Hopefully it’s love for the people you’re cooking for, because the greatest and most memorable meals are as much about who you are with as they are about what you are. But love for what you’re doing, and for the ingredients you’re doing it with, will more than suffice. I suggested once to a maniacal barbecue professional that cooking well was not a profession, it was a calling. He laughed and went further: “it’s an illness.” I knew just what he meant. You must like cooking for other people, even if you neither know nor like them. You must enjoy the fact that you are nourishing them, pleasing them, giving the best you’ve got.
