Cooking
Quotes - Give two cooks the same ingredients and the same recipe
“When
I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the
nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have
eaten it to know that it would make you throw up. ”
―
Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
“Would
it really be so bad if you slowed your life down even a teensy bit? If you took
charge of the ingredients of your food instead of letting corporations stuff
you and your family, like baby birds, full of sugar, corn products, chemicals,
and meat from really, really unhappy animals?”
―
Catherine Friend, Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save
Old Macdonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat
“If
I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much
difference, I needn’t have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty,
intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could
think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there
was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well
lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life – lots of
crowds and overmedication and bland food that might or might not have been a
relative. But deep in his or her bones, there was a capacity for feral joy. I
could taste it.”
―
Julie Powell, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously
“Give
two cooks the same ingredients and the same recipe; it is fascinating to
observe how, like handwriting, their results differ. After you cook a dish
repeatedly, you begin to understand it. Then you can reinvent it a bit and make
it yours. A written recipe can be useful, but sometimes the notes scribbled in
the margin are the key to a superlative rendition. Each new version may inspire
improvisation based on fresh understanding. It doesn't have to be as dramatic
as all that, but such exciting minor epiphanies keep cooking lively.”
―
David Tanis, Heart of the Artichoke: and Other Kitchen Journeys
“To
begin cooking duck at one in the morning is one of the finest acts of madness
that can be undertaken by a human being who is not mad.”
―
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, La soledad del manager
“Her
cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a
Scotchwoman."
[Sherlock
Holmes, on Mrs. Hudson's cooking.]”
―
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Naval Treaty - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
“Without
the Project I was nothing but a secretary on a road to nowhere, drifting toward
frosted hair and menthol addiction.”
―
Julie Powell, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
“You
have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except
a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You
will just have to go on working, and teaching, and getting around, and
spreading the gospel until it does. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child)”
―
Joan Reardon, As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto
“For
whatever reason, none of the women in this house cooked. He’d had to learn in
order to survive.”
―
Helen Hoang, The Kiss Quotient
“A
real dish has grown from all the chefs who have combined their talents over the
centuries to develop a meal with unique physical characteristics, for there’s
not a chef on earth who can claim sole title to a particular dish. It will have
typical Iberian or French features, but with traces of Indian, Celtic, Roman,
Jewish and even Moorish culture in its savour, although food can’t possibly
pass from one country to another without change”
―
Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe
“I
am more of an herb guy than a spice guy. It comes back to a certain
conservatism I have regarding food. The French are not big on spices; they use
more herbs. I know the spices used in European cooking and use them in
moderation. I am not going to serve a dish that is wildly nutmegged!"
David Waltuck, Chanterelle NYC”
―
Karen Page
“I’ve
sat in restaurants and viewed the food on the plate as I would a half-blooded
mongrel. I may feel sorry for it and given time even get to like it a little,
but it’s never going to really gain my affections. The plate in front of you
should tantalize, seduce and enchant you. It should be a cheeky devil, a minx,
a hussy even, but never a desperado”
―
Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe
“Wandering
across the vast room, I stopped at a set of shelves as high as the ceiling, and
holding about six hundred volumes - all classics on the history of Soalris,
starting with the nine volumes of Giese's monumental and already relatively
obsolescent monograph. Display for its own sake was improbable in these
surroundings. The collection was a respective tribute to the memory of the
pioneers. I took down the massive volumes of Giese and sat leafing through
them. Rheya had also located som reading matter. Looking over her shoulder, I
saw that she had picked one of the many books brought out by the first
expedition, the Interplanetary Cookery Book, which could have been the personal
property of Giese himself. She was pouring over the recipes adapted to the
arduous conditions of interstellar flight. I said nothing, and returned to the
book resting on my knees. Solaris - Ten Years of Exploration had appeared as
volumes 4-12 of the Solariana collection whose most recent additions were
numbered in the thousands.”
―
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
