My childhood favourite is mum’s shepherd’s pie, Yorkshire pudding and roasted potatoes. I remember coming home from school and going to the kitchen to help her. It’s because of her that I discovered my love for cooking.
I quite like that jeopardy, those up-against-the-wall odds. I don’t like it when it’s over-comfortable, too easy, something that can be done in two or three weeks. I like a challenge.
Chelsea has always been a foodie heaven and it will never change in that respect.
I suppose I might be a player-coach nowadays. I’m a great teacher, and I enjoy teaching. But I’m glad I got injured and ended up turning to cooking. It was an accident but the happiest one of my life.
I spend more time in the kitchen than I have in the dining room, for obvious reasons, however, I just want to sit and indulge.
I love eating out. I don’t deny that. But I don’t want 12 or 15 courses because the chef wants me to taste this or taste that. I just want to be able to decide.
I’m a big lover of fish. Cooking fish is so much more difficult than cooking protein meats, because there are no temperatures in the medium, rare, well done cooking a stunning sea bass or a scallop.
I like finding talent. That’s what really turns me on, I suppose.
When you’re cooking in the premier league of restaurants, when things go down, it has to be sorted immediately.
There are very few chefs both in Britain and the States that really identify the secret of being consistent. And combine consistency with flavor.
MasterChef Junior for me was about working closely with these kids and getting them to reeducate their parents to understand that food is as important educationally as Math and English and it’s important that we don’t take it for granted.
But I love women chefs: they are intelligent, they are fast learners, and they can be tough. As for the effect the have on the boys, its entirely positive. Put a woman in a kitchen and discipline will improve, if anything: the guys have being told off in front of the girls. It’s a playground thing – they just find it embarrassing.
To walk into an office and have your ‘good morning’ returned with a grunt and no eye contact is not my idea of a happy house. There is always time to acknowledge that Someone is more important than Something, even if it takes a couple of precious minutes.
Addicts are selfish, the most selfish people you’ll ever meet. And self-pitying. And manipulative. Always making promises they’ll never keep. They disgust me.
I recall when we opened in New York how the designer locks were impossible to slide shut, often leading to a difficult encounter no matter which side of the door you were on.
Put on a fireman’s uniform and walk past the fire because it’s your lunch break, and you are dead. Grab a bucket and start throwing water over the blaze and you are seen to be God’s little helper.
Loo doors without a decent, large hook are as infuriating as a lock that doesn’t offer you full protection.
Now I was lucky, in a way, because my money didn’t come overnight. It started with a gradual easing of housekeeping restraints so that Tana could shop without working out the sums beforehand. She could impulse-buy and fill the kitchen shelves with things that were fun to buy, even if they never saw the light of day again. Norwegian wooden toothpicks, plastic swords for the olives, pink loo paper with the imprint of raspberries.
A recipe is a guideline. Adding, subtracting, evolving it – that is part of the pleasure.
Adapting a recipe’s ingredients is completely in your hands. But the method is what really matters. The techniques in cooking are rigorous and imperative: They are your passport to a successful dish. Cooks must practice, practice, practice. Anyone can learn, but you need focus, proper understanding, and to go at the right pace, not running before you can walk.
But sometimes you have to question even the best and greatest. Cookery is quite a journey. Take nothing for granted.