When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, I was on vacation in the Cayman Islands.
I don’t know any group of professionals that mobilize as fast and as often as chefs do when there are people who are in need.
When I came to El Bulli, right away I knew I was becoming part of something incredible. It was like watching the Big Bang happening right in front of me.
I believe the future is vegetables and fruits. They are so much more sexier than a piece of chicken.
The history of cooking is my passion, and cooking is my passion.
Like many parents after a long family holiday, I usually welcome the moment when my kids head back to school.
Your parents would not be happy if you came home and said you wanted to grow up to be a chef or a rock star.
Music is always on. Not at work. But at home, everything always has to have a soundtrack.
Dragon fruit is very subtle, very delicate. So you want to be careful not to kill it with things that have very strong flavor.
I get very upset when people start adding weird things to romesco.
When you go to watch a baseball game, when you go to watch an NBA game, when you watch an NFL game, when you go to watch movies, the offering that those arenas are doing foodwise is ‘all the hot dogs you can eat’; all the French fries you can eat; for $20 you can eat 20 hot dogs.
The modernity of yesterday is the tradition of today, and the modernity of today will be tradition tomorrow.
Let me ask you: Who do you prefer, a clown organizing your menu – with all due respect to Mr. McDonald – or a chef? I do believe it’s a very simple answer.
I’m sorry for the ducks; I love foie gras.
Recipes are overrated.
For me, Romesco is one of the greatest sauces in the world.
Old cookbooks connect you to your past and explain the history of the world.
Me, I’m an encyclopedia. I’m not a very smart guy, but I’m an encyclopedia. You can ask me about anything you want. Probably I have the book; probably I have a first edition.
After a year, the aromatics in an olive oil are gone. Sometimes the bottles on the shelf in the supermarket are there a lot longer than you are.
Roberto Donna is a great Italian chef.
Our brain, our body, craves fat. We cannot help it. That’s why a kid will eat a hot dog quicker than a piece of broccoli.
Romesco with asparagus is simple and brilliant.
Everyting starts to happen at my home at 7 A. M., 7:20, when you hear the orange juicer. That means my daughters are already making the fresh Clementine juice.
Listen to me: Leek is a vegetable. It can be the center of a dish.
I started culinary school at a very young age, and really I wanted to be out working, cooking, more than I wanted to be in a classroom. You could say I wasn’t a very good student – I wanted to be a student of life and experience.
In 2010, I created World Central Kitchen as a way to try and help find solutions to many of the food issues we face.
Let me tell you a story about when I was growing up in Spain. Many Sundays, we would invite 30, 40, 50 people to the countryside, and my father would make a big paella. He put me in charge of the fire and the ‘stove’ – the rocks that hold the pan. But he wouldn’t let me cook. I got so unbelievably upset.
I realized very early the power of food to evoke memory, to bring people together, to transport you to other places, and I wanted to be a part of that.
To me, what I’m interested in, in the end, is the meaning of food in our lives.
For me, there is no better tapa than a really good stuffed olive.
Everyone should wake up and have a fresh-squeezed orange every day. By having a fresh glass of orange juice with American oranges, you are supporting the local economy, you have all the vitamin C you need in a day, and you support the environment because you don’t use any plastic from bottles or bags.
Meat, to me, it’s slightly boring. Hold on, I love meat too, but only once in a while. You get a piece of meat, and you put it in your mouth, you chew, the first five seconds, all the juices flow around your mouth, they’re gone, and then you are 20 more seconds chewing something that is tasteless at this point.
To feed a nation is never easy!
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