115 Quotes About Ingredients

Garlic is to my food what bass guitar is to music.

Cooking is not a science but an art, mistakes are okay, messes are fine—the pleasure is in the creating and the sharing of the result.

No matter our age, everyone in our household knows that cooking and eating together is where the fun is

Nana’s oven-baked fried chicken cut off the bone (with plenty of ketchup) was a huge hit. So were Thanksgiving turkey bathed in gravy and Nana’s Passover brisket

I still have my little red hardcover notebook—spine now held in place by packing tape, pages dotted with cooking stains—filled with her loving instructions for mandelbrot, nut cake, and strudel.

I would follow my mother around the kitchen watching and trying to find any way to help. One of the first dishes my mother taught me to make was hollandaise sauce. Though she always served it with broccoli, I soon realized it was equally delicious with asparagus, artichokes, or any other vegetable.

I'm making lunch. Who wants pasta?""We have leftover caramelized cauliflower and some cannellini beans soaking," Lois says."There's a chunk of pancetta in there," Benji pipes in."I roasted a mess of garlic yesterday," Andrea offers."Perfect," I say, smiling, the dish coming together in my head.

Every cook knows it's a rare day when you have all the parts of the perfect dish. But that day back at Mawton I had everything I needed: white fleshed pippins, pink quince, and a cinnamon stick that smelled like a breeze from the Indies. My flour was clean, my butter as yellow as a buttercup.

Eau-de-vie- flavored with myrtle," said the old woman. "Try it!" She watched intently as Ellie raised the glass to her lips. "Myrtle from the garden. I steep the berries with honey in the local firewater, but the secret ingredient is the flower, added for the final day. Such a pretty white flower it is, drowned in purple for just one day."The liqueur tasted of stewed plums. Not unpleasant, but very strong.