There is a unique freshness when eating buckwheat noodles cold with plenty of herbs and citrus acidity. I can't think of any better use of chopsticks on a hot and sweaty evening.
Infants have around 30,000 tastebuds, only about a third of which survive into adulthood, so a child's sensitivity towards extremes of sweet, sour and bitter flavours is heightened.
Just-poached vegetables show off their natural attributes and taste fresh and light in a way you never get with roasting or frying.
Polenta is to northern Italy what bread is to Tuscany, what pasta is to Emilia-Romagna and what rice is to the Veneto: easy to make, hungry to absorb other flavours, and hugely versatile.
When it comes to cooking pasta, the first essential is to make sure you have a big enough pot: it needs room to roll in the water while cooking.
I have to admit that I can't take a whole fig and eat it on its own as I would a peach or mango. It's just too much.
I now understand how varied the world of cultivated rice is; that rice can play the lead or be a sidekick; that brown rice is as valuable as white; and that short-grain rice is the bee's knees.
As with lemon juice, the more sorrel you use, the more it has to be balanced with something sweet, starchy or creamy - it's a yin-yang approach to cooking that I find rather calming.
Leeks, like other oniony things, reach a certain peak when fried. It's the subtle sweetness that suddenly becomes evident and works so well with their creamy texture.
Hardly any of my most memorable meals have been eaten in a restaurant, and definitely none in one of those fancy marble-floored, polished-silver establishments.
As for pineapple, it's far more versatile than you might think, and certainly merits wider use than in Hawaiian pizzas and pina coladas and on cheesy cocktail sticks.
Though not a true cereal but a fruit, buckwheat seeds resemble cereal grains and are often used in a similar way to rice, barley, bulgar or quinoa, usually as a side dish.
Barberries, or zereshk, are tiny dried red fruit with a tremendously sharp flavour. They come from Iran, where they're used to add freshness to rice and chicken dishes.
Stuffed vine leaves tend to burn and/or stick when you cook them. To avoid this, use a heavy based pan lined with a few layers of second-rate leaves.
Nearly all edible seaweeds - or 'sea vegetables,' as they ought technically to be called - belong to one of three broad groups: green, red and brown algae.
Like brown rice, black rice is unmilled, and it is the dark outer husk that makes it so nutty and chewy. It's also why it takes longer to cook than many other rices.
Poaching white fish in moderately hot oil guarantees soft-textured flesh and allows you to prepare a sauce calmly, without the usual panic about overcooking the fish.
On some subconscious level, I've been prejudiced against turnips, parsnips, swedes and other roots. Do they taste of much? Are they really special? How wrong I was.
When I was younger, I behaved a bit strangely sometimes - lost my temper, did silly things - but little by little, I've gotten better. As a chef, I think you need to do a lot of work on yourself and your temperament.
But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.
Chefs have only been able to work in restaurants, high-end cuisine. Why? Why haven't they been able to find other scenarios? For those chefs who want to do avant-garde cuisine, should they be finding their income in a restaurant?
