“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.

The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn’t set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.

I don’t really cook meat. I eat a bit of seafood but I’m not really into meat and the idea of cooking it is pretty intense.

The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one’s home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.

I love home cooking, and I’m not a great one for fast food.

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.