I started cooking after seeing Julia Child make an omelette on TV when I was about eleven years old. Once, while I was the chef at the French Culinary Institute in New York, I prepared for Alain Chapel to come with a staff of about twenty. When they showed up a day early, I had to cook them dinner just before closing with a staff of three students. They weren't very nice about the results. Cooking for the public can be exasperating, but it's also very fulfilling because you're educating people at the same time.
Cooking is a celebration of nature's bounty.
The cook simply allows nature to come forth in all it's beauty and savor. Foods need little manipulation to show themselves at their best. Guests freak out when they see a half pint of heavy cream going into a few leeks or over a pasta gratin, so I have to be surreptitious. In so many ways people now want lower fat diets, yet they still demand outstanding flavor. If we don't eat fat, we feel hungry all the time and eat too much.