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Recently I've been doing risottos. Some of them have been amazing. Some of them, not all of them.

I started cooking 30-something years ago. When I was 14, 15, I was a short-order cook in a snack bar. That was at a place called the Gran Centurions. It was an Italian-American swim club my parents belonged to.

My mom has a rare talent for being able to open up the refrigerator, and with the peas, the leftover eggs, the cream, the spinach, the cheese, and a little rice, she can just whip up incredible risotto.

I could cook from quite an early age - purely because I liked it.

When I was about nine years old, I announced to my mother that I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I went to the library and got this whole pile of books. I'd love to say it all turned out great. It didn't. But, sort of, from that point on, whenever there was serious cooking at home, I was the one who did it.

When I was five years old, my parents gave me a drum set for Christmas. My mom played the piano, and Dad played the saxophone badly. But that Christmas morning, I remember we all played together, and I thought it was the greatest day ever.

Since my parents both worked, they hired me when I was 11 to make dinner every night. I got a quarter a day. But I was always making things like duck a l'orange and baked Alaska. I was a little bit nutty.

My mother fed me with a spoon until I was 6 years old.

When I was 16 and arrived in France, I discovered chocolate mousse. I was crazy about the bread, too. Every morning, I'd go to the bakery and get a fresh croissant. It made me feel very sophisticated.

When I was younger, on weekends, my mom would make us pancakes with our initials on them and then a tiny cup of coffee. I remember at 10 sneaking my own coffee and pouring a ton of sugar in and going up to the playroom and drinking it.