Quotes About Cooking

What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that it is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavours and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way.

As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system - and it is profoundly upsetting if another cook or, God forbid, a waiter - disturbs your precisely and carefully laid-out system.

how about hollandaise sauce? Not for me. Bacteria love hollandaise. And hollandaise, that delicate emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter, must be held at a temperature not too hot nor too cold, lest it break when spooned over your poached eggs. Unfortunately, this lukewarm holding temperature is also the favorite environment for bacteria to copulate and reproduce in. Nobody I know has ever made hollandaise to order.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter? I can.

Embora nominalmente pertençam à sala, com o tempo, os auxiliares acomodam-se aos hábitos e práticas da cozinha e começam a adquirir a mesma visão do mundo: aquela perspetiva xenófoba e ligeiramente paranóica em relação a tudo o que possa existir para lá das portas da cozinha, o mesmo sentido de humor macabro e a desconfiança em relação ao pessoal que não pertence à cozinha.

É o único cozinheiro que eu conheço que gosta de cozinhar para os empregados, insistindo em fazer-lhes pratos que sejam mesmo comestíveis.

Já tinha visto gangsters antes, é claro, mas nunca tinha trabalhado numa casa que era completamente mafiosa, onde acabei por conhecer pessoalmente verdadeiros wise guys, cujos nomes saíam nos jornais. (…) Também não posso dizer que fosse um arranjo desagradável; pelo menos desta vez sabia que os meus cozinheiros iam aparecer para trabalhar todos os dias, porque se não fossem voltavam para a prisão.

Uma frigideira de saltear como deve de ser, por exemplo, deve ser capaz de causar sérios estragos cerebrais se baterem com ela na cabeça de alguém. Se têm sérias dúvidas sobre qual é que se vai amachucar – a cabeça da vítima ou a sua frigideira – então atirem a frigideira para o lixo.

Não dá certo ter dois cozinheiros fortemente armados a esmurrar-se no meio da linha por causa de uma situação melindrosa, tendo à volta recipientes cheios de óleo a ferver e facas afiadas como navalhas.

A última coisa que o chefe quer num cozinheiro de linha é um inovador, alguém com ideias próprias que irá estragar as suas receitas ou as suas apresentações. Os chefes exigem cegueira, lealdade próxima do fanatismo, costas fortes e uma consistência de autómato para executar as tarefas dentro de uma situação de combate.

chicken is boring. Chefs see it as a menu item for people who don't know what they want to eat.

The tagine's dome top is supposed to force the condensation back into the dish and keep it moist and tender.

Maybe we missed an important moment in history there. When we finally closed down home ec, maybe we missed an opportunity. Instead of shutting down compulsory cooking classes for young women, maybe we would have been far better off simply demanding that the men learn how to cook, too.

Nothing too serious. Just enough facility with a knife to be on a par with any Sicilian grandmother.

I was now a graduate of the best cooking school in the country – a valuable commodity on the open market – I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.

That dried sawdust they sell in the cute little cans at the supermarket? You can throw that, along with the spice rack, right in the garbage.

F. Dick makes a good one for about twenty-five bucks. It's stainless steel, but since it's serrated it doesn't really matter; after a couple of years of use, if the teeth start to wear down, you just buy yourself another one.

With a spoonful of nostalgia and even more sauce

Mexican food is about taking the time to do it right, about hours of slow simmering.

Right now, a defiant, young, creative generation of Mexican chefs like Eduardo are performing some of the most exciting new cooking anywhere on earth—a mixing of the very old and traditional, with the very new

If you are easily offended by direct aspersions on your lineage, the circumstances of your birth, your sexuality, your appearance, the mention of your parents possibly commingling with livestock, then the world of professional cooking is not for you.

And when you buy a non-stick, treat it nice. Never wash it. Simply wipe it clean after each use, and don't use metal in it, use a wooden spoon or ceramic or non-metallic spatula to flip or toss whatever you're cooking in it. You don't want to scratch the surface.

I believe that the human animal evolved as it did—with eyes in the front of its head, long legs, fingernails, eyeteeth—so that it could better chase down slower, stupider creatures, kill them, and eat them; that we are designed to find and eat meat—and only became better as a species when we learned to cook it.

Call me crazy, call me idealistic, but you know what I believe? I believe that when you're making hamburger for human consumption, you should at no time deem it necessary or desirable to treat its ingredients in ammonia. Or any cleaning product, for that matter. I don't think that's asking a lot—and I don't ask a lot for my fellow burger-eaters.