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The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn't waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it.

Mario Batali

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Mario Batali
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 19
Chef
Cook
Media Personality
Restaurateur
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Mario Francesco Batali
Thinking
Cooking
Tradition
Waste
Food
Matriarchs
Didn
Celery
Best
Grandma
Much
Dealt
Time
Italian

More quotes by Mario Batali

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There are two activities in life in which we can lovingly and carefully put something inside of someone we love. Cooking is the one we can do three times a day for the rest of our lives, without pills. In both activities, practice makes perfect.
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Protein has been intensely over-represented on the plate. Now, the garden should be the main drag for main courses.
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What I like to do when I go out is enjoy my friends and the food around it. If we have to stop and give five minutes to the chef, then I'm down with that. But if the chef has to interrupt every course to tell us how important this new revolution that's happening is, then I'm not so much interested in that.
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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.
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Every Super Bowl, I do different food each quarter from each of the hometowns of the teams competing. So I’m always hoping for cities with a gastronomic soul—not so much Indianapolis or Denver, right? For halftime we have New York hot dogs from Papaya Dog. And at the end of the game I’ve chosen a dessert based on who I think is going to win.
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When you add just a little bit [of Tabasco] at the end, what you taste is the spectrum between the cooked chile flavor and the kind of nearly raw, just kind of fermented chile flavor at the end.
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My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.
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I like cast iron coated with enamel for longevity and forgiveness if I happen to take my eyes off the prize while pouring Chianti.
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The very common error of young or unconfident cooks is to keep putting more of their own personal ideology into a plate until there's so much noise that you really can't even hear a tune. You can say more in an empty space than you can in a crowded one.
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The Gulf Coast has the potential to create a culinary raw ingredient paradise that smart cooks can capitalize on.
Mario Batali
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Find something you love, because if you love what you do, you'll never spend a day at work.
Mario Batali
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If I hear something's not quite going right, then I'm there quicker than if I hear something's going wrong.
Mario Batali
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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.
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Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.
Mario Batali
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Food is everyday-it has to be, or we would not survive for long. But food is never just something to eat. It is something to find or hunt or cultivate first of all.
Mario Batali
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I think that there is philanthropy and there is publicity. If you can marry the two to do something good, then I think it's great. Some of the other guys go around and slag people as a profession. That's not so interesting to me, because it's easy to take down, it's harder to build.
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The objective.. is to achieve a comfort level between the cook/artist/performer and the customer/viewer/diner. And if we can achieve that, and the customers are happy and the cooks are happy, then we have a great experience.
Mario Batali
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If you want your kids to listen to you, don't yell at them. Whisper. Make them lean in. My kids taught me that. And I do it with adults now.
Mario Batali
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Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.
Mario Batali
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Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.
Mario Batali