Confit is the ultimate comfort food, and trendy or not, it is dazzling stuff.

You know, this is really a way of cooking. It's not my way. I'm deeply influenced by the Mediterranean way of being. I've spent a lot of time there. And I've sort of translated it; I've tried to make it available to people in this country to whom it might not be familiar.

Using lots of fresh foods, fruits and vegetables, helps to keep the menu buoyant - I don't know if that's the right word, but it keeps a balance of freshness and health.

There are so many things that come into writing a recipe, and it's really important if you're writing for home cooks to be cooking like you are at home.

I was aiming for the cooks that I've talked to by teaching an online course and by traveling, listening to people who are really busy and harried but want to be cooking.

This book is pointing the way into it for people that see it as daunting or a mystery. Some people just do it, but others need help with the mindset, permission almost to listen to themselves. Understanding how things work is the key.

I also think it's very important to consider how the food will feel to the person eating it.

Generally a chef's book is like a calling card or a portfolio to display their personal work.

To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment.

Often for hors d'oeuvres, I serve room temperature vegetables, something like that, so that the main course might be quite rich but the first course has balanced it out.

You don't have to stick with these recipes. They're guides. As I say, they're a way in. Have fun with them. It's an easier way to cook in a busy life, once you get the hang of it.

The restaurant chefs in Spain are breaking ground, but in terms of the everyday cooking in Spain I still hear people coming back and saying they were disappointed. I think it's because they're expecting the chef stuff.

I was working in restaurants as a captain and as a waiter.

I realized I didn't want to be a photographer. I gave it up, but I still worked that job in the restaurant and I found myself constantly hanging out in the kitchen.

A lot of people who want to cook with less fat are surprised by that. You can cook vegetables in a little water in a covered pan and then throw the fat into the residual liquid to coat them.

So many people think they need to have serious equipment. In the magazines and the media, they see all this stylish stuff, especially on TV, and they think, That's what I need to make it work. You don't. I'm attempting a little bit of liberation here.

I'm a serious eater and a seriously hungry person, so I set out on that path to figure it out for myself, and of course it really resonated with other people.

That being said, I often write into recipes techniques I learned in the restaurant kitchen. There are ways of organizing your prep and so on that are immensely useful. Those are woven into all the recipes I do.

Salt is a preservative. It really holds flavor. For example, if you chop up some fresh herbs, or even just garlic, the salt will extract the moisture and preserve the flavor.

Confit is the ultimate comfort food, and trendy or not, it is dazzling stuff.

A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.

But all that being said about modulation, if you're serving people delicious food, they won't complain.

I had all kinds of food issues, including health concerns and weight concerns.

Years down the line, I became a food stylist.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

But, I think that the reason I responded to this book, sort of paradoxically, is that it starts out like The Big Chill, sort of. Four friends, who are not quite happy with their life, and every year they get together for a week and look for some comfort from each other.

But I think one of the reasons I tend to stay in the water most of the time is I distrust the comfort.

The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.

Shows can come and go. They can be a hit and then in three years, gone. There's some comfort in having the stability of a job and having children. It's a double-edged sword.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative.

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

Look whether it be indifferently, as well for sins secret as open, what you find to be your best cordials to comfort you, whether God's Word, or natural means.

Scientists at MIT and engineering schools all across America say that they could improve the fuel economy standards for the existing set of vehicles by 10 miles per gallon using existing technology, without compromising safety or comfort at all.

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are.

If you look closely enough, amid the merciless and the bitter, there is always the chance that you may find comfort and the promise of something good.

Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus he loves the house and hates art.

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

To the degree we're not living our dreams, our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.

So people have been hurting and I understand that. And it doesn't give them comfort or solace for me to tell them, you know, but for me, we would be in a worldwide depression.

I have deep feelings for the welfare and comfort of others.

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.

There's no comfort in the truth, pain is all you'll find.

I've always had the perspective that roles come into my life when I need them most and sort of teach me lessons. The same can be true of films, films are released into society to aid in a lesson, inspire people, comfort people.

The difference is that if we turn from the Gentile first, we will have the Almighty as the immediate staff and our comfort. If not, we will have neither the Gentile nor, for a terrible stage, the Almighty.

If there's comfort involved, it's probably not for me.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.