Taste: The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller
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Taste: The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller
- Brand: Unbranded
Description
He lists wonderful pairings of pasta and sauce because “not all wheat flour pasta works with all sauces”. My name is Larry and I love food. I mean, seriously. I love to read about it, I love to cook it, and I seriously love to eat it. Most of the memoirs I’ve read have been written by chefs or have been about people’s love of food, so when I saw Stanley Tucci (one of my favorite actors) had written this book, I jumped on it like I would a buffet. (Hey, #fatboysgottafat.)
Guess what, he waited six months! I know. I'm calling him out here only to prevent someone else from doing the same. A good reader friend pointed out that this was probably anxiety, and not just a guy avoiding the prognosis. He’s right of course, and I mistook it for machismo, which was totally incorrect. Taste was a delightful memoir by Stanley Tucci of his life through food beginning with growing up in an Italian family in upstate New York with many traditions surounding food. He lovingly describes how when he was growing up, his mother spent most of her waking time in the kitchen, which she does to this day. In Tucci's words, cooking for her is at once a creative outlet and a way of feeding her family well:
Christmas Gifts
Also absent from “Taste” is a section of photo color plates that seems to be the usual stylistic formula for celebrity memoirs. Although this isn’t a hugely tragic departure; it would have been nice.
As “Taste” progresses, it begins to lose some steam and the boiling pot settles (another pun!). Tucci’s tales become quite repetitive and read exactly the same: “I ate here. I liked this dish. Then I ate here with this person. I liked or hated that.” Boring! There isn’t much excitement to be shared or a thesis to these experiences. It is also at this point that Tucci begins to name drop chefs, other foodies, and his celebrity friends which are consequentially tedious and too typical Hollywood. This type of behavior is seemingly ‘below’ Tucci and has little place in “Taste” therefore weakening the essence of the memoir. The owner, who was really incredibly sweet and polite, came over and said, “How do you like your andouillette?” We said, “Oh, it’s, you know, it’s great. It’s different from the other andouillettes that we’ve had.” Just lying. He said, “Would you like something else?” We said, “Yes, we’d like an omelette, please. We’ll have four of them. That would be great.” Friday: Scrambled egg, pepper, and potato wedge. As the food budget was wearing thin by the end of the week, this was an inexpensive lunch my mother might whip up on Thursday night after a simple dinner of pasta and salad. I speed my audiobooks up so it only took me about 4 hours of listening and I couldn’t listen fast enough and had it on at every opportunity (walking, cooking, shower, dishes, washing). Unless my editor cut it, but the word definitely came to mind. There’s something very choreographed about the ritual of cooking.
Christmas Cards & Gift Wrap
So often I could picture Tucci with his sly wit and slightly curmudgeonly manner telling me these stories. (He loves poking fun at Meryl Streep, too.) Taste really was just an all-around fantastic reading experience that made me so hungry, and I, well, devoured it in no time. It was part of my grandfather, whom we adored, and that made it the sweetest liquid ever to pass our lips. Incredibly vague name of red sauce or even, Gravy”. Do not call sauce, gravy. Gravy is completely different and what Brits use over our Sunday roast Dinners.
Thursday: Veal cutlet sandwich or wedge with a small amount of butter and lettuce. This was in the days of affordable veal. I listen to 4-5 audiobooks a month on Audible. If you sign up here, you can get 30 days free trial on Audible which gives you 1 credit to get any Audiobook you want and access to hundreds of free material including audiobooks and podcasts.Let’s move on to something more delicious. If you could eat only one food or one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? No, for some unknown reason, I feel more at home in the Italian Alps than I do in the brutal heat of Puglia. I like brisk autumns, snowy winters, rainy springs, and temperate summers. The change of seasons allows for a change in one’s wardrobe (I’m sartorially obsessed) and, most important, one’s diet. A boeuf carbonnade tastes a thousand times better in the last days of autumn than when it’s eighty degrees and the sun is shining. An Armagnac is the perfect complement to a snowy night by the fire but not to an August beach outing, just as a crisp Orvieto served with spaghetti con vongole is ideal “al fresco” on a sunny summer afternoon but not nearly as satisfying when eaten indoors on a cold winter’s night. One thing feeds the other. (Pun intended.) So a visit to Iceland to escape the gloom of what is known in London as “winter” was an exciting prospect. However, my greatest concern, as you can probably guess, if you’re still reading this, was the food.” The book started off well enough with memories of his mother in particular who cooked up a storm and growing up in an Italian American family. Many memories made me laugh because I also grew up in an Italian American family. In my family, however, my father worked two jobs to make ends meet and when things got tough, monetarily, my mom went out to work at a bank and rose in ranks as the head teller. Those were difficult times as we hardly saw our parents but my mother always, always “cooked up a storm” for her family. I’d like him even more if he’d help me get ready for the Met Ball and give me that tough lovin’ I need to survive my mean boss at Runway magazine, so I can ultimately become a journalist at the New York… It was ‘mostly’ enjoyable listening to Tucci share family stories, his mother’s amazing cooking, “memory meals”, recipes, his Italian culture and heritage, his growing up in New York, celebrity anecdotes, and his stark funny-bone personality.
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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