Q. It sounds like you were fascinated with cooking from a young age. How was the seed planted so early on? And what were some of the first things you learned to cook?

A. I grew up in a family where pretty much everything revolved around food – cooking and eating together. I was always in the kitchen with my Mom – more so as a taster than helper until I was a little bit older. My Mom is a really wonderful cook, and she is very free-spirited in her cooking. She would never follow a recipe, and was always substituting ingredients when she did start with a recipe. I think that was a really great example for me – to develop the confidence of just paying attention to the flavors and textures of different ingredients and how they came together.

My best friend of 45 years has shown me letters I wrote to her when I was away at summer camp, all describing, in painstaking detail, everything I ate throughout the day – which you could imagine, at a summer camp, wasn’t a very exciting menu, so I guess I was pretty into food.

I fell in love with cooking when I was about 12 years old. My mom gave me a copy of the New York Times International Cookbook, and I started making dishes from around the world. I would prepare elaborate dinner parties for my parents’ friends, and I think my parents still have all of the detailed notes I would take, planning each menu. I would make French baked rice, Asian cucumber salad, Peruvian avocado soup, etc. READ THE REST HERE