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In book, Symon's mission has a philosophical flavor

Joe Crea - Food and Restaurants Editor
Source: Cleveland.com

Chefs write cookbooks for all sorts of reasons. From the ego boost to the potential profit to creating a permanent chronicle for one's style of cooking, chef Michael Symon admits there's plenty of allure to having a book with your name on it.
But toward the beginning of his first cookbook - "Live to Cook: Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen" (Clarkson Potter) - Cleveland's "Iron Chef" explains that he had an added mission.
"I have never wanted simply a collection of recipes," Symon writes in the book co-authored with local writer Michael Ruhlman. "Recipes are important but only to a point. What's more important than recipes is how we think about food, and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that. . . . My goal in 'Live to Cook' is to make great food more approachable for home cooks and to do so without dumbing down or simplifying the food or the cooking."