As chefs, especially pastry chefs, your creativity plays such an important part in your daily work. We truly do have a blank canvas to work with every time we create a new dish.

In recent years, I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television, to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.

All great chefs have two things in common. First, they respect nature as the true artist, and they are just cooks. Second, everything that they do is an extension of them as a person.

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.

I love Michel Roux, Jr., and James Martin - the chefs who are experts in their own right, like Rick Stein on fish. But I don't watch them very much because I don't think it's fair for my husband to be in a total food environment all the time! So we watch programmes about gardening more.

I hated the Naked Chef. Fine, yes, he did good things for school food or whatever, but, you know, I don't want my chefs to be cute and adorable.

It is not difficult now to make good food because we have sophisticated equipment and refined ingredients. Being innovative also helps you. It sets you apart from other chefs. But taste is king.

Chefs are at the end of a long chain of individuals who work hard to feed people. Farmers, beekeepers, bakers, scientists, fishermen, grocers, we are all part of that chain, all food people, all dedicated to feeding the world.

There are so many food shows, really beautiful ones, that exist to elevate professional cooking and professional chefs. But there aren't that many that really celebrate home cooking or are for home cooks especially.

Food trucks are an essential part of people's days. They are important to the fabric of feeding people, like hotel chefs cooking breakfasts or for weddings.

I go to the fanciest restaurants in the world and try them out. I like to see these chefs that are wizards do their thing. I like two types of food: cheap fast food - In-N-Out Burger, Taco Bell, stuff like that - or expensive food. Anything in between just bothers me.

My goal is to take the nutrition world globally. You've got chefs who do their chef thing, you've got fitness trainers who do the fitness stuff but I'm the only one who does both.

Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone... Bad food is fake food... food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people's ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives.

They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

The New Nordic diet originated in 2004, when the visionary chefs Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer called a symposium of regional chefs to address the public's increasing consumption of processed foods, additives, highly refined grains, and mass-produced poultry and meat.

Pastry is different from cooking because you have to consider the chemistry, beauty and flavor. It's not just sugar and eggs thrown together. I tell my pastry chefs to be in tune for all of this. You have to be challenged by using secret or unusual ingredients.

In the past few years, we've been doing amazing stuff with desserts. Pastry chefs have been using herbs and spices in their desserts. So vanilla cake doesn't have to be just vanilla, it can have a little thyme. Or you could have a custard with a little lavender in it, which is just amazing.

"Male egos require constant stroking. Every task is an achievement, every success epic. That is why women cook, but men are chefs: we make cheese on toast, they produce

The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills marketing skills cooking skills personality and more importantly delivering on the plate. So you need to be strong. Physically fit. So my chefs get weighed every time they come into the kitchen.

I launched Chefs for Humanity a national nonprofit with my voice heart and money from my own pocket. Money gives you the ability to make a difference in the world and when used in a positive way is a lot of fun.

I still cook at home. A lot of chefs I think don't cook at home. But I still do I love cooking at home I love having friends.

If you want to become a great chef you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.

We the chefs have a responsibility to learn about the chemical makeup of food!

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.