I seldom cook by numbers, any more than when I walk my dog, Hamlet, along the familiar streets of lower Manhattan I use a compass or plot my course on a map. When my wife, Judy, or friends ask how much of this or that I use in a stew or salad, I say “a little” or “a lot,” but usually I say “not too much”—not meaning to be rude, but because I agree with the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus that you cannot enter the same river twice, that each act is unique and irretrievable, like the water rushing downriver to the sea, or the seconds of our lives ticking away on our wrists, or the way we hear a tune or read a book. From a Heraclitean perspective, it is impossible to make the same dish twice—nor should one want to, since it can be made better the next time, when you will be a little wiser and the ingredients, a little more forthcoming. Recipes should be more like stories than like maps or formulae. So in this book I tell practical stories about some favorite dishes and how they fit into my life and hope readers will try them in the same spirit. In cooking, “not too much” is usually a good rule, since you seldom want a particular flavor to dominate. You want harmony, though syncopation helps.

I am a book publisher, not a professional cook, though in my youth I worked in restaurant kitchens, and later published many fine books by famous chefs who became friends—Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, Daniel Boulud, Maida Heatter, and Patrick O’Connell among others—and learned from them, too. From time to time I’ve written about food for various publications, and many of the dishes I describe in this book appeared first in those magazines w...