Eat with Your Hands

From Zakary Pelaccio, founder and owner of Fatty Crab and Fatty 'Cue, comes a gorgeous, groundbreaking cookbook of Southeast Asian—inspired, French— and Italian—inflected food that celebrates getting your hands dirty in—and out of—the kitchen.

Eat with Your Hands takes readers on a tour of the outrageously flavorful and wholly original food that has made Pelaccio a star, in a cookbook that's as irreverent, high-spirited, and deeply iconoclastic as the chef himself.

Combining a punk rock ethos with a commitment to producing exquisitely imagined and executed food, Eat with Your Hands brings together Pelaccio's eclectic influences in wildly inventive recipes that showcase his innovative blending of Asian flavors, sustainable local ingredients, and American gusto.

Full of highly opinionated suggestions for both what to drink and what to listen to in the kitchen, paeans to the joys of the mortar and pestle and fermented condiments, charming sidebars on kitchen techniques, and an unbridled love for real food, Eat with Your Hands is a celebration of no-holds-barred cooking from a chef who is redefining the American culinary landscape.

"Opening with a recipe for a Frog Leg Clay Pot, it's clear that the debut of Pelaccio, owner and founder of NYC's Fatty ‘Cue and Fatty Crab, will be a radical departure from the norm. A curious mélange of Malaysian, barbecue, and classic cooking, Pelaccio's inventiveness and enthusiasm is infectious and engaging. Dishes like Goat's-Milk-Braised Goat Parts, a roasted pig's head, and Anelli Con Ricci Di Mare (which calls for eight whole, live sea urchins) may be best left to the pros at Pelaccio's restaurants (as well as his iconic Fatty Duck and Fatty Brisket, also included here) but cooks are likely to find his Grilled Langoustines with Bacon Vinaigrette, Pork Fries, Oyster Banh Mi, and homemade bacon approachable and irresistible. Each recipe is paired with drink and music suggestions, though some may balk at his recommendation of two cases of beer, a couple joints, and an 8-ball of cocaine (?!) in order to properly smoke a whole pig. Painfully specific ingredients, such as DIY 'lardo' or a bottle of cincalok (a Malaysian ingredient made from fermented krill), may put some readers off, but Pelaccio's passion is difficult to deny in what is easily one of the most creative — not to mention Falstaffian — cookbooks of the season. Color photos. (Apr. 17)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

“To eat at Fatty Crews new restaurant is to experience the very essence of nowness. No one else is cooking like this anywhere.”
—Sam Sifton, New York Times

Iconoclast chef Zak Pelaccio has been hailed as a “mini Mario” (Batali) and “the next Jean-Georges” (Vongerichten). The ingenious culinary innovator behind the acclaimed Fatty Crab and Fatty Cue restaurants,  Palaccio entreats food-lovers to Eat With Your Hands with this groundbreaking and gorgeous cookbook of Southeast-Asian inspired, French-Italian inflected cuisine. A gastronomes delight, Eat With Your Hands celebrates the unique joys of getting your hands greasy in—and out—of the kitchen with more than 125 unique, extraordinarily savory recipes aimed at both the professional and the home cook alike. This is haute cuisine with a punk rock flair, presented with a refreshing irreverence that would do Anthony Bourdain proud.

Zakary Pelaccio is an owner and founder of the restaurants Fatty Crab and Fatty 'Cue, an award winning chef, a father, a part-time writer, amateur gardener, occasional teacher, and devout student of flavor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.