The Book: The Tucci Cookbook by Stanley Tucci. Tidy, sexy little man with serious food cred. Star of Big Night, The Hunger Games Tri-Fourlogy, and Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. Oh, and also Julie and Julia… And he always has a twinkle in his eye.
Pros:
Beautiful book with lovely photography. The writing is concise, and each recipe includes short personal stories. There is a wide variety of recipes from different regions in Italy, and some personal family recipes too. Neatly divided into courses.
Cons:
Not enough pictures of Stanley Tucci. The ones that exist are delightful. Not enough pictures of the food. Some recipes are a little too concise, a la Marcella, and pictures of at least the finished dish would help.
The Recipes:
Salsa alla Maria Rosa:
This is a nice fresh tasting tomato sauce with carrots and a fresh vegetable flavor. It has a nice story attached, and is bland as hell. One strike. I’ve made dozens of tomato sauces in my life – maybe even hundreds. This one just barely rates as “fine.” I can’t even think of anything humorous/interesting to say about it.
Mozzarella in Carozza (mozzarella in a carriage, which sounds like a weird name, but consider Pigs in Blankets or Angels on Horseback).
Now this one was exciting. As a woman who loves fried cheese more than almost anything, I couldn’t imagine this could go wrong. And… It was close. Little fried/grilled cheese sandwiches? Amazing idea, but they were just a touch bland since mozzarella isn’t the most flavorful of cheeses. The soak in egg helped – they browned evenly and quickly but hurt the flavor. When I changed this up a little – skipped the egg wash step and added a dipping cup of pizza sauce. Pretty good! This is an idea I can work with, even if the source material didn’t exactly work.
Pizza Ripiena (stuffed pizza or Easter pie)
This was a huge disappointment. If you like ricotta and ham, then boy do I have a recipe for you. Because that’s what this tastes like. Just ham’n’ricotta. Ricotta’n’ham. Is that ricotta I taste? Yes – with hints of ham. Very fussy and hard to make. Very boring results. Doesn’t that just look awful?
Hmmm. I didn’t expect this result. I thought Stan The Man would be a slam dunk. I really, really want to keep this lovely book, but I’m afraid I’d better follow my own rules.
Verdict: Trash
illdothedisheslater 