A Quote by Yotam Ottolenghi

When I cook a meal, I like to serve things one by one and keep them separate. I get that from my father - he's such a purist. Some people even put their desserts on the main plate. It's just wrong.
I'll tell you something about tough things. They just about kill you, but if you decide to keep working at them, you'll find the way through. On the Food Network they have these shows where cooks have to put a meal together with all these weird ingredients. That's a lot like my life-dealing with things you wouldn't think ever go together. But a good cook can make the best meal out of the craziest combinations.
My mom's always been a good cook, so I took a lot of stuff from her, but most of the stuff I took from Emeril or Bobby Flay right off the TV and make it. I just loved to cook, so it just became a thing. It's a release. Even if I'm alone, I'll cook a full meal, maybe even a two-course meal, just because I love to cook. It's my secret love!
When you're used to getting just a piece of bread for a meal, you don't realize that you can ask for a plate of pasta. You have never seen a plate of pasta. You don't even know it exists. So, to ask for it is totally out of your reality. Hopefully, at some point, either someone shows you a plate of pasta, you read about it, or you hear about it enough so that it becomes real, and it's not just a fantasy anymore, and then you start thinking "Hey, I want that pasta."
We've overmedicated kids. Quite frankly, some of the overmedication of kids are because welfare moms want to get additional benefits, and if they can put them on SSI through maintenance drugs, they can also put them on Social Security disability and get a separate check. That is wrong on every single level.
You ever go out to a restaurant now? You can get quality food - you can go out and get the best food that was available 20 years ago. They'll put it on a plate, you'll sit in a plastic chair because nobody values the chair, the white tablecloth, the maître d', but they'll put on your plate some great food for what used to be available at Applebee's prices. There are some really nice things going on, some external values being delivered to people.
I'm in the game of spinning plates. I'm spinning a boxing plate. I'm spinning a Tae Kwon Do plate. I'm spinning a Jujitsu plate. I'm spinning a freestyle wrestling plate. I'm spinning a karate plate. If I was to put all them down and have one boxing plate spinning, it would be like a load off my shoulders.
I can cook, but I also want everything to look beautiful on the plate - then I get upset when people eat it. Everyone just tears through it, and that makes me sad. It's not a rewarding experience for me to cook.
And so I put down some of the things that he said, about keeping your tools sharpened and not letting them lie on the ground where they get hurt or get abused and dirty and can't find them. And some thoughts about how his father used to do things.
My father would get up with his plate after dinner and keep it where it was supposed to be kept. He wouldn't leave the plate for my mom to pick up.
I'm kind of a purist and I actually just want to be a good player, with that said though... I probably should get a little more involved in that as that's what people are doing and making great songs out of their computer so it's kind of like, at what point does purist become arrogance?
I don't know how to cook and there's so much work involved you have to buy the groceries and prepare them. I like it when people cook for me, or I'll just order some take-out.
I think, when I was younger, I was cooking to impress. Sometimes the dish would have 15 things on the plate. That's cooking only for yourself. As you get more mature, you take all the superfluous things away, and you get the essential flavor. Now I cook for people, not for myself.
People who hardly ever cook at all, suddenly at the holidays, feel like it's their responsibility to not only cook dinner for large groups of people suddenly, but to serve things that are fussy or fancy or formal. And I don't think that's what anybody really wants, especially if you're not good at it.
Take any person, put them in the wrong environment, and they can get off to some pretty bad things. Warren Buffett has said that he would not like to get into debt because he doesn't want to discover what behavior he's capable of.
Once a month we have 'dessert for dinner' night. I'll make four separate desserts. They'll come home from school and eat as much cake and custard and ice cream as they can physically get in their guts. Because sometimes I think, let them just be children.
I just wanted to give them the 'Lost Jewelry' so they can say, 'Yo, they get that's mean.' And then when I tell 'em, 'Yo, that ain't even the meal. Get ready for the meal!' That's when we 'bout to go crazy because the taste of the appetizer.
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