Taste: My Life Through Food

Tucci details his family’s Christmas traditions, then and now. In his childhood, his mother would prepare the traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, a part of their Catholic heritage. He lists a typical menu, detailed and luxurious but simple at the same time. He elaborates on zeppole, deep-fried “rings or balls of dough made from mashed-up potatoes and wheat flour” (101). He talks about his own experiments with making zeppole and how he created something entirely new out of initial failure. Another favorite is baccala, a spread made from dried and salted cod, eaten worldwide but now threatened by overfishing.

After he becomes an adult, Tucci himself often hosts the Christmas Eve feast, making a stew with seven types of seafood rather than the elaborate multicourse buffets his Mom produced. Now that he lives in England with his second wife, Felicity, Tucci is surprised at how different the food traditions are—not only from his own family’s traditions but also from what he envisioned as a stereotypical English holiday.

Christmas Day brings has its own traditions. Tucci remembers the children waking up too early to unwrap presents and the always thwarted promise of an afternoon nap. This prospect was interrupted, much to the chagrin of his wife, by the preparation of the timpano. Anyone who has seen Tucci’s cult classic, Big Night, will remember that the timpano is the “centerpiece of the film’s climactic meal” (109). They will also remember that its preparation is elaborate and daunting, to say the least. Thus, Tucci’s actual holiday feasts are interrupted by the making of the timpano—for which he provides a recipe (five pages long), should any reader be bold enough to tackle it—which, despite its heaviness, is only a prelude to a larger meal. After dinner and digestives, the family usually plays the “Ring Game,” wherein someone hides a ring along with a piece of string; much lying and cheating takes place, with encouragement: “It is a cruel but brilliantly funny game, and as soon as you understand that cheating is not only necessary but fair, as it sometimes is in life, you will enjoy it” (118). He ends the chapter by confessing that, though he had hopes that his new wife, Felicity, would enjoy the drama of the timpano, she does not. It is truly more trouble than worth, yet it persists as a family tradition. He also passes along a recipe for “A Christmas Cocktail,” wishing the reader “a happier holiday” (120).

Tucci talks about the influence television and film had on his life, not least that their appeal propelled him into his nearly 40-year-long career. In particular, he mentions the fact that he liked cooking shows growing up, as did his mother. He talks at length about two of his favorite on-air personalities, Julia Child and Keith Floyd.

Child, of course, was a giant in the industry; her The French Chef revolutionized cooking in America and introduced the notion of cooking shows to generations of audiences, as Tucci notes. He also was granted the opportunity to play Paul Child, Julia’s husband, in the film adaptation of Julie & Julia, opposite Meryl Streep. He counts it among his most enjoyable working experiences, along with The Devil Wears Prada, winkingly suggesting that his collaboration with Streep made such work so gratifying.

Keith Floyd is a less familiar figure, a British television personality who traveled to various regions and countries to experience the cultures and cook the food. Tucci notes that the style was fairly rudimentary but impressive in its own way, using uninterrupted shots and unscripted patter: “But his energy, excitement, and profound knowledge about what he’s doing, along with some impressive hand-held camerawork, makes for an incredibly dynamic and entertaining cooking show” (127).

Tucci then analyzes the relative success of contemporary cooking shows and rails against their formulaic (and counterfeit) expressions of delight in their own cooking. He then segues into his own experience with this kind of television, the creation of his CNN show, Searching for Italy. In this series, he explores different regions of Italy, delving into their cultures and culinary expressions. He selects three recipes—one each from the north, the middle, and the south of the country—to illustrate “the wonderful diversity of the Italian table” (131). Pizzoccheri pasta from the Alps represents the humble country cooking that dominates much of Italian cooking. He recounts being asked to prepare the dish—in front of the cameras—for the family patriarch of a Lombardy family. He acts his way to success.

He chooses Carbonara—the combination of guanciale (cured pork cheek), eggs, and real parmesan cheese—to represent the cooking of Rome, in the middle of the country, and waxes profane on the glories of this dish at the restaurant Pommidoro. He argues that “it is the quality of the ingredients that makes the dish greater than the sum of its parts” (139) and eschews the substitution of pancetta for the more authentic guanciale. For his southern dish, he chooses spaghetti alla bottarga, which is dried fish roe, a simple yet incredibly satisfying preparation.

Tucci elaborates on the writing and making of Big Night, his movie about two brothers trying to save their Italian restaurant, with two very different philosophical visions. He wanted to write an American movie that had the feel of a foreign film, with an undetermined ending and close attention to characters rather than plot. Some of the experiences portrayed in the film derived from his time working at an old-style Italian restaurant, Alfredo’s. He also relays how he learned to make a frittata from chef Gianni Scappin so that he could make one onscreen for the film “in one continuous take” (152). A recipe for the simple dish is provided, as well. He ends the chapter by talking about another film he made for the same production company that worked on Big Night. He was treated to another simple but stunning dish from a friend: pasta con aglio e olio, or pasta with garlic and oil. 

The entire chapter discusses the realities of catering on movie sets: “Eating catered food on movie sets is often a terrifying prospect,” he begins (159). Still, Tucci focuses on the exceptions rather than the rule and details some of the most pleasant and interesting of his on-set experiences.

In the United Kingdom, Tucci appreciates the hearty English breakfast that one often finds on location, along with the omnipresent “‘tea table’” (162). He notes that, ironically, catering on sets in Italy is often terrible—because most actors and crew members will know of a decent restaurant in the area. Tucci allows that “[t]he only thing that makes Italian set catering bearable is that wine is always served” (163). In Germany, the quantity of quality food was amazing: “Someone please employ me there again” (165). In France, the service was as civilized as if the cast and crew were at a four-star restaurant. In Iceland, Tucci learns never to let stereotypical assumptions influence one’s expectations. Here, he tastes a stew so delicious that he has yet to find its equal: “To this day it remains the best catered meal I have eaten on any film set from the South Pole to the Arctic Circle and all points in between” (172). He also tries whale and puffin, the former being tasty enough to assuage his guilt.