Bill Buford

In normal life, "simplicity" is synonymous with "easy to do," but when a chef uses the word, it means "takes a lifetime to learn.

The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali's friends had described to me as the 'myth of Mario' was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinner.

What made them particularly unusual was the way Steve presented them. He was rational and fluent and had given much thought to the problems he was discussing, although he had not thought about the implications of the thing _ that this was socially deviant conduct of the highest order, involving injuries and maiming and the destruction of property., I don__ think he understood the implications; I don__ think he would have acknowledged them as valid.

I was taught how to tie up the loin with a butcher's looping knot and was so excited by the discovery that I went home and practiced. I told Elisa about my achievement. __ tied up everything,_ I said. __ leg of lamb, some utensils, a chair. My wife came home, and I tied up her too._ Elisa shook her head. __et a life,_ she said and returned to her task.

You don't learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you're not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.