Emeril Quotes

A sous-chef with dreams of her own restaurant empire may have mastered the art of classical French sauce making, but not yet have developed the signature cooking style she imagines as the cornerstone of her own chain of restaurants. She gauges her progress not only by whether she is moving toward her aspirations, but also by her improving skills. Our chef may not yet have the stature of Chef Auguste Escoffier or Emeril Lagasse, but she can remember a time when she could not name the five French mother sauces, let alone execute them. She's made progress. Appreciating the skills she has developed is a marker along the path toward her culinary aspirations. The sense of accomplishment that accompanies improved skills is one of the rewards we reap when we dedicate ourselves to mastery.

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

Some vampire literature is accurate, particularly concerning garlic. Vampire hunters have relied on it for centuries. Emeril LaGasse is not just a famous television chef, but also a modern Van Helsing whose obsession with garlic and pork fat is legendary. Not that bacon kills vampires. What a travesty that would be. --“Vampire Foibles,” Dexter Bloodgood’s Survival Guide for Modern Vampires, 19th Edition

and spinach from the pan

Inspired first by the need to keep the cameramen awake, Emeril started yelling as he added ingredients to dishes—“Bam!

ride was tough because our bus driver, “Speedy” Springer was not what you would call a cautious driver. Somehow, I got the fish home without getting totally soaked and I put the bowl on my dresser. I had a lot on my mind. I had to figure how to get the letter to Mr. Smith and write a dumb fish diary. I forgot about Emeril until after supper, when I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to write the stupid fish journal. Dylan sat on the floor playing with his toy cars and it was really hard to concentrate because he kept making these “Vroom-vroom” noises.

Before she steps through, she stops and looks back over her shoulder, and I'm surprised to see tears in her eyes. Would you look at that? There's some in mine, too. Some bitch has gotta be cutting onions in these woods. Major problem this time of year, wannabe Emeril Lagassés just creeping through the woods like Bigfoot. Raul really needs to look into that.

All I can say is the bubbling pizza tasted as spectacular as it looked, and I didn't even fool with fixin' a salad to go with it. Since Sugar and Spice were begging and whining, I picked off a few pieces of sausage and pepperoni and tossed them to the dogs while I kept watching Emeril roll out and stretch some dough and trying not to think about Vernon and Sally and the way they'd deceived me. What I really wanted to do was scream at Emeril that his dough was too thick and more like the Chicago style than the crisp classic Neopolitan one I was eating. But, instead, I finished munching on the slice, and looked at the meatballs and pieces of bacon and golden mushrooms and shiny olives and onions nestled in all the melted cheese on the next slice, and started nibbling on that one. By now, Emeril was chopping herbs while he sautéed onions and garlic in olive oil, and when I wasn't concentrating on him, my thoughts shifted again to Vernon and Sally, and the humiliating stunt they'd pulled on me, and how I'd really like to take my gun and blow both their brains out. Then I wondered why in hell Emeril would dog up his pizza with so much tomato sauce, and Sugar was driving me crazy begging for more meat, and before I realized it, I was sinking my teeth into a third slice loaded mainly with red peppers and sausage that had a wonderful fennel taste and telling myself how much better this pizza was than the one Emeril was fixin'.

My naked contempt for vegetarians, sauce-on-siders, the 'lactose-intolerant' and the cooking of the Ewok-like Emeril Lagasse is not going to get me my own show on the Food Network. I don't think I'll be going on ski weekends with Andre Soltner anytime soon or getting a back rub from that hunky Bobby Flay. Eric Ripert won't be calling me for ideas on tomorrow's fish special. But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it.