KINGS OF THE KITCHEN DVD:2

US$27.50 including 7-10 working days international AIRPOST delivery.

LONDON

I was once slated in the Sunday Times for having a failed football career and a shot gun wedding by getting my wife ‘up the duff ‘ was the exact words so I had to marry her. This was by a talented writer by the name of AA Gill who writes in the Sunday Times - a food critic. I asked him politely not to come and review my new restaurants. Lo and behold he turns up with Joan Collins. No-one would actually think that I had the bollocks to evict the whole table, and I kicked the whole lot out.

I am constantly obsessed with what is going on in New York. I am constantly obsessed with Charlie Trotter’s new menu. I am constantly obsessed with what Thomas Keller is doing at the French Laundry. I admire Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Rozasse [Spain]. I travel frequently, so I need to stay that little edge in front.

US$2.75

MUNICH

My inspiration is coming from nature - for example when I cook a rabbit , since rabbit eats carrots and lettuce , I serve rabbit with carrots and lettuce.

I want the produce to be distinctive and honest . I don't try to wrap a potato five times so it does not look like a potato . I try to keep a product simple and to process it minimally so that the result is a very light , tasty dish. I keeps the vegetables very simple, very lightly cooked. For sauces I don't like to reduce them very much and prefer to keep them light . To thicken them I would rather grate a small amount of potato into it and maybe then at the very end add a little bit of butter. The sauce then tastes very fresh, simple and doesn't overpower the produce.

US$2.75

PARIS

The great dishes of tomorrow will hardly be touched by the cook's hand at all

It's very difficult for me to express where the feelings of creativity come from in my art. I'm very inspired by the visual, by what I see around me. For example, the transparency of crystal, the thread of a table cloth or even the range of produce one can buy all help to inspire me. I'm talking about when the eye looks deeply and really sees. The colour of a herb, the curve of an eggplant, the translucent nature of a white onion, the colour of a date or the perfume of a cumin, all these things are a part of the sensual journey that is inspiring me.

US$2.75

LONDON

Portraying cooking as an art is wrong. Cooking is more than an art – it is giving pleasure to so many different senses. It is not only visual, it is mental, it is your sensory glands, your nose, feel as well, because you’re crunching into food, you’re not just slurping. It is everything – a total experience.

US$2.75

SYDNEY

My interest in European food came from a different point in the sense that I was looking for things that I couldn't learn here. So I did a course in Perfumerie in Paris to learn the art of trapping flavour. It is understanding of how to encapsulate flavour and to offer it to people in an accessible way. One of the simplest way that we know of trapping flavour is by using fat - any fat, whether it be olive oil or animal fat.

In perfumerie you would follow the notes and so composing a series of notes into something that sings for itself. At the end of the day the sum has to be greater, than all of the parts.

US$2.75

MILAN

Dishes have a meaning in a part of the world and in another region, it has no meaning. The meaning is the culture of the region, the taste of the people, the climate – many things. So by talking things from Italy like spaghetti with tomato and re-interpreting the recipe, you don’t lose the meaning.

In the orient the first bite is very important but the meaning goes deeper. Centuries ago in Europe, the grandmother took the duck, killed it and cooked it. Today in Europe we don’t have this relationship with food. We go to the supermarket and buy the duck already prepared - that is food but not the animal. In the orient they still have the connection to the animal. In Japan they have soups where the fish swimming inside and you drink it.

US$2.75

PARIS

Rostropovich comes here very often. I design a special menu card each time he comes. The first time he came he ordered the veal kidney. The waiter asked him if he liked it rare, medium or well done, and he replied "Do you believe that when I am playing for 300 people I ask them the way they want me to play?"

US$2.75

LONDON

People say that fine dinning is dying, I find that a hideous thing to say because people, no matter who you think you are, no matter what you think of food, somewhere in your life or somewhere down the line we all want to be pampered.

US$2.75

MILAN

It was not until I worked with Gualtiero Marchese that I understood for the first time, what cooking was really about. Other chefs gave me a basic understanding of working with produce, but Marchese was the first to elevate cooking into an art form. I was 20 years old and for the first time I understood that things were happening in the kitchen. I then went to work for Alain Ducasse.

US$2.75

SYDNEY

In Switzerland I worked in the Hotel Central in Zurich and It was there I met chef Bruno Enderlich. He was someone who took you under his wing and explained to you about produce, and explained to you about seasons.

Everything you did, Bruno would just come along and do something to it and it would change the whole dish entirely. He pushed himself. For example on his days off he would go work for Freddie Girardet and they he would come back and tell us about this guy Freddie Girardet.

US$2.75

MILAN

Cooking was my passion from when I was a youngster. My mother tells me that when I was a young boy , I was always saying that I'd be a cook or a photographer. Now I am chef with a passion for photography.

In terms of organisation, the Italian chefs have a lot to learn from the French but if you look at Italian cuisine, fortunately we have a incredible gastronomic patrimony which does not need to envy any other place in the world.

US$2.75

MILAN

Gastronomy is a sensation that you feel in your heart because a rapport with food cannot be an obligation. You have to love cooking to have a real talent for it, it is not something that one can improvise. To see the transformation in front of your eyes or the changes of colour; it is something that gives a great sense of pleasure, particularly when you achieve a dish.

US$2.75