“If we don’t watch out, the pleasure o be gained from the discriminating enjoyment of food will be lost. It may not be long before the art of fine cooking is viewed as the invention of a handful of snobs. . . .”

A whole aspect of living well, of civilization itself, is threatened with extinction.

It’s in the kitchen that confidences are exchanged, that family life takes place; it’s among the remains of a meal or when your’re elbow-deep in peelings that you ask yourself what life is all about, rather than when you’re sunk in an armchair in the sitting room.

I asked, “What are words?” The tenzo said, “One, two, three, four, five.” I asked again, “What is practice?” “Nothing in the entire universe is hidden.”

I do not stick to rules when cooking. I rely on my imagination.

Mind you, why they’d be cooking chips at this hour was anyone’s guess.

I am a guilty party here – to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.

There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend

Yes, of course. I was on her like, um… I believe that old woman last week we took after she’d burnt down her house cooking said ‘like white on rice.

Is cooking an art ? Is talking an art ? Is even painting an art ? It is artfulness that makes art, not the medium itself. Of course photography is an art – when it is in the hands of artists.”

My biggest challenge is cooking traditional French dishes, which usually require very specific techniques and methods. That’s just not my style… I cook from the soul.