The Tucci Cookbook
This cookbook was created by a collaboration—and much love—between actor Stanley Tucci, his family, and his friends (especially Gianni Scappin, executive chef for New York’s Castellano restaurants), combining expertise and artistry to bring a simple culinary collection to life. As sometimes happens in collaborative cookbooks, here the identity of the particular creator of each of nearly 200 recipes is murky. Is it the professional, French-trained chef; Tucci’s mother or father or grandparents; or a very close family friend? Although the voice behind a particular recipe can be puzzling to identify, the end results are not unclear. These are well-crafted traditional dishes that mirror the best of northern and southern Italian cuisines, including fried pasta, frittatas, grissini, polenta, braciole, chicken cacciatore, and biscotti. Prefaced by food star Mario Batali and with a resonant essay advising how to pair foods and wines (e.g., sweet tames spice), this is a warming cookbook, well worth savoring. --Barbara Jacobs