Quotes About Cooking

My most memorable meal was with my parents at Joel Robuchon's Restaurant Jamin in Paris. It was Christmas 1982, and the flavors - from cauliflower and caviar to crab and tomato - astounded me. It was the first time I remember thinking that I would like to really learn how to cook.

Like regular table salt, MSG can also help boost our perception of other existing flavors. Tomato soup with a pinch of MSG tastes a little more tomato-y. Add a dash to beef stew to make it taste beefier.

I cook a lot of Italian food. Bucatini Pomodoro is my best: it's a fat spaghetti with tomato, olive oil, and reminds me of getting married in Italy.

I make a great lasagna. I also like making piccadillo. It's a Cuban dish with ground beef, tomato sauce, garlic and olives served over rice, with plantains. My ex-husband and all my boyfriends love it.

For rave-worthy soups, skip the store-bought stock. You can extract a cleaner, stronger broth from a combination of water and several pantry ingredients. It's all about layering powerful flavor-enhancers that you probably already have on hand - bacon, tomato paste, herbs, peppercorns, a Parm rind, and, of course, kosher salt.

To grow a tomato or a pepper and prepare a meal from your labor and care is primordially satisfying.

I prepare my style of biriyani by sauting sliced onion, tomato, green chilli, ginger garlic and add required water and rice. If I end up adding a tad too much of salt, I used to add curd to balance it.

Once you know how to make koshari, youll never think twice about whether to save those last few scoops of rice or the half-cup tomato passata.

People should always have a good bottle of extra virgin olive oil, a packet of pasta, tinned tomatoes and a good cheese somewhere in their fridge.

I take 12-bean soup mixes, soak the beans overnight, boil them up, add tomatoes and flavoring, and freeze it. I'll have a cup a day. It's very nutritious.

Never use an aluminum pot, pan, or utensil when cooking tomatoes - or any other soft metal items for that matter. The acidity in the tomato doesn't do well with them; they create a chemical reaction that can turn cooked tomatoes bitter and fade the color, and the food will absorb some of the aluminum!

The taste of any simple tomato-based salad is dependent on the quality of the tomatoes.

In Spain, we mainly use red plum tomatoes, but it is always fun to experiment. Try using a mix of colors or substitute green tomatoes for plum next time you make a tomato dish.

I love roast chicken, juicy summer tomatoes, and carrot cake slathered with tangy cream-cheese frosting.

My favorite way to cook is to look in my cabinets and see what I have. That's the most fun. 'I don't have tomatoes, but I have this chili-garlic sauce from the Asian grocery store. Let's throw that in there and see how it affects my beef barley soup!'

There's a point of no return when you're cooking tomatoes. A little too much heat, a little too long in the pot, and you lose that sense of fresh ripeness that makes tomatoes so great.

It's important to salt the tomatoes before draining them because that helps pull out the water. Fresh herbs, some garlic and pepper will also enhance the flavor.

Be aware of what you cook tomatoes with. The high acid content of the tomato slows down the cooking process of some other foods. Dried beans cooked with tomatoes added to the pot can take up to 20 percent more cooking time than beans without tomatoes added.

My goal and my mission is to cook the home-style food that I grew up with - simple, straightforward, inexpensive and homemade tortillas. Nothing fancy and no cream based sauces - just tomatoes & chiles and nothing pre-processed.

I love tomatoes, and they're so good for you.

I'm particularly fond of boned chicken breasts with a little garlic under the flesh and cooked in a casserole for 40 minutes with a jar of olives, some cherry tomatoes and a spoonful of olive oil.

If you cook chopped tomatoes with all of their juices, it takes a long time for the sauce to reach the right consistency. By then, the freshness is gone.

One meal option is a piece of poached chicken the size of your fist with a green salad sprinkled with lemon juice, carrots, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and celery. Another is a cup and a half of quinoa with minced veggies, all cooked at once so the quinoa absorbs the nutrients.

You can pretty much make anything with a base of tinned tomatoes. If I don't have tinned tomatoes in my cupboard, I start to panic - it's a genuine thing.