Once you understand the foundations of cooking - whatever kind you like, whether it's French or Italian or Japanese - you really don't need a cookbook anymore.

I don't think you could have a 7 with a manual. But I can't see having a BMW sports sedan without a manual.

When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.

I wonder if I love the communal act of eating so much because throughout my childhood, with four older brothers and a mom who worked in the restaurant business, I spent a lot of time fending for myself, eating alone - and recognizing how eating together made all the difference.

Good food is a good trend.

This is the great challenge: to maintain passion for the everyday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane.

Repetition is the mother of perfection. If there is true perfection, it's about doing something over and over again. I truly think that if somebody does a recipe they've never done before and gets it right, they're probably more lucky than they are talented.