Top 181 Quotes & Sayings by Marcus Samuelsson

Not only are pasta dishes delicious, but they are also great, easy options for a quick dinner during a busy weekday.

When you're in Portuguese-African Brazil, or Lisbon, or Mozambique, sometimes piri piri is used as a condiment. Sometimes piri piri is just spices from a jar, and sometimes it's made with garlic, olive oil, cilantro, parsley, and some light chilies.

In Ethiopia, food is often looked at through a strong spiritual lens, stronger than anywhere else I know. It's the focal point of weddings, births and funerals and is a daily ceremony from the preparation of the meal and the washing of hands to the sharing of meals.

I think that if you grind your spices and keep them in small batches, you can use them in endless ways. The key thing is to have a spice mill or a coffee grinder, and to keep your spices cold and in tightly lidded boxes.

Cooking is in an honest profession where you cannot hide and let others do the work for you. You have to show up, work hard and prove you can do it faster and better. And find a mentor who will recognize your talent and push you in the right direction.

While I hold my own political views, it's important not to get too wrapped up in individual candidates and personalities, but instead to focus on the real issues.

Cooking turkey every year doesn't have to be monotonous - I want people to always mix it up using different spices and preparations.

Even just a few spices or ethnic condiments that you can keep in your pantry can turn your mundane dishes into a culinary masterpiece.

I don't have memories of Ethiopia as a child. I didn't learn about Ethiopian culture until after I moved to New York and started meeting people from the Ethiopian community.

We know so much about the European food story, and we're getting to know about the American food story; but we know so little about the African food story.

You have to balance, but you can be aggressive as a chef. It benefits the food. You have to be passionate. You can't be angry cooking.

Criticism is part of the creative man's journey, and I appreciate it.

Healthy can be the new good. Eating delicious should not be sacrificed because it's healthy.

There shouldn't be an announcement that divides our food between what tastes good and what is good for us.

As an adopted person, once you find out about that 'other' side of yourself, it's almost like you find out who you really are.

I learned from my grandmother, who grew up in devastating war times, how important it is to keep with tradition and celebrate the holidays during tough times.

I love using rice as a flour; I'll grind roasted rice and dip fish in that. It gives a beautiful, crunchy texture.

Like all food, whether you're talking about Persian food, or Chinese food, or Swedish food, it's always a reflection of wars, trading, a bunch of good and a bunch of bad. But what's left is always the food story.

I started cooking for the love of cooking, and I am going to keep cooking whether there's a celebrity aspect to it or not.

To become a good cook is to know yourself, and I, at this point, know myself. I know myself, and I know the cook I want to be and the cook I am striving to be.

While eating gluten-free may help you lose weight initially because it eliminates baked goods, one has to be smart when choosing replacement options because the gluten-free versions often have the same number of calories.

I want people to understand my journey and to be inspired by that. You can be an immigrant, and if you work really hard, you can have your own restaurant.

Although I believe affection and romance should be shown all year around, it's always smart to have a good plan up your sleeve for Valentine's Day.

Without food, we cannot survive, and that is why issues that affect the food industry are so important.

Every time you use the word 'healthy,' you lose. The key is to make yummy, delicious food that happens to be healthy.

If you get hungry mid-day, a banana is the best snack at your desk, after a workout, or in between classes. Fruit is a very good snack in general.

Salad can get a bad rap. People think of bland and watery iceberg lettuce, but in fact, salads are an art form, from the simplest rendition to a colorful kitchen-sink approach.

There has long been a debate in the aid community and in Africa about how to most effectively help situations of poverty in developing nations and underprivileged communities.

Most people cringe at the thought of a casserole.

I feel like there's a lot of tasks in cooking that I want to master, that I want to do better.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite American traditions. I quickly picked it up when I moved to the U.S. from Sweden.

I can take a lot of pride that I can launch cookbooks and there's an audience out there that supports that.

I love cookbooks for completely different reasons. I love 'The Harry's Bar Cookbook' and Marco-Pierre White's 'White Heat' for their feel. For pure learning, Gray Kunz wrote a great cookbook, 'The Elements of Taste', published in 2001. The first time I read Charlie Trotter's, the Chicago chef's first cookbook, I was blown away.

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday - it's a day that's American to the core and it's a day that's all about what and how we eat.

As a chef and activist, I'm particularly concerned with food politics issues such as the farm bill.

I have never seen a picture of my mother. My mother's family never owned a photograph of her, which tells you everything you need to know about where I'm from and what the world was like for the people who gave me life.

Taking dishes straight off the restaurant's menu and putting them into a cookbook doesn't work, because as a chef you have your own vision of what your food is, but you can't always explain it. Or you can't pick recipes that best illustrate who and where you are and what you're doing. And if the recipes don't work, you don't have a book.

In the hot summer months, popsicles are a perfect way to cool down while enjoying a delicious, fruity treat. Frozen, refreshing, mouth-friendly candy on a stick cannot get any better... or can it?

Most of my education has been around food.

I love Thanksgiving because it's a holiday that is centered around food and family, two things that are of utmost importance to me.

If it's done really well, you don't want big portions because you think, 'That was so fulfilling. I'm not stuffed. I feel great.'

I'm engaged in food on so many levels, and I love that. So my work, my craft, is around food, and writing is one aspect of it; communicating a narrative, cooking online is one aspect of it; solving the food chasm that we have in Harlem and finding a farmers market is another one, and all of them are equally exciting for me.

I think it's very expensive to not eat healthy. Eating healthy is the only affordable option we have left.

For many of us, clean water is so plentiful and readily available that we rarely, if ever, pause to consider what life would be like without it.

Spices, of course, are essential.

They say never trust a skinny chef, but the fact is, to stay healthy when you're a chef means you have to work twice as hard.

Being an Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised chef, there's nothing traditional about my Thanksgiving spread.

I would love to take a cooking class from Gandhi. Maybe I could teach him how to cook, and he could teach me his message. I wouldn't mind learning how to make couscous from scratch from a North African woman, either.

Food has always been in my life. Being born in Ethiopia, where there was a lack of food, and then really cooking with my grandmother Helga in Sweden. And my grandmother Helga was a cook's cook.

Simple ingredients can be used to make elegant dishes with just a little extra attention to detail.

I stand behind everything I've done.

Weekends are sacred for me. They're the perfect time to relax and spend time with family and friends.

It wasn't until I came to New York and started to see the African American community, but also the Ethiopian community here, and started to eat the food, started to understand the music. I said, you know, I got to go and understand the culture. So me and my sister went.

As a chef, I could not wash my hands - nor clean pots, pans, utensils, meats or produce, nor make soups and sauces - if I did not have clean water. Were this to happen, of course, these would be the least of my concerns. Because water is the linchpin of survival: without it, not much else matters.

I'm an American chef. I'm American. I live here. I love being here. But, of course, it is different. A black man's journey is different.

We struggle with eating healthily, obesity, and access to good nutrition for everyone. But we have a great opportunity to get on the right side of this battle by beginning to think differently about the way that we eat and the way that we approach food.

I love having a croissant and a great cup of coffee. Just one cup.

I get so tickled when that pilot happens to be an African American because I rarely see that. The same is true when I go to find restaurants. I mean, most places I go, I kind of have some idea who the chef is, which is why I want to go.

For decades, many blacks were reluctant to pursue a profession that was associated with servitude. If you went to school, it was to become a lawyer or doctor. Older generations didn't understand why one would spend money to learn how to chop, peel, dice, and saute vegetables when that trade could be taught at home.

I had great schooling, and my parents were always in front of me, or next to me, or behind me, making sure I had whatever I needed.