Cooks Quotes & Sayings

No one who cooks cooks alone. — Laurie Colwin

I can cook, I can breathe, I can live! — Sophia Loren

The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors. When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world. — Frances Power Cobbe

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible. — Mario Batali

I ate, boy. Early this morning. Some awful fish soup. The cooks should be hanged for that. No one should face fish first thing in the morning. — Robin Hobb

Matt: I know you can cook. Meredith: What makes you so sure? Matt: Because less than an hour ago, you set me on fire. — Judith McNaught

Well, I think one of the problems with 'Birds of Prey' was there were too many cooks in that kitchen. The studio, the producers, the network, all had very different visions of what that should be. They should have just let Laeta Kalogridis control that. Instead they decided to try to get their hands in the mix. — Melissa Rosenberg

I'm a professional cook. I've worked with other cooks from all over the world, but my family is not that way - they're always lived within 25 miles of my hometown! — Paul Prudhomme

I love having Phil [Robertson] in the kitchen! Not only is he a great cook, but it means less work for me! — Kay Robertson

In all my work I like to convey the fact that I like cooks, that it's noble toil and that it is hard. — Rocco DiSpirito

The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went. — Saki

Daddy Jack and Fanny don't care what I do as long as I stay out of the kitchen. She looms over the stove, madly coating everything she cooks with cayenne pepper and several shakes of Tabasco. — Frances Mayes

Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature. — Michael Fassbender

Behind Chipotle is not a corporation; behind Chipotle is a man that is one of the great cooks, that created a great concept. — Jose Andres

If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything. — Michael Symon

Like parents, cooks shouldn't have favourites, but some recipes inevitably shine more than others. — Yotam Ottolenghi

"And I stole some oxen jerky out of Bercelak's bag. He makes the best oxen jerky."
"Bercelak the Vengeful cooks?"
"Aye. And he's surprisingly good at it, too! — G.A. Aiken

Pizzerias in big cities benefit from Italian natives or descendants thereof, people who understand that real pizza comes from Naples where the crusts are thin and the toppings simple. Samantha's favorite was Lazio's, a hole-in-the-wall in Tribeca where the cooks yelled in Italian as they baked the crusts in brick ovens. Like most things in her life these days, Lazio's was far away. So was the pizza. The only place in Brady to get one to go was a sub shop in a cheap strip mall. Pizza Hut, along with most other national chains, had not penetrated deep into the small towns of Appalachia. — John Grisham

Most cooks try to learn by making dishes. Doesn't mean you can cook. It means you can make that dish. When you can cook is when you can go to a farmers market, buy a bunch of stuff, then go home and make something without looking at a recipe. Now you're cooking. — Tom Colicchio

The longer the sauce cooks, the spicier it gets. — Barbara Kingsolver

It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him. — Robertson Davies

Always explore your garden and go to the market before you decide what cook. — Alice Waters

Now, why was diagonal cutting better than cutting straight across? Because the corner of a triangularly cut slice gave you an ideal first bite. In the case of rectangular toast, you had to angle the shape into your mouth, as you angle a big dresser through a hall doorway: you had to catch one corner of your mouth with one corner of the toast and then carefully turn the toast, drawing the mouth open with it so that its other edge could clear; only then did you chomp down. Also, with a diagonal slice, most of the tapered bite was situated right up near the front of your mouth, where you wanted it to be as you began to chew; with the rectangular slice, a burdensome fraction was riding out of control high on the dome of the tongue. One subway stop before mine, I concluded that there had been logic behind the progress away from the parallel and toward the diagonal cut, and that the convention was not, as it might first have appeared, merely an affection of short-order cooks. — Nicholson Baker

God made food; the devil the cooks. — James Joyce

When our gifts are remembered and lived, we discard the idea that happiness requires an ideal life in which we are comparatively the best. Many beautiful and enjoyable things are messy and far from ideal. Some of the greatest cooks have the messiest of kitchens, and beautiful gardens are the result of sweat and dirt. As we move closer to our essence, we better understand that we can have a wonderful life in the absence of perfection. — Robert A. Giacalone

Both my parents are chefs ... I grew up in a restaurant and was always surrounded by cooks. I love food. — Ming-Na Wen

Tyrion Lannister: Someone should tell the cooks that turnips isn't a meat. — George R R Martin

Writing is a lot like making soup. My subconscious cooks the idea, but I have to sit down at the computer to pour it out. — Robin Wells

She did not so much cook as assassinate food. — Storm Jameson

Bad cooks - and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen - have delayed human development longest and impaired it most. — Friedrich Nietzsche

So sell the Hummer, buy a Dodge, and move into a trailer. (Wulf)
Oh, yeah, right. Remember when I traded the Hummer for an Alpha Romeo last year? You burned the car and bought me a new Hummer and threatened to lock me in my room with a hooker if I ever did it again. And as for the perks ... Have you bothered to look around this place? We have a heated indoor pool, a theater with surround sound, two cooks, three maids, and a pool guy I get to boss around, not to mention all kinds of other fun toys. I'm not about to leave Disneyland. It's the only good part in this arrangement. I mean, hell, if my life has to suck there's no way I'm going to live in the Mini-Winni. Which knowing you, you'd make me park out front anyway with armed guards standing watch in case I get a hangnail. (Chris) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves. — Daniel Defoe

I cook and I chat. That's what I do. I love to write recipes, but basically, if you had to put it in a nutshell, I cook and I chat. — Rachael Ray

If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant? — Martin Scorsese

I guess that from the moment we are fed by our mothers, without even knowing it, we are caught in a net that brings us comfort, something we always feel when a special woman cooks for us. It is something unique and personal - it is something we want to keep for ourselves. — Jose Andres

Cooks must feed their egos as well as their customers ... — M.F.K. Fisher

If your woman picks your ducks, and she cooks and carries her Bible ... now there's the complete package of womanhood. — Phil Robertson

I could stay here, I thought, make money at the track while she nurses me over the bad moments, rubs oils on my body, cooks for me, talks to me, goes to bed with me. — Charles Bukowski

Jared's lips quirked up. "Are you sure Benji won't greet me in the morning with a shotgun?"
"Not if you make him french toast. He'll totally sell me out for someone who cooks. — Amy Lane

Cooks are an undervalued, awesome profession. — Tom Douglas

It's just about asking why. We as cooks historically have been very, very technically proficient but not technically informed as to why we do what we do. Modernist cuisine is about that knowledge. — Wylie Dufresne

The same fire that cooks a meal for us may burn a child, and it is no fault of the fire if it does so; the difference lies in the way in which it is used. — Swami Vivekananda

Adding chocolate chips to almost anything aside from cookies - pancakes, banana bread, etc. - is just an apology for making an inferior product. "Oh, these are my chocolate-chip pancakes!" Well, then you don't make good pancakes on their own. You can't hide behind a thin veil of chocolate forever, home cooks of America. — Bryan Bishop

Today, women in general are more likely to do housework than men - cooking and cleaning. But why is that? Is it because women are born with a cooking gene or because over years they have been socialized to see cooking as their role? I was going to say that perhaps women are born with a cooking gene until I remembered that the majority of famous cooks in the world - who are given the fancy title of "chef" - are men. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I imagine the proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth can be applied to writing as well as anything else. The poetical or literary broth is better cooked by one person. — Barbara Pym

I don't cook. I respect food too much. — Eva Mendes

He hadn't moved. All the crazy-hot activity in the kitchen - waitresses going in and out, cooks going back and forth, the constant thump of barbecue being hand-chopped - and he was so still. She had to quickly turn away. Staring at an Alexander man too long was like staring at the sun. The image became imprinted. You could close your eyes and still see him. — Sarah Addison Allen

At Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet Academy, I studied under a brilliant and fiery teacher. This tiny, stuttering old man flew into a rage if his students' white socks failed to reach mid-calf level. Nor could he tolerate floppy hair. We wore hairnets to class - an athletic brigade of short order cooks. — Sascha Radetsky

I think Pete Sampras has really reached his peak. About the only thing he doesn't do is cook. — Michael Chang

I live to eat - when someone else cooks for me. — Saffron Aldridge

Scalia would bring the spoils of a recent hunting trip. "Scalia kills it and Marty cooks it," said guest and former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson in 2007. "I never heard them talk about anything political or ideological, because there would be no point, — Irin Carmon

Everybody eats, everybody learns to cook — Jim Bob Duggar

The fact is that it takes more than ingredients and technique to cook a good meal. A good cook puts something of himself into the preparation - he cooks with enjoyment, anticipation, spontaneity, and he is willing to experiment. — Pearl Bailey

It is a very great mistake to suppose, as a few English cooks still do, that spaghetti and macaroni should be soaked in water before cooking. — Elizabeth David

It's not like I'm out eating McDonald's and Del Taco every night. I eat good: my mom fixes dinner every single night - baked chicken, fish - she cooks a great meal every single night. — Bryce Harper

I hope the cooks who are working for me now are getting that kind of experience so they can use what they're learning now as a foundation for a great career. — Thomas Keller

'Kitchen Confidential' wasn't a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia. — Anthony Bourdain

Simon shook his head."Look,do you know what you want to eat,or do you just want me to keep pushing this cart up and down aisles because it amuses you?"
"That and I'm not really familiar with what they sell in mundane grocery stores.Maryse usually cooks or we order in food."said Jace — Cassandra Clare

The Ecuadorian, Mexican, Dominican and Salvadorian cooks I've worked with over the years make most CIA-educated white boys look like clumsy, sniveling little punks. In — Anthony Bourdain

Dashi remains unfamiliar to most French and American cooks, who tend to reach for a bouillon cube to do many of the same things. But dashi is worth preparing and using the way the Japanese do: for poaching fish, as a soup base, and in simmered dishes. — Nobu Matsuhisa

The more the merrier. Too many cooks spoil the broth of destruction. — Gareth Roberts

Remember!
When you tell a woman that she cooks something very good; you will be fucked by eating it three times a day. — M.F. Moonzajer

I was aiming for the cooks that I've talked to by teaching an online course and by traveling, listening to people who are really busy and harried but want to be cooking. — Sally Schneider

Nobody cooks using just one ingredient. Why would you write using just one flavor of story? — Patrick Rothfuss

I'm not much of cook, but I cook a mean bowl of oatmeal. — Mahershala Ali

I would probably never have learned to cook. — Elizabeth David

The planet will continue to cook. — Paul Krugman

There you see how absurd the reactions of the so-called markets are. For a long time, Italy was run by one of the most unprofessional politicians anywhere. But there wasn't much pressure in terms of speculation. Now, in Mario Monti, Italy has the kind of leader you usually only get in Hollywood movies, a distinguished professor who won't even accept a cook at his residence, the Palazzo Chigi. Instead Monti's wife cooks their pasta herself - and this is the man the markets don't trust. — Martin Schulz

Do you know what happens, Etienne," says Madame Manec from the other side of the kitchen, "when you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water?" "You will tell us, I am sure." "It jumps out. But do you know what happens when you put the frog in a pot of cool water and then slowly bring it to a boil? You know what happens then?" Marie-Laure waits. The potatoes steam. Madame Manec says, "The frog cooks." ========== — Anonymous

Chef Thomas Keller was an inspiration to me and many, many young cooks like me. He told us that the role of the new, modern chef is different. — David Chang

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks / Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks / The founder's you; the table is this place / The carvers we; the prologue is the grace / Each act a course, each scene, a different dish. — George Farquhar

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected with the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be- musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors- but "somebody": to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring not quiet and self-fulfillment, but self-glorification and self-expansion — Anthony De Mello

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks. — Lin Yutang

Give two cooks the same ingredients and the same recipe; it is fascinating to observe how, like handwriting, their results differ. After you cook a dish repeatedly, you begin to understand it. Then you can reinvent it a bit and make it yours. A written recipe can be useful, but sometimes the notes scribbled in the margin are the key to a superlative rendition. Each new version may inspire improvisation based on fresh understanding. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as all that, but such exciting minor epiphanies keep cooking lively. — David Tanis

When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks. — H.L. Mencken

I have a problem with the new cooks: you all are more cultured, you cook better ... but you're lazier. — Juan Mari Arzak

When you ate her tuna casserole, you didn't talk or flip through a National Geographic. Your eyes and ears stayed inside your mouth. Your whole world kept inside your mouth, feeling and careful for the little balled-up tinfoils Irene Casey would hide in the tuna parts. A side effect of eating slow was, you naturally, genuinely tasted, and the food tasted better. Could be other ladies were better cooks, but you'd never notice. — Chuck Palahniuk

Nicole craved sweets. Her list included peach pie, rhubarb pie, and pumpkin pie, all of which would be on hand the following week for the Fourth of July cookout on the bluff, so she knew Quinnie cooks would have their recipe cards nearby. In addition to pies, she wanted recipes for blueberry cobbler, apple crisp, molasses Indian pudding, Isobel Skane's chocolate almond candy, and, of course, Melissa Parker's marble macadamia brownies. — Barbara Delinsky

What does happen in 'Gourmet,' we had eight test kitchens, and at any given time, there were, like, ten or twelve test cooks. And whenever anybody finished something, they would yell, 'Taste!' and everyone would go running towards it, and then taste, and then brutally deconstruct the dish. — Ruth Reichl

In New York, we're always confined with spaces. Our restaurants are difficult to navigate as cooks and to operate. We fight against the buildings we run in New York. — David Chang

Frying gives cooks numerous ways of concealing what appeared the day before and in a pinch facilitates sudden demands, for it takes little more time to fry a four-pound carp than to boil an egg. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

...anyone who willingly turns their life upside down by becoming a cook is totally insane to begin with. So many chefs that I have met are dyslexic and totally not school people or intellectuals. That could be symbolic of the kind of lifestyle that they choose to live. They all drink a lot, do a lot of drugs, drink a shitload of coffee and espresso. They don't sleep much, and obviously don't have much of a life outside the kitchen. A cook's friend is a cook, there isn't much time for a non-cook friend or girlfriend. And time really isn't the issue so much as it's a lifestyle and a culture that is very hard to understand or identify with unless you are on the inside. Cooks hang out with cooks because there is nobody else awake, hungry and totally wired at 2am on a Tuesday. — Jennifer Topper

Anyone can cook but only the fearless can be great. — Brad Garrett

The very common error of young or unconfident cooks is to keep putting more of their own personal ideology into a plate until there's so much noise that you really can't even hear a tune. You can say more in an empty space than you can in a crowded one. — Mario Batali

When you cook, you never stop learning.
That's the fascination of it all. — James Beard

I love to cook; I cook every day. Chicken features a lot in our lives. — Kate Winslet

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful ... You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. — Doris Lessing

Cupcakes The first time you bake cupcakes, you will certainly follow the recipe with rigor. The third time, you might improvise and screw up. Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can. At this point, by the fifth time, some people actually learn to bake. They improvise successfully. They understand the science and the outcomes. They develop a kind of gracefulness in the kitchen. Others merely plod along. They're cooks, not chefs. A cook follows a recipe. A chef invents one. We have too many cooks. The world is begging for chefs. — Seth Godin

Cook more often. Don't study; just cook. — Masaharu Morimoto

The range of ingredients available to home cooks has expanded dramatically. People are incorporating herbs and spices like lemongrass, smoked Mexican chile, sumac, and za'atar mix. — Yotam Ottolenghi

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth. — Melvin Maddocks

Too many cooks might wreck the whole dish. — Stieg Larsson

New York has magnificent eating available, both in restaurants and in the materials available to home cooks in the many specialty markets. — Steve Albini

The world has too few modest fry cooks and far too many self-important professors. — Dean Koontz

Forgiveness is the oil that love cooks in. — Ron Moore

I wasn't the most confident of cooks, but I just persevered, and I wanted to learn, and I wanted to be a sponge, and I wanted to be better than the next person, and I wanted to learn as much as I could, so I just kept pushing, and it took me a long time actually to be confident in my technique and my ability as a cook. — April Bloomfield

The food that comes in Tuesday is fresh, the station prep is new, and the chef is well rested after a Sunday or a Monday off. It's the real start of the new week, when you've got the goodwill of the kitchen on your side. Fridays and Saturdays, the food is fresh, but it's busy, so the chef and cooks can't pay as much attention to your food as they - and you - might like. — Anthony Bourdain

Most cooks would not, for example, prepare an important, elaborate, and difficult dish on the back-burner. Neither should we relegate the cultivation and preparation of happiness for a position where it is both hard to reach and difficult to infuse with new ingredients. — Gina Barreca

After two undefeated seasons of 'Worst Cooks in America,' I'm ready for a third. Going against Bobby Flay takes the challenge to another level, but I'm ready to whip these contestants into shape and the winner is sure to be from Team Burrell. — Anne Burrell

3.6.40: From a letter from Lady Oxford15 to the Daily Telegraph, on the subject of war economies: "Since most London houses are deserted there is little entertaining ... in any case, most people have to part with their cooks and live in hotels." Apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist. — George Orwell