When I told Mr Rathbone that Stanley Tucci had written a food memoir he said, “He could write a book about his slippers and they would publish it.” As documented in this blog previously, Mr Rathbone is very understanding about my celebrity crush on Yul Brynner, which in recent years has kind of transmogrified into a celebrity crush on Stanley. What do these two men have in common?!
They have both written cookbooks – hahahah!
Actually, Stanley has written a couple of cookbooks and his latest is a memoir with recipes and I LOVE IT.
As mentioned, myself and my bestie Cathy of Kitchen Confidence have pledged to cook our way through the book. I nabbed the Negronis and my first cooking challenge was Stanley’s Spaghetti with Lentils. It was GOOD but HUGE. Stanley and his family must have massive appetites as his recipe states serves 4 and we got about 8 portions out of this.
I’m not going to post the recipe here, as I’ll probably be breaking some kind of copyright law and I LOVE Stanley and don’t want to upset him in any way (!) so I’ll just pop up some pix to tempt you to get Taste and cook this up for yourselves. It was super delicious.
Here’s a fun video of me breaking up the spaghetti
and here are the busted up bits with a Stanley Tucci Negroni (naturally) hovering in the background…
Big pot of spaghetti with lentils
Big pot of Stanley’s marinara sauce (this isn’t in the book but you can find a video of Stanley demonstrating this here – highly entertaining!)
Cathy & I really enjoyed making and eating this dish but I see that I scribbled a note on the recipe, “We would have liked more sauce, we are Brits of course.” Because although we know in our minds that real Italian food is usually plenty of pasta with a little bit of sauce, we are greedy and like it the other way round. I served this with some grilled hipsi cabbage in an anchovy sauce. That was delicious too.
The next day, I popped the leftovers (and there were a LOT of leftovers) into a casserole dish after adding the rest of the Stanley Tucci marinara I had made, and topped with cheese and breadcrumbs. I bunged it in the oven covered with foil to heat through, then took the foil off to melt the cheese a bit.
I ate some of this with my friend Lady Jane who came to stay, and sent some home with her in a Tupperware for Trix. I STILL had plenty left! This was super tasty and I can’t wait to cook another dish from Stanley’s fab book. Highly recommended. He’s the new Vincent Price!
I was in the Waterstones in Gower St, yesterday and looked at his other books . I thought he only cooked Italian, but the others are more VP in style with all sorts of cuisines – he even cooks Shepherd’s Pie, my absolute childhood favourite. I But I will cook this also, not surprised it made loads, there are similarities here with Bogie’s spag. loaf and I always end up with loads of that, but it’s no problem as it reheats well and is fine cold for lunch the next day ! His movie ‘Big Night’ is available to rent on Amazon Prime, but I’m in every charity shop I pass hoping to find it on DVD along with cheapo copies of his cook books !
Oooh Mark, the Waterstones in Gower St, that takes me back. I think Stanley really knows his stuff in the kitchen and yes, his cookbooks do put me in mind of Vincent. i love Shepherd’s Pie too – yum! I still haven’t got around to making Humphrey’s Spaghetti Loaf but now I have finally found a good place to keep a “movie star to-cook list” it has finally gone on the record.
I bought a copy of Big Night on DVD to watch with Cathy before she skedaddled to Ballymaloe for 3 months – goodness knows where I put it…
The food gods are with me. On a whim I checked for him online in my local libraries and there he was ‘Taste’ and ‘The tucci table’ back on the shelves ! Going to try the Spag and lentils soon, but see he does this combining in the pan on the stove top . Did you bake yours ? As thats how I thought it would be done a la Bogie spag. loaf. Sure it won’t matter too much either way, looks fab . Dying to try it …. And maybe you should save the film for when you attempt the timpopo ! And hold a celebratory screening !
You have a good point here Mark! I had totally forgotten that after we had eaten two portions as per Stanley’s recipe, I bunged the rest in a dish and baked it with some cheese and breadcrumbs on top. Will make a note of this in the blog post. Thanks for flagging that. Good idea about Big Night. From what he says about baking the timpano you need guests with a lot of patience, so having the movie on is a good idea!
Aha, mystery solved, but good idea ! Cooked this on tuesday and for something so simple it really is astoundlingly delicious . Made it with half a cup of red lentils & two tins of toms . But top tip, don’t leave the broken up spaghetti completely wrapped up in the tea towel as otherwise – ahem, like me – you may suddenly need a tea towel for another reason and grab the wrong one – broken spag. all over the floor, start again ! Well, we can’t all be Stanley Tucci ! I had some more cold on weds eve with a beetroot salad . Fab stuff .
Hahahaha – that’s very slapstick Mark! Glad you enjoyed this one, I agree, surprisingly yummy. Oooh beetroot salad, yes please! Jx