Quote

I wanted to write a food book, but I'm not a chef or an expert on culinary matters, to put it mildly.

A cookbook is not like being an author. It's writing down recipes; it's not writing.

Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.

Cooking is an art form, a creative thing.

There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.

We in the media have been guilty about not doing a better job of making people understand how really simple cooking is. We've made everyone feel like they have to be a chef.

It does seem to produce more creative results when there are limitations. It's like in wartime with rations - people became more inventive with cooking.

I think my cooking these days is a lot more relaxed from when I was working in professional kitchens. Spending time in people's kitchens made me realize that people want to eat healthy meals that are easy to prepare, with minimal ingredients that can be made on a budget.

'Outlaw Cook' was a revelation. Folks like Jeff Smith and Marcella Hazan got me interested in cooking, but John Thorne pushed me into the path that I follow to this day. This is the only cookbook I've ever read that understands how men really eat: over the sink, in the dark, greasy to the elbows.