Sublime

After all, in an orthodoxy, even the smallest deviations are acts of rebellion.

Never pick up your knife until you know you won’t have to put it down.

I had to start writing. I wrote an almost entire first draft of the book, and it was not good. I wrote it like two and a half times. And I couldn’t get there. There was one moment—I was supposed to have a phone call with the editor one morning. I was so desperate and sad—at my wit’s end, I just didn’t know what to do. The draft I had sent her, she

I am always impressed by a well-written menu, one that is informative and appetizing without slipping into pretentious nonsense. Here, for example, is a London restaurant’s attempt to justify the exorbitant price of its whitebait: “The tiny fresh fish are tossed by our chef for a few fleeting seconds into a bath of boiling oil, and then removed bef

Then Michael wrote Cooked, and his agent—this was Binky Urban, a really powerful agent—read the part of the draft which described me, and she said, “Oh wow, what a charismatic character. Does she have any book ideas?” And he said, “Well, yes actually, she has an idea.” So I told her what I was thinking, and she said, “Yes, this is a good idea but i

On the trip, we were talking and I told him, “I’ve been putting this pressure on myself to come up with an idea of a book to write that would be groundbreaking.” He said, “Write the book you already know.” I said, “I guess the book should just be this philosophy that I have: salt, oil, acid, heat.” He said, “No one’s ever said that before. It’s a g

John Carlin, “If the World’s Greatest Chef Cooked for a Living, He’d Starve,” Guardian, December 11, 2006, http://observer.theguardian.com/foodmonthly/futureoffood/story/0,,1969713,00.html