My Earliest Memories: A Guest Post by Tom Colicchio
From the public to the private, acclaimed chef and television personality Tom Colicchio shares the story behind his love of cooking — and his successful career. Read on for his exclusive essay on where this book began.
Hardcover
$32.00
$35.00
Why I Cook
Why I Cook
By
Tom Colicchio
With
Joshua David Stein
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$32.00
$35.00
From Emmy Award-winning chef Tom Colicchio—a cookbook and memoir that shares an exclusive look inside the mind and kitchen of the beloved restaurateur and TV personality
From Emmy Award-winning chef Tom Colicchio—a cookbook and memoir that shares an exclusive look inside the mind and kitchen of the beloved restaurateur and TV personality
People keep asking me why this kind of book (a memoir of my life from childhood through today); why these recipes (home cooking rather than restaurant dishes); and why now. The literal answer to that question is that this book has been under contract with Artisan for more than 15 years so I was on deadline! But the longer story is….
When we first signed up the book, I thought I wanted to do a big, beautiful coffee table-worthy book like The French Laundry Cookbook. Then, given how satisfying I find gardening, I thought maybe I’d do a gardening book. But I’m not an expert gardener, just an enthusiastic one, so my mind turned to the idea of a book about teaching my sons to cook. My oldest son, Dante, and I actually started working on it that summer but then his girlfriend came to visit and that was that. He was 15 then, and now he’s 32! Eventually, while I was teaching Zoom cooking classes during the pandemic, I started hearing the same questions over and over: why did you start cooking? Why do you cook now? And the images that came immediately to mind were some of my earliest memories.
My grandfather, my mom’s dad, lived next door to us when I was a kid. He’s the reason I love to fish, and whenever he took me fishing, he’d make us a pepper and onion frittata for lunch. The smell of peppers and onions frying instantly brings me back to those predawn moments in his kitchen. I’d wake up, smell peppers and onions frying, and know it was a fishing day.
Until the pandemic, when those questions started bubbling up, I hadn’t consciously thought about those memories in decades. But fishing with my grandfather was also the first time I was entrusted with a knife. My grandfather assigned me the task of cleaning the fish we caught before we brought them inside to cook. I liked having a job, and that connection with family around food. And that brings me to the longer answer of why I wrote this book.
While incredible opportunities continue to come my way, I feel confident enough these days that unless a proposal excites me creatively, I’m not interested. My definition of success has grown beyond James Beard Awards and stars in the New York Times to include the health of my relationships, with my loved ones and with the people I am blessed to work with. I’m still working closely with my chefs in the restaurants, but I’m no longer on the pass at night, mostly because I want to eat dinner with my kids, and also because my knees and back don’t like it. With that said, it might surprise people to learn that I’m cooking more than I ever have. I find my greatest pleasure in cooking for close family and friends. It never gets old. That—feeding the bonds of those relationships—is why I cook. To this day, when I go fishing, my grandfather’s frittata is what I make. I hope you make it, too (see p. 33 of Why I Cook): it keeps well and tastes delicious at room temperature.
