The key to Jason Epstein's long and happy life in food is that if you want to eat well, cook it yourself. Moreover, he believes that you never make the same dish twice, that recipes are constantly changing, and nothing is written in stone. So what he gives us in this delicious little book are stories interwoven with recipes - of growing up in Maine, harvesting clams and oysters and lobsters, of working in a hamburger joint, of sailing to Europe, settling in the New York of yesterday and now in his current Manhattan world on the edge of Chinatown. He is forever learning something from the cheese man at di Paolo's sublime shop on Grand Street or about seebah (sea bass) from the fishmonger in Chinatown, or perhaps a tip from Alice Waters, whose first cookbook he published. So a new dish evolves or an old one is transformed, the details of which he shares with us his listeners in his conversational style.

No ingredients extracted, no precise amounts given - just a general idea of how he puts it all together, thereby inspiring his listeners to do the same. A revolutionary little book that puts the fun back into cooking.