Quote

To eat the boiled head of a pig sliced like salami is very strange. It may seem cutting edge, but it's actually a lot older than any of the other traditional salami.

For many years now, my source for salvific chicken soup has been the Sanamluang Cafe on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Kingsley Drive: crystalline broth, flecks of fried garlic, and a moist, steamed bird nesting on thick rice noodles and bean sprouts has stanched many a misery.

My favorite dish is bibimbap, which is composed of various vegetables, steamed and pickled, and meat toppings over a bed of rice.

I have an obsession with hot sauce. I love Cholula. I put Cholula on everything.

I'm a big fan of Caribbean food, Spanish food, Dominican food - like rice and beans. Hot sauce just adds a different layer of boom to the food, you feel me?

I make a wicked clam chowdah, and linguine with clam sauce. Oysters I like to eat raw, and mussels in either a white wine sauce or in beer with paprika.

Littlenecks and cherrystones are chewy and sweet on the half shell with mignonette, served raw. But a well-cooked clam is a toothsome, tender thing, full of that magical stuff known as clam liquor.

I like regular meals and restaurants that will adapt things to your taste. Not a place where they roll their eyes if you want the sauce on the side.

Shimeji are those odd-looking clusters of small mushrooms you often find in so-called 'exotic' selections at the supermarket. They have an appealing firmness that is retained during light cooking.