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Recipes are important but only to a point. What's more important than recipes is how we think about food, and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that.

There are so many things that come into writing a recipe, and it's really important if you're writing for home cooks to be cooking like you are at home.

Once you know the fundamentals of cooking, then you don't need to follow a recipe - you just know what herbs go well or what meats, or what combination of what goes together, and then you can just branch out from there. But if there's something specific that I want to make, I work on the recipe and tweak it to my own.

For me, whether it's in a book or on T.V., a recipe has to be simple. I have a short attention span, so to open a cookbook and see a recipe that goes on for three to four pages, well, I've lost interest.

I quite enjoy cooking but I'm not consistent. I can't follow the recipe book. If something goes well, I'll never make it again, which is completely stupid. It's a one-shot kind of deal.

Even though I'm big on recipes, I love to make up my own dishes and when you take a risk in the kitchen, you learn a lot about food!

When I first started to cook, I would cook these elaborate meals, but I rarely cook at home now.

Mastering one recipe is better than mastering too many. Learn something and own it, and you'll feel so much better about it. You'll have more confidence if you've made it five times, and that confidence adds so much fun to cooking.

I'm not a trained chef, so I end up making stuff up. It either turns out brilliant or an absolute disaster. I just go for it.