I always thought that family was the most important thing in life, and no matter what I do, whether being a chef or an actor or a dancer, being a dad is what I do best.
If I didn't ever model? I would be back in Kansas. I would probably end up being a pastry chef. My grandma taught me how to make a pie.
In an Indian kitchen, the focus is on getting the job or dish done right in whatever way possible; however, in a French kitchen there's a clear hierarchy, and a chef has to know where their skills are and not go beyond them.
Japanese chefs believe our soul goes into our knives once we start using them. You wouldn't put your soul in a dishwasher!
I remember when I was in college, I used to watch Julia Child's cooking show during dinner and joke with my roommates about becoming a TV chef.
One of the things is challenging yourself to do a Rome show when everybody's done a Rome show. To find some aspect of food culture or chef culture that people can look at in a new way.
I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.
I think D.C. has always been very, very vibrant for food. Like Boston in a way. Boston and D.C. were really the two cities that were the most active with their local chefs and their local food scene.
While some people may think being a chef only entails making enticing dishes and pushing the culinary boundaries, being a part of the food industry involves much more.
As a chef, I always have in mind how to properly feed the public, but at times it's easy to forget that some people have trouble even getting any food, much less adequate nutrition.
I'm the joke of the family with cooking because I've never done it - primarily because I've been surrounded by people who are so good at it. Mum's brilliant. Boyfriends have always been good at it. I'm waiting for my inner chef to be released.
My husband is the chef of the family; he's a brilliant cook. Actually, it makes you quite lazy when you have somebody that's so good at cooking under the same roof. It's all beans or spaghetti when I'm left to run it.
Pastry is different from cooking because you have to consider the chemistry, beauty and flavor. It's not just sugar and eggs thrown together. I tell my pastry chefs to be in tune for all of this. You have to be challenged by using secret or unusual i...
I was once in a long relationship with a man who ran a vintage clothes store but had been a chef, so I'd come home each night to a different three-course meal. I was quite fat, but so happy.
My dad was a master butcher and I trained to be a butcher when I left school. I didn't enjoy it at the time but I love cooking now, so perhaps I would have been a chef.
Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately.
I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them.
The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.
They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.
Everybody these days wants to be a star, including myself. Don't get me wrong, I'm a chef but you want to market yourself and your projects.
Shows like 'Top Chef,' 'Hell's Kitchen' have helped bring attention to the culinary world on a whole, but you have to be cautious it doesn't get out of hand.
