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The stuffed eggplant story alone is worth the price—it reads like a memoir wrapped around a cookbook. I’ve already dog-eared half the pages, and the way he traces each dish back to a specific moment makes you feel like you’re in the kitchen with him.

I picked this up for the storytelling as much as the recipes, and the opening about that bored-kid moment with a stuffed eggplant hooked me immediately. The way Colicchio ties his personal kitchen memories to each dish makes it read like a memoir you can actually cook from.

The first chapter alone, where he recounts that stuffed eggplant from a teenage boredom-fueled experiment, makes you want to run to the kitchen immediately. It reads less like a cookbook and more like a personal conversation with a guy who genuinely loves why we cook.