"I ended up wanting to be a cook and hold my own in a restaurant." — Bill Buford

The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali's friends had described to me as the 'myth of Mario' was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinner.

Gordon Ramsay grew up in a tourist town, Stratford-Upon-Avon, but in a part tourists don't visit - a council estate: a concrete bunker subsidized by the local government, synonymous with deprivation and blight.

I bashed myself. I cut myself. I caught on fire. I fell: I had been myopically focused on peeling garlic, and hadn't noticed a bin of beef at my feet until I walked into it.

Bahia is the Amazon's geographical next-of-kin: the same climate, forest canopy, diverse floor. But there is no wild cacao; the tree was introduced, most likely by a Frenchman, Louis Frederick Warneaux, who, in 1746, sowed seeds near one of Bahia's large rivers.

Giada De Laurentiis, of 'Everyday Italian,' is not a chef, although she has culinary expertise - she was trained at the Cordon Bleu and worked as a private cook for a wealthy Los Angeles family.

The commonplace about Italian cooking is that it's very simple; in practice, the simplicity needs to be learned, and the best way to learn it is to go to Italy and see it firsthand.

Gordon Ramsay, the only chef in London honored with three stars by the 'Guide Michelin,' is not a monster.

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I ended up wanting to be a cook and hold my own in a restaurant.