I wasn't looking to get into TV. My family was in ...

When I was a kid, for my birthday every year, my mother made me pasta bechamel, which is rigatoni with a white cream sauce.

These days it's cool to be ethnic and to be different, but when I was a kid, it was not cool - at all. My friends would come over and my mom would make crepes with eggs, stuffed with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and spinach. And they'd be like, 'What is this?'

Lidia Bastianich, sorry, but kind of boring. I mean, I love Lidia, but you can fall asleep watching her. And Mario Batali? I love Mario to death... but he's not romantic or sensual. Those are the things I bring to the table.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

In an age of incompetence, I've been able to last in this crazy business. I actually know how to play my ax and write a song. That's my job.

I started in the restaurant business at the age of 19 as a waitress. I loved the atmosphere and the camaraderie of the restaurant business. I loved not having to go to an office. I loved making people happy.

Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.