Using lots of fresh foods, fruits and vegetables, helps to keep the menu buoyant - I don't know if that's the right word, but it keeps a balance of freshness and health.

I often write into recipes techniques that I learned in the restaurant kitchen. There are ways of organizing your prep and so on that are immensely useful. Those are woven into all the recipes I do.

A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.

Generally a chef's book is like a calling card or a portfolio to display their personal work.

To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment.

I'm a serious eater and a seriously hungry person, so I set out on that path to figure it out for myself, and of course it really resonated with other people.

Often for hors d'oeuvres, I serve room temperature vegetables, something like that, so that the main course might be quite rich but the first course has balanced it out.