Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.

As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery, the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.

When you cut that eggplant up and you roast it in the oven and you make the tomato sauce and you put it on top, your soul is in that food, and there's something about that that can never be made by a company that has three million employees.

Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.

Shop often, shop hard, and spend for the best stuff available - logic dictates that you can make delicious food only with delicious ingredients.

Unlike curing cancer or heart disease, we already know how to beat hunger: food.

I was at a party, and some squiggly looking dude with a bow tie came up and said, 'How'd you like to be on TV?' Turns out he was the programming guy at the Food Network. They had me come into the office, and I did a 'Ready, Set, Cook' with Emeril Lagasse, I believe.

Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.

My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.

When I was growing up in Mississippi - it was good Southern food... but I also grew up with a Greek family when other kids were eating fried okra, we were eating steamed artichokes. So I think it played a big part in my healthy cooking.