Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef is near perfect, in my mind, when it comes to food-writing and memoir. This has so many things I love in a book, but mainly that it’s by a smart, ferocious lady who has a tendency to associate love with eating.

The sections of the book—how family weirdness shapes us as young people (Blood), how food experiences settle in the psyche (Bones), and how these things combine to form the dysfunctional and/or successful adults we become (Butter)—are introduced with a fervent honesty and frankness that is at times surprising.

Hamilton is a kitchen boss at heart, musing on her torpid personal life while building New York’s Prune to be the well-loved, eclectic institution it has been for the past 15 years—now cemented as one of the city’s favourite brunches (the service for which Hamilton affectionately refers to as “a shitshow”). There’s wicked candour in descriptions about her personal relationships, and an unapologetic tinge that could make those with overtly traditional ideas about marriage a bit squirmy. One friend thought the book was “kinda sad”, another described it as “hilarious and frustrating.”

Best bits: Off the top, there’s the slightly surreal and drool-inducing set-up in describing her father’s famed annual party, complete with full pig roast and performance artist roster. Next is the simple, intoxicating egg and toast she receives from her Greek host while traveling alone as a not-quite adult; this is a formative moment in her path to becoming a chef. Finally, her endearing love for her Italian mother-in-law, who does not speak English, but is an unexpected source of strength and softness for the otherwise hardened Hamilton. It’s the Nona bits that fuel the waterworks for me.