In his debut cookbook, Nick Curtola teaches home cooks how to take their cooking from mundane to transcendent by offering not a trick nor a hack but a hard-earned lesson gleaned from decades of trial and error in the kitchen. In his signature Italian-by-way-of-Northern California groove, Curtola shares 100 recipes, all touched with his signature approach to simplicity and seasonality. Recipes include: beef short ribs tenderized in a creamy-sweet shio koji marinade that adds sweetness and umami; a simple salad of sliced mandarin oranges with toasted sesame oil but with chopped cilantro stems added (yes, just the stems.); and carbonara, which, meanwhile, incorporates the Italian fish sauce colatura—once you have a bottle on hand, all it takes is a few drops to add stunning depth to a classic dish.