The internet is full of secret food tours, tours that take the participants to eateries that cater to a few rather than the many, whose reputation is held as a treasured confidence, to secret menus that can only be accessed with the right password. Really? Really. There are such places and goings-on.
Many are beyond the purse of most, some are simply restaurants that serve excellent foods but do not have a great publicist.
And the secret foods?
Last winter, amidst the wholesale worldwide focus on comfort foods and the resulting addition of pandemic pounds, CNN, offered its weekend viewers luscious … and I purposely used that word … programs which whisked us away to the gastronomic secrets of six Italian regions. Our guide on this marvelous tour was none other than the author, director and actor from “Big Night” (and other flicks), Stanley Tucci.
So, enamored by those wanderings through Milan, Bologna, Rome, Naples and the Amalfi Coast, Tuscany and Sicily, I immediately bought his very recent Memoir, “Stanley Tucci: Taste, My Life through Food.”
And it is a memoir, a wandering through memories of foods, meals and their preparation intertwined with the everyday and the special times of his life. He was, according to his meanderings, a typical teen, in love with food in general, particularly all of what we would call junk food today. But he remembers meals, even mid-week meals of great creativity and nuance prepared by his mother. These gave him a yardstick with which to measure other meals at other times in other places, and if you have seen “Big Night,” they show up as parts of the menu in the movie.
Tucci’s appreciation for good cooking incorporates context into its evaluation. His in-laws, who he describes as eating typical, less-than-lyrical American fare, e.g. hamburgers, etc., prepared a magnificent seashore meal of lobster that would equal any praise he had for the most obscure little bistro. Not a garlic clove or handpicked, fire roasted tomato in sight.
As a memoir the writing reveals no plot but it is clear that Tucci felt compelled to write this as the result of an agonizingly long spell involving the diagnosis and draconian cure for a form of oral cancer. For almost two years, he could not eat. For one so connected to food and its quality, he had to endure a good amount of time attached to a feeding tube as the treatment for the cancer which also destroyed his taste buds and olfactory sense. Thankfully, that has passed and Stanley has regained his senses of taste and smell. The book is as much of a product of Tucci’s love of food as it is of his divorce from it during treatment.
Charmingly, the book includes recipes, some of which I am anxious to try.
Now, Stanley and I do share some commonalities. He grew up in Katonah, N.Y. My mother worked in Katonah, most of my second-hand clothes came from a thrift store across from the train station in Katonah and I share a favorite recipe with Mr. Tucci which I will share with you.
My experiences with food have been, by comparison to Stanley, very limited. This so-simple Italian classic is one of my favorites and one which sends my spouse into paroxysms of delight:
Spaghetti with garlic infused olive oil … Or in Italian, ‘Aglio e Olio’
Ingredients:
. 4 tablespoons of good olive oil (which means, it’s more expensive)
. Six fat garlic cloves sliced very thin. You can also grate the garlic into the oil
. Few flakes of dried hot peppers
. 1/2 cup or less of parmesan cheese
. Fresh basil.
. Cooked spaghetti for four. Your choice of type. I like the angel hair but then I am not a chef or even a
barely functioning cook. Cook the pasta in less water than you would normally. You want a more
starchy cooking water.
. A half cup or so of the pasta water.
Putting it all together:
Heat the oil in a frying pan until shimmering, turn down the heat and add the garlic and red pepper flakes. Cook until you smell the garlic…about 30 seconds. Remove from the heat.
Add well drained spaghetti to the oil and garlic mixture. Mix the two together and add a some of the pasta water a little at a time while stirring the pot. The pasta will start to look a little creamier.
Add ½ cup of cheese. Mix well.
Sprinkle each serving with more cheese and shredded basil. A few drops of olive oil on each won’t hurt either.
With a green salad and a bottle of red wine you will have a memorable meal.
So, no tours around the Ferro household, but a chance to follow Stanley Tucci both On Demand or in print. Both are good options. Ciao, bella!
