A couple of years back, I was between restaurant gigs and, for pretty much the first time in my life, actually found myself cooking at home every night: no prep guys, no purveyor deliveries, no pro kitchen, just me lugging stuff home from the market and cooking dinner in my tiny NYC apartment kitchen. I did a lot of Italian cooking—NYC-style. That's what Urban Italian is about. It's written with my wife, Gwen Hyman, who writes about food and culture, and it's full of actual workable recipes, plus some crazy true-life stories about my cooking life.

This isn't one of those fancy chef books you can't actually cook from in a real kitchen without a crew or special equipment: Gwen's no chef, but she can make every one of these recipes, and if she can do it, so can you.

Available through Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Noble.