Stanley Tucci’s Italian food memoir: happy reading

Stanley Tucci’s new memoir Taste: My Life Through Food was a bedside no-brainer in my house. And it has some great recipes.

Memoir: Stanley Tucci. Picture: Getty Images

Stanley Tucci’s new memoir Taste: My Life Through Food was a bedside no-brainer in my house. The actor is a New Yorker (albeit a New Yorker in England these days); he’s Italian; and the subject matter is food, mostly. And these are a few of my favourite things.

(I’d just finished Woody Allen’s Apropos of Nothing; it doesn’t have the Italian thing going on – although I did learn a few Yiddish phrases that might come in handy – but whatever you want to say about Woody, the guy loves his food. And New York. But the critics who said it was a self-indulgent ramble probably got it right.)

For his demonstrably bad Negroni technique, video of which went viral last year and which he unforgivably commits to print in his memoir (under no circumstances should you shake a Negroni), I am prepared to forgive Stan and press on. Stephen Fry calls Taste (Fig Tree, $45) “captivating”; English food writer Jay Rayner says it is “gloriously written”. And Nigella describes the book as “impossible to read without becoming ravenous!” Her punctuation.

I got to the part where Stan’s family moved from upstate New York to Italy for a year when he was 12 and I was thinking: how lucky were you, mate? You got Florence and schiacciata; I got a Melbourne boarding school and baked beans. It explains a lot.

So, Stan peppers his memoir with a few recipes. Unsurprisingly, most are for pasta. Aglio e olio; spaghetti with lentils; timpano, the pasta pie made famous by Tucci’s breakthrough film Big Night 25 years ago; pizzoccheri, the ingredient list including “a f**k lot of butter”; carbonara; spaghetti alla bottarga; fettuccine with ragu alla Bolognese; spaghetti con zucchine alla Nerano; pasta fagioli.

I may even give some a go, although it won’t be timpano, which I remember sampling when the marvellous Melbourne restaurateur Olimpia Bortolotto made it for a group celebrating Big Night’s launch in Australia. Molto complex. But I can see myself having a crack at pizzoccheri, the predominantly buckwheat flour pasta of the alps with potato, cabbage, butter and cheese. Not in summer, obviously.

And there’s the thing: Stan seems to be a packet pasta guy, which is fine because a lot of dishes depend on the texture of dried pasta to work. But egg pasta is a lovely way to balance protein and starch – and the fresher, the better.Now, I thought I knew a thing or two about pasta until some samples arrived from a NSW company, Berkelo, that makes “sourdough pasta” in various dried styles. Whether it is the grains they use, or the sourdough starter employed, or both, I’m not sure. But it is good pasta, in terms of flavour and texture. And it got me thinking: if Stan were coming round for tea, I might just knock him up a batch of my own fresh sourdough pasta.

Turns out using sourdough starter for pasta dough is an actual thing. There’s a Canadian brand, Kaslo, that explains: “The bran in wheat contains phytic acid, which stops gastrointestinal enzymes from digesting proteins and starch in the stomach. As a result, some people who eat wheat manifest digestive problems like indigestion and bowel irritation. Fortunately, we have an excellent alternative in sourdough. It contains wild yeast and lactobacilli that neutralise phytic acid, making it easier to digest.”

If you’ve got a starter in the fridge, I say do it yourself. This does, after all, use what we sourdough types call “the discard”, a good thing. For about 500g of pasta, mix 100g of your starter with one whole egg and four yolks; add it to the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook then add 150g each of semolina flour and Tipo 00 flour. Add salt and a splash of olive oil.

Now proceed as you might with any other pasta dough; give it about five minutes of mixing before kneading by hand on a floured bench for a few more. Wrap in film and refrigerate for a minimum of one hour, maximum 24, before rolling and cutting as per usual.

For Stan, I’m thinking some kind of creamy Albany scallop and tarragon lasagne, a Margaret River chardonnay – and a Negroni to start. Stirred, Stan, not shaken. Ever.

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