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[Jinmyo]

Hi Michael. I've tremendously enjoyed Making of a Chef and Soul of a Chef and The French Laundry Cookbook is without question one of the most important cookery books of the last twenty years. So I'm very interested in your upcoming books on French comfort food and especially charcuterie for the home cook.

I wonder if you could tell us something about your own cooking at home and how you understand translating the great traditions of professional cooking to home cooking.

(Also, a great pig story for that context would not go unappreciated.)

[Michael Ruhlman]

I love to eat traditional stuff, basic stuff very simple ingredients, and simple preparations that have to be exact. I love to roast chicken, I just love it, and I do it really well because I love it, because I really care about it. When you pull it from the oven, and it's deeply golden brown, skin that's been aggressivley salted and is visibly crisp and powerfully aromatic. I love to cut it into its pieces, I love it when my wife can't help herself and snatches a wing to eat while we get it on the table because it's too good to let it just sit there. I love make a sauce from the juices--with just wine water and the skin stuck to the pan (if I have shallots better, and if tarragon is in the garden, beautiful). I just love to cook that way. I do it once a week and I never ever get tired of it or get tired of trying to make it better. That's what cooking is all about for me. Trying to perfect that stuff that you do all the time. ... A custard, when you hit it right is one of the great substances on earth. But it takes real care to get it just right. I almost never do. But I love the challenge of it. That's what home cooking is about--really it's the best kind of cooking there is, and far outstrips the best of restaurant cooking, which is about so many other things.

About the pig--there's no better creature on earth for cooking. The variety of stuff you can do with it, the miracle of its fat, so creamy and luxurious, oh man. Grill some hog belly, finish it slowly in the oven till it's meltingly tender--if I die I want it to happen when I'm eating hog belly and I'll pray simply to be preseved in that moment. No, wait, better: hog belly confit, deep fried so it's crispy outside and melting inside. ... I'm getting hungry.