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I've always been able to cook Italian food. That's in my blood because I'm half Sicilian.

I'm married to an Italian woman, and I used to love cooking Italian at home, because it's one-pot cooking. But my wife does not approve of my Italian cooking.

I'm very Italian, so I love cooking for friends. Whether it's Valentine's Day and my boyfriend and girlfriends' boyfriends are away, or someone's in town, or someone had a baby, I cook.

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on.

The cooking standards for Italian food are less demanding than for French. All you need are some fried mozzarella and five pastas, and you're in business.

In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.

My mother and sisters cooked Italian food, and I never heard of half of the dishes you see in these Italian restaurants. I just go in and order spaghetti.

Well, I'm Italian, but my family isn't stereotypical. I mean, I only have one sister and we don't yell or throw pasta at each other. My mother doesn't even have a secret spaghetti sauce recipe.

What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.