There are lots of gaps. We get the childhood in Katonah, New York (the son of a high-school art teacher, his grandparents emigrated to the US from Calabria), but little about his efforts to win an Equity card (maybe he was too poor to eat then). His two marriages are touched on only lightly (his first wife, Kathryn, died of cancer in 2009; his second – whom he met at her sister’s wedding, at George Clooney’s “gorgeous” house in Lake Como – is the literary agent, Felicity Blunt). There isn’t much… gossip, unless you count the (non) revelation that Marcello Mastroianni, with whom Tucci once had dinner, favoured a digestivo comprising half a shot of amaro and half a shot of Fernet-Branca. The sharing of recipes. The friendships and bonding that occur over shared meals. The conversations. The moments you will never forget. Taste” begins in a charming way setting the table (pun intended and achieved – haha, Tucci!) for a delightful read. Tucci jumps into his past as a child and hashes tales of his family and thus ultimately reveals how he became the man that he is today. In fact, he had such a lovely upbringing (I’m sure there are skeletons in the closet but “Taste” was simply not the time or place to reveal them); that readers with traumatic lives (such as myself) might be slightly triggered and envious. That being said; this simply means that Tucci is a wonderful storyteller and is able to bring a narrative visually to life. At this point, “Taste” is very emotive to the reader. In this book, Tucci shared memories of growing up in an Italian family that shared an immense love of food, and how his preferences were much more expansive than those of his peers, yet he still craved the junk foods of his youth.

Book Review: ‘Taste,’ by Stanley Tucci - The New York Times

Not only is this an autobiography but it’s a dip into history, cuisine of Italian-Americans and Italy, Stanley Tucci cooking, Stanley Tucci family and a glimpse into Stanley Tucci cookbook recipes. LOVED THIS!My bad I guess because I was hoping for more funny similarities about Italian Americans growing up! Describing Stanley Tucci wife, Felicity Blunt, cooking roast potatoes and complete confusion when they watch her boiling, fluffing them up and covering in goose fat. The tone of his book is light and, for an American actor, moderately ironic (I should know; I’ve interviewed enough of them). Even when he’s undergoing chemotherapy – in 2017, a tumour was discovered at the base of his tongue, the treatment for which meant that, for a time, he was fed via a tube – he doesn’t get Oscar-speech mushy. But this only serves to emphasise the pulsing desire one scents in the melted butter he likes to dribble over his Maine lobster, in the wonton soup and fried plantains at Caridad, a now defunct Cuban-Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side. Separate him from his schiacciata (a bread similar to focaccia) or his chimichurri sauce, and no good will come of it; he’s one of those people who thinks about dinner even as he butters his toast. Allow him free rein, on the other hand, and there will be fireworks – or at any rate, something good to eat when you arrive home from work feeling as though you could devour a ranch. He lists wonderful pairings of pasta and sauce because “not all wheat flour pasta works with all sauces”.

Taste: My Life Through Food - Stanley Tucci - Google Books Taste: My Life Through Food - Stanley Tucci - Google Books

I speed my audiobooks up so it only took me about 4 hours of listening and I couldn’t listen fast enough and had it on at every opportunity (walking, cooking, shower, dishes, washing). Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them. Guess what, he waited six months! I know. I'm calling him out here only to prevent someone else from doing the same. A good reader friend pointed out that this was probably anxiety, and not just a guy avoiding the prognosis. He’s right of course, and I mistook it for machismo, which was totally incorrect. Oh, the bit about machismo, in Stanley's last chapter he talks about his grueling bout with cancer. He had a cancerous tumor at the base of his tongue, in his throat, which started as a pain masquerading as a toothache. Or so he thought. He did go to the dentist, in the US and London. The London doctor said it might be cancer and gave him specific instructions on what to do next. No, for some unknown reason, I feel more at home in the Italian Alps than I do in the brutal heat of Puglia. I like brisk autumns, snowy winters, rainy springs, and temperate summers. The change of seasons allows for a change in one’s wardrobe (I’m sartorially obsessed) and, most important, one’s diet. A boeuf carbonnade tastes a thousand times better in the last days of autumn than when it’s eighty degrees and the sun is shining. An Armagnac is the perfect complement to a snowy night by the fire but not to an August beach outing, just as a crisp Orvieto served with spaghetti con vongole is ideal “al fresco” on a sunny summer afternoon but not nearly as satisfying when eaten indoors on a cold winter’s night. One thing feeds the other. (Pun intended.) So a visit to Iceland to escape the gloom of what is known in London as “winter” was an exciting prospect. However, my greatest concern, as you can probably guess, if you’re still reading this, was the food.”

It was part of my grandfather, whom we adored, and that made it the sweetest liquid ever to pass our lips. Delving into memories of his childhood and revisiting cherished times with friends and family in his own words, Stanley explores how food has often been a meaningful centre-point of these interactions. Alongside the likes of anecdotes about Meryl Streep and tales of his courtship of his wife, Felicity Blunt, he includes a number of unmissable recipes, from the Negroni that became an internet sensation, to his family’s cherished tomato sauce. The resulting book is a reminder of how food is so often a portal to our past, a connection to our loved ones, and almost always present at life’s most precious moments. We hear about the New York of old and places that are no longer there like “independantly-owned cinemas” but makes you want to visit New York and experience the current places. Z eppole are deep-fried balls of a dough made with flour and, sometimes, mashed potatoes. The sweet version, dusted with sugar, are often filled with pastry cream, like the more famous cannoli. The savoury version, favoured in Calabria, in southern Italy, may contain anchovies, and go down very well indeed with a martini, or a glass of something cold, fizzy and unforgivably expensive.