“Instead of going out, I’m trying to encourage people to have a memorable experience in their own home. We call it ‘Delicioso Night In.’ I invite the people I care about the most. Then, when I get a lot of people together, I like to have finger foods.”

My mother and my grandmother are pioneers of Mexican cuisine in this country, so I grew up in the kitchen. My mom, Zarela Martinez, was by far my biggest influence and inspiration – and toughest critic.

Latin food suffers like Chinese. You can do marginal Chinese and be successful. You can do crappy Mexican and be packed.

I wanted to get away from the Mexican vernacular and do more ‘nuevo Latino.’ Americans are starting to understand regionality in Mexican food. It is very regional in terms of ingredients.

I like to cook with the philosophy of using great ingredients and not altering them too much.

I was a little, uh, incorrigible as a kid, so the kitchen was a good place to give me structure and balance. It taught me hard work, but then I grew to love it.

Nobody likes sweaty coleslaw.

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.

I feel like a million tonight – but one at a time.

I don’t have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn’t very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge ’cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.

Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.

If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not; then marriages would be truly made in heaven.

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.

I was born because my mother needed a fourth for meals.

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.