Chefs And Love Quotes

All worries are less with wine.

You must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work … You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success.

Hunger gives flavour to the food.

Some people when they see cheese, chocolate or cake they don't think of calories.

Forgiveness is a funny thing. We act like it has to be earned, as if there are a certain number of hoops someone can jump through to make us forget that they hurt us. But forgiveness can't be earned! It can only be given freely, as a gift!

Good morning, good morning, good morning," Loki chirped, wheeling in a table covered with silver domes. "What are you doing?" I asked, squinting at him. He'd pulled up the shades. I was tired a hell, and I was not happy. "I thought you two lovebirds would like breakfast," Loki said. "So I had the chef whip you up something fantastic." As he set up the table in the sitting area, he looked over at us. "Although you two are sleeping awfully far apart for newly weds." "Oh my god." I groaned and pulled the covers over my head. "You know, I think you're being a dick," Tove told him as he got out of bed. "But I'm starving. So I'm willing to overlook it. This time." "A dick?" Loki pretended to be offended. "I'm merely worried about your health. If your bodies aren't used to strenous activities, like a long night of love making, you could waste away if you don't get plenty of protein and rehydrate. I'm concerned for you." "Yes we both believe that's why you're here," Tove said sarcastically and took a glass of orange juice that Loki had just poured for him. "What about you princess?" Loki's gaze cut to me as he filled another glass. "I'm not hungry."I sighed and sat up. "Oh really?" Loki arched an eyebrow. "Does that mean that last night-" "It means last night is none of your business," I snapped.

It does not make you less of a woman to need a man. To need one to exist, yes, this is nonsense. To need one to give one scope and importance, this is dishonest. But to need a man, one man, to bring joy and passion? This is life

Nobody believes in racial profiling until they get a red-haired sushi chef with a southern accent.

She's lovely and she's with Skinner, and they're probably in love and there's no justice in this world

I'm shocked and appalled that you would dare to suggest I might not be completely original and unique in every way. I'll have you know that I'm a very special snowflake, Ms. Cavanaugh. There's no one like me anywhere in the world. I know, because I checked.

IMBECILE!" the chef shouted. "Next time why don't you just put your whole HAND in the food, hey? Yes, your whole hand, or maybe your FACE! I arrange the food on plates with care, are you understanding what I am telling you? It is part of the art form of cooking, yes? A lovely plate of food is a thing of beauty! And then you, NUMBSKULL, come along and put your fat greasy FINGERS all over my plate, and SHAKE the plate, and move my food all around the plate until it looks like pigs' vomit!" "Chef Vlad!" I cried out in delight.

Well, thank you kindly, pretty lady," Max said, twisting his mouth into a grin... He blinked. "Wow, that came out creepier than I was expecting. Sorry about that.

But I love women chefs: they are intelligent, they are fast learners, and they can be tough. As for the effect the have on the boys, its entirely positive. Put a woman in a kitchen and discipline will improve, if anything: the guys have being told off in front of the girls. It's a playground thing - they just find it embarrassing.

When I see individuals so passionate for their chosen field, I feel a very strong sense of belonging. Passion unites us – not just every writer and every chef but every musician, every artist, every man, woman and child who throws themselves into an activity not for money or fame or because it makes any sense at all but because they love it and they must.

Robert, what are you doing? I'm cooking.’ ‘I like to thank the chef for the excellent food.’ ‘But surely that is done at the end of the meal.’ ‘What a good idea, I'll thank you later … as it should be done.

You Americans. You suppress the body of its desires, and treat the heart as if it is a wild animal to be tamed, so that when those things are awakened in you , they have the strength of ravenous lions, too long imprisoned.

You're unbelievable." "Thank you." "That wasn't a compliment!" "I know you didn't mean it as one, Juliet, but when you think about it, what could be more glorious than to be too much, too out of the ordinary, to be believed?

Danny shook his head, amusement relaxing the tense line of his mouth. 'Is that all you think about?' 'No! Sometimes I think about food. And beer. The color cyan. I'm a complex and multilayered flower, Danny.

But our goal, remember, is to feed around our table the people we love. We’re not chefs or restaurateurs or culinary school graduates, and we shouldn’t try to be. Make it the way the people you love want to eat it.

You want to be queen of the mountain, you take that crown and wear it with pride. It's gonna look great on you. Me? I'm more of a baseball cap kind of guy.

When aspiring chefs ask me for career advice, I offer a few tips: Cook every single day. Taste everything thoughtfully. Go to the farmers’ market and familiarize yourself with each season’s produce. Read everything Paula Wolfert, James Beard, Marcella Hazan, and Jane Grigson have written about food. Write a letter to your favorite restaurant professing your love and beg for an apprenticeship. Skip culinary school; spend a fraction of the cost of tuition traveling the world instead.

Seafood Newburg is a dish with a history. Well, of course MOST dishes have some kind of “history,” but this particular dish is sort of a history celebrity. It all began around 1876 when an “epicurean” named Ben Wenberg (or Wenburg) demonstrated the dish at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City. After some “tweaking” by the Delmonico chef, Charles Ranhofer, the dish was added to the menu under the name “Lobster Wenburg.” It proved to be very popular. But sometime later, Wenburg got involved in a dispute with the Delmonico’s management and the dish was subsequently removed from the menu. But customers still requested it. So, the name was changed to “Lobster Newburg” and reappeared to the delight of restaurant customers. So, that’s the story. Probably. One can never be sure about these origin myths.

I mean, it's just sex. It's simple biology, right? You build up tension and stress-- you need to open a valve somewhere and let it out, or you'll explode. Nothing deep and emotional about it, just a bodily function. Like sneezing.' 'Sure,' Kane said, nodding sagely. 'Coed naked sneezing. The next wave in porn.

I mean, imagine for a second Olivero Barretto, some nice Italian kid from down the block in Cranston, Rhode Island. He comes to see Mr. Cavilleri, a wage-earning pastry chef of that city, and says, "I would like to marry your only daughter, Jennifer." What would the old man's first question be? (He would not question Barretto's love, since to know Jenny is to love Jenny; it's a universal truth). No, Mr. Cavilleri would say something like, "Barretto, how are you going to support her?

Chefs are magicians in white, accomplished at slight of hand.

History is a cookbook. The tyrants are chefs. The philosophers write menus. The priests are waiters. The military men are bouncers. The singing you hear is the poets washing dishes in the kitchen.

This is a love story,” Michael Dean says, ”but really what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery or the chase, or the nosey female reporter who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely, the serial murder loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets, or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice-trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk. Just as the housewives live for catching glimpses of their own botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors and the rocked out dude on ‘roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on hookbook. Because this is reality, they are all in love, madly, truly, with the body-mic clipped to their back-buckle and the producer casually suggesting, “Just one more angle.”, “One more jello shot.”. And the robot loves his master. Alien loves his saucer. Superman loves Lois. Lex and Lana. Luke loves Leia, til he finds out she’s his sister. And the exorcist loves the demon, even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace. As Leo loves Kate, and they both love the sinking ship. And the shark, god the shark, loves to eat. Which is what the Mafioso loves too, eating and money and Pauly and Omertà. The way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar and sometimes loves the other cowboy. As the vampire loves night and neck. And the zombie, don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool, has anyone ever been more love-sick than a zombie, that pale dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms. His very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains. This, too is a love story.

If you can't reuse or repair an item, do you ever really own it? Do you ever really own it? Do you ever develop the sense of pride and proprietorship that comes from maintaining an object in fine working order? We invest something of ourselves in our material world, which in turn reflects who we are. In the era of disposability that plastic has helped us foster, we have increasingly invested ourselves in objects that have no real meaning in our lives. We think of disposable lighters as conveniences -- which they indisputably are; ask any smoker or backyard-barbecue chef -- and yet we don't think much about the tradeoffs that that convenience entails.

Winslow bounced over on the balls of his feet, clearly not experiencing any sort of crash. 'Aren't your guys nervous? I'm nervous as all hell.' 'There's nothing to be nervous about,' Beck said, joining them. 'Nerves are only useful when they can spur you on to work harder, faster, better. Once the work is done, they become pointless.

On traditional economic theory: We do not play chess as if we were a grandmaster, invest as if we were Warren Buffett, or cook like an Iron Chef. It is more likely we cook like Warren Buffett, who loves to eat at Dairy Queen.

Rosemary died when I was six, and when my parents told me, I cried. I wasn’t sure if I had a right to, but I think now of something the British chef Nigel Slater once wrote, that it is “impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you.” I think the same can be said of the person who scoops your ice cream into a dish and stands, smiling, as you eat.

whatever," Winslow snorted. "The first team that got judged, from the Italian place on East Thrity-Sixth? They came back in here looking like whipped dogs. Come on, I Know i'm not the only one here about to wet myself." There was a short pause while they all looked at Win, and the way he was sort of dancing in place. "Dude," Danny finally said, "Maybe you just need to pee.

Americans love cooking shows. Come to think of it, how many of us are eating when we watch a cooking show? As we watch the chef perform his or her magic, the humble ham sandwich we're gnawing on briefly transubstantiates into whatever the chef's preparing. There's always a small communion between viewer and chef, only you don't get to eat what they're making. It's like watching a Catholic mass on TV.

Let’s start over shall we? Hello gorgeous. I’m Justin McKinley. I’m head baker at Le Chef Petite. I’d love to get to know you better. Can I seduce you with my vast knowledge of sweet and sensual desserts?” Alicia couldn’t help it. She giggled. One of those girly, I’ve-been-flirting bubbly

Oh, that’s lovely wrist action you’ve got there. Fancy coming into the larder with me and earning yourself five woodbines?

I love Italy. For hundreds of years, if not centuries, the people of italy (Italians) have been living here." [Audrey's insight]

Just like trying to ice skate on two sticks of butter in the desert, my love for her melted and was no good to anyone but a chef.

I am the chef of love. Let me utilize your oven.

Just like trying to ice skate on two sticks of butter in the desert, my love for her melted and was no good to anyone but a chef.


But they also confuse two distinct occupations: cooks and chefs. Cooks do it at home for love. Chefs do it in public for money. Dinner parties are karaoke cheffery. There

you've got to jiggle the knob hard then bump with your hip." A low cackle of laughter sounded from the other side of the door. "That's what he said. What? Hold on a sec. I got this.

The trouble is, we have up-close access to women who excel in each individual sphere. With social media and its carefully selected messaging, we see career women killing it, craft moms slaying it, chef moms nailing it, Christian leaders working it. We register their beautiful yards, homemade green chile enchiladas, themed birthday parties, eight-week Bible study series, chore charts, ab routines, “10 Tips for a Happy Marriage,” career best practices, volunteer work, and Family Fun Night ideas. We make note of their achievements, cataloging their successes and observing their talents. Then we combine the best of everything we see, every woman we admire in every genre, and conclude: I should be all of that. It is certifiably insane.

Giving a nod to his old pal, Fate, he felt a slow smile crease his cheeks,"So," he said. "We really are alone." "Yeah," she said, then her eyes widened comically."Hey, no-stay over there. What are you doing? Personal space!

So..." he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back onto his heels. "You come here often?" Picking up on his mood with the lightning quickness that had won them a space in the finals, Jules flirted right back."Pretty often. But you must be new. I'm sure I'd remember if I'd seen you here before, hot stuff." That made him grin and saunter closer, close enough to reach out and smooth a lock of dark gold hair behind her ear. "What do you say we low this joint?...

If only my love was a net that could keep the flies out. If only my love was a net full of food for all the hungry bellies. I understand why so many people have given up on Africa - no one wants to say we are leaving a continent of people behind to tough it out in a hundreds-of-years-old war of survival, but we are, and the reason is because the level of change it would take to make a difference, to heal past wounds and chart a new path is mammoth, gargantuan, almost unimaginable.

Max rocked back on his heels, shoving his hands into his pockets, and said, 'So. Juliet Cavanaugh. I assume my parents have been talking your ear off for the last however many months, telling you how awesome I am, and filling your head full of stories of my impressive talents in the kitchen.' 'Um. Not so much,' Jules said, shooting a glance at Danny, who shook his head and went back to his prep work. 'No? I should take this opportunity to set the record straight, then.' Max heaved a deep sigh. 'It's all true.' 'What?' 'Everything they should've told you about me,' Max explained. 'And I don't know why they didn't, because it's all true. No exaggeration or family bias plays into it at all--I am the best chef in the entire world.

Hey, no worries. I don't need to be on top." Pausing he quirked one brow outrageously before continuing smoothly. "I like to be on the bottom every now and again." Jules wondered if there were some sort of daily sexual innuendo quota he had to meet.

As Amani frantically diced the ingredients for her Pan seared Mahi-Mahi with Mango Salsa, she recalled her first meeting with him during a class he taught on the presentation of food and organization the previous year. Amani had been immediately drawn to the tall, serious Californian, and not just because of his looks. With dark wavy hair, strong features and the deepest blue eyes she had ever seen short of Paul Newman’s, David Spencer was everything Amani admired in a man, and then some. http://omadisonpress.com/romance/all-...

He'd been living a lie since he arrived. He'd pretended to be a local, yet had loathed everything about Milwaukee. Now Al knew differently. He didn't want to be anything else but himself: a cheese curd-loving, festival-going, Brew Crew fan who adored the most incredible chef in the city.

I flip on my blinker. “I like reading reviews. I feel like business reviews are a reflection of the owner, and I want to know what people think of my restaurants. The constructive criticism helps. I haven’t had the kitchen experience a lot of chefs have, and critics are some of the best teachers.” “What do you get out of reading reviews about other people’s businesses?” “Nothing, really. I just find it entertaining.” “Do I have any bad ones?” Lily looks away from me, half turning so that she’s facing forward again. “Never mind, don’t answer that. I’m just going to pretend they’re all good and that everyone loves my flowers.

The difference between Hindu cuisine and Muslim cuisine is very easy to explain. In Kashmir the Hindus avoid sexy onions and garlic; they love the taste of heeng (asafetida) and the non-incestuous fennel and ginger. Muslims find heeng (and its sulfurous odor) unbearable. They adore garlic, green praans, garam masala, and on certain occasions, mawal flowers.

The first change is a realization that I am no longer alone. Even when I'm lying in the dark by myself, I now sense other beings hovering near me. It isn't just me living in this house, but unfinished love and my dejection and anger and dead Paulie, and their miraculous presence feels as real as my fingernails digging into my hand. The second change is that I'm not more obsessed with cooking, like the Roman gourmets and their cherished chefs, who wanted to put all things wonderful or special or new or majestic or strange or scary-looking on the table. The cooks back then knew only how to bake or boil, but I understand how a few drops of pomegranate juice can transform a dish. The third change is that with these first two revelations, my sense of taste has become ever more sensitive and sharp, my imagination richer. When I got my ears pierced and walked into the street in the middle of winter, I become one large ear. All sensation and pain were concentrated in my ears. It's that same feeling. Everything about me disappears and I'm only a pink tongue. This is the time to grow into a truly good chef.

Are you talking about me?" Danny looked up from the pastry board, suspicion written clearly across his face. "Just bemoaning your tragic heterosexuality," Win sighed, swinging his knives down on the prep station. "Oh," Danny said, blinking. "Well. Sorry about that, but there's not much I can do about it." Win waved that away. "No big. I'm not that into workplace romance, myself.

Stella. I cannot wait to see her and hold her in my arms once more. I long for my stellina. I worry that the distance between us will someday create cracks in our love that cannot be mended. Our time together sometimes seems thin, like a spice or other flavor is missing. I need to think of something I can do more to seal our love together, to rekindle our fire so we will always long for each other.

Yesterday I just felt like eating my ass off so I did. I ate two Chef Boyardee pizzas, a Fifth Avenue candy bar, an entire package of fun size Snickers (that was fun!), several cherry sours (not the entire package, there are still a few left), an apple (apples don’t taste as good as they used to), several Slim Jims, a slice of burnt garlic toast, white cheddar popcorn and microwave popcorn. Today I will drink black coffee, eat a bowl of oatmeal (old school, boiled on the stove but no butter but lots of cinnamon and brown sugar) and dance to various YouTubes. I need to buy a pair of gloves, get my ass to the boxing gym and learn to love protein shakes. Also, I want to run a marathon. Then I want to get a backpack, stuff it with trail mix and the like and take to the road like the chick in that Wild book.

I followed the chef to the circular herb garden with relief. Here were familiar plants with gentle smells: thyme, dill, mint, basil, and others equally benign. He asked me to identify the ones I knew and gave me a brief dissertation on their uses: Dill was good with fish, thyme complemented veal, mint went well with fruit, and basil was perfect for the dreaded love apples. He plucked two large mint leaves with purplish undersides, placed one on his tongue, and gave me the other. We came to rest on a curved stone bench in the middle of the garden, and we sat there sucking on fresh mint, him enjoying the breeze, and me awaiting the judgement that must be coming. He continued his lecture on herbs. He talked about the subtlety of bay laurel, the many varieties of thyme, and the use of edible flowers as garnishes.

Father never used a knife to cut mangoes, he would suck them. He would eat several at a sitting, one by one, all varieties, sandhoori, dusshairi, langra, choussa, alphonso. He loved good food. Good chutney. He was right-handed but held a chapatti in his left; he scooped up the chutney with a torn bit of chapatti. If curried lamb was served, he liked gravy more than the pieces. He ate kebabs without a piyaz.

I wish I could say he was a French professor, a French chef, or even a bilingual tutor, but I can’t. He worked in a factory and spent his summer evenings at a reenactment village as a blacksmith or something equally masculine. But it didn’t really matter. He was the kind of man I had dreamt of, one who could bring a touch of the exotic to my small-town existence. (No doubt he would make love as passionately as he spoke French.)

I have never thought you weren't good enough for me. The fear I always had, deep down in my heart, is that I'm not good enough for you." Murmurs of astonishment rippled through the room but he didn't seem to notice. "You see, I was never the one who could make you laugh." He glanced at Lawrence, then back at her. "I was never the one who made coronets of rosebuds for your hair and told you that you were pretty." He swallowed hard, and his chin lifted a notch, telling her as clearly as any word how difficult it was for him to reveal himself this way. "I always wanted to say those things, do those things, but I couldn't, for a gentleman is not supposed to behave that way. A gentleman is not supposed to fall in love with the chef's daughter. But right now, today, I don't give a damn what gentlemen do. I'm just a man, and the only thing I care about is you.

I decided to serve him even more luxurious versions of the foods he had loved when we were young. The centerpiece of the meal would be braised beef shank, flavored with fennel pollen, cinnamon, ginger, and a hint of rose vinegar. I stewed it with plums and cherries and doused it with a little malmsey for good measure. Then I made a casserole of eggplant and cheese, ray fish in pastry wraps, capon meatballs, and a blackberry tourte.

It's a difficult path that we tread, us Indie self-publishers, but we're not alone. How many bands practicing in their dad’s garage have heard of a group from the neighbourhood who got signed by a recording company? Or how many artists who love to paint, but are not really getting anywhere with it hear of someone they went to art school with being offered an exhibition in a gallery? How many chefs who love to get creative around food hear of someone else who’s just landed a job with Marco Pierre White? There’s no difference between us and them. There is, however, a huge difference in how everyone else perceives the writer. And there’s a huge difference between all of us – the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen - and the rest of society in that no one understands us. It’s a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we’re wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating. It’s acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it’s a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever.

Everyone's here except for St. Clair." Meredith cranes her neck around the cafeteria. "He's usually running late." "Always," Josh corrects. "Always running late." I clear my throat. "I think I met him last night. In the hallway." "Good hair and an English accent?" Meredith asks. "Um.Yeah.I guess." I try to keep my voice casual. Josh smirks. "Everyone's in luuurve with St. Clair." "Oh,shut up," Meredith says. "I'm not." Rashmi looks at me for the first time, calculating whether or not I might fall in love with her own boyfriend. He lets go of her hand and gives an exaggerated sigh. "Well,I am. I'm asking him to prom. This is our year, I just know it." "This school has a prom?" I ask. "God no," Rashmi says. "Yeah,Josh. You and St. Clair would look really cute in matching tuxes." "Tails." The English accent makes Meredith and me jump in our seats. Hallway boy. Beautiful boy. His hair is damp from the rain. "I insist the tuxes have tails, or I'm giving your corsage to Steve Carver instead." "St. Clair!" Josh springs from his seat, and they give each other the classic two-thumps-on-the-back guy hug. "No kiss? I'm crushed,mate." "Thought it might miff the ol' ball and chain. She doesn't know about us yet." "Whatever," Rashi says,but she's smiling now. It's a good look for her. She should utilize the corners of her mouth more often. Beautiful Hallway Boy (Am I supposed to call him Etienne or St. Clair?) drops his bag and slides into the remaining seat between Rashmi and me. "Anna." He's surprised to see me,and I'm startled,too. He remembers me. "Nice umbrella.Could've used that this morning." He shakes a hand through his hair, and a drop lands on my bare arm. Words fail me. Unfortunately, my stomach speaks for itself. His eyes pop at the rumble,and I'm alarmed by how big and brown they are. As if he needed any further weapons against the female race. Josh must be right. Every girl in school must be in love with him. "Sounds terrible.You ought to feed that thing. Unless..." He pretends to examine me, then comes in close with a whisper. "Unless you're one of those girls who never eats. Can't tolerate that, I'm afraid. Have to give you a lifetime table ban." I'm determined to speak rationally in his presence. "I'm not sure how to order." "Easy," Josh says. "Stand in line. Tell them what you want.Accept delicious goodies. And then give them your meal card and two pints of blood." "I heard they raised it to three pints this year," Rashmi says. "Bone marrow," Beautiful Hallway Boy says. "Or your left earlobe." "I meant the menu,thank you very much." I gesture to the chalkboard above one of the chefs. An exquisite cursive hand has written out the morning's menu in pink and yellow and white.In French. "Not exactly my first language." "You don't speak French?" Meredith asks. "I've taken Spanish for three years. It's not like I ever thought I'd be moving to Paris." "It's okay," Meredith says quickly. "A lot of people here don't speak French." "But most of them do," Josh adds. "But most of them not very well." Rashmi looks pointedly at him. "You'll learn the lanaguage of food first. The language of love." Josh rubs his belly like a shiny Buddha. "Oeuf. Egg. Pomme. Apple. Lapin. Rabbit." "Not funny." Rashmi punches him in the arm. "No wonder Isis bites you. Jerk." I glance at the chalkboard again. It's still in French. "And, um, until then?" "Right." Beautiful Hallway Boy pushes back his chair. "Come along, then. I haven't eaten either." I can't help but notice several girls gaping at him as we wind our way through the crowd.

VISIONS OF GRANDEUR I'm walking through a sheet of glass instead of the door, Flying over a giant candlestick lighting up Central Park, Repeating two courses at Hard Knock's College, And swimming through the Red Sea with silky jelly fish. I'm hopping over an empty row house in Philadelphia, Getting a seventy dollar manicure on a gondola in Venice, Wearing a white pearl necklace stolen from Goodwill, And running my first New York City marathon. I'm discussing the meaning of life with my late cat Charlie. Dating John Doe- the thirty-third chef at the White House, Running non-stop on a broken leg through a bomb-blasted city, And keeping a multi-lingual monkey named Alfredo as my pet. I'm spying on two hundred and twenty-two homegrown terrorists from Iowa, Worshiped by a red-headed gorilla named Salamander, Sleeping with a giant teddy bear dressed in black leather, And wearing hot pink lipstick over a shade of midnight blue.

Today I saw the most beautiful girl in the world... She is the most beautiful girl in the world, Bartolomeo Scappi thought. Never have I seen a woman so perfect, so angelic, so impossible for me to attain. "Bella," he breathed when air filled his lungs once again. Even Ippolito d'Este's presence at the dining table could not mar his giddiness. The girl was so beautiful she glowed like a painting of the Madonna, making everyone around her seem colorless in comparison. She was clearly a principessa of a grand house, sitting between Ippolito's father, the Duke of Ferrara, on one side, and a woman most likely to be her mother on the right. Bartolomeo sought to memorize every feature of this goddess with golden hair that shone with glints of red in the last rays of the day's sunlight. Her eyes were dark chestnut, rich and deep, while her lips were pink, like the inside of a seashell. Her hair was braided, but much of it flowed loose over shoulders, teasing her pale skin. She wore a dress of red, with sleeves billowing white. Rubies and pearls spilled across her delicate collarbone toward her beautiful breasts. Scappi painted her picture in his mind and stored it deep within the frame of his heart. That evening, while staring at the sky, his thoughts lost in the memory of the signorina, a shooting star passed across his vision. "Stella," he said under his breath. I will call her Stella. My shining star.

In Oishinbo: Ramen and Gyōza, Yamaoka and the gang are on an assignment to help a lonely gyōza chef find a new recipe and true love. While investigating, they have lunch at a dumpling restaurant that boasts "100 types of gyōza" on the sign. (Incidentally, a cute thing about Japanese restaurant chains is that they often put the word "chain" in the name, like, "Gyōza Chain Hanasaki.") They eat dumplings with fillings like garlic-miso, flaked salmon, and Chinese roast pork.

This place, our little cloud forest, even though we missed our papi, it was the most beautiful place you've ever seen. We didn't really know that then, because it was the only place we'd ever seen, except in picture in books and magazines, but now that's I've seen other place, I know. I know how beautiful it was. And we loved it anyway even before we knew. Because the trees had these enormous dark green leaves, as a big as a bed, and they would sway in the wind. And when it rain you could hear the big, fat raindrops splatting onto those giant leaves, and you could only see the sky in bright blue patches if you were walking a long way off to a friend's house or to church or something, when you passed through a clearing and all those leaves would back away and open up and the hot sunshine would beat down all yellow and gold and sticky. And there were waterfalls everywhere with big rock pools where you could take a bath and the water was always warm and it smelled like sunlight. And at night there was the sound of the tree frogs and the music of the rushing water from the falls and all the songs of the night birds, and Mami would make the most delicious chilate, and Abuela would sing to us in the old language, and Soledad and I would gather herbs and dry them and bundle them for Papi to sell in the market when he had a day off, and that's how we passed our days.' Luca can see it. He's there, far away in the misty cloud forest, in a hut with a packed dirt floor and a cool breeze, with Rebeca and Soledad and their mami and abuela, and he can even see their father, far away down the mountain and through the streets of that clogged, enormous city, wearing a long apron and a chef's hat, and his pockets full of dried herbs. Luca can smell the wood of the fire, the cocoa and cinnamon of the chilate, and that's how he knows Rebeca is magical, because she can transport him a thousand miles away into her own mountain homestead just by the sound of her voice.

Ideally, I wanted to become a vegetable. The vegetables were not afraid of anything. The carrots were fucking the earth. The carrots and onions were having better sex than me. Zucchini made scandalous love to paneer, mushrooms, garlic and tomatoes. Basil coated the deep interiors of fully swollen pasta, with names sexier than shapes. R-i-g-a-t-o-n-i! F-u-s-i-l-i! C-o-n-c-h-i-g-l-i-e! Gulmarg salad licked walnut chutney in public. Even brinjal (that humble eggplant), swimming in a pot of morkozhambu, insisted on having more pleasure than me.

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn't care about any of it. There, I ordered chicken Dijon, or beef Bourguignon, or a simple green salad, or a pate sandwich, and when it came to the table, I melted into whatever arrived. I lavished in a forkful of spinach gratin on the side, at how delighted the chef had clearly been over the balance of spinach and cheese, like she was conducting a meeting of spinach and cheese, like a matchmaker who knew they would shortly fall in love. Sure, there were small distractions and preoccupations in it all, but I could find the food in there, the food was the center, and the person making the food was so connected with the food that I could really, for once, enjoy it.

Five years from today. Where, exactly, do you want to be?" Her eyes lit up. Sadie loves that kind of question. "Ooh. Wow. Let me think. December, getting close to Christmas. I'll be twenty-one..." "Passed out under the tree with a fifth of Jack, half a 7-Eleven rotisserie chicken, and a cat who poops in your shoes." Frankie returned our startled glances with his lizard look. "Oh, wait. That's me. Sorry." I opted to ignore him. "Five years to the day,Sadie." She glanced quickly between Frankie and me. "Do we need a time-out here?" "Nope," I said. "Carry on." "Okay. Five years. I will be in New York visiting the pair of you because, while NYU is fab, I will be halfwau through my final year of classics at Cambridge, trying to decide whether I want to be a psychologist or a pastry chef. You," she said sternly to Frankie, "will be drinking appropriate amounds of champagne with your boyfriend, a six-three blond from Helsinki who happens to design for Tory Burch. Ah! Don't say anything. It's my future. You can choose a different designer when it's you go. I want the Tory freebies." She turned to me. "We will be sipping said champagne in the middle of the Gagosian Galley, because it is the opening night of your first solo exhibit. At which everything will sell." She punctuated the sentence by poking the air with a speared black olive. "I love you," I told her. Then, "But that wasn't really about you." "Oh,but it was," she disagreed, going back to her salad. "It's exactly where I want to be. Although" -she grinned over a tomato wedge- "I might have the next David Beckham in tow." "The next David Beckham is a five-foot-tall Welshman named Madog Cadwalader. He has extra teeth and bow legs." "Really?" Sadie asked. Frankie snorted. "No.Not really.

This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely the serial murderer loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck, and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk just as the Housewives live for catching glimpses of their own Botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors, and the rocked-out dude on ‘roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on Hookbook, and because this is reality, they are all in love—madly, truly—with the body mic clipped to their back buckle, and the producer casually suggesting just one more angle, one more Jell-O shot. And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke love Leia (till he finds out she’s his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the Mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omerta` --the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.

What is this food in my head, anyway? Let’s see...it’s green and good for you and so delicious. It’s prepared by angels with love. The minute you bite into it, it’s savory, chewy, nourishing, and whole- some. You feel instantly revitalized. A small, tiny amount, just a few bites, rejuvenates every cell, deepens your breath, clears your mind, heals your wounds, and mends your heart. It’s made from joyous plants that voluntarily separate themselves from their stalks, laying themselves at the feet of the approaching gardener who gathers them. They eagerly offer their vital energies to nourish living spirits. The angels in their chef hats, singing mantras, cook it tenderly to retain all the benefits of the generous plants. It’s barely sweet, barely salty, and contains all the freshness of spring herbs, summer fruit, spreading leaves, and burgeoning seeds. It comes premade in bags or boxes...you just open it up, sit down, and enjoy. It’s a full meal, enough maybe for a whole day, maybe for a week, maybe for your family, maybe for your friends and neighbors. It multiplies like loaves and fishes, in little biodegradable containers that vaporize instantly the moment you finish them, without any greenhouse emissions. Nothing to clean up!

A honey pie, lovingly made. The tiny sugar bee, still perched on the edge of the flaky crust, mocked me. That little bee nibbling on her honey pie. A pulse of sheer heat lit up my sex, licked down my thighs, tweaked my nipples. I shoved another messy bite into my mouth, relishing the taste, wanting...him. This was his work, made with his hands, his skill, his mind. My grumpy man with the ability to create sweetness in the most unexpected of ways. Somehow, at the back of my mind, I'd known from the start. From the way he'd all but ordered me to try his brest. How he'd watched me eat it with that strange intent look upon his face. Pride. That was what it was. He was proud of his work. I ate up my honey pie without pause, devouring it until it was nothing more than a sticky paste on my fingers, buttery crumble on my lips. Moaning, I licked my skin clean like a cat might. I swore I felt claws prickling, aching to come out. Because he had known, and I hadn't. Was it a joke to him? What had he said? The chef was temperamental. Oh, how he must have laughed on the inside at that. With a growl, I washed my hands and headed for the door, half of me more turned on than I'd ever been in my life, the other half ready to tear into the most irritating man I'd ever met.

Almost everything I know in the world, I learned from novels and memoirs and stories. I could practically draw you a city map of Milan, Rome, or Venice, even though I’ve never been to any of them. I’ve read about how to make the perfect Old Fashioned, how to tend a rose garden, how to butterfly a pork loin. But then you find yourself standing at a bar or kneeling in the dirt or holding a very sharp chef’s knife and you realize all at once that it doesn’t matter what you’ve read or seen or think you know. You learn it, really learn it, with your hands. With your fingers and your knife, your nose and your ears, your tongue and your muscle memory, learning as you go.

this gave me great happiness. The same is true of every job you do. Are you a teacher? You enrich the lives of young people every day! Are you a chef? Each meal you cook brings great pleasure into the world! Perhaps you do not love your job, or you work with difficult people. You are still doing important things, contributing your own small piece to the world we live in. We must never forget this. Your efforts today will affect people you will never know. It is your choice whether that effect is positive or negative. You can choose every day, every minute, to act in a way that may uplift a stranger, or else drag them down. The choice is easy. And it is yours to make.

How can you say anything other than Ratatouille is Pixar's best movie? Your a chef, for Christ's sake," Sue said. Lou smiled at Sue's accusatory tone. She needed this distraction. Harley rolled his eyes and said, "You're letting your biases show, Sue. Up uses music better- like a character. The opening fifteen minutes is some of the best filmmaking- ever. And who doesn't love a good squirrel joke?" "But Ratatouille brings it all back to food." Sue waved a carrot in the air to emphasize her point. "They made you want to eat food cooked by a rat! I'd eat the food; it looked magnificent. That rat cooked what he loved; what tasted good. Like I've been telling Lou, we should cook food from the heart, not just the cookbook.

Here we’ll describe four signs that you have to disengage from your autonomous efforts and seek connection. Each of these emotions is a different form of hunger for connection—that is, they’re all different ways of feeling lonely: When you have been gaslit. When you’re asking yourself, “Am I crazy, or is there something completely unacceptable happening right now?” turn to someone who can relate; let them give you the reality check that yes, the gaslights are flickering. When you feel “not enough.” No individual can meet all the needs of the world. Humans are not built to do big things alone. We are built to do them together. When you experience the empty-handed feeling that you are just one person, unable to meet all the demands the world makes on you, helpless in the face of the endless, yawning need you see around you, recognize that emotion for what it is: a form of loneliness. ... When you’re sad. In the animated film Inside Out, the emotions in the head of a tween girl, Riley, struggle to cope with the exigencies of growing up.... When you are boiling with rage. Rage has a special place in women’s lives and a special role in the Bubble of Love. More, even, than sadness, many of us have been taught to swallow our rage, hide it even from ourselves. We have been taught to fear rage—our own, as well as others’—because its power can be used as a weapon. Can be. A chef’s knife can be used as a weapon. And it can help you prepare a feast. It’s all in how you use it. We don’t want to hurt anyone, and rage is indeed very, very powerful. Bring your rage into the Bubble with your loved ones’ permission, and complete the stress response cycle with them. If your Bubble is a rugby team, you can leverage your rage in a match or practice. If your Bubble is a knitting circle, you might need to get creative. Use your body. Jump up and down, get noisy, release all that energy, share it with others. “Yes!” say the people in your Bubble. “That was some bullshit you dealt with!” Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight, and sharing that energy in the Bubble changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.

You see I'm wearing the tie," said Bingo. "It suits you beautiful," said the girl. Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got all flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner. "Well, what's it going to be today?" asked the girl, introducing the business touch into the conversation. Bingo studied the menu devoutly. "I'll have a cup of cocoa, cold veal and ham pie, slice of fruit cake, and a macaroon. Same for you, Bertie?" I gazed at the man, revolted. That he could have been a pal of mine all these years and think me capable of insulting the old tum with this sort of stuff cut me to the quick. "Or how about a bit of hot steak-pudding, with a sparkling limado to wash it down?" said Bingo. You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate. This chappie before me, who spoke in that absolutely careless way of macaroons and limado, was the man I had seen in happier days telling the head-waiter at Claridge's exactly how he wanted the chef to prepare the sole frite au gourmet au champignons, and saying he would jolly well sling it back if it wasn't just right. Ghastly! Ghastly! A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them, and Mabel hopped it.

Our meals, the dishes we're creating, bring on new sensations---an awakening of sorts for certain people, albeit nostalgia or something else. Food brings on emotions---and we're doing things right if we're bringing them out in people." "Food is about balance of flavors and textures and taste, not emotion." Charles grips my shoulders. "Kate, when you cook, how are you doing it? With anger or with love?" "Probably a little of both sometimes," I gasp. "What are you saying? People are eating my emotions? Like in that movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar? Simply Irresistible? She was a chef, like me, with a flailing restaurant, and there was a rich guy, like you. And a crab." He snickers. "This is real life, not the movies. And I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

A kitten is almost too easy, I think, as I quickly pull out its fur and separate and de-bone it, and put the pieces in the blast cooker for three of the remaining four minutes, then add them to my gumbo, just as Chef Reamsy calls time. “Ladies first,” he says, as I present him with a plate. “What have we here?” “Chef, this is a Slim Jim, Chee-Tos, and kitten gumbo in a spicy Pepsi sauce,” I say. “Bon appetite.” He picks through it. “It certainly looks visually stunning,” he says. “What’d you use in the sauce?” “Pepsi, and a little K-C Masterpiece barbecue sauce. I put that in a pan and let it reduce down.” He takes a bite. “Flavorful. The meat is moist and tender, the sauce has just the right amount of spice, and I love the way you incorporated the stray kitten into the dish. Well done indeed.

For the primo piatto, the chef had chosen to serve a dish he called gnocchi- small dumplings made with potato flour. It was an unusual dish as potatoes were a rarity from the New World and largely unknown. The gnocchi were simply dressed in browned butter and sage and then dusted with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was a plain presentation with no garnish, and it was accompanied by a white table wine of no special distinction. My mouth watered as I carried the gnocchi up to the dining room. I'd tasted one dumpling in the kitchen, and I loved the earthy flavor as well as the way it resisted when I sank my teeth in. The butter and sage coated my mouth so that the taste lasted even after I swallowed. I liked the way it felt in my stomach, solid and nourishing, and I looked forward to learning how to make it.

It was Lola Simeona who served their bestseller: Soup No. 5 was a horrifying concoction of bull testes and spices, yet still was the best broth this side of the city, a popular meal for the adventurous and for those who prize umami above all. Occasionally a new customer would stagger out, pale and green all at once, because Lola Simeona was never shy about telling them exactly what they were eating, and in great detail. If it tasted good, she liked to say, then why would knowing this change anything? Lola sold Soup No. 5 regular at nearly all hours, closing at two a.m., only to begin again at nine the next day. Soup No. 5 regular was a picker-upper, a mood brightener. Soup No. 5 regular put people in cheerful temperaments, ready to face the day with optimism- a surprising side effect, given the cantankerous nature of the chef.

I grabbed a handful of tarragon and closed my eyes, inhaling its sweet fragrance. I could almost feel my grandmother next to me, smell the aromas embedded into her poppy-print apron, taste her creamy veloutés. Thanks to her, my skills in the kitchen started developing from the age of seven. I'd learned how to chop, slice, and dice without cutting my fingers, to sauté, fry, and grill, pairing flavors and taming them into submission. Just as I'd experienced with my grandmother's meals, when people ate my creations, I wanted them to think "now this is love"- while engaging all of the five senses. For me, cooking was the way I expressed myself, each dish a balance of flavors and ingredients representing my emotions- sweet, sour, salty, smoky, spicy-hot, and even bitter. My inspiration as a chef was to give people sensorial experiences, to bring them back to times of happiness, to let them relive their youth, or to awaken their minds.

As soon as I was immersed in my work, cutting up the kabocha squash for the winter butternut squash soup, dicing the carrots to braise in orange juice, and starting another giant vat of chicken stock, I allowed the aromas and natural muscle rhythms of the kitchen to sweep me up in what I loved. I calmed down and experienced--- as corny as it might sound--- the joy of cooking. I was in love with food, obsessed with it. Food wasn't just fuel; it could heal a broken heart, it could entertain, it could bring you home. Magic happened when a perfectly balanced dish came together. A beautiful symphony of flavors. Salty, sweet, acidic, crunchy, colorful, soft, hard, warm, cold. It should take you on a journey. Once I had an Italian dish called Genovese, consisting of braised rabbit over thick noodles with a carrot and pea sauce. It was so beautiful, earthy, clever, and delicious, and it warmed you from the inside. It was what I liked to call a "circle of life plate.

Unlike GTA, in real life, the law is a thing and jail is a thing. But that's about where the differences end. If someone gave you a perfect simulation of today's world to play in and told you that it's all fake with no actual consequences - with the only rules being that can't break the law or harm anyone, and you still have to make sure to support you and your family's basic needs - what would you do? My guess is that most people would do all kinds of things they'd love to do in their real life but wouldn't dare to try, and by behaving that way they'd end up quickly getting a life going on in the simulation that's both far more successful and much truer to themselves than the real life they're currently living. Removing the fear and the concern with identity or the opinions of others would thrust the person into the not-actually-risky Chef Lab and have them bouncing around all the exhilarating places outside their comfort zone - and their lives would take off. That's the life irrational fears blocks us from.

While the others tended the flowers outside, the kitchen was her garden, where feasts and banquets bloomed. At twenty-six, she couldn't imagine ever loving anything as much as cooking. Nothing fancy though; no big white plates and tiny morsels. Candy cooked to feed the soul. Flavor and quantity were of equal importance. She had become Thornfield's resident cook when she dropped out of high school and convinced June she was safe with knives. It's in your blood, Twig said after a bite of her first cassava cake, fresh from the oven. These are your gifts, June said when Candy served her first platter of spring rolls with mango chutney, made from homegrown vegetables and herbs. It was true; when she was cooking or baking, it was almost as if a deeper, hidden knowledge took over her hands, her instincts, her tastebuds. She thrived in the kitchen, spurred by the idea that maybe her mother was a chef, or her father a baker. Cooking soothed the incision-like cut she felt inside whenever she thought that she might never know.

Sensuality is for you, not about you. It’s for you in a sense that you are allowed to indulge all of your senses and taste the goodness of this world and beyond. It’s also for you in a sense that you’re allowed to curate and express yourself in an authentic way (i.e. in the way you dress, communicate, live, love, play, etc.). However, sensuality is not ABOUT you, it’s about those to whom you were brought here to touch and inspire. It’s about the joy and pleasure you’re here to bring. You didn’t come here for yourself nor empty-handed, but you came here bearing special gifts. You were brought here to be a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures. Your passion is an indication of the sensual gift(s) you were endowed with before you made your grand entry into this world. Your divine mandate now is to exploit every sensual gift you have to the fullest whether it’s music, photography, boudoir or fashion modeling, etc. If you have a love for fashion, always dress impeccably well like my friend Kefilwe Mabote. If you have a love for good food and wine, create culinary experiences the world has never seen before like chef Heston Blumenthal whom I consider as one of the most eminent sensual innovators in the culinary field. Chef Heston has crafted the most sensually innovative culinary experience where each sense has been considered with unparalleled rigour. He believes that eating is a truly multi-sensory experience. This approach has not only led to innovative dishes like the famous bacon and egg ice cream, but also to playing sounds to diners through headphones, and dispersing evocative aromas with dry ice. Chef Heston is indeed a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures in his own right and field. So, what sensual gift(s) are you here to use? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. For instance, you may be a great home maker. That may be an area where you’re endowed with the most sensual innovative abilities than any other area in your life. You need to occupy and shine your light in that space, no matter how small it seems.

He carefully poured the juice into a bowl and rinsed the scallops to remove any sand caught between the tender white meat and the firmer coral-colored roe, wrapped around it like a socialite's fur stole. Mayur is the kind of cook (my kind), who thinks the chef should always have a drink in hand. He was making the scallops with champagne custard, so naturally the rest of the bottle would have to disappear before dinner. He poured a cup of champagne into a small pot and set it to reduce on the stove. Then he put a sugar cube in the bottom of a wide champagne coupe (Lalique, service for sixteen, direct from the attic on my mother's last visit). After a bit of a search, he found the crème de violette in one of his shopping bags and poured in just a dash. He topped it up with champagne and gave it a swift stir. "To dinner in Paris," he said, glass aloft. 'To the chef," I answered, dodging swiftly out of the way as he poured the reduced champagne over some egg yolks and began whisking like his life depended on it. "Do you have fish stock?" "Nope." "Chicken?" "Just cubes. Are you sure that will work?" "Sure. This is the Mr. Potato Head School of Cooking," he said. "Interchangeable parts. If you don't have something, think of what that ingredient does, and attach another one." I counted, in addition to the champagne, three other bottles of alcohol open in the kitchen. The boar, rubbed lovingly with a paste of cider vinegar, garlic, thyme, and rosemary, was marinating in olive oil and red wine. It was then to be seared, deglazed with hard cider, roasted with whole apples, and finished with Calvados and a bit of cream. Mayur had his nose in a small glass of the apple liqueur, inhaling like a fugitive breathing the air of the open road. As soon as we were all assembled at the table, Mayur put the raw scallops back in their shells, spooned over some custard, and put them ever so briefly under the broiler- no more than a minute or two. The custard formed a very thin skin with one or two peaks of caramel. It was, quite simply, heaven. The pork was presented neatly sliced, restaurant style, surrounded with the whole apples, baked to juicy, sagging perfection.

To that point, I remember when visiting my parents’ years later, I happened to catch an old episode of The French Chef. Because my interest in food had grown, I watched it with even more attentiveness than I had when I was young. But on this particular occasion, I was taken aback by my reaction when Mrs Child bid US her ubiquitous farewell, ‘This is Julia Child, bon appétit!’ My eyes suddenly welded up and I had to stop myself from crying: why was I suddenly experiencing a powerful rush of emotion because a black and white moving image of a chef was saying goodbye to me in French? After a few moments, I realised that I was moved by Mrs Child not only because she brought back happy boyhood memories of spending time with my mom but also because Julia herself was so genuinely happy to be doing what she was doing. I saw in that moment the embodiment of what I, and so many of us, aspire to. To spend your life doing what you love and doing it well. To achieve this is a rare thing, but for those who can, real joy is theirs, as is the ability to bring that joy to others through their chosen vacation.

Indeed, food and femininity were intertwined for me from very early on. Cooking was the domain not of girls, but of women. You weren’t actually allowed to cook until you mastered the basics of preparing the vegetables and dry-roasting and grinding the spices. You only assisted by preparing these mise en places for the older women until you graduated and were finally allowed to stand at the stove for more than boiling tea. Just as the French kitchens had their hierarchy of sous-chefs and commis, my grandmother’s kitchen also had its own codes. The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentils. You went from wearing skirts and half saris to wearing full saris, and at about the same time you got to make the rice-batter crepes called dosas for everyone’s tiffin. You did not get told the secret ratio of spices for the house-made sambar curry powder until you came of marriageable age. And to truly have a womanly figure, you had to eat, to be voluptuously full of food.

claque, aka canned laughter It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s nothing new under the sun (a heavenly body, by the way, that some Indian ascetics stare at till they go blind). I knew that some things had a history—the Constitution, rhythm and blues, Canada—but it’s the odd little things that surprise me with their storied past. This first struck me when I was reading about anesthetics and I learned that, in the early 1840s, it became fashionable to hold parties where guests would inhale nitrous oxide out of bladders. In other words, Whip-it parties! We held the exact same kind of parties in high school. We’d buy fourteen cans of Reddi-Wip and suck on them till we had successfully obliterated a couple of million neurons and face-planted on my friend Andy’s couch. And we thought we were so cutting edge. And now, I learn about claque, which is essentially a highbrow French word for canned laughter. Canned laughter was invented long before Lucille Ball stuffed chocolates in her face or Ralph Kramden threatened his wife with extreme violence. It goes back to the 4th century B.C., when Greek playwrights hired bands of helpers to laugh at their comedies in order to influence the judges. The Romans also stacked the audience, but they were apparently more interested in applause than chuckles: Nero—emperor and wannabe musician—employed a group of five thousand knights and soldiers to accompany him on his concert tours. But the golden age of canned laughter came in 19th-century France. Almost every theater in France was forced to hire a band called a claque—from claquer, “to clap.” The influential claque leaders, called the chefs de claque, got a monthly payment from the actors. And the brilliant innovation they came up with was specialization. Each claque member had his or her own important job to perform: There were the rieurs, who laughed loudly during comedies. There were the bisseurs, who shouted for encores. There were the commissaires, who would elbow their neighbors and say, “This is the good part.” And my favorite of all, the pleureuses, women who were paid good francs to weep at the sad parts of tragedies. I love this idea. I’m not sure why the networks never thought of canned crying. You’d be watching an ER episode, and a softball player would come in with a bat splinter through his forehead, and you’d hear a little whimper in the background, turning into a wave of sobs. Julie already has trouble keeping her cheeks dry, seeing as she cried during the Joe Millionaire finale. If they added canned crying, she’d be a mess.

From my vantage point in a busy working kitchen, when I’d see Emeril and Bobby on the tube, they looked like creatures from another planet—bizarrely, artificially cheerful creatures in a candy-colored galaxy in no way resembling my own. They were as far from my experience or understanding as Barney the purple dinosaur—or the saxophone stylings of Kenny G. The fact that people—strangers—seemed to love them, Emeril’s studio audience, for instance, clapping and hooting with every mention of gah-lic, only made me more hostile. In my life, in my world, I took it as an article of faith that chefs were unlovable. That’s why we were chefs. We were basically … bad people—which is why we lived the way we did, this half-life of work followed by hanging out with others who lived the same life, followed by whatever slivers of emulated normal life we had left to us. Nobody loved us. Not really. How could they, after all? As chefs, we were proudly dysfunctional. We were misfits. We knew we were misfits, we sensed the empty parts of our souls, the missing parts of our personalities, and this was what had brought us to our profession, had made us what we were. I despised their very likability, as it was a denial of the quality I’d always seen as our best and most distinguishing: our otherness. Rachael

Most of the garden was devoted to the usual things- lettuces, onions, cabbage, and eggplant- ordinary ingredients for good, honest meals. But then there were the chef's other plants, the ones that made the cooks cross themselves and kiss their thumbnails whenever they were forced to handle them. Take love apples, to start with. Their poisonous reputation was as well known as that of hemlock, and the cooks protested loudly the day the chef put in his seedlings. What if their roots contaminated the onions? What if their fumes caused swoons or fits? What if the odd, tangy smell of their leaves attracted disgruntled ghosts from the nearby dungeons? It took repeated assurances, the installation of a wire enclosure, and the fact that nothing catastrophic followed their planting to keep the staff from uprooting the love apples behind the chef's back. Even so, one cook quit, and another developed a twitchy eye and started nipping at the cooking sherry. After the love apples, the chef put in beans- another rarity from the New World- and then potatoes. Once, he tried something he called maize, but the plants failed, so instead he bought sacks of dried maize from an unknown source. In a giant stone mortar, he ground the dried maize down to a coarse yellow meal from which he made one of his exotic specialties- polenta.

David Chang, who had become the darling of the New York restaurant world, thanks to his Momofuku noodle and ssäm bars in the East Village, opened his third outpost, Momofuku Milk Bar, just around the corner from my apartment. While everyone in the city was clamoring for the restaurants' bowls of brisket ramen and platters of pig butt, his pastry chef, Christina Tosi, was cooking up "crack pie," an insane and outrageous addictive concoction made largely of white sugar, brown sugar, and powdered sugar, with egg yolks, heavy cream, and lots of butter, all baked in an oat cookie crust. People were going nuts for the stuff, and it was time for me to give this crack pie a shot. But as soon as I walked into the industrial-style bakery, I knew crack could have nothing on the cookies. Blueberry and cream. Double chocolate. Peanut butter. Corn. (Yes, a corn cookie, and it was delicious). There was a giant compost cookie, chock-full of pretzels, chips, coffee grounds, butterscotch, oats, and chocolate chips. But the real knockout was the cornflake, marshmallow, and chocolate chip cookie. It was sticky, chewy, and crunchy at once, sweet and chocolaty, the ever-important bottom side rimmed in caramelized beauty. I love rice crisps in my chocolate, but who would have thought that cornflakes in my cookies could also cause such rapture?

The good news was that he wasn't sixteen anymore and he had this, his art. His food. And if this dinner continued to go the way it was going, if Mrs. Raje stood by her word and gave DJ the contract for her son's fund-raising dinner next month based on tonight's success... well, then they'd be fine. Mrs. Raje had been more impressed thus far. Everything from the steamed momos to the dum biryani had turned out just so. The mayor of San Francisco had even asked to speak to DJ after tasting the California blue crab with bitter coconut cream and tucked DJ's card into his wallet. Only dessert remained, and dessert was DJ's crowning glory, his true love. With sugar he could make love to taste buds, make adult humans sob. The reason Mina Raje had given him, a foreigner and a newbie, a shot at tonight was his Arabica bean gelato with dark caramel. DJ had created the dessert for her after spending a week researching her. Not just her favorite restaurants, but where she shopped, how she wore her clothes, what made her laugh, even the perfume she wore and how much. The taste buds drew from who you were. How you reacted to taste as a sense was a culmination of how you processed the world, the most primal form of how you interacted with your environment. It was DJ's greatest strength and weakness, needing to know what exact note of flavor unfurled a person. His need to find that chord and strum it was bone deep.

At the risk of oversimplifying a topic that deserves entire books, we can summarize like this: During enslavement, many Black cooks learned their way around kitchens because their lives could depend on having that knowledge and skill. After slavery was abolished, many took to slinging fried chicken (or cooking in general) as one way to make a living. Interestingly, it wasn’t until Black folks began navigating their supposed freedoms-applying to schools, looking for paid work, seeking housing-that cartoonish, offensive images of Black folks eagerly consuming chicken or stealing chickens began to appear in essays, comics, advertisements, and postcards, perpetuating a narrative by white society that Black people were subhuman and needed to be controlled, policed, and locked out of mainstream opportunities. Exacerbated by the deep white resentment of Black people’s increasing social and political mobility (this period saw the largest representation of Black people in Congress than any time since), the idea took root that being Black meant that you loved fried chicken so much that you couldn’t resist it. This narrative is a painful legacy of slavery that wasn’t of our own making and is ironic, given that people all over the world get down with wings and things. But the essence of this stereotype persists. We know folks who refuse to eat fried chicken around white people, or chefs who don’t cook it in their restaurants, because they feel that’s the only thing certain diners expect from them…American fried chicken tastes good. It’s also complicated.

This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely the serial murderer loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck, and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk, just as the Housewives live for catching glimpses of their own Botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors, and the rocked-out dude on ’roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on Hookbook, and because this is reality, they are all in love—madly, truly—with the body mic clipped to their back buckle, and the producer casually suggesting just one more angle, one more Jell-O shot. And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke loves Leia (till he finds out she’s his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omertà—the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.

From Walt: The Grapes of Wrath, Les Misérables, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby-Dick, The Ox-Bow Incident, A Tale of Two Cities, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote (where your nickname came from), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and anything by Anton Chekhov. From Henry: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Cheyenne Autumn, War and Peace, The Things They Carried, Catch-22, The Sun Also Rises, The Blessing Way, Beyond Good and Evil, The Teachings of Don Juan, Heart of Darkness, The Human Comedy, The Art of War. From Vic: Justine, Concrete Charlie: The Story of Philadelphia Football Legend Chuck Bednarik, Medea (you’ll love it; it’s got a great ending), The Kama Sutra, Henry and June, The Onion Field, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Zorba the Greek, Madame Bovary, Richie Ashburn’s Phillies Trivia (fuck you, it’s a great book). From Ruby: The Holy Bible (New Testament), The Pilgrim’s Progress, Inferno, Paradise Lost, My Ántonia, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Poems of Emily Dickinson, My Friend Flicka, Our Town. From Dorothy: The Gastronomical Me, The French Chef Cookbook (you don’t eat, you don’t read), Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Something Fresh, The Sound and the Fury, The Maltese Falcon, Pride and Prejudice, Brides-head Revisited. From Lucian: Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Band of Brothers, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Virginian, The Basque History of the World (so you can learn about your heritage you illiterate bastard), Hondo, Sackett, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Bobby Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Quartered Safe Out Here. From Ferg: Riders of the Purple Sage, Kiss Me Deadly, Lonesome Dove, White Fang, A River Runs Through It (I saw the movie, but I heard the book was good, too), Kip Carey’s Official Wyoming Fishing Guide (sorry, kid, I couldn’t come up with ten but this ought to do).

Cultivating loyalty is a tricky business. It requires maintaining a rigorous level of consistency while constantly adding newness and a little surprise—freshening the guest experience without changing its core identity.” Lifetime Network Value Concerns about brand fickleness in the new generation of customers can be troubling partly because the idea of lifetime customer value has been such a cornerstone of business for so long. But while you’re fretting over the occasional straying of a customer due to how easy it is to switch brands today, don’t overlook a more important positive change in today’s landscape: the extent to which social media and Internet reviews have amplified the reach of customers’ word-of-mouth. Never before have customers enjoyed such powerful platforms to share and broadcast their opinions of products and services. This is true today of every generation—even some Silent Generation customers share on Facebook and post reviews on TripAdvisor and Amazon. But millennials, thanks to their lifetime of technology use and their growing buying power, perhaps make the best, most active spokespeople a company can have. Boston Consulting Group, with grand understatement, says that “the vast majority” of millennials report socially sharing and promoting their brand preferences. Millennials are talking about your business when they’re considering making a purchase, awaiting assistance, trying something on, paying for it and when they get home. If, for example, you own a restaurant, the value of a single guest today goes further than the amount of the check. The added value comes from a process that Chef O’Connell calls competitive dining, the phenomenon of guests “comparing and rating dishes, photographing everything they eat, and tweeting and emailing the details of all their dining adventures.” It’s easy to underestimate the commercial power that today’s younger customers have, particularly when the network value of these buyers doesn’t immediately translate into sales. Be careful not to sell their potential short and let that assumption drive you headlong into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember that younger customers are experimenting right now as they begin to form preferences they may keep for a lifetime. And whether their proverbial Winstons will taste good to them in the future depends on what they taste like presently.

I have been all over the world cooking and eating and training under extraordinary chefs. And the two food guys I would most like to go on a road trip with are Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlmann, both of whom I have met, and who are genuinely awesome guys, hysterically funny and easy to be with. But as much as I want to be the Batgirl in that trio, I fear that I would be woefully unprepared. Because an essential part of the food experience that those two enjoy the most is stuff that, quite frankly, would make me ralph. I don't feel overly bad about the offal thing. After all, variety meats seem to be the one area that people can get a pass on. With the possible exception of foie gras, which I wish like heckfire I liked, but I simply cannot get behind it, and nothing is worse than the look on a fellow foodie's face when you pass on the pate. I do love tongue, and off cuts like oxtails and cheeks, but please, no innards. Blue or overly stinky cheeses, cannot do it. Not a fan of raw tomatoes or tomato juice- again I can eat them, but choose not to if I can help it. Ditto, raw onions of every variety (pickled is fine, and I cannot get enough of them cooked), but I bonded with Scott Conant at the James Beard Awards dinner, when we both went on a rant about the evils of raw onion. I know he is often sort of douchey on television, but he was nice to me, very funny, and the man makes the best freaking spaghetti in tomato sauce on the planet. I have issues with bell peppers. Green, red, yellow, white, purple, orange. Roasted or raw. Idk. If I eat them raw I burp them up for days, and cooked they smell to me like old armpit. I have an appreciation for many of the other pepper varieties, and cook with them, but the bell pepper? Not my friend. Spicy isn't so much a preference as a physical necessity. In addition to my chronic and severe gastric reflux, I also have no gallbladder. When my gallbladder and I divorced several years ago, it got custody of anything spicier than my own fairly mild chili, Emily's sesame noodles, and that plastic Velveeta-Ro-Tel dip that I probably shouldn't admit to liking. I'm allowed very occasional visitation rights, but only at my own risk. I like a gentle back-of-the-throat heat to things, but I'm never going to meet you for all-you-can-eat buffalo wings. Mayonnaise squicks me out, except as an ingredient in other things. Avocado's bland oiliness, okra's slickery slime, and don't even get me started on runny eggs. I know. It's mortifying.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.