Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am a sugar freak.
I eat to survive, you know?
There's always time to date.
I'm very much half city and half country boy.
The biggest fear in my life is being mediocre.
Desserts are last, but don't let them be least.
I can't even kill a lobster without saying a Hail Mary for it.
Plain sugar cookies, no matter how well they are made, are a bit boring to me.
I drink at least a couple of espressos every day and love the flavor of coffee.
Cooking is about imbibing different cultures and putting them in a plate on the table.
Baking is about multi-tasking. If you are organized and prepared, that's half the battle.
I have pictures of me feeding deer and possums with baby bottles. I am such an animal lover.
As kids, my mom would always let us help bake, and if we behaved, we got to lick the beaters clean.
We never really know what people are capable of until the only person they can rely on is themselves.
I like the Rockabilly look. My background is half Italian, half French. I wear cowboy boots and jeans.
If I can't do something and excel at it and do it well, I have a tendency to give up on it really easy.
Everyone has days when things can go wrong. That doesn't make you a bad pastry chef - that makes you human.
If you take everything personally and to heart, it will tear you apart. Take criticism, learn, adjust, and move on.
I love biscuits. I have a real thing for a biscuits, and if it's not made right, I'm gonna come down hard on somebody.
First and foremost, food needs to be delicious. It should pop and explode with flavor. Food should please all the senses.
I fell in love with pastry because I felt I could be much more creative. It's precise, and you don't have to kill anything.
I played every sport in high school for one year. If I couldn't be great at it, I quit. I would rather not do it than be average.
I see myself as half country boy and half city boy, so I need both to balance me out. I couldn't spend all of my time in either place.
I actually have a pig collection in my cabin: all types of old wood hand-carved pigs that my mom started for me as a housewarming gift.
I didn't come from a wealthy family. My dad told us if we wanted spending money, we had to earn it. So I developed an early work ethic.
Both my parents worked. So it wasn't like the previous generation where we learned how to cook and bake from our mothers and grandmothers.
There are so many restaurants that cook for themselves and think they are different. But it is always about making your guest feel special.
A pastry chef's lifespan in a restaurant is limited. You have to open a bakery or pastry shop. There's only so far you can go in a restaurant.
As most people will tell you, the best pies have the best crusts. It has to be tender, flaky, and full of flavor. That is the key to a great pie.
The inspiring thing is that people are often more experimental with their desserts than other courses. It allows me to be more creative and excite people.
Everyone has a different impression of what they are eating; not everyone tastes the same things, and definitely, not everyone has the same food memories.
My dad said, 'If you want to go out with girls and go out with your friends, get a job.' I found one at the local country club as a pot washer in the kitchen.
I want to do more TV and more books. I want to have my hand in different projects. I'm way too hyper; I'm just one of those people who has to have a lot going on.
I am not a shock jock pastry chef. I don't create desserts using strange ingredients just for the sake of doing so, like so many of my colleagues in the industry.
I have been a fan of the Beastie Boys ever since I can remember. I have a ton of their music on my iPod and even still have a t-shirt from a show I saw when I was a kid.
When I was growing up, chocolate milk was a treat, and the chocolate milk that ended up in a bowl of Cocoa Puffs when I had those for breakfast was the biggest treat of all.
Pastry school is great for a foundation and introducing you to basic techniques, but it is really up to the chefs to practice, practice, practice and refine their techniques.
As chefs, especially pastry chefs, your creativity plays such an important part in your daily work. We truly do have a blank canvas to work with every time we create a new dish.
Every few years, I change my look for the simple reason that I get bored. If you Google Image me, you will see so many different looks: long hair, short hair, clean shaven, beard, etc.
Chocolate is one of the backbones of the pastry kitchen. It is one of the most important ingredients in our pantry. It is very versatile, it is complex, and it is extremely temperamental.
I dislike cloyingly sweet desserts - sweet is not a flavor - so I suggest dialing back the sweetness and focusing on what the dessert is about, whether it is a ripe fruit, chocolate, etc.
You can tell a lot about your cooks' personalities by their music collection. I personally have such an eclectic collection, partly due to the combining of music libraries with girlfriends past.
The true mark of professionalism is the ability to respect everyone else for their styles and always find something positive in every dining experience and highlight it in your thoughts and words.
My mom was a rescue veterinarian, and I grew up helping her nurse injured animals back to health. Any deer hit by a car, fox caught in a trap, whatever it was that got hurt, everyone brought them to my mom.
Whenever a chef cooks for his own ego rather than his guests, he/she set themselves up for ridicule and failure. In the end, it's the service industry. Our goal is to make our guests happy through our cooking.
Chocolate is the go-to ingredient for many people. It is the thing people crave when they are happy and celebrate; it is also the go-to ingredient for many people when we are sad or depressed. It makes us feel better.
If you would ask me some of the ingredients that people are surprised by that could appear on my menu are such things as bleu cheese, vegetables like parsnips and rutabaga, bacon, pork fat, fois gras, truffles, and olives.
Just because you love to cook and you are good at in your home environment doesn't necessarily mean that you are cut out for competition. It is a different animal and requires you to approach cooking in a very different way.
Part of what makes a great chef is the ability to adapt, cook, and to taste. A great chef will use all their food knowledge, food memories, and senses to work with each ingredient and apply themselves to the dish they are creating.
TV has taken a crazy turn, especially in the industry of food, where everything is either a competition show or a sort of reality show. We've lost the kind of shows that are, like, 'Here's how you do this,' like the old Julia Child shows.