“I love ingredients because they have memories. Stories, histories, personalities. A peach has a memory of every finger that’s touched it. A vanilla bean cures for months. Sometimes when I take a first bite, I try to name every individual ingredient, to find the gardener who pruned the tree that yielded the olives for the oil coating this specific pan in this specific kitchen watched over by one specific cook, who came to work thinking of his mother’s skillet back home.”
―
Casey McQuiston,
The Pairing
