The Tucci Table

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The book is heavy on Italian food, naturally, and I am tempted to try his Polenta Fries, which Tucci calls a great alternative to French fries. They look delicious.

Featuring family-friendly recipes and stunning photography, a cookbook filled with traditional and modern Italian dishes from New York Times bestselling author, beloved actor, and respected foodie Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci's association with wonderful foods began for fans with the movie Big Night and resonated in his role as Julia Child's husband in Julie & Julia. But well before these films, he was enjoying innovative homemade Italian meals throughout his childhood, when family and food were nearly inseparable and cooking was always a familial venture. Decades later, Tucci is still no stranger to professional kitchens. Dropping in on chefs in Italy, like Tony Lo Coco (I Pupi, Sicily), Sarah Cicolini (Santo Palato, Rome), and Fabio Picchi (Cibrèo, Florence), was one of the joys of making the series. “You have to know how to stay out of the way,” he says with a reverence that recognizes the demanding nature of restaurant work. “That’s what is really important. And be deferential and know what they’re doing. It’s almost like you’re walking on stage while a play is going on.” Tucci was comfortable filming in Italian restaurants. However, he admits, “It doesn’t matter if the chef cooked it 40,000 times... You’re supposed to turn it out perfectly every time, no matter what the circumstances are. And those circumstances change at any given night and at any given moment. And that is the most terrifying and exciting thing about being in a kitchen and being a chef.” Featuring family-friendly “simple to make and magnificently delicious” (Mario Batali) recipes and stunning photography, a practical cookbook from New York Times bestselling author, beloved actor, and respected foodie Stanley Tucci.

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The recipes are carefully written so that they can be followed easily. But more than the food, there is a strong and powerful sense of family throughout. This is a book that virtually anyone can use. There are some basic recipes for those who are new to the kitchen, and more complex dishes for those of us who have more experience with cooking. A few of the dishes that I most look forward to trying include Isabel's New York Cheesecake Ice Cream, Baked Ham with Mostarda di Frutta, and Pan-Seared Loin of Venison with Red Wine, Juniper and Quince. The book is divided by course for easy navigation. In addition to anecdotes about Tucci's family, these recipes are paired with tips on how to store these dishes, how to make them better, or how to work with substitutions in a pinch. I really appreciated that for some of the more difficult recipes that step by step photos were included. The photography in this book is lovely, and while there's not a picture for every recipe, there are a lot of photographs. From his late friend actress Natasha Richardson, whom he said was "an extraordinary cook who threw some of the best dinner parties I have ever attended', he shares her Pissaladiere, topped with anchovies, onions and olives.

Growing up, I remember watching movies with the bald guy with the glasses who looked super smart. As I started to select genres that I liked and prefered as one does with age, I was still able to find him in even the strangest of movie selections- of the top of my head, He was reassuring as the doctor in a movie I found utterly boring: The First Avenger, Captain America. He was the reassuring Head designer in that cult classic The Devil Wears Prada. He was frightening in a quiet and menacing way in The lovely Bones and for a while I was hesitant to watch anything else he was in - the mark of a great actor. His son Nico's Pasta with Proscuitto, Onions, Peas and Pancetta looks like a winning dish to me, and I appreciated the detailed instructions on the carbonara finish to the dish. There was no ice. No cold sugary soda, no kids drinking milk, not even beer was chilled. Eggs and many foods were not refrigerated. These were the surprising impressions Stanley Tucci remembers from that formative year as a 13-year-old boy living in Florence, Italy, during his father’s teaching sabbatical. When he could, Tucci ate pizza and schiacciata, a Tuscan focaccia bread. But mostly, he feasted on his mother’s expanding repertoire of American, Calabrian, and Florentine recipes. In the evening, his parents sent him across the street to buy wine from the grocer.But if you think that a cookbook with a celebrity name attached to it is all that The Tucci Table is then you are about to be wonderfully surprised. Few actors can look so at ease or so convincingly distraught in restaurants, dining rooms, and bars on screen. His real-life obsession with cooking comes out in the “foodie” movies for which he is best known, like Big Night (1996), starring Isabella Rossellini and Tony Shalhoub, and Julie & Julia (2009) with Meryl Streep. Stanley Tucci is an accomplished actor, he is also an accomplished chef; so the writing of a cook book is not so far out of the realm of what should be expected. Tucci has always loved to cook, and follows his successful 2012 The Tucci Cookbook with a new cookbook, The Tucci Table, filled with recipes from himself, his family and even some famous friends, written with his wife Felicity Blunt, sister of actress Emily Blunt.

Editor's note: This interview with Stanley Tucci appeared in the February issue of the Italian print edition of La Cucina Italiana as well as in the Spring 2021 issue of the American print edition. But after three decades of acting, directing, writing, producing, and sharing countless meals, Tucci is a prolific food storyteller in his own right. In Big Night, the film he directed as a 36-year-old, Tucci played Secondo, a frustrated Italian restaurateur in New Jersey, who serves seafood risotto to a meatball-loving clientele. In these clever scenes of a failing family restaurant, Tucci exposed the tension between art, commerce, and culture, and the pressure on immigrants to assimilate by preparing meals that reflect traditions different from their own. To prepare for his role, Tucci spent 18 months with chef Gianni Scappin at Le Madri, one of Manhattan’s first Tuscan restaurants, which closed in 2005. He studied every mannerism, from the flip of a frittata to the rhythm of a knife dicing garlic. (His parents and Scappin published a cookbook in 1999, featuring recipes from the family and film.) Featuring 100 luscious new full-color photographs, The Tucci Table captures the true joys of family cooking. Buon appetito! Each recipe comes with a fun little story that introduces the people in Tucci's life, and makes you feel like you know them too. It made the recipes seem more personal, as though this book wasn't mass produced, but given to you as something special. There's a fair bit of humor in this book as well, which made it very easy to flip through for recipes. It's clear that this book was written in love.The Tucci Table is a glimpse inside the private and intimate life of Stanley Tucci and the people he loves. He shares insights into family and caring that happen to be part of the food he makes and enjoys. Some of the recipes are his and some are friends and family. But what should be felt through it all is the setting of the family dinner, where food is prepared carefully and with the love that one brings to their family. These are not meals meant to impress others, these are the foods meant to bring people home.