Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.

• Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.
• Finishing food is about the tiny touches. In the last seconds you can change everything.
• As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.
• I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.
• The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family.
• My family makes these vinegars - out of everything from grapes to peaches and cherries. We go through the whole process with the giant vat and drainer, label them, and give them as Christmas presents.
• We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.
• In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted.
• The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.
• Working at the Food Bank with my kids is an eye-opener. The face of hunger isn't the bum on the street drinking Sterno it's the working poor. They don't look any different, they don't behave any differently, they're not really any less educated. They are incredibly less privileged, and that's it.