I really love the beach.

Things taste less salty when they're cool.

What any immigrant is after is a taste of home.

The beach has always been a constant in my life.

A burger is a black dress; a kebab is a Met Gala gown.

The cornerstone of every Persian meal is rice, or polo.

No one's born a good cook. You have to learn and practice.

When I left restaurants, I had to learn to be a home cook.

No Persian meal is complete without an abundance of herbs.

Hello, my name is Samin, and I'm an artisanal-bread hoarder.

I just drink regular drip coffee, but I'm kind of a coffee baby.

For me, I am very much a champion of home cooking and home cooks.

Apricots are the most private fruit, loath to reveal their secrets.

Chex mix is this wonderful crunch that you just can't get enough of.

In the wake of a failed relationship, I'm often flooded with if-onlys.

The delicate sweetness of just-picked vegetables is always worth savoring.

I'll eat anything, even foods I've always shunned, when a friend cooks it.

I get an especially acute case of agita at the thought of a mortar and pestle.

Growing up, I thought salt belonged in a shaker at the table and nowhere else.

By definition, comfort foods are rich and creamy or evocative of childhood pleasures.

People love giving cooks spoons, I've noticed. Or, at least, they love giving them to me.

I live by myself, so I derive a lot of joy from being with my friends and their families.

Chez Panisse is a sensory temple - you might have to be made of stone not to fall for it.

I grew up eating and loving Persian food, going to school, and everyone making fun of me.

Inexpensive and forgiving, kosher salt is fantastic for everyday cooking and tastes pure.

The higher a flour's protein content, the more structure and elasticity it will lend a dough.

My mom, who left Iran in 1976, steeped us in the smells, tastes, and traditions of Persian cuisine.

I have a lot of plants - my living room is like a jungle. I like the idea of bringing the outside in.

As a student of Alice Waters, the patron saint of salad, I'm no stranger to the art of lettuce washing.

I love roast chicken, juicy summer tomatoes, and carrot cake slathered with tangy cream-cheese frosting.

The best - and most popular - recipe I've ever written has three ingredients: buttermilk, chicken, and salt.

Fried vegetables, often overbattered and undercooked, tend to disappoint me with their tough or soggy crusts.

I love bitter broccoli rabe tossed with Calabrian chiles and hidden under a mountain of snowy shaved Parmesan.

I always turn to Wendell Berry for inspiration on food, community, agriculture, and, well, just being a human.

Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn to use it well, and food will taste good.

There's nothing historically in my life very flashy. I'm not exceptionally beautiful. I'm not exceptionally wealthy.

I know pastry chefs who are overwhelmed by the idea of tasting, rather than measuring, their way to a balanced vinaigrette.

I grew up in San Diego with immigrant parents, before the food blogs, before this kind of celebrity chef culture we know now.

I love a Yorkshire pudding. It's basically pancake batter that's fried in beef fat and puffs up; it's like you can't go wrong.

Steaming offers no opportunity for either seasoning or developing the brown, crisp textures that sauteing and roasting afford.

I could probably go on for a long time about the differences between Northern California and Southern California Mexican food.

Browning butter affects more than just the color and the flavor of its milk solids; the water that butter contains also simmers away.

Tart and sweet, tinged with the faint scent of almonds and flowers, the Blenheim is the ideal apricot for both eating and preserving.

In sausage, fat is a source of both delightfully porky flavor and a springy texture. Without enough fat, sausage will be dry and tasteless.

Grilling used to make me nervous, but then I learned to view the fire as just another source of heat, no different from a stove or an oven.

While a pot of boiling water may not offer the char or smoke of a grill, it does give the cook an advantage when it comes to seasoning food.

While other stone fruits grow tender on the surface as they ripen, apricots take an alternate path to maturity, softening from the inside out.

I love the look of delight on my guests' faces when I serve them a bowl of olive-oil aioli alongside roasted potatoes or a grand Nicoise salad.

Salt's relationship to flavor is multidimensional: It has its own particular taste, and it both balances and enhances the flavor of other ingredients.

Ours was a pork-free household. The rules were arbitrary but strict: No pork in the house, ever. Except for the occasional pepperoni pizza. Or maybe Hawaiian.

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