quotations about cooking
Would it really be so bad if you slowed your life down even a teensy bit? If you took charge of the ingredients of your food instead of letting corporations stuff you and your family, like baby birds, full of sugar, corn products, chemicals, and meat from really, really unhappy animals?
CATHERINE FRIEND
Compassionate Carnivore
The very common error of young or unconfident cooks is to keep putting more of their own personal ideology into a plate until there’s so much noise that you really can’t even hear a tune. You can say more in an empty space than you can in a crowded one.
MARIO BATALI
Harvard Business Review, May 2010
Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.
HARRIET VAN HORNE
Vogue, Oct. 15, 1956
A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"Anacreon and Polycrates,", Imaginary Conversations
My mother was the worst cook ever; in school, when we traded lunches, I had to throw in an article of clothing.
RITA RUDNER
stand-up routine
Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention.
THOMAS KELLER
The French Laundry Cookbook
A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.
ELSA SCHIAPARELLI
Shocking Life
It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.
DEB CALETTI
The Queen of Everything
For the first two years I was married, I thought the only flavor was charcoal.
MILTON BERLE
Milton Berle's Private Joke File
Nobody thinks it’s silly to invest two hours’ work in two minutes’ enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, well, so is the ballet.
JULIA CHILD
NBC TV, Dec. 1, 1966
Recipes are just descriptions of one person's take on one moment in time. They're not rules. People think they are. They look as if they are. They say, "Do this, not this. Add this, not that." But, really, recipes are just suggestions that got written down.
MARIO BATALI
"Life Is Not a Recipe", The Best Advice I Ever Got
There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.
THOMAS WOLFE
The Web and the Rock
After you cook a dish repeatedly, you begin to understand it. Then you can reinvent it a bit and make it yours. A written recipe can be useful, but sometimes the notes scribbled in the margin are the key to a superlative rendition. Each new version may inspire improvisation based on fresh understanding.
DAVID TANIS
Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys
The difference between a chef and a cook is the difference between a wife and a prostitute. Cooks do meals for people they know and love. Chefs do it anonymously for anyone who's got the price.
A. A. GILL
Independent, Nov. 4, 1998
I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and say to myself "well, that's not going to happen."
RITA RUDNER
stand-up routine
Many folk like to know beforehand what is to be set on the table; but those who have laboured to prepare the feast like to keep their secret; for wonder makes the words of praise louder.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Return of the King
Say hey, good lookin' whatcha got cookin'?
How's about cookin' something up with me?
Hey, sweet baby don't you think maybe
We can find us a brand new recipe?
HANK WILLIAMS
"Hey, Good Lookin'"
I can tell in two minutes if I should hire someone in the kitchen. Two minutes. It's his desire. It's that open-eyed, attentive expression. If he doesn't have it ... I mean, I can teach a chimp how to cook dinner. But I cannot teach a chimp how to love it.
MARIO BATALI
Esquire, Jun. 2004
No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art. Or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here. Cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering.
ALTON BROWN
interview, Sep. 12, 2002
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.
JAMES BEARD
attributed, The Restaurants of New York