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I've Been Lucky Enough In 20 Years In The Media To Have A Nice Soap Box That Put Me In A Position To Describe To An American Viewership That Tuscany Is Different From Umbria, And It's Different From Emilia-romagna And, Not That That Was News, But It Was Never Presented To Them In A Way That Was, "hey, Look. This Is A Different Plate From That Different Place." And Although We All Think Of "spaghetti, Lasagna, Ciao," As What Italy Is All About, There's All Of This Great Stuff... I Was Merely An Interpreter. I Wasn't The Developer Of The Content.

-Mario Batali

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I've Been Lucky Enough

Mario Batali

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I've Been Lucky Enough In 20 Years In The Media To Have A Nice Soap Box That Put Me In A Position To Describe To An American Viewership That Tuscany Is Different From Umbria, And It's Different From Emilia-romagna And, Not That That Was News, But It Was Never Presented To Them In A Way That Was, "hey, Look. This Is A Different Plate From That Different Place." And Although We All Think Of "spaghetti, Lasagna, Ciao," As What Italy Is All About, There's All Of This Great Stuff... I Was Merely An Interpreter. I Wasn't The Developer Of The Content.

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Look At Cookbooks With Your Kids And Ask Them What Sounds Good.

Recipes Are Just Descriptions Of One Person’s Take On One Moment In Time. They’re Not Rules.

My Last Meal? The Food Would Be Much Less Significant Than The Company.

The Passion Of The Italian Or The Italian-american Population Is Endless For Food And Lore And Everything About It.

Are We Darwinists - Where We Live And Let Live? Or Are We Nurturing As A Society? There Has To Be A Standard Of Living That We Decide To Support.

Live And Let Live

The Difference Between 'molto Italiano' And 'the Babbo Cookbook' Is That The Ingredient Lists In 'molto' Are About Half Or Even A Third The Size. In 'babbo,' They Are Very Long, They Are Very Real. That's Exactly How We Make Them In The Restaurant.

I've Been Lucky Enough In 20 Years In The Media To Have A Nice Soap Box That Put Me In A Position To Describe To An American Viewership That Tuscany Is Different From Umbria, And It's Different From Emilia-romagna And, Not That That Was News, But It Was Never Presented To Them In A Way That Was, "hey, Look. This Is A Different Plate From That Different Place." And Although We All Think Of "spaghetti, Lasagna, Ciao," As What Italy Is All About, There's All Of This Great Stuff... I Was Merely An Interpreter. I Wasn't The Developer Of The Content.

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.

Michigan Is My Antidote To Manhattan. This Is Where I Come To Relax.

Indianapolis Versus Denver Would Not Be A Great One Gastronomically.

Larousse Gastronomique Is A Veritable Dictionary Of Cooking Terms For The French Kitchen. If A Chef Were Allowed Only One Book, This Would Have To Be It.

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.

I Am Happiest When I Am With My Wife, Susi, And Our Two Boys Exploring And Loving Something For The First Time.

To Eat The Boiled Head Of A Pig Sliced Like Salami Is Very Strange. It May Seem Cutting Edge, But It's Actually A Lot Older Than Any Of The Other Traditional Salami.

If I Hear Something's Not Quite Going Right, Then I'm There Quicker Than If I Hear Something's Going Wrong.

Find Something You Love, Because If You Love What You Do, You'll Never Spend A Day At Work.

Something You Love

I Think Any Way Of Getting People Into The Field By Lowering The Threshold Of The Cost To Get Them To Play, Is Great. That Said, There's All These Restaurants Around That Are Very Popular That Have One Menu. And They Don't Even Have Tables, And They Don't Even Have Backs On Their Chairs. It's Not Really The Experience I'm After, But I'm Happy They Exist.

I Love Simple Food. I Like To Serve The Entire Animal, Not Only Because It Somehow Provokes A Customer To Think About It, But Also Because To Honor Of The Animal That Has Been Killed For Us To Eat, You Have To Eat The Whole Thing. It Would Be Silly To Just Eat The Chops And Throw Everything Else Away.

Shop Often, Shop Hard, And Spend For The Best Stuff Available - Logic Dictates That You Can Make Delicious Food Only With Delicious Ingredients.

I Come From An Italian Family. One Of The Greatest And Most Profound Expressions We Would Ever Use In Conversations Or Arguments Was A Slamming Door. The Slamming Door Was Our Punctuation Mark.

Bologna Is The Best City In Italy For Food And Has The Least Number Of Tourists. With Its Medieval Beauty, It Has It All.

Jimmy Fallon And I Play Regularly At The Bayonne Golf Club In Jersey. He's Eighteen Holes Of Fun. Any Time We Play He Has Moments Of Brilliance, But Also Moments Of Utter Catastrophe.

When You Add Just A Little Bit [of Tabasco] At The End, What You Taste Is The Spectrum Between The Cooked Chile Flavor And The Kind Of Nearly Raw, Just Kind Of Fermented Chile Flavor At The End.

Reading Is A Key Feature In The Life Of Every Single Successful Person I Have Ever Met.

If You Go To Italy And You Drive From The Airport To The Town, There Isn't 30 Square Feet That Isn't Planted By Someone. Even Next To The Train Tracks, They See The Joy Of The Interaction With The Planet As Integral To The Experience. The Idea That You Can Get Free Arugula Just By Planting Seeds... Because It Will Regrow Itself The Next Year. We've Come A Long Way From Foraging To Now Planting. The Next Step Of That Will Be Continuing That Expansion Of Planting And Really Owning The Crops.

The Perfect Recipe For A Margarita Is 2 Ounces Tequila, 2 Ounces Fresh Lime Juice, 1 Ounce Cointreau, And A Tiny Splash Of Some Kind Of An Agave Or Orange Juice.

Breakfast Is The Best Time For Me To Figure Out What My Kids Are Doing. Right After You Wake Them Up At Breakfast, You Pepper Them With Questions. You Can Get In There Because They're Not Protecting What They Thought Was Cool: "what Happened Yesterday?" "oh, Matthew Stole My Book And Ran Away And It Was Really Annoying..." That Wouldn't Happen After Lunch, Because Their Defenses Are Up. In The Morning, If You Lull Them Into A Comfortable Place, You Get More Honesty, And That's Without Being A Detective.

You Sit Down At Katz's And You Eat The Big Bowl Of Pickles And You're Eating The Pastrami Sandwich, And Halfway Through You Say To Yourself, I Should Really Wrap This Up And Save It For Tomorrow. But The Sandwich Is Calling You: Remember The Taste You Just Had. So Fatty. It's What You Want. It's What You Are! I've Never Gotten Home From Katz's With A Doggie Bag In My Hand. A Pastrami Sandwich At Katz's Is What's Bad And Good About Food. It's The Sacred And The Profane.

If You Could Learn How To Make A Perfect Lemon Tart Then You Got A Story. If You Don't Feel Like That, Make A Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie, But Have Five Go-to Dishes Like That And You Can Move Them Around, Change Them Up Just A Little Bit, And Always Have Something In The Can.

In Case You're Wondering Why Guy Fieri Is Here, He Won A Contest.

My Wife Susi And My Kids Quite Simply Are The Most Fun Of All My Friends.

The Kitchen Really Is The Castle Itself. This Is Where We Spend Our Happiest Moments And Where We Find The Joy Of Being A Family.

I Think In Times Of Bizarre Strangeness, What You Can And Should Do Is Spend Time With Your Family Eating Lunch Or Dinner. And If You Can Do That, You Will Restore Us To The Peace.

I Can Teach A Chimp How To Make Linguini And Clams. I Can't Teach A Chimp To Dream About It And Think About How Great It Is.

If You Want Your Kids To Listen To You, Don't Yell At Them. Whisper. Make Them Lean In. My Kids Taught Me That. And I Do It With Adults Now.

I Can Tell In Two Minutes If I Should Hire Someone In The Kitchen. Two Minutes. It's His Desire. It's That Open-eyed, Attentive Expression. If He Doesn't Have It ... I Mean, I Can Teach A Chimp How To Cook Dinner. But I Cannot Teach A Chimp How To Love It.

Chefs Don't Actually Say 'that's A Spicy Meat-a-ball,' Except To Indicate That There's A Bomb Threat In The Restaurant Without Alarming The Customers. Terrorism Is The Spiciest Meatball There Is.

My Family Makes These Vinegars - Out Of Everything From Grapes To Peaches And Cherries. We Go Through The Whole Process With The Giant Vat And Drainer, Label Them, And Give Them As Christmas Presents.

When I Was In College, I Used To Write Little Ditties And Short Stories And Poetry For My Friends. Writing A Book Is Another Thing. It Is So Much Different From My Traditional Day Of Dirty Fingernails And Greasy Hair And Hot Pans.

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Close Your Eyes And Place Your Finger On A Map. Wherever It Lands, That's The Theme Of The Evening. So Many Times We Settle For Routine Dishes. This Forces You To Try New Cuisines.

Passion Is What Adds So Much Value To Life. And If You Think About The Things That You Do, There's So Much Juice Potential For Them If You Do It.

Twelve-piece Cookware Sets For Ninety-nine Bucks Are Routinely Hawked On Late-night Tv - Often By Friends Of Mine. But With A Mere Five Pieces, You Can Do Whatever You Like - Slay The Dragon And Then Cook Its Tenderloin In The Style Of The Duke Of Wellington, If You Want To.

I Would Challenge Any American Cook, Regardless Of What They've Learned From Their Mom, To Operate A Restaurant And Not Have Spent Any Real Time In Italy.

There Are Pockets Of Great Food In Spain, But There Are Also Pockets Of Very Mediocre Food In Spain, And The Same In Morocco And The Same In Croatia And The Same In Germany And The Same In Austria.

Once You Become An Elaborate And Well-developed Culture, Anything From Rome Or The Etruscans, For That Matter, The Food Starts To Become A Representation Of What The Culture Is. When The Food Can Transcend Being Just Fuel, That's When You Start To See These Different Permutations.

When I Was A Child, Our Whole Family Cooked. All My Cousins Cooked. All My Aunts And Uncles Cooked. It Was Part Of Our Heritage.

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I Got Some Media Coverage For Using The Tail, The Ear, The Oink.

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What I Like To Do When I Go Out Is Enjoy My Friends And The Food Around It. If We Have To Stop And Give Five Minutes To The Chef, Then I'm Down With That. But If The Chef Has To Interrupt Every Course To Tell Us How Important This New Revolution That's Happening Is, Then I'm Not So Much Interested In That.

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.

When You Taste Things In The Right Order, Sometimes They Taste So Much Different Than If You Taste Them Out Of Order. Not That There's A Right Order, Like By Rule, But Just Like In A Thoughtful Way That Makes Sense.

I Really Want To Be A Rock Star.

The Way The Bankers Have Kind Of Toppled The Way Money Is Distributed, And Taken Most Of It Into Their Own Hands, Is As Good As Stalin Or Hitler.

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I Think Tabasco Brings Me Pure Heat And Southern Kind Of Familiarity, Along With The Vinegar And The Barrel-aged Spices.

I Like Cast Iron Coated With Enamel For Longevity And Forgiveness If I Happen To Take My Eyes Off The Prize While Pouring Chianti.

Protein Has Been Intensely Over-represented On The Plate. Now, The Garden Should Be The Main Drag For Main Courses.

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.

My Kids And I Make Pasta Three Days A Week Now. It's Not Even So Much About The Eating Of It; They Just Like The Process. Benno Is The Stuffer, And Leo Is The Catcher. They've Got Their Jobs Down.

Unlike Curing Cancer Or Heart Disease, We Already Know How To Beat Hunger: Food.

I Just Signed To Do My Next Book With Ecco Press, A New Primer Or Encyclopedia. This Will Be My Take On What Classic Italian Cooking Is.

I Might Use Milk If I Was Using A Touch Of Milk To Make Like A Lasagna Or A Baked Pasta. But Cream? That Is Totally Not The Way They Do It In Italy, And It's Not A Very Good Thing. It's Kind Of A Blanket For Flavor.

I Put Hibiscus Flower In Every Cup Of Tea I Have. It's Sweet, Sexy, And Cleansing.

I Think That There Is Philanthropy And There Is Publicity. If You Can Marry The Two To Do Something Good, Then I Think It's Great. Some Of The Other Guys Go Around And Slag People As A Profession. That's Not So Interesting To Me, Because It's Easy To Take Down, It's Harder To Build.

The Tradition Of Italian Cooking Is That Of The Matriarch. This Is The Cooking Of Grandma. She Didn't Waste Time Thinking Too Much About The Celery. She Got The Best Celery She Could And Then She Dealt With It.

I'm A Big Fan Of Featuring All Of The Local Shellfish And Seafood Provided.

We Would Load Up The Yellow Cutlass Supreme Station Wagon And Pick Blackberries During Blackberry Season Or Spring Onions During Spring Onion Season. For Us, Food Was Part Of The Fabric Of Our Day.

The Idea Of Having Dinner Together Every Day With Your Family Removes The Pressure From Trying To Explain Everything. You Tell Us The Good Parts About Your Day, But You Also Tell Us The Bad Parts About Your Day. And At The End Of That, Because You're In A Ritual, You Remove The Pressure Of Admitting You Had A Failure That Day. And It Also Takes The Wind Out Of Having A Great Day. I Mean, It Makes You A Little Bit More Normal All The Time. That Moment Of Therapeutic Sharing Is Something That Happens In Food, That Doesn't Necessarily Happen When You're Watching Tv.

The Hamptons Are Usually Filled With What I Had Hoped To Leave Behind In New York City.

The American Dream Is Ownership A House, A Car, A Vacation Home And, Even Better, Your Own Business

The Pendulum Of Cookery Techniques Became More Significant Than The Actual Experience. And When That Happens, The Customer's Satisfaction Becomes Secondary To The Chef's Satisfaction. And In That Case, You Have An Upside-down Equation. Because The Customer Is The Basis Of Our Restaurant, First Of All, And If The Chef Becomes The Most Important Person At The Table - Even More So Than The Guests - Then Suddenly You're Left With Something That Doesn't Really Work.

When We Opened Babbo, We Were An Indie Band. Now We're Kinda Apple. We Have 19 Restaurants And 2,800 Employees, We Are No Longer Perceived As The Indie Band Although We Think Of Ourselves As The Indie Band, And We Operate Our Restaurants As Individual Indie Bands.

I Like Thick Or Middle (spaghetti). Thin For Me Is Always Overcooked By The Time I'm Eating It.

Food Is "everyday"-it Has To Be, Or We Would Not Survive For Long. But Food Is Never Just Something To Eat. It Is Something To Find Or Hunt Or Cultivate First Of All.

I Think The More Prominent The Actual Product In Its Raw Nature Is To Its Final Consumer, The More Sympathy And Likelihood They'll Consume It They'll Have. Some Friends Of Mine Are Trying To Do These Rooftop Farms In Brooklyn, And I Love That Idea. As Long As They're Using Clean Water And Real Soil And Creating Delicious Things By The Sun, Then Brilliant.

One Of The Most Important Leadership Lessons Is Realizing You're Not The Most Important Or The Most Intelligent Person In The Room At All Times.

Every Super Bowl, I Do Different Food Each Quarter From Each Of The Hometowns Of The Teams Competing. So I’m Always Hoping For Cities With A Gastronomic Soul—not So Much Indianapolis Or Denver, Right? For Halftime We Have New York Hot Dogs From Papaya Dog. And At The End Of The Game I’ve Chosen A Dessert Based On Who I Think Is Going To Win.

I Like Anchovies, And I Don't Tell Everybody About Them. Almost Every Time, They Don't Even Notice.

When You Use It In Cooked Foods, It Changes [the Tabasco Flavor] A Little Bit; It Loses A Little Bit Of The Bright Acid That You Love On It, But You Get That More Cooked Heat And Chile Flavor Down.

There's A Battle Between What The Cook Thinks Is High Art And What The Customer Just Wants To Eat.

There's A Pretty Equitable Distribution In The Restaurant Industry Of How Money Gets Paid, Except For In The Kitchen. The Kitchen Is The Lowest-paid Group Of People.

[if] We Can Celebrate That In A Way That Celebrates Our Love For New England As Well As Our Love For The Italian Culture As Well As The American Culture, Then We've Done Something That's Really Good And Supporting These Fishermen Who Are Doing The Right Thing In Sustainability . . . Paying Attention To Make Sure We Don't Overfish Our World.

Everyone Makes Pesto In A Food Processor. But The Texture Is Better With A Mortar And Pestle, And It's Just As Fast.

The Chinese Five-spice Works Really Well In The Quantity That I Used. It Makes It Almost Imperceptibly Just A Little Bit Sweeter Without Making It Really Sweet Or Really Even That Asian Flavored.

I Don't Put Cream In Any Pasta Noodles Ever. I Would Use A Little Butter, But I Don't Ever Use Cream.

Finishing Food Is About The Tiny Touches. In The Last Seconds You Can Change Everything.

Even Though You'll See Gnocchi Or Linguine Everywhere In Some Of The Regions Of Italy, Each Of Those Chefs Has Their Own Expression Of That Which Expresses More About The Place They Were Exactly Born Than It Does About Trying To Be A Part Of The Greater Mass. And That's The Italian Culture.

What Will Always Remain Is Love, Passion And Family Time.

When You Use Tabasco In The Marinade, It Kind Of Infuses Everything.

The Gulf Coast Has The Potential To Create A Culinary Raw Ingredient Paradise That Smart Cooks Can Capitalize On.

The Italians Were Eating With Forks When The French Were Still Eating Each Other.

It's Fascinating To Travel Around Italy And Realize Just How Many Different Ways They Make Spaghetti.

Although The Skills Aren't Hard To Learn, Finding The Happiness And Finding The Satisfaction And Finding Fulfillment In Continuously Serving Somebody Else Something Good To Eat, Is What Makes A Really Good Restaurant.

Any Simple But Delicious Dish That Celebrates The Season And Locality Is What I Want To Be Known For.

I Obsess Everyday About Everything. Not Only About What We Do Well But What We Can Do Better... In The End, The Only Reason I Am Motivated To Do What I Do Is For The Hedonistic Pleasures Of The Table.

There Are Two Activities In Life In Which We Can Lovingly And Carefully Put Something Inside Of Someone We Love. Cooking Is The One We Can Do Three Times A Day For The Rest Of Our Lives, Without Pills. In Both Activities, Practice Makes Perfect.

You Have To Be Generous If You Want To Spend Your Time Making Someone Else Dinner. Even If You're Charging, You're Still Giving.

The Objective.. Is To Achieve A Comfort Level Between The Cook/artist/performer And The Customer/viewer/diner. And If We Can Achieve That, And The Customers Are Happy And The Cooks Are Happy, Then We Have A Great Experience.

I'm Pretty Confident That The Seafood From The Northeastern Atlantic Is One Of The Most Delicious And Unique In The Country, So That We Can Represent That In A Way That The Italians Like To Represent Things.

Day-old Bread? Sadly, In America A Lot Of Day-old Bread Just Becomes Nasty. Italian Day-old Bread, Not Having Any Preservatives In It, Just Becomes Harder And It Doesn't Taste Old. What I Would Warn People About Is Getting Bread That's Loaded With Other Things In It, Because It Starts To Taste Old.

You Have To Live Life To Its Full Chorizo.

All The Information You Could Want Is Constantly Streaming At You Like A Runaway Truck - Books, Newspaper Stories, Web Sites, Apps, How-to Videos, This Article You're Reading, Even Entire Magazines Devoted To Single Subjects Like Charcuterie Or Wedding Cakes Or Pickles.

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.

In Growing Up In Seattle, I Don't Know A Single Family That Didn't Barbecue Or Cook On The Weekends And Make Its Own Kind Of Simple, Pared-down, What I Call Pacific Northwest Cooking.

Just Because You Eat Doesn't Mean You Eat Smart. It's Hard To Beat A $1.99 Wing Pack Of Three At A Fast-food Restaurant - It's So Cheap - But That Wing Pack Isn't Feeding Anyone, It's Just Pushing Hunger Back An Hour.

I Don't Think Fine Dining Is Dying, But I Think Those Rare Occasions When You Really Want The Fanciness Are Diminishing... I Think A Lot Of People Are Going To Find Simpler, More Casual Ways To Enjoy An Experience.

The Hardest Part Of Anything Is Making A Dish Consistently Great - You Order It Seven Years Later, If It's Still On The Menu, And It's Still As Good As What You Remember.

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