Quotes By Mario Batali

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.

Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.

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.

I put hibiscus flower in every cup of tea I have. It's sweet, sexy, and cleansing.

The Gulf Coast has the potential to create a culinary raw ingredient paradise that smart cooks can capitalize on.

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.

You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else.

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.

The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.

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.

Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.

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.

If you're going to buy pasta, you should buy dry pasta. If you're going to make it you can make the real thing, but you shouldn't buy fresh pasta.

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.

My wife Susi and my kids quite simply are the most fun of all my friends.

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.

I got some media coverage for using the tail, the ear, the oink.

Finishing food is about the tiny touches. In the last seconds you can change everything.

Working at the Food Bank with my kids is an eye-opener. The face of hunger isn't the bum on the street drinking Sterno; it's the working poor. They don't look any different, they don't behave any differently, they're not really any less educated. They are incredibly less privileged, and that's it.

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.

Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.

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.

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.

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.

In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted.

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.

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.

We need to figure out a 'harvest system' to collect the produce that stores don't put out for customers to buy because it's not perfect looking. Frankly, the stuff left to rot in the storeroom is more beautiful to me than the perfect carrot. I'm a gnarly carrot kind of guy.

Michigan is my antidote to Manhattan. This is where I come to relax.

There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.