The writer talks about whom he most enjoys cooking for, drinking with Mario Batali in Spain, and whom he’d serve if he could cook for anyone.

Question: Whom do you most enjoy cooking for?

MarkrnBittman:  It’s a toss up.  My wife is the greatest diningrncompanion and a total joy to cook for and she's a good eater and we really havernfun together, but I have to say that my kids, who grew up eating my food andrncan call and say I'm coming over, could you make something Asian or I'm comingrnover I need this pasta dish or I'm coming over and could you just – could wernhave one of those – it's really nice and if there are people who don’t like torneat I don’t want to cook for them. rn

I don’t want tornhave to convince anybody that what I'm making is good.  I know it's good.  I usually enjoy it.  If someone enjoys eating, they'll enjoyrneating the stuff I cook.  If theyrndon’t, something is wrong somewhere. rnThere's not – Julia Child used to say, "The great thing aboutrncooking is you get to eat your mistakes."

The thing isrnthat if you take care in cooking and if you know what you're doing, even arnlittle bit, unless you burn something there are very few things that wind up sornbad that you can't enjoy them. rnVery few.  So I mean I'mrnlucky enough to have been doing this long enough and writing about it andrnlearning from other people and thinking about it so that generally speaking thernstuff I do is pretty good and the people I cook for tend to enjoy it.  But I said before it's not brilliant,rnit's not earth shattering it's just good food.

Question: What was it like hanging out withrnGwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali in Spain?

MarkrnBittman:  Well, Mario and I have known each otherrnprobably ten years and we've gotten increasingly busy, so we don’t see eachrnother that much.  So it was reallyrna treat to hang out so much and I know from my – the people who – I was goingrnto say my fans, which I guess is right, but anyway.  I know from people who've watched "Spain on the Road Again"rnand my other TV shows that everybody thinks that TV is the most fun thing inrnthe world and everybody's completely jealous of, "Oh, well you got to hangrnout with Mario and Gwyneth and who's that beautiful woman and the food inrnSpain must be so amazing."

Thernfact is television is a tremendous amount of work.  And for every minute on screen there is an hour ofrnwork.  So for every 60 minutes onrnscreen, there's a week of work and it really is like that.  So we did a huge amount of driving andrnthere's a lot of setup time and not exactly rehearsal but figuring out whatrnwe're going to do.  So none of thatrnwas my favorite part.

My favorite partrnwas nighttime when everything was done and we all got drunk together.  So that was really great and Mario, ofrncourse, can drink anyone under the table. rnI think he'll admit to this, maybe it's not an admission, I think he'llrnbe proud of this.  Whereas I can'trndrink anyone under the table plus I go to bed earlier than anybody else.  I go to bed earlier than anybody.

So we'd finishrnthe shoot, we'd have a bite to eat, we'd have a fair amount of wine.  It would be 9:30, 10:30, 11:30, I'd gornto bed.  Mario would be up untilrnfour in the morning.  Everyone elsernwas waking up with black eyes and broken shoulders, he was always in greatrnshape.  So that was sort of what itrnwas like.

Question: If you could cook for anyone, livingrnor not, whom would you serve?

MarkrnBittman:  So I could say I would cook for AdolphrnHitler and serve him poison.  Irncould say that.  I could say quiternsincerely -- see I don’t think you could influence people really, I mean I –rnthe obvious answer, an obvious answer is well, I would cook for President Obamarnand set him straight on a number of issues but he's already got a lot of peoplernsetting him straight.