Tension translates to your guests. They’ll have a much better time having chili and baked potatoes than they would if you did roast duck with a wild cherry sauce and then had to lie down and cry for a while.

Sometimes it’s good just to be seduced by the particular cheeses spread out in front of you on a cheese counter.

Anyway, what makes people look youthful is the quality of their skin and I don’t think you can change that.

I think sometimes that people assume because I’m on television I’m an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I’m not and I don’t have any training. My approach isn’t about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.

I think we all live in a world that is so fast-paced, it’s threatening and absolutely saturated with change and novelty and insecurity. Therefore, the ritual of cooking and feeding my family and friends, whoever drops in, is what makes me feel that I’m in a universe that is contained.

I despair of the term ‘clean eating’... it necessarily implies that any other form of eating – and consequently the eater of it – is dirty or impure and thus bad.

Clean eating necessarily implies that any other form of eating – and consequently the eater of it – is dirty or impure and thus bad, and it’s not simply a way of shaming and persecuting others, but leads to that self-shaming and self-persecution that is forcibly detrimental to true healthy eating.

I don’t believe you can ever really cook unless you love eating.

I am not sure about facelifts because I wouldn’t want to be someone who just looks like she’s had a facelift.

In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don’t know if I’d like to make myself worse in that respect.