Chris Morocco Quotes

Chris Morocco

Profession : Chef

Birth : February 26, 1980

The zeitgeist tells us that we 'should' prefer dark chocolate much the same as we should prefer wine, coffee, and whiskey with flavor profiles that run toward the extreme. But sometimes I just want to eat something accessible and enjoyable without embarking on a cerebral tasting exercise.

Chris Morocco

Normally, making polenta means having a convenient excuse to use all the butter, milk, and Parmesan in my fridge. Using miso and water instead builds tons of flavor but keeps the texture light.

Chris Morocco

Almondine is the kind of spot that seems to be on every corner in Paris - packed with classic French pastries, unpretentious and yet insanely good. The pain aux raisins is my favorite, a tight coil of croissant dough layered with a whisper of unctuous pastry cream and jammy-glazy raisins.

Chris Morocco

Volume can vary a ton when you're cooking, depending on how you measure. Do you carefully spoon the flour into a measuring cup, or do you scoop with the cup? Are you using chunky Morton kosher salt, or finer Diamond Crystal? There can be a 40 percent difference in volume depending on the brand.

Chris Morocco

I'm not a food-optional person. People who forget to eat meals are like aliens to me and, even now, in the age of Seamless and Caviar, I have a hard time relying on strangers to feed me.

Chris Morocco

When done right, sheet pan dinners are a dream come true: Your whole dinner goes into the oven on one pan and comes out ready to eat. But it takes a little finesse and a few rules to get everything done right.

Chris Morocco

The story of my life could be told in a series of waffle snapshots. I spent childhood weekends watching the lid of our Munsey waffle maker rise and fall as it chugged through a single square waffle at a time.

Chris Morocco

Veggie burgers, by nature, take more work than meat-based ones, but they should never feel (or taste) like a compromise.

Chris Morocco

Boneless skinless chicken breasts don't give a damn about their bad reputation. They don't care that you think of them as pale, dry, and rubbery.

Chris Morocco

I find it is imperative to switch my footwear at least once throughout the day to avoid fatigue, bouncing around the office in Superfeet-clad sneakers, then slipping into clogs whenever I am in the kitchen.

Chris Morocco

The injustice I feel when my kids drag me out of bed by 6 most mornings is tempered and possibly even erased by the happiness I feel when eating a thick piece of whole-grain toast with a shamelessly large cup of coffee.

Chris Morocco

My grandmother, Erminia 'Minnie' Morocco, treated cookies like a form of currency.

Chris Morocco

When my grandmother passed away in 2014, she left behind some recipes, but nobody stepped forward to follow in her footsteps and become pop-up cookie factories whenever the need arose.

Chris Morocco

We've all been there. Your roux looks good, you add stock until your gravy is the ideal consistency, and then those pan drippings go in and suddenly you've got a sauce that's thinner than chicken soup. Before you panic, remember that there's always a way to thicken it, whether you're an hour or a minute away from dinner time.

Chris Morocco

When I was a kid, brown rice felt like punishment. Like the ever-increasing amount of whole wheat flour that would appear in my mom's pancakes and waffles, brown rice with dinner felt like we had done something really wrong.

Chris Morocco

There are some things, like sushi, that I'll still choose white for, because its flavor is so unobtrusive. But I actually prefer the nutty intensity of brown rice in stir-fries, grain bowls, and as my go-to grainy side dish.

Chris Morocco

Unlike meat fibers which contract and bind as they cook, vegetables, grains, and legumes just want to fall apart as they heat up. So when I said I wanted to create a grillable, totally vegan veggie burger that came together in under 20 minutes, there was a good chance this would be the mission that I simply never came back from.

Chris Morocco

It takes a lot to get vegetables to come together into burger form and stay there. A whole lot, in fact. That is why so many veggie burger recipes require eggs, gluten, prodigious amounts of starches, and chilling or freezing before they have a chance of holding together.

Chris Morocco