Stanley Tucci Transcript

 Stanley Tucci Transcript

Stanley Tucci:
It’s just heresy. Just twirl it. It's not that hard, it really isn’t that hard, and it tastes better. It's meant to be twirled.

Kerry Diamond:
Hey, everybody. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Today's guest is Stanley Tucci, the much-loved actor, director and now, memoirist. Stanley's new book, Taste: My Life Through Food is out today. And it's a wonderful read, filled with family stories, recipes and travel. Stanley is also the star of Stanley Tucci, Searching for Italy, now streaming on HBO Max. Stanley just won an Emmy for the show, so congrats to Stanley and the crew.

Before we get to Stanley, I'd like to thank Crate & Barrel and Kerrygold for supporting this episode. We'll hear from Kerrygold, the makers of beautiful butter and cheese, in just a sec. And Crate & Barrel, well, who doesn't love Crate & Barrel? I love Crate & Barrel. As I was doing some homework on today's guest, I realized I've never owned a bar cart. So I looked up bar carts on crateandbarrel.com and there are some really sexy options. There's also everything you could possibly need to stock your bar, from gorgeous drinkware, to bottle openers, and some chic cocktail shakers. There's lots of good cheer over at Crate and Barrel. So be sure to check out crateandbarrel.com.

Now, here's a little Cherry Bombe housekeeping. We have a brand new event we're getting ready for. Cherry Bombe Cooks and Books is happening October 16th and 17th at the new ACE Hotel, Brooklyn. Celebrate the fall's hottest books and coolest authors. Join your favorite folks, including Claire Stafford's, Chef Missy Robbins, Top Chef winner, Kelsey Bernard Clark, the Korean Vegan, Sophia Road, Dorie Greenspan and so many others, so many of my favorite people for talks, demos, and panels. If you're a cookbook nerd, like I am, you don't want to miss the special weekend. Tickets to the individual events are on sale now at cherrybombe.com. So hop on over and snag a ticket or two. The team and I would love to see you.

A special thanks to our partners, Le Creuset and Maple Hill Creamery, and to our bookstore partner, Kitchen Arts and Letters. If you'd like to stay at the new ACE Hotel Brooklyn that weekend, use code Cherry B, letter B, Cherry B for 15% off the best price when booking at acehotel.com. Now, a quick word from our friends at Kerrygold, and then some fun conversation with the one and only, Stanley Tucci.

Stanley Tucci, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.

Stanley Tucci:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Kerry Diamond:
It's so nice to see you again.

Stanley Tucci:
Likewise.

Kerry Diamond:
And congratulations on the publication of Taste, finally. We've been talking about it for a little while, and on your Emmy.

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, right. Yeah, I know. We were shocked.

Kerry Diamond:
Were you? It's been a few good weeks, huh?

Stanley Tucci:
Yes, it's been great. Yeah, we were quite surprised, but really happy about it.

Kerry Diamond:
Well, you know I love the show, so it wasn't a surprise to me. It was such a pandemic delight, being able to watch that show and travel virtually with you.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, yeah. Good. Thanks.

Kerry Diamond:
So we'll talk about that in a little bit, but first I want us to jump right in and talk about Taste, which is so wonderful. And I absolutely loved reading it.

Stanley Tucci:
Thank you.

Kerry Diamond:
What made you decide to write a memoir through the lens of food?

Stanley Tucci:
Well, I'd always made notes about food, and I thought maybe someday I'd write, but just fractured musings about food, maybe a book peppered with recipes, observations and stuff like that. But it was Simon & Schuster who suggested that it take the form of a memoir. And I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to do that, or I wasn't quite sure that I even knew how to do that. I said, "All right, well, I'll try it." So I just started writing it and it worked, thank God.

Kerry Diamond:
So you've kept notes about your meals over the years.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. To a certain extent. Just, yeah, and thinking about maybe writing something, or doing other cookbooks, or things like that. I don't keep a journal or anything. I keep a series of notebooks that are just meant... That are scattered all over the place. And suddenly, I look back and I find something I wrote 10 years ago, and go, "Oh, that's... I forgot about that. That's all right." And then sometimes you read stuff, and you go, "God, you pretentious idiot."

Kerry Diamond:
That's what's good about a diary, other people don't necessarily have to read it.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
I really regret not keeping notes about all the wonderful meals I've had. So if anyone is listening, and who is younger, and eating a lot of wonderful food, start now. You never know how those notes will come in handy years later.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, it's true. And Felicity would... I'd get to a point often and I'd go, "Well, I don't know if I have anything else to write. I don't know." She goes, "Stanley, what about the time when you, blah, blah, blah." I go, "Oh yeah. Is that... Should I write about it? Is that interesting?" And she's like, "Yes. You remember you told me that story 1,000 times." So she would jog my memory, but also let me know why something was interesting when I thought it wasn't interesting. Because you don't really think, well, I don't really think that a lot of what I do is very interesting, I just do it. But she assured me that it was, so I wrote it down.

Kerry Diamond:
It's wonderful to have someone like that when you're writing a memoir.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, very helpful.

Kerry Diamond:
So you start, of course, talking about your family, and you mentioned that your mother and your grandmother were extraordinary cooks. I'm guessing most of our listeners can't say that or use the word extraordinary. So I would love for you to share a little bit about each woman.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. They were incredible. My mom's still alive and incredible. Sometimes it reminds me of that old joke my father always said, which is, "I used to think my mother was a good cook until I went into the Army," where a lot of people, their parents aren't really very good cooks and people just get by. And you wonder, you just think about people's diets a lot of times. You think, "Oh no, that's so terrible. What a terrible waste."

Kerry Diamond:
You wrote about marshmallow fluff sandwiches, which I existed on as a child. And I cracked up because you had, in parentheses, "Today, that would be child abuse."

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
And I've often thought that.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. My grandmother, she came to America when she was just three years old, but they lived in a very tight-knit Italian community with all the relatives. So unlike my grandfather, she spoke English perfectly, and she drove, and she read English. He didn't really read English. He didn't speak English very well, and he didn't have a license. So she did all of that stuff that, a lot of times in a family, a man might do. And besides that, she had a job and she was an incredible cook. The food that she made was really, was very simple stuff, which is what most Italian food is, but it was delicious. And I think she had a really sophisticated palette, and my mother does too. I think that they were both... Maybe even my mother even more so. My mother is somebody who could just taste something just for a second, and she'll go, "Oh, you know what's in there." And she'll find the component of it. There's just a little a wisp of it in there. And she'll find it. It's a really sophisticated palette. And whether that is a genetic thing, or I don't know what it is, I have it. And then her teachings too were really, really important. Meaning, and she'd say, "Taste that. Do you see the difference between this and this? Do you see why that needs, blah, blah, blah?" And that was invaluable to me.

Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm. Your mother did an extraordinary amount of cooking for someone who also had a full-time job and a household to run.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
I was just amazed and wondered how much time she spent cooking and grocery shopping.

Stanley Tucci:
A lot. Well, she and my dad worked in the same school. So they drove to work together. They came home from work together. So in the afternoon was usually when they came, around 3:00 or something, when they finished, which great for us is because they were always home. So even as we got older, and you were playing soccer after school, and having games, and doing plays or whatever, your parents were always there. And that was a very, really nice thing to have. They would drive back from school. And a lot of times, they would do some shopping on the way home, or we would go shopping on the weekends. And when we were little you went everywhere with your parents. You didn't have a babysitter or anything. So you did, all the errands you did on a Saturday.

And part of that was food shopping, or we had to go look at furniture, or we had to go to the hardware store, or the liquor store. And all that really informed you. It's really good to have those experiences as a kid, but it does have a really positive impact on you, watching somebody shop, watching them pick just the right thing. My mother, she still does this. She would go through a supermarket, and she'd see something, and she'd just pick it up and she'd taste it. My father, "What are you doing?" She goes... Or other people would see her, and be like, "What's she doing?" And she goes, "Come on, do you how much money I spend in this store?" But she wanted to know and she was right. She had to know. And that's just very influential.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. You mentioned that she always found quality ingredients and I was amazed because you grew up in Westchester. I grew up in Staten Island. I remember the worst lettuces in the supermarket. The iceberg lettuce was just awful. And that really was the only option. The tomatoes were pink and they came in hard, and they came in that plastic box wrapped with cellophane. Do you remember those?

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
As an Italian, your family is probably horrified by those.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, it was horrifying. The weird thing was, yeah, there were tomatoes, but not like today where you can get everything all the time, which really, we shouldn't be able to do, let's face it, for a number of reasons. But I think we really only had tomatoes when they were in season. And a lot of those tomatoes were grown by my grandparents or by my uncles. And my parents would grow to sometimes. Or friends, people who grew them, that's where you got them. And then of course, when they were in season, you couldn't get them in the grocery store. There was no such thing as organic at that time. Wasn't even thought of. So a lot of stuff that we ate came from my grandparents' garden, or my uncle, a couple of uncles. Again, makes a huge difference because basically you're eating seasonally, which is what we all should do, because the food just tastes better.

Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely.

Stanley Tucci:
That's really simple. And it's better for the planet.

Kerry Diamond:
You basically walk us through what your mother would make in the course of a week and you share some recipes. Can you tell us one dish that really stands out that your mom made when you were younger?

Stanley Tucci:
Well, I loved when she made... Oh gosh, she made amazing stuff. But when she would make paella, it wasn't cooked in the conventional way. In other words, on a steel pan over a fire. It was in this very beautiful, like a casserole dish, but something like that, but quite elegant. And she incorporated chicken, and lobster, and clams, maybe some muscles. And it was absolutely... Did it always have that sort of crustiness? I can't remember what they call it on the bottom. Now I don't... I think maybe a bit, but not to the extent that when you get it in Spain or... But it was amazing. It was delicate, and moist, and delicious, and sweet almost. And her... God, what else? There are a million of them, simple dishes, like pasta con piselli which is just a very light tomato sauce, maybe with a little extra onion for sweetness, and then canned peas, or just very…

Kerry Diamond:
And what kind of pasta?

Stanley Tucci:
Very small pasta, ditali or ditalini. Very small.

Kerry Diamond:
We also have to talk about your school lunches because you gave us a week's worth of school lunches. And I was like, "This is extraordinary." You could have created a sandwich shop just based on what your mom made you for lunch in the course of a week.

Stanley Tucci:
I know. If I did that, I mean, it would be an incredibly successful sandwich shop. It's true, because let's say you'd have eggplant parmigiana, or you'd have veal cutlets, or you'd have chicken cottage, or you'd have a frittata, scrambled eggs with sweet pepper and potato. And then of course, one day a week I always had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You might have a cheese sandwich or something, but not usually. You might have even just a great ham and cheese, but on a really nice piece of Italian bread with a little bit of mustard, or you'd have meatballs, either with sauce or even without sauce, and just butter, and maybe a little bit of lettuce. I mean amazing.

Kerry Diamond:
I most definitely would have traded lunches with you, Stanley, But I wonder if kids still do that. I was intrigued by a detail that you shared a few times in the book, that your family rarely ate in restaurants. Why was that a rare treat for you?

Stanley Tucci:
Couldn't afford it. I mean, my father, we weren't poor. My dad was an art teacher. But what's the salary of an art teacher in 1960, 1970? I mean, you're not going to take a family of five out to dinner. If you do, you're going to go get a hamburger, or you're going to go to a pizza place. And there was this wonderful pizza place we used to go to, which is still around. So it's been around for a century, I think, called the Muscoot Tavern or the Muscoot Inn, or something. And it was really, really delicious pizza. I mean, to this day, it's actually some of the best pizza I've ever had. But you just didn't go out and it just wasn't in our culture. It wasn't in our nature to go out.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. I was going to say it was a different culture back then. You know what I mean?

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, it was. It-

Kerry Diamond:
Where you just didn't go to restaurants as much.

Stanley Tucci:
There really weren't a lot of restaurants. There might be a bar week and a hamburger. If there were restaurants, they were all very high-end, like I wrote in the book, sort of Frenchy, whatever. And there was no point in going to an Italian restaurant. What was the point?

Kerry Diamond:
And you wrote that whatever your mother was making was better than they could have possibly served in a restaurant anyway.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, exactly.

Kerry Diamond:
So in time though, you do fall in love with restaurants, and this week marks the 25th anniversary of Big Night, which is such a major milestone for that wonderful movie.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, thanks.

Kerry Diamond:
Big Night was one of the first times many of us learned about timpano, at least in my case. For the younger members of our audience or folks who maybe, for whatever reason, haven't seen the movie, can you tell us what the film is all about?

Stanley Tucci:
It's the story of two brothers in a never clearly defined location, but it's obviously East Coast America in the late 1950s-ish. We consciously never defined the year or the place. And they have this little restaurant and they're serving incredible food. The brother who's the chef is very dogmatic, and an artist in a way, and refuses to compromise, whereas his younger brother who is front of the house and manages all their finances is trying to make him to make compromises so that people will eat at the restaurant. And the problem is, in the 1950s, and not only the 1950s, I mean, really basically up until the late '80s, if you put risotto on the menu or you put veal cheeks on the menu, or you put something like that, people aren't going to eat that. They aren't going to walk in.

And what we have in the movie is someone orders a risotto, a seafood risotto. And then the woman asks for a dish of spaghetti on the side, not understanding that it's just, it makes no sense not to do that. So in the end, they throw a big party, or a big night in order to invite Louis Prima, who was a big star at the time. And if he comes, there'll be some notoriety, they think, and word will get out that the restaurant is great and they'll do well. But that doesn't really happen to them, unfortunately. I wrote the thing and I can't even describe it.

Kerry Diamond:
No, you did a nice job describing it. Why did you choose restaurants as the device for this film?

Stanley Tucci:
I was always interested in restaurants when I worked in one, when I was in college as a bartender. And I was very interested in how similar it was in structure to the theater. So you'd have backstage, offstage, and then you have onstage, the kitchen, and the dining room. And there's nothing in between those two. And that is fascinating to me because the behavior in the kitchen, or backstage when you're doing a play, is not what you see that happening in front of you on the stage or in the dining room. The play, Noises Off, is the perfect example of... It's an extreme version. But I wrote it with as my cousin. And one of the things he wanted to do was tell a story about Italian immigrants without the mafia being involved in any way, which is a very rare thing, but also to tell the story of the struggle between commerce and art. And that really is the crux of the story. Those other elements that I described are part of it, but that is the crux of the story. How do you tell the story of an artist without being pretentious? Do you know what I mean?

Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm.

Stanley Tucci:
And one of the ways we thought was through food.

Kerry Diamond:
I rewatched the movie in the spring in preparation for your conversation with Ina Garten, when we did the Julie & Julia.

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
And I really found myself moved in unexpected ways because of the pandemic, and what restaurants have gone through for the past year and a half. And I didn't expect to make a connection between what's going on right now and Big Night. It was even more moving for me.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. I mean, let's face it, they've suffered so much here in England. It's really hard. You see so many restaurants closed. They're necessary, number one. But they employ so many people, and it's a really hard life.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. They're so central to so many of the stories in your book.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. I wrote about, in the book, the idea of a third place that this author had written about many years ago called The Great, Good Place. He talks about the third place. And the restaurant is that. It's not where you work. It's not where you live. It's a neutral playing field where people you don't know, everybody can convene and share.

Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm. Speaking of sharing, you share a recipe for timpano in your book.

Stanley Tucci:
I do.

Kerry Diamond:
And I wanted to ask, are you confident civilians can make that recipe?

Stanley Tucci:
No. I can't even make it. I mean, it's very labor intensive. You have to know what it's supposed to taste like. That sounds silly, but you have to know what it's supposed to... Everybody knows what good spaghetti con vongole tastes like. Who the hell knows what this timpano is supposed to taste like? Except seven people in my family.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh, that's so funny.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. So, and I have seen, people have made this for me at events and things. And it's just awful.

Kerry Diamond:
It's like an Italian turducken almost, right?

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, yeah. No, it's just terrible because they'll go like, "Oh, I couldn't get that. I'll just put that in." It's like, "No, it doesn't work that way. It actually doesn't work that way."

Kerry Diamond:
I love that. So it was the inclusion of the recipe, more of a dare than anything?

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. I figure if you're going to, also, you're going to talk about something ad nauseam, might as well just give the recipe too, because, yeah, I think it's important to see the complexity of it and how time-consuming it is. Well, I made one just about a month ago with a food critic that I've gotten to know. He was doing a piece that's going to come out pretty soon, I think, for The Observer Food Monthly. And he goes, "Let's make the timpano." And I was like, "You're out of your mind. Do you want to?" And he goes, "Yeah, let's do it." And I was like, "All right." So we did it. And I was terrified because I hadn't made one in years, but it really came out... It was great. It was great. And it was delicious.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, fun. I can't wait to read that. Well, another thing you can't escape, apologies for the next line of questioning, is Julia Child. And you know our audience loves Julia Child so much.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
So I have to ask you a few questions. I didn't know you grew up watching Julia Child with your mother.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I have very specific memories of it. I loved watching her. I was just so fascinated by it. And my mom loved her so much. And she stuck with me. It piqued my interest in all things culinary, but particularly watching people on cooking shows and stuff. And her and Keith Floyd, another guy that I write about in the book, who's British, who died a number of years ago, but was absolutely brilliant. But Julia Child, then when Meryl and Nora came and they were like, "Do you want to play Paul Child?" I was like, "Oh, my God." I was so excited.

Kerry Diamond:
You said something really special about Julia in the book in regards to taste. And since that's the title of your book, I wanted to ask you about it. You said watching Julia Child taste something helped you really understand what it means to taste. Why did you write that?

Stanley Tucci:
Because it's true. Because I think, when you see people taste, there's so many cooking shows nowadays, right? Too many cooking shows, frankly. And a lot of them are the competition cooking shows, which I really don't care for. But when you see people taste, they go, "Oh." You think, "That's impossible. You don't know what that tastes like. You have to wait a second." And they're afraid because they're on television, and they're afraid that it's going to take too long for them to assess what it really tastes like. Or maybe they're also afraid that they're not going to like it if they really taste it. But take the time because people really like to watch that. It's weird. It's a weird moment, but it's a silent moment, but it's a crucial moment. That's why you've been working for the last hour, just for that moment. So that moment never happens, which is weird to me. When you see somebody really tastes something, they really do. They think, and they feel at the same time, and you can see their eyes flitting about going to memory, going to talking to themselves, feeling something. And then they go, "Oh, oh yeah, yeah. I like that." Or, "Ugh," or whatever.

Kerry Diamond:
One of my favorite moments on Radio Cherry Bombe was we interviewed Alice Waters years ago.

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, wow.

Kerry Diamond:
And she said, "Taste, taste, taste." She said, "If you're cooking something, you have to constantly be tasting." And I just loved that advice. And you realize not enough people stop to do that.

Stanley Tucci:
That's true. You have to, I have to remind myself to do it sometimes, because I think, "Oh, I've got it." And then you're about to serve it. You're like, "Oh shit. I never tasted it." You taste it, go, "Oh, no. No, I have to go back. I have to go back."

Kerry Diamond:
So let's talk about Nora Ephron for a minute. You had said at one point in the book that there's so much bad food on movie sets. But I remember you telling us, when you spoke to Ina about the movie, that that was not the case on a Nora Ephron film.

Stanley Tucci:
No, I remember that the catering being quite good, and also just the craft services were really good too. And then you'd get leftovers from the stuff you did in the scene, that you ate in the same. So that was good. But actually, by the time you finished doing the scene, you weren't hungry. So, but the crew and everybody else got to eat it.

Kerry Diamond:
Did you get to go out much with Nora to dinner?

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. We went out a few times. We had some really lovely dinners. And I had known her husband prior to working, doing the movie, who's such a lovely guy. And yeah, we had friends in common and stuff. So yeah, we had some really nice times. She was painfully funny.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, it's a big regret that I've never got to interview her and I never will.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. Boy, was she smart.

Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned Keith Floyd. So I'll confess. I never knew who Keith Floyd was until... I've heard you mentioned him in an interview and I need to go watch all the YouTube clips that you reference in the book. How did you discover Keith Floyd? And was he a big influence on Searching for Italy?

Stanley Tucci:
Yes. Oh, without question. I first saw him when I was in my first apartment in New York. This is in the 1980s, and it was when cable first came in. And I had PBS, and I was flipping through the channels, and this guy was on a train in a tuxedo with a very posh British accent. He was completely drunk, and he was talking about cocktails, and talking about this, "I'm shy. I'm on the Orient Express." And all this. And I was like, "Who is this guy?" I somehow kept catching him on PBS, and his show, Floyd, they're all different names, but Floyd on France, Floyd on Italy. And he just goes to different countries. And as I wrote in the book, commandeers a kitchen from somebody, and starts cooking. And it's incredible. It probably is the best food travel log ever made. I mean, Anthony Bordain was brilliant, but this is above and beyond, because Anthony was more of an observer. Floyd is right in it, talking to everyone, seems to be able to speak whatever language, or maybe not. Who knows? He's really fascinating. Well, he was very influential, and I pointed the way his show is shot, that when we were doing our show, I want that looseness to it. I don't want it to be tight. And I want it to be spontaneous, as spontaneous as it can be.

Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm. You filmed Searching for Italy, was it pre-pandemic? 2020?

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay.

Stanley Tucci:
The first four episodes were pre-pandemic. The last two were, well, just between the first lockdown and the second lockdown [crosstalk 00:30:20].

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, right. I remember that.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah.

Stanley Tucci:
We were wearing masks in some of it. We had social distancing. The rules were quite strict. And on the day we left Campania, they were just shutting everything down again. So we got so lucky.

Kerry Diamond:
Wow. It's such a good show.

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, thank you.

Kerry Diamond:
And you even say this in the book, how many more food shows do we need? Et cetera, et cetera. But I know people hate being asked this, but will there be another series?

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, yeah. No. I'm leaving-

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, good.

Stanley Tucci:
I'm leaving in a week for it.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, for? Italy?

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. So what I'm going to do, three more regions this fall, and next year we'll do five or six more shows. And I've done one here in London where... Because we couldn't go to Italy, but there are so many Italians here, and a lot of recent immigrant Italians, but there's also a history of Italian immigration here. So we did an episode here that we don't know when we'll show that, but it's the seventh-largest concentration of Italians outside of Italy.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's wonderful news. Oh my gosh. Everyone's going to be so happy to hear that.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Well, I guess you could search for Italy around the globe.

Stanley Tucci:
You could.

Kerry Diamond:
I mean, Italy's way beyond Italy,

Stanley Tucci:
Right. But that won't be me doing that. I'll be too tired.

Kerry Diamond:
I'm still rooting for you and Ina to go search for France. I think that would be an amazing spinoff.

Stanley Tucci:
That's a pretty good idea. All right. Okay, I'm in.

Kerry Diamond:
Great.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Great. I'll tell Ina. Okay, before I let you go, you also talk about a few of your food rules in the book. Many of which concern pasta. You said, "You should never cut pasta if you are an adult." Want to explain that one?

Stanley Tucci:
Well, I shouldn't have to explain it, but I will. It's just heresy. Just twirl it. It's not that hard. It really isn't that hard. And it tastes better. It's meant to be twirled. It's that length for a reason. If they wanted it to be shorter, they would've made it shorter.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh my God. I have tears in my eyes. Just twirl it. It's so funny. I feel like that could be on a bumper sticker or something. Oh my gosh.

Stanley Tucci:
But do you know what I mean? It's the length of that, it's on purpose. It's not a random thing. It's this long for this reason. And it goes with this sauce. If you cut it, the whole thing just gets thrown out the window. I'm very upset, you can see, right now.

Kerry Diamond:
I'm so sorry to agitate you so early in the day. But you can break spaghetti.

Stanley Tucci:
Yes.

Kerry Diamond:
For certain things.

Stanley Tucci:
For certain things. Yeah. So you take it, and you put it into a... Like a tea towel, is what I call them now, opposed to dish towel. And you just really beat it up, and it should come out about an inch long, inch and a half long. Italians, we use that in soups sometimes. And they'll use it in, it's like a lentil dish that my grandmother used to make. And it works that way. But now you can actually buy pasta that way. And the Spanish actually have a pasta, even though they're not really a pasta culture, the one pasta that they really have is a pasta like that.

Kerry Diamond:
You also have strong opinions about the coupling of certain pastas and sauces.

Stanley Tucci:
Yes.

Kerry Diamond:
And I was laughing. It made me think of that old Glamor Magazine article, the dos and the don'ts that they would... If you read Glamor Magazine, Stanley, back in the day.

Stanley Tucci:
I didn't, but yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
They would have fashion do’s and don'ts. As I was reading your book, I was like, "Stanley Tucci's pasta do’s and don'ts." What's a do and a don't, in terms of pasta and sauce?

Stanley Tucci:
Well, you wouldn't take bolognese, and you wouldn't mix that with star pasta, would you? I'm asking. Answer my question.

Kerry Diamond:
No, I would never in a million years.

Stanley Tucci:
There you go. Great answer. You'd have it with something that supports it. They often serve it with fresh tagliatelle, but you can also serve it with a dried pasta, like a penne, or paccheri are good too. Or short rigatoni, delicious, because it makes sense. They go together, they support each other. They compliment one another.

Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I'm not Italian, but I dated Italian guys growing up. And I remember one of my boyfriend's moms made the pastina in the chicken broth with a lot of Parmesan on top of it. And I was thinking it would be so wonderful to make that pastina again in the Parmesan broth that you shared the recipe for and see how that tastes.

Stanley Tucci:
That would be delicious actually.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah.

Stanley Tucci:
That's a good idea.

Kerry Diamond:
And it's so nice when you don't feel well. It's the best.

Stanley Tucci:
It is the best. That's what I had as a kid growing up. Yeah. A chicken broth pastina, and a little bit of Parmesan. You just feel better.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. And add a little cracked black pepper today as a grown-up. One last question.

Stanley Tucci:
Sure.

Kerry Diamond:
We're going to do a little speed round and then let you go. You said acting is wearing thin as the years go by.

Stanley Tucci:
Well, and it's not wearing... You know what it is? Obviously I'm not going to stop acting. I have so many children. I can't stop acting. I do love it. I do love acting. The only thing that puts me off is waiting. I don't mean waiting to work. That used to put me off, but it seems I'm not waiting to work anymore, which is good. It's simply waiting on set. The machinations of making a movie, it's really tedious. And you spend the majority of your time waiting in the wings to go on. It's the opposite of a play. And that's really hard. I think when you want to do as many things as I want to do, and you also want to be with your family, and you want to blah, blah, blah, you're not really interested in going to the middle of wherever in the middle of the night, and spending eight hours in a trailer, and then showing up and working for an hour. It's a hurry up and wait. I mean, it's the old... I think someone says, it was Richard Harris who said it, they went to his trailer, and they knocked on the door, and they said, "Mr. Harris, we're so sorry to have kept you waiting." And he said, "It's all right. I get paid for waiting. It's the acting I do for free."

Kerry Diamond:
All right, let's do a quick speed round. And then we will let you go.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, all right.

Kerry Diamond:
What is one of your most treasured cookbooks? You don't really mention cookbooks in Taste, come to think of.

Stanley Tucci:
No, I don't. And I have a huge collection of them, a huge collection. I really do love the Silver Spoon Cookbook, I think it's called, which is recipes, the regional recipes of Italy. That's an amazing book. I found this book a number of years ago as I was on a set, a TV set. And it was just part of the... Props just put all these books and shelves. And I was just waiting, as usual. And I was looking through the books, and I found this book. It was a Robert Carrier book. He was a big chef here in the 1960s and '70s in England, and brought French cuisine and all that sort of stuff. And this book, I mean, the pictures are so terrible that I had to have it.

And the recipes, it's very much of the period. And everything looks disgusting. But I was like, "I have to have this book." But he was incredibly influential in a very good way in England. I recently, I told a friend of mine, Jay Rayner, who's a food critic. I said, "Jay, you know what? I have this book, this Robert... I have an original edition." He goes, "Oh my God, are you kidding me?" He goes, "That's impossible to find." He goes, "Hang on to that, because that is..." And it is amazing. It is like a time capsule. I've never cooked anything from it. I don't care. I just want to look at it.

Kerry Diamond:
That's what's so wonderful about cookbooks. Are you pals with Nigella?

Stanley Tucci:
I do know Nigella. Yes. Yes. I've met her a number of times and she was kind enough to read the book and give me a quote.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's nice.

Stanley Tucci:
She's pretty amazing.

Kerry Diamond:
She has an amazing cookbook collection, and just wrote a story for us about cookbooks.

Stanley Tucci:
Well also, she's a beautiful writer too.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, so beautiful. I mean, it makes me want to hang up my hat when I read her writing. Okay. Music in the kitchen.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. Jazz. Usually jazz. Diana Krall. I love Diana Krall. The Beatles. Usually the American Songbook stuff, but also, yeah, it depends. If I really need to wake myself up for... I love Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. They're really good.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I'll check them out. Most used kitchen implement.

Stanley Tucci:
Tongs.

Kerry Diamond:
Oldest thing in your fridge.

Stanley Tucci:
I don't want to look.

Kerry Diamond:
Good answer.

Stanley Tucci:
It's probably a bottle, a jar chutney or something that's been there for years.

Kerry Diamond:
What was your last pantry purchase?

Stanley Tucci:
Last pantry purchase, I'm sure it was pasta.

Kerry Diamond:
What is a dream travel destination?

Stanley Tucci:
I really would like to go to Scandinavia. I'd like to go. I've only been to Copenhagen once, but I'd like to go there. I'd like to go to Norway, Finland and Sweden. I really want to explore all that. Not just because of its physical beauty, but culturally, and also the food.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. And then our last question, and we ask everybody this. You might hate this question, but I'm going to ask you anyway. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?

Stanley Tucci:
One food celebrity. Oh my God. Oh my God. Well-

Kerry Diamond:
You'd be rescued quickly. I have no doubt.

Stanley Tucci:
It probably just would have been Julia Child. Right?

Kerry Diamond:
I thought you were going to say Massimo.

Stanley Tucci:
Oh, Massimo. Yeah. Heston Blumenthal.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay, why Heston-

Stanley Tucci:
No, he talks too much. No, he's a good friend of mine. Oh, God.

Kerry Diamond:
You'll be entertained and you won't starve. Okay.

Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Well Stanley, that's it. Thank you so much. You are always so delightful to talk to.

Stanley Tucci:
Thank you.

Kerry Diamond:
And this book is wonderful. Whether you read the book on your own or you read it as a companion to your show, Searching for Italy, everyone will just really enjoy the read. There's so much we didn't talk about that's in the book. I didn't want to take away too much from what's very special about the book-

Stanley Tucci:
Well, thank you.

Kerry Diamond:
... because I wanted people to discover it on their own.

Stanley Tucci:
Okay.

Kerry Diamond:
Thank you for being so gracious with your time always.

Stanley Tucci:
Well, thank you so much. Thank you for... You made it really fun. Thank you.

Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Stanley Tucci for stopping by. I always love talking to Stanley. Be sure to check out Stanley's book out today, Taste, My Life Through Food. It's a beautiful read. And if you haven't watched Stanley Tucci, Searching for Italy, you can catch it on HBO Max, and I highly recommend it. You might want to make yourself a little cheese and fruit plate for the viewing because the show will make you hungry. Thank you to Crate & Barrel, Kerrygold, and ACE Hotel, Brooklyn for supporting our show. Don't forget to check out Cherry Bombe Cooks and Books. Tickets are on sale cherrybombe.com. And hey, the new issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine is out. But I'll tell you more about that next week.

Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. If you enjoyed this episode, we've got lots of other great ones, including that time Ina Garten interviewed Stanley for us. Be sure to give a listen. Radio Cherry Bombe is recorded at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Thank you to Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios, and to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. Thanks for listening everybody. You're the bombe.