Southeast Asia food uses many different types of spices which are quite new to me like the curry leaves which I saw at the Kreta Ayer wet market in Chinatown. With such spices used in cooking this usually imparts a strong aroma to Southeast Asian food which appeals to the senses.

In our house we repeated the pattern of thousands of other homes. There were a few books and a lot of music. Our food and our furniture were no different from our neighbors'.

Bahrainis are better off than many other Arabs. We have a welfare state everybody gets a salary whether they have a job or not. Electricity and food are subsidized school and healthcare are free. And we don't differentiate between Bahrainis and foreigners. We are very proud of that.

A lot of food criticism has a similar flavor to it and I'm probably going to write about it in a different way.

Asian food is very easy to like because it hits your mouth very differently than European food does. In European food there may be two things to hit - maybe sweet and salty maybe salty-savory but Asian kind of works around plus you have that distinct flavor that's usually working in Asian food.

You can buy a box of low-fat macaroni and cheese made with powdered nonsense. I'm not worried if I'm using four different cheeses and it's high in fat. It's real food. That's what's more important.

I'm reading a lot of different books but I always think I have to switch it up a little bit. It's like food - everything in moderation same with my books same with my reading. You read books that are good for you and you learn a lot of stuff then you read 'Fifty Shades of Grey ' which is like candy.

Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef ' I feel is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way.

Jackie Chan is a very good comedy/martial arts star. He does one kind of martial arts that Jet Li doesn't know how to do and Jet Li does a martial art that Jackie Chan doesn't know how to do. You can both go to two Chinese restaurants but both can have different kinds of food.

Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants but they are dumbed down and I hate it when they dumb them down.