Italian cooking is the great love of my culinary life and I make no apologies for it. The philosophy behind it resonates with everything I believe about food: start with the best ingredients you can find, don’t overcomplicate things, and trust that simplicity done well is always more impressive than complexity done badly. A three-ingredient pasta that makes you close your eyes on the first bite. A slow-cooked ragu that fills the kitchen with something almost unreasonably good. A risotto that rewards patience with something silky and extraordinary. Italian food delivers all of it.

I’ve never lived in Italy, but I’ve eaten my way through it enthusiastically from afar, cooked my way through its regional traditions obsessively, and spent nearly thirty years refining the recipes that matter most to me. From Roman pasta classics to northern risottos, from Sicilian-influenced fish dishes to the kind of bruschetta that makes people genuinely emotional, this collection is built on real respect for Italian cooking and a deep, lifelong affection for what it does better than almost anyone else. Grab the good olive oil. We’re cooking Italian.