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"  Nothing makes the dashing (and eligible) Rocco DiSpirito feel more alive than cooking for whoever sits at his table. Though the star cook checks the &amp;quot;single&amp;quot; box, he does share his home with a few companions: his cat, Pumpkin, and Teesha (short for Lateesha), his &amp;quot;street&amp;quot; dog.  DELISH: Everyone wants to know: What&amp;#039;s your bachelor pad like?  RD: I&amp;#039;m pretty modest. I don&amp;#039;t have rooms and rooms; I don&amp;#039;t have a red room and a Picasso room. I have a few functional, pretty rooms. What happens to a chef is you spend all your time and money making your restaurants your home. DELISH: Your home isn&amp;#039;t, for lack of a better word, homey? You must have a style. RD: I have a blue bedroom, which is cozy and warm. I&amp;#039;m a long way away from being a domesticated person.  DELISH: What&amp;#039;s your favorite room? RD: The bedroom. How can you not say the bedroom? Given our absolute choice, we would love to sleep later and go to bed earlier, right? DELISH: What&amp;#039;s the one thing in your bedroom you couldn&amp;#039;t live without? RD: The view of the East River. It&amp;#039;s really nice for me because I get all kinds of sun. I almost get sunburn in the morning; it is a big, open view. DELISH: What is your ideal day at home? RD: I have little time at home. Today is my first day off in a long time. I wouldn&amp;#039;t do anything unusual. I&amp;#039;d start with a really great cup of coffee, foamy milk and strong espresso, read the paper without having to rush through it. Not worrying about what is on my BlackBerry. Practice some guitar, which I barely get to do. And then later on, cook a meal for two to three good friends. I really love the experience of planning, prepping, and cooking because there is something profoundly satisfying about it. It is for me the best way to connect on a human level. A great day at home would involve that. Laugh a lot and drink good wine.  DELISH: What kind of wine are you drinking these days? RD: I&amp;#039;m finding there is a lot of good wine out there. It used to be that wine stores were minefields. Now for $10 you can get a great bottle. Delish: When you just want to make something quick and delicious, what do you prepare? RD: My go-to quick meal is a piece of salmon with miso-orange marmalade glaze, which I bake in the toaster oven. It takes eight minutes to cook and gets nicely burned. Burned miso is so yummy.  Delish: If you had an unlimited amount of money to spend on one kitchen item, what would it be?  RD: I think it would be a solid sterling silver pan to make risotto. Sterling silver has the best heat-conducting productivity. Also the most even heat, apparently. I would love that. I like to cook risotto, so it would make me pretty happy. Delish: What&amp;#039;s the one kitchen item you recommend every cook should have? RD: Salt and pepper. But pepper in a pepper mill. I&amp;#039;m not being silly! Pepper in a mill makes a big difference. If you don&amp;#039;t have the finest ingredients, you can still cook great food. It adds a small effort for a lot of difference. Delish: What are some memorable moments around your table? RD: I was having two friends over for dinner one night and I fell asleep. They woke me up and I hadn&amp;#039;t cooked anything. I went to the fridge, didn&amp;#039;t have much, and pulled a miracle out of a magician&amp;#039;s hat. These guys really loved good food. So I was worried about disappointing them. I cooked decent food, but had to defrost a piece of meat left over in the freezer for years. We laughed a lot and they made fun of me: &amp;quot;This great chef Rocco is cooking dinner, we&amp;#039;re so excited but he&amp;#039;s asleep!&amp;quot; In general people are really nervous about entertaining and about being judged. It&amp;#039;s not about that but about connecting with others; ultimately the table is about the energy and people you&amp;#039;re with and not the food. Don&amp;#039;t let the food get in the way of it. Because even a chef who&amp;#039;s been cooking forever makes mistakes.  Want more on Rocco? Learn his secret to healthy eating. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/restaurants/a996/celeb-chef-rocco-dispirito/>