Quotes from Chris Morocco

The brilliance of nduja is that while you can certainly eat a lot of it very quickly (and nobody would blame you) it is so packed with flavor that even a small amount can go a long way.

When done right, sheet pan dinners are a dream come true: Your whole dinner goes into the oven on one pan and comes out ready to eat. But it takes a little finesse and a few rules to get everything done right.

I sound, convincingly, twice my age whenever I visit New York City neighborhoods I frequented in my 20s and grumble about how much they have changed.

Pureed soups kinda suck. By definition, they have one flavor and one texture, a visual blank space where something much more interesting should be.

I was Bookings Production Manager at Vogue, a fancy way of saying that I helped produce photo shoots and booked hair, makeup, and modeling talent.

Volume can vary a ton when you're cooking, depending on how you measure. Do you carefully spoon the flour into a measuring cup, or do you scoop with the cup? Are you using chunky Morton kosher salt, or finer Diamond Crystal? There can be a 40 percent difference in volume depending on the brand.

I am not someone who ever feels bad about eating a big bowl of pasta for dinner.

Cooking at home has made my pantry work harder than ever, and I'm constantly turning to ingredients that I know will add maximum taste-bud payoff with minimal fuss.

I must admit - I don't really like peanut butter.

Have you ever walked into a store and wanted to leave your old life behind and become the person you would be if your life was full of the things in that store? I hadn't until I walked into At Land in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

My brain still recoils at memories of the tofu stir-fries in my college co-op. A student 'cook' made them in a wok the size of a prosperous Martian's flying saucer, and, man, were they bad - steamy, crumbled bits of tofu and limp greens sloshing around in a warm bath of liquid aminos. I couldn't eat tofu for decades.

When I was growing up, a warm, crusty baguette was within arm's reach during every dinner: sliced, if my mom was cooking, or left whole so we could tear it apart if my dad was at the stove.

Once you get your hands on some nduja, chances are you will find all kinds of ways to use it.

Surprisingly, fish works great for sheet pan dinners because it cooks quickly through direct pan contact.

Veggie burgers, by nature, take more work than meat-based ones, but they should never feel (or taste) like a compromise.

There are some things, like sushi, that I'll still choose white for, because its flavor is so unobtrusive. But I actually prefer the nutty intensity of brown rice in stir-fries, grain bowls, and as my go-to grainy side dish.

I would always rather do something in moderation than simply swing from one extreme to another.

I find it is imperative to switch my footwear at least once throughout the day to avoid fatigue, bouncing around the office in Superfeet-clad sneakers, then slipping into clogs whenever I am in the kitchen.

I love to cook, but, after spending a full day in the Bon Appetit test kitchen, the last thing I need to do is start chopping onions all over again when I get home. That means dinners can be a bit scrappy: reheated leftovers from my weekend prep, fridge-dump salads, or just taking whatever I can find and putting a scoop of cottage cheese on it.

When it comes to breakfast, baked goods are my weakness (besides coffee): toast, croissants, heck, even a scone on the weekend. There is one bakery item, though, that you will never see in my life, and that's a muffin.

Pretty much anything pureed needs a big flavor assist to be delicious; just think about how much butter, cream, and salt it takes to make mashed potatoes truly amazing.

Standalone bakeries that produce everything in-house are hard to find - let alone ones that produce results as consistently good as Almondine.

I'm not the kind of person who has tall stacks of beautiful ceramics in every corner of my cabinets.

The story of my life could be told in a series of waffle snapshots. I spent childhood weekends watching the lid of our Munsey waffle maker rise and fall as it chugged through a single square waffle at a time.