Q: What’s your biggest disaster in the kitchen?

A: It’s more a question of recovery than a question of disaster. When something happens, you know, professionally, you try to recover and do something with it or adjust it or whatever. Sometimes, if it’s entirely burned, there’s nothing you can do. I mean, two days ago I had guests at my house, and I did a kind of focaccia, flat bread, and I put it in the oven, and it looked okay, but there was something strange with it. Then finally the top was nice and brown and crusty, but it still looked not right. So I took it out of the oven, lifted it up, looked underneath, and it was totally raw, the dough was raw. I turned it upside-down and removed the tray and realized that my oven was broken. So I put it back in the oven upside-down to re-cook it on the other side. The bread was okay; probably not as good as it would have been. But it was okay.

Q: So you still have mishaps in the kitchen, even now?

A: Oh, sure. There is always that suspense in the kitchen that it may not work exactly the way you want it to. The more you know how to use a knife and how good you are with technique, the more you can control the food. But only to a certain point; you can’t really control the food completely. A chicken is never the same: one day it has more fat, one day less; one day it has been frozen, one day it’s younger, older; you cook in aluminum, you cook in stainless steel or copper, or you cook on gas, with electricity; it’s very humid, as it is today, or it’s very dry, or you’re in a good mood or not — all these things affect your cooking.

Q: What’s the meal you’d make if you were really trying to impress someone, like on a first date?

A: Well, on my first date with my wife, you know what I gave her? On my first date with my wife, I gave her beef stroganoff with noodles, and it was frozen stuff — at that time, I was director of research and development for Howard Johnson, and I had developed those products which I was very proud of, and I was giving them to French chefs or whoever, without telling them that it was frozen, to make them realize how good it was. And I think that’s what I gave her the first time I cooked for her.

Q: And did she like it?

A: Yes, of course she told me she loved it. At that time we were deeply in love. We still are. We celebrated our 35th anniversary last week.

Q: What are the three things in your kitchen that you can’t live without?

A: Well, my hands, that’s for sure. And you need a good pot, a good stove, and a good knife. And then ingredients, you know, you’re always at the mercy of ingredients. The greater the ingredient, the less you fool around with it. I mean, now I have an enormous amount of tomatoes on my table in my kitchen. I planted a lot of tomatoes this year and we had a big crop, and I have some yellow ones, some green ones, some orange ones. We do things every day with tomatoes. Because it’s there, it’s in season, it’s now. I would advise people to cook in season, because that’s when the food has the best taste, that’s when it’s most nutritionally sound, and that’s when it’s the cheapest.

Q: What advice would you give someone who’s afraid of cooking?

A: Have a glass of wine. Or maybe a bottle. Relax. People don’t realize that you can take a chicken — chicken used to be dry, you know? It used to be that in order to have a chicken, you had to baste it, you had to be careful — and now, the chickens are moist, and basically it’s almost impossible to have a dry chicken. So you take one chicken, put a bit of salt on top of it, put it in a 400-degree oven, close the door for an hour, and take it out: you’re going to have something very decent to eat right there. And this is how you build your confidence. And I tell people, " Do you have any friends who know how to cook? " And if you have a friend who knows how to cook, you say, " Okay, well if you cook, can I come, and I’ll do the dishes, I’ll help? " just to be around someone who cooks.

Q: Do you think it’s a skill everyone can learn?

A: Yes, to a certain extent, everyone can cook. The technique that I do on my show, anyone can do that — it’s purely a mechanical process, you know, it’s a question of repeat, repeat, repeat. I mean, granted, some people are a bit better at that than others. But to a certain extent, it has nothing to do with cooking; that is, there are different levels to cooking. First you have to become a craftsman, taught to use a knife. And I know many professional chefs who are very good craftsmen and cook well and run a kitchen properly, and are relatively lousy cooks. They don’t have much of a sense of taste. On the other hand, there are friends of mine — like a friend of mine named Gloria Zimmerman, who has written a couple of cookbooks. And I think that Gloria is an absolutely terrific cook, she has a great sense of taste and all that, but she could never run a kitchen. She doesn’t have the technique, the speed, or what you need. Mrs. Smith at the corner of the street who does a terrific chocolate cake, you wouldn’t say, " Oh my God, you should open a pastry shop or work in a restaurant. " If Mrs. Smith works for me, she does one chocolate cake, which is terrific, but it takes her half the day. Well, I need 80 portions between six and nine o’clock. So it’s more than having talent; you have to be a technician in a professional environment.

Q: What do you think of the phenomenon of the George Foreman Grill?

A: I think it’s amazing. My daughter has one, and she told me it’s absolutely terrific. And I like George Foreman; actually, I was with him last year — I was elected father of the year, and so it was a big party in New York, and there were five fathers of the year, and he was one of them, and I was sitting next to him, and I had a good time. I talked to him about his grill, and about his five boys who are called George, and I said, " Why do you call them all George? " And he said, " You know, in my business, I get hit on the head so much, I figure by the time I’m 40 I won’t remember their names. "

Q: Do you have a favorite recipe in the new cookbook?

A: Oh boy, they’re all my favorites, you know? It’s like children. I like straightforward, simple recipes, but the recipes fit different occasions, depending on where you are, what you do, what you’re in the mood for, whether it’s winter or summer, cold or hot. First and foremost, taste is much more important than presentation. And simplicity of recipe, fresh ingredients, sharing with the family, that kind of stuff.

Q: What did you have for breakfast today?

A: I had a glass of juice and some coffee and milk, that’s it. I don’t really eat breakfast.

Q: But isn’t that the most important meal of the day?

A: Not for me.

Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com