Hold Your Tongue

Ethan Stowell, owner of Tavolàta, Anchovies & Olives, and How to Cook a Wolf, from his cookbook Ethan Stowell’s New Italian Kitchen, out September 21.

Courtesy Geoffrey Smith.

"IT WAS DURING my first stint in a restaurant kitchen—there among the misfits and mad geniuses, most of them unfit for human company and therefore well-suited to restaurant hours—that I felt, for the first time, like I was truly among my people…. I have no truck with those snobby chefs who think that a fryer has no place in the modern kitchen or think it’s trashy. People like fried things…. Tongues have an awesome richness that goes completely underappreciated because people don’t serve them, fearing a food that can taste them."