Quotes from Ted Allen

However, I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire, and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

I cook everything. I love Mediterranean cooking, I love Asian cooking. I do lots of Japanese noodles.

To me, the kitchen is a place of adventure and entirely fun, not drudgery. I can't think of anything better to do with family and friends than to be together to create something.

I'm a home cook and love to read about food, but I'm not trained as a chef. I'm just really into cooking and passionate about it.

What I bring to the table is a huge enthusiasm and love for this stuff.

Cooking for people is an enormously significant expression of generosity and soulfulness, and entertaining is a way to be both generous and creative. You're sharing your life with people. Of course, it's also an expression of your own need for approval and applause. Nothing wrong with that.

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

Cooking allows you to have travels, adventures and journeys without going anywhere. The running joke between my partner and me is that I'm not really concerned about how long it takes, or how much I destroy the kitchen, because I just have such a good time doing it.

People want honest, flavourful food, not some show-off meal that takes days to prepare.

One of the smartest things you can do on 'Chopped' is to take one of those ingredients and make a pickle out of it, because almost every dish benefits from that. I'm feeling like those intuitions are becoming more natural.

I'm in a loft and the kitchen is in the very center of the apartment. The whole place revolves around it.

My place in Chicago is a 105 year old house, but I really like contemporary spaces too, so it's refreshing and fun to be in a space where you can do contemporary things.

When the idea of 'Chopped' surfaced, it was originally meant to be taped at some guy's mansion with him and his crazy Chihuahua. A stuffy fellow in a tuxedo was to host, and the losing chef's dish was then fed to the dog! I am not kidding, I saw it! I think it is genius! Twisted, but genius!

You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.

In recent years, I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television, to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.

To me, the kitchen is a place of adventure and entirely fun, not drudgery. I can't think of anything better to do with family and friends than to be together to create something.

I went in saying I wanted to be the food guy.

I think what I do differently from a lot of TV chefs is that I break down barriers and make fine food more accessible to the regular person, who might be intimidated. I try hard, particularly with wine, to make it not intimidating. It's sort of a teaching job.

I really have a great deal of humility in that department, and a great deal of respect for people who spend their lives learning how to make these amazing preparations.

My whole problem is that all of my favorite things at Thanksgiving are the starches, and everyone is trying to go low-carb this year, even a green vegetable has carbs in it.

I'm a home cook and love to read about food, but I'm not trained as a chef. I'm just really into cooking and passionate about it.

I've always hoped 'Chopped' would telegraph our enormous affection and love and admiration for chefs and food, but at the same time, we are inflicting extraordinary cruelty on them.

The funny thing about Thanksgiving, or any huge meal, is that you spend 12 hours shopping for it and then chopping and cooking and braising and blanching. Then it takes 20 minutes to eat it and everybody sort of sits around in a food coma, and then it takes four hours to clean it up.

Not to sound too much like Christopher Guest in 'Waiting for Guffman ' but on Thanksgiving you're putting on a show!