Lawrence Casiraya’s Reviews > The Nasty Bits: Collected Cuts, Useable Trim, Scraps and Bones > Status Update

“But where does one draw the line? Where, exactly, does a chef go over to the dark side? I think that, as with any celebrity, it comes when you forget who the hell you were to begin with. When you forget that at the end of the day, even if you're not actually doing much of the physical cooking anymore, you're still just a cook”

“FOOD AND SIN ARE two words that—in the English-speaking world, anyway—have long been linked. Food is a matter of the senses, a pleasure of the flesh, and when one anticipates eating a good meal, one's body undergoes physiological changes similar to those experienced prior to . . . other functions”

“As I've said many times, I can teach people to cook. I can't teach character. And my comrades from Mexico and Ecuadorhave been some of the finest characters I've known in twenty eight years as a cook and as a chef. I am privileged, made better, by having known and worked with many of them. I am honored by their hard work, their toil, and their loyalty”

“The "slow food" lobby, arguing for sustainable sources of food, organic and free-range products, cruelty-free meat, and a return to a photogenic but never-to-be-realized agrarian wonderland, seem to overlook the fact that the stuff is expensive, and that much of the world goes to bed hungry at night—that most of us can't hop in the SUV with Sting and drive down to the organic greenmarket to pay twice the going rate.

“Parsimonious and forward-thinking Frenchmen—already inclined to make the most of humble (read cheap) ingredients, utilized every scrap of stock meat, hoof, snout, tongue, organs, creating dishes that are now popular stand-alone and frequently expensive favorites, ordered on their own merits, rather than served as cleverly disguised by-products”

“I’ve been some kind of traveling salesman or paid wanderer, both blessed and doomed to travel the world until I can’t anymore. Funny what happens when ypur dreams come true.”