Cuisine Quotes

“In the restaurant kitchen, August meant lobsters, blackberries, silver queen corn, and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. In honor of the last year of the restaurant, Fiona was creating a different tomato special for each day of the month. The first of August (two hundred and fifty covers on the book, eleven reservation wait list) was a roasted yellow tomato soup. The second of August (two hundred and fifty covers, seven reservation wait list) was tomato pie with a Gruyère crust. On the third of August, Ernie Otemeyer came in with his wife to celebrate his birthday and since Ernie liked food that went with his Bud Light, Fiona made a Sicilian pizza- a thick, doughy crust, a layer of fresh buffalo mozzarella, topped with a voluptuous tomato-basil sauce. One morning when she was working the phone, Adrienne stepped into the kitchen hoping to get a few minutes with Mario, and she found Fiona taking a bite out of red ripe tomato like it was an apple. Fiona held the tomato out.
"I'd put this on the menu," she said. "But few would understand.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Blue Bistro

“The whole concept of 'the perfect meal' is ludicrous.

I knew already that the best meal in the world, the perfect meal, is very rarely the most sophisticated or expensive one....Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“After her mother died and Adrienne and her father took up with wanderlust, Adrienne became exposed to new foods. For two years they lived in Maine, where in the summertime they ate lobster and white corn and small wild blueberries. They moved to Iowa for Adrienne's senior year of high school and they ate pork tenderloin fixed seventeen different ways. Adrienne did her first two years of college at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she lived above a Mexican cantina, which inspired a love of tamales and anything doused with habanero sauce. Then she transferred to Vanderbilt in Nashville, where she ate the best fried chicken she'd ever had in her life. And so on, and so on. Pad thai in Bangkok, stone crabs in Palm Beach, buffalo meat in Aspen. As she sat listening to Thatcher, she realized that though she knew nothing about restaurants, at least she knew something about food.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Blue Bistro

“But your lolas took offense at being called witches. That is an Amerikano term, they scoff, and that they live in the boroughs of an American city makes no difference to their biases. Mangkukulam was what they styled themselves as, a title still spoken of with fear in their motherland, with its suggestions of strange healing and old-world sorcery.
Nobody calls their place along Pepper Street Old Manila, either, save for the women and their frequent customers. It was a carinderia, a simple eatery folded into three food stalls; each manned by a mangkukulam, each offering unusual specialties:
Lola Teodora served kare-kare, a healthy medley of eggplant, okra, winged beans, chili peppers, oxtail, and tripe, all simmered in a rich peanut sauce and sprinkled generously with chopped crackling pork rinds. Lola Teodora was made of cumin, and her clients tiptoed into her stall, meek as mice and trembling besides, only to stride out half an hour later bursting at the seams with confidence.
But bagoong- the fermented-shrimp sauce served alongside the dish- was the real secret; for every pound of sardines you packed into the glass jars you added over three times that weight in salt and magic. In six months, the collected brine would turn reddish and pungent, the proper scent for courage.
unlike the other mangkukulam, Lola Teodora's meal had only one regular serving, no specials. No harm in encouraging a little bravery in everyone, she said, and with her careful preparations it would cause little harm, even if clients ate it all day long.
Lola Florabel was made of paprika and sold sisig: garlic, onions, chili peppers, and finely chopped vinegar-marinated pork and chicken liver, all served on a sizzling plate with a fried egg on top and calamansi for garnish. Sisig regular was one of the more popular dishes, though a few had blanched upon learning the meat was made from boiled pigs' cheeks and head.”
― Rin Chupeco, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“She showed you how to make her special adobo recipe- proper adobo, with soy sauce and vinegar and spices- and it tasted exquisite, better than any other grandmother would have made. She offered both meals for free to the carinderia's clientele that day, much to their delight. Sampling your casserole brought them no perceptible changes; eating Lola's adobo left them fresh, eager, and thrumming with energy, exhaustion falling away like a cloak.”
― Rin Chupeco, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“In the Army, the drill sergeants said, "Eat it now and taste it later.”
― Joseph Perry Grassi, The Little Guy (or The Motor Scooter): The story of a diminutive soldier in the rear with the gear

“It wasn't only that my feet ached and I cooked the funkiest meals (they were still so good they'd make you twerk something, but definitely off the wall: macaroni jalapeño burgers and Caribbean jerk lamb tacos).”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, With the Fire on High

“Everyone jumps to their stations and I meet Richard and Amanda at ours. We're in charge of assembling spoonfuls of sweet-potato casserole but with a Spanish twist. That was my idea, a Southern holiday meal meets a twist of southern Spain. Most of the hors d'oeuvres were prepared beforehand so we just need to get them in the oven and put on the finishing garnishes. I begin scooping sweet-potato casserole onto ceramic serving spoons while Richard garnishes them with sugared walnuts and Spanish sausage. Three months ago, most of us had never even tried Spanish cuisine, and today we're hosting a semi-Spanish-themed banquet.
We work like machines. I spoon and pass the bite to my left. Richard adds walnuts and sausage, and passes the plate. Amanda adds parsley and cleans the plate. Chili aioli would make this bomb. A sweet and savory bite. I almost walk to the spice cabinet, then stop myself.
That's not the recipe.
We make trays and trays of food; some are set forward for the students who will begin serving. These are the skewers of winter veggies and single-serve portions of herbed stuffing with jamón ibérico- the less hearty bites. While the first course is being distributed the rest of us begin wiping down our stations. Our mini bites of sweet potato and mac and cheese will be going out next.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, With the Fire on High

“You did your best to be a good student. You chopped and cooked and measured and served according to her wishes. But sometimes you wondered if the stall could stand to be upgraded with modern comfort food. With pandan ensaymada instead of the increasingly popular but also growingly common ube, the fresh bread from the oven and the cheese still melting, sweetly fragrant from the infusion of those steeped leaves and as simple as a summer morning. Or chopped watermelons in bulalo soup to replace tomatoes, for that extra tang. Or even pork adobo, but with chili and sweet pineapples. You had so many ideas.”
― Rin Chupeco, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“It's basty!"
"There's definitely a soup underneath the crust. I see carrots. Gingko nuts. Mushrooms. And...
Shark fin! Simmered until it's falling apart!"
Aah! It's all too much! I-I don't care if I burn my mouth...
I want to dive in right now!
Mm! Mmmm!
UWAAAAH!
"Incredible! The shark fin melts into a soft wave of warm umami goodness on the tongue...
...with the crispy piecrust providing a delectably crunchy contrast!"
"Mmm... this piecrust shows all the signs of the swordsmanship he stole from Eishi Tsukasa too."
Instead of melting warm butter to mix into the flour, he grated cold butter into granules and blended them...
... to form small lumps that then became airy layers during the baking, making the crust crispier and lighter. A light, airy crust like that soaks up the broth, making it the perfect complement to this dish!
"Judge Ohizumi, what's that "basty" thing you were talking about?"
"It's a dish in a certain style of cooking that's preserved for centuries in Nagasaki- Shippoku cuisine."
"Shippoku cuisine?"
Centuries ago, when Japan was still closed off from the rest of the world, only the island of Dejima in Nagasaki was permitted to trade with the West. There, a new style of cooking that fused Japanese, Chinese and Western foods was born- Shippoku cuisine! One of its signature dishes is Basty, which is a soup covered with a lattice piecrust.
*It's widely assumed that Basty originated from the Portuguese word "Pasta."*
"Shippoku cuisine is already a hybrid of many vastly different cooking styles, making it a perfect choice for this theme!"
"The lattice piecrust is French. Under it is a wonderfully savory Chinese shark fin soup. And the soup's rich chicken broth and the vegetables in it have all been thoroughly infused with powerfully aromatic spices...
... using distinctively Indian spice blends and techniques!"
"Hm? Wait a minute. There's more than just shark fin and vegetables in this soup.
This looks just like an Italian ravioli! I wonder what's in it?
?!"
"Holy crap, look at it stretch!"
"What is that?! Mozzarella?! A mochi pouch?!"
"Nope! Neither! That's Dondurma. Or as some people call it...
... Turkish ice cream.
A major ingredient in Dondurma is salep, a flour made from the root of certain orchids. It gives the dish a thick, sticky texture.
The moist chewiness of ravioli pasta melds together with the sticky gumminess of the Dondurma...
... making for an addictively thick and chewy texture!”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 35 [Shokugeki no Souma 35]

“I've been studying every aspect of every dish on sauté for the past two months. How the orzo-filled roasted onions accompany the red snapper in a tart broth dotted with hot chili and cilantro oil. How the pheasant, seared skin-side down and flipped, then finished off in the oven, is served with pumpkin risotto, cranberry coulis, and a side of garlic greens. How the grouper, sautéed in olive oil, then butter, and finished in the oven, lies on a mountain of mashed potatoes surrounded by baby turnips and roasted bits of corn, lightly drizzled with a balsamic reduction.”
― Hannah Mccouch, Girl Cook: A Novel

“Diana, meanwhile, reads every novel she can find that's set on the Cape, and describes for her father the pristine, golden beaches, sand dunes with cranberry bogs and poets' shacks hidden in their declivities. She conjures the taste of briny oysters and butter-drenched lobsters, fried clams eaten with salt water-pruned fingers, ice-cream cones devoured after a day in the sun.”
― Jennifer Weiner, That Summer

“Suddenly and without warning, one of the men stepped around and, with the beast's nether regions regrettably all too apparent, plunged his bare hand up to the elbow in the pig's rectum, then removed it, holding a fistful of steaming pig shit - which he flung, unceremoniously, to the ground with a loud splat before repeating the process.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Tiens, allons-y pour la septième raison de trouver que la vie est belle : cuisiner pour des gens qu’on aime en prenant son temps et en écoutant la radio.”
― Anne-Laure Bondoux, Et je danse, aussi

“Practice, Ami. There is no talent without practice."
And practice you did. You hacked at livers and pig brains for sisig, spent hours over a hot stove for the perfect sourness to sinigang. You dug out intestines and wound them around bamboo sticks for grilled isaw, and monitored egg incubation times to make balut.
Lola didn't frequent clean and well-lit farmers markets. Instead, you accompanied her to a Filipino palengke, a makeshift union of vendors who occasionally set up shop near Mandrake Bridge and fled at the first sight of a police uniform. Popular features of such a palengke included slippery floors slicked with unknown ichor; wet, shabby stalls piled high with entrails and meat underneath flickering light bulbs; and enough health code violations to chase away more gentrification in the area. Your grandmother ruled here like some dark sorceress and was treated by the vendors with the reverence of one.
You learned how to make the crackled pork strips they called crispy pata, the pickled-sour raw kilawin fish, the perfect full-bodied peanuty sauce for the oxtail in your kare-kare. One day, after you have mastered them all, you will decide on a specialty of your own and conduct your own tests for the worthy. Asaprán witches have too much magic in their blood, and not all their meals are suitable for consumption. Like candy and heartbreak, moderation is key.
And after all, recipes are much like spells, aren't they? Instead of eyes of newt and wings of bat they are now a quarter kilo of marrow and a pound of garlic, boiled for hours until the meat melts off their bones. Pots have replaced cauldrons, but the attention to detail remains constant.”
― Rin Chupeco, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“Truffles, foie gras, seafood, and caviar for forty-five people exceeded the restaurant's resources in both finances and prep time. The food at family meal was intended to be simple but tasty. We cooks took turns organizing and cooking for the restaurant staff before the first seating of the evening. In the early years, hand-stretched pizza had made regular appearances, as did roasted chicken, spaghetti and meatballs, and vats of chicken noodle soup. Recently, though, some newer recruits in the kitchen had turned family meal into more of a family feud. Eager to show Alain their individual style and prowess, the newbies had whipped up ten square feet of vegetarian lasagna with made-from-scratch ribbons of pasta, individual Beef Wellingtons with flaky pastry crusts, pillowy gnocchi dunked in decadent Bleu d'Auvergne with a finish of nutmeg grated tableside. Irritatingly good but, in my opinion, completely missing the point.”
― Kimberly Stuart, Sugar

“You never look at your plate with disappointment here, eating seems to be a penance back home [in England] but in America they make food fun.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“One of the functions of traditional cuisines is to reinforce these shared childhood food memories.”
― Bee Wilson, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“There are signs that the Japanese themselves consider their excellent cuisine as an essential part of what it means to be Japanese.”
― Bee Wilson, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Umami is the savoury meatiness in seaweed and miso and soy sauce. It is, to a large extent, the concept that enables Japanese cuisine to be healthy and attractive at the same time.”
― Bee Wilson, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Drawings on caves dealt with one of man's major concerns, that of finding food. Hunting with spears, trapping deer, stalking game with bows and arrows, and spearing fish or catching them in nets are all portrayed with an energy.”
― K.T. Achaya, INDIAN FOOD

“After lunch, Pindar would go in to the university and meet with his students. When his colleagues asked him how his book was going, he tried to seem jolly. "Oh, you know. It's just dreams of eating. Like any other cookbook, only older," he would laugh. "Dabbling in Babylonian stewpots." But he loved his old recipes. In fact, he loved all cookbooks, old or new, perhaps because so few other things in life were such unabashed invitations to delight. When, as a young man, he had invented a sandwich made of peanut butter, bacon, and mango chutney, he thought he might die of pleasure.”
― Grace Dane Mazur, The Garden Party: A Novel

“Vivian Weaver took us from pot to pot in her kitchen, lifting lids, stirring and tasting as she went along. There was seafood gumbo, fried fish and fried chicken, dumplings, butter biscuits, cornbread, fried okra, black-eyed peas, green beans, and bread pudding.”
― Margot Berwin, Scent of Darkness

“I like to try new recipes. I'm mastering Wisconsin cuisine." Ray wanted to keep her talking, discover more about her and why she kept popping up wherever he went.
"Wisconsin cuisine? Is that even a thing?" Sabrina asked.
He smiled. "Have some state pride. You know, kringle, booyah, fish boils, cheese curds. Do you have a favorite?"
Sabrina took a few breaths before responding.
"Kringle... and anything with cheese.”
― Amy E. Reichert, The Kindred Spirits Supper Club

“I tell them about Philadelphia's Italian neighborhoods and how they gave rise to the famous cheesesteak and lesser-known roast pork sandwich, and about the Pennsylvania Dutch and how they introduced the pretzel to North America. I talk about water ice and The Commissary, Tastykakes, and South Philly, the ongoing cheesesteak rivalry between Pat's and Geno's and my personal preference for Delassandro's Steaks over either one. One diner originally from Chicago jumps in with his own stories about Lou Malnati's pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs, and another from New Haven talks about white clam pizza at Pepe's and burgers at Louis' Lunch.”
― Dana Bate, The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs

“If you don't know what a hot brown is, let me just put it this way: it takes the perfection of bread, turkey, and bacon, and then sends it all into a different dimension with a Mornay sauce worth trading your waistline for.”
― Bethany Turner, Hadley Beckett's Next Dish

“Regular guests had claimed she'd outdone herself with such creations as her Aberdeen Angus grass-fed rib eye with mushroom puree and beef tea; they'd gushed over her sea bass with prawn tortellini accompanied by fennel and a white wine sauce, and the crowd favorite always received lots of compliments, a chocolate orange mousse with fruit brioche.”
― Nicole Meier, The Second Chance Supper Club

“Things in the kitchen were, thankfully, going according to plan. Ginny's hands moved at a gratifying pace over the stove. She deftly controlled the four burners to simmer sauces with ease. A pair of solid wooden cutting boards were positioned at her elbow, piled with minced garlic, leafy herbs, and fresh root vegetables. A beautiful cut of Angus beef rested on the counter, coming to room temperature and marinating in rich juices. An elevated twist on a white chocolate cheesecake chilled on the packed refrigerator shelf. All in all, she had planned a fabulous meal.
This was how Ginny had always envisioned Mesquite running, smooth and well staffed, with happy guests at the table and herself at the helm. If she thought about it hard enough, which she rarely had time to do, Ginny would say this evening was damn near perfection.
Feeling sentimental, she allowed herself a pour from the bottle of chilled Oregon pinot noir in the refrigerator. She wiped her fingers clean with a nearby tea towel and watched as the golden evening light filtered through the windows, illuminating the translucent burgundy liquid in her glass.
This is how it should be, she thought to herself. Happy customers in the other room, her daughter and her sister all under one roof, and a warm place to call home. She'd be content if she knew it could last.”
― Nicole Meier, The Second Chance Supper Club

“What about Date #3?"
"Dinner at Puke. That's a big no."
"It's pronounced the way it's spelled," Daisy said coldly. "Pewque. And what's wrong with it?"
"I checked out the menu," Liam said. "I can't get excited about a faux-rustic meal of fromage-frisée, bone-gel bream, and liver-sauced jowl."
"I see you haven't changed." Layla's voice dripped sarcasm. "Once an ass. Always an ass."
"That's what I thought when I read the house special for this week," Liam said. "It doesn't matter if you house-ferment, dehydrate, and then pulverize your eel. Sprinkle it on your pigeon roulade and it's still going to be eel.”
― Sara Desai, The Dating Plan

“Suddenly, I'm thinking about all I didn't know about Felix's life. What the ate at the Israeli restaurant, for example, the meal that made him want to come here.
"Endive salad with creamy yuzu dressing, followed by three-chili shrimp scampi," Felix cuts in. "For dessert: white chocolate gelato with fresh pomegranate and a passionfruit drizzle.”
― Adi Alsaid, North of Happy