The Salad Book: Over 200 Delicious Salad Ideas for Hot and Cold Lunches, Suppers, Picnics, Family Meals and Entertaining, All Shown Step-by-Step and with 800 Fabulous Photographs Book

Trying to philosophize about cooking is ridiculous. Only the French would do something this dumb.

Here's a sample:

DENIS Which just goes to show that small mouthfuls are better than big ones, by the way. The passage from Plotinus was indigestible, but cut up into small pieces it's fine.

CÉCILE When we eat we cut up our food for the same reason, so that we won't choke. These individual sentences are like appetizers in a way, dainty morsels. Even so, they're not as simple as you seem to suppose. This concept of emanation, for example'when you stop and think about it, it's hard to work out what it means.

HÉLÈNE Remember, Plotinus says a material object is beautiful "insofar as it participates in the thought that flows from the divine."

Oh, brother. The book contains 300-odd pages of this pseudo-intellectual fatuity.