It's okay if you finish cooking something easy after your guests arrive - some dishes must be prepared a la minute, as chefs say. Just remember to keep talking.

I cook everything. I love Mediterranean cooking, I love Asian cooking. I do lots of Japanese noodles.

Two words to improve any dish. Ba, Con

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.

Cooking for people is an enormously significant expression of generosity and soulfulness.

People want honest, flavourful food, not some show-off meal that takes days to prepare.

However, I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire, and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

My place in Chicago is a 105 year old house, but I really like contemporary spaces too, so it's refreshing and fun to be in a space where you can do contemporary things.

If I have committed any culinary atrocities, please forgive me.

In actuality, there was casting for the show and it was pretty difficult.

My head phones always allow me to listen to myself

Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art.

Every single soul is a poem.

The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.

Longing is like a seed that wrestles in the ground

I always give the encore over to chaos, so people can yell out requests and I can hack my way through a song that I don't really know anymore.

It's one of the oldest theatrical adages: never work with children or animals.

Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.

All the world is competent to judge my pictures except those who are of my profession.