they say, 'I don't really cook.' They're afraid, they're intimidated, they know all about food from eating out and watching TV, but they don't know where to start in their own kitchen.

I think that any city created to be that over-the-top tends to be slightly inspiring, if not frightening. Vegas is all about people being amped up and winning or losing. With all that energy comes additional pressure.