Samin Nosrat

My students regularly spend 20 hours or more in the kitchen with me. I try to teach them that even the most well-written recipe for, say, gazpacho can never take into account the ways in which a tomato that's lapped each morning and evening by coastal fog will taste completely different from one grown in a hot, inland valley.

Grilling used to make me nervous, but then I learned to view the fire as just another source of heat, no different from a stove or an oven.

I hate recipes.

I know pastry chefs who are overwhelmed by the idea of tasting, rather than measuring, their way to a balanced vinaigrette.

No Persian meal is complete without an abundance of herbs.

I'm not the number-one fan of the heavy holiday meal. And also, I didn't grow up eating them, the traditional Western holiday meals, so it's just not something I have a nostalgic relationship to.

We all have incredible relationships to what we eat, to what we don't eat, to what we've eaten since childhood and what we were fed, to what food means to us. And so I find it a really powerful tool in storytelling and in opening people's hearts and their minds.

People love giving cooks spoons, I've noticed. Or, at least, they love giving them to me.

I love a Yorkshire pudding. It's basically pancake batter that's fried in beef fat and puffs up; it's like you can't go wrong.

I really love the beach.

In the wake of a failed relationship, I'm often flooded with if-onlys.

Friends have warned me that I can be a bully in the kitchen. With every fledgling relationship, I'm anxiously aware that the simple act of cooking alongside my new paramour can unleash havoc.