What I Ate in One Year: (and related thoughts)

by Stanley Tucci

The second is that we die and find that death is a long meal alone with terrible food. The third is that we die and find that death is a table resplendently set with an extraordinary meal for us and all those we’ve ever loved to share for the rest of eternity.

I’m headed to Rome to film Conclave, a movie with Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini, directed by Edward Berger. The film is based on the book of the same title by one of my favorite novelists, Robert Harris, about the choosing of a new pope.

Meta!

My apartment is spartan at best. It is not designed with comfort in mind. It’s designed with the architect’s ego in mind, with which he is clearly incredibly comfortable.

It has one rather small bedroom with a bed that looks like a bed should look but feels like a bed shouldn’t feel.

I asked for the Tupperware so I can transport my own food to set, as on-set catering, even in Italy, is usually questionable. More to follow on that subject.

And my bed because my bed at home feels like an actual bed as opposed to those marble slabs used for making fudge.

The lovely people at the front desk recommended a place to eat around the corner. I went there. I ate. I would not recommend it.

I made a pot of tomato sauce because I find the act and aroma comforting and I know I will eat it with pasta or rice over the next few days.

Only Tucci of him.

if this TV is as complex as the wall-mounted touchscreen panel for the lighting, which seems to have been designed by an angry astronaut, then I am going to need assistance.

The weather in Rome this time of year rivals London. Actually, it’s worse. Very cold and very wet.

We had both white and red wine and some appetizers: salami, prosciutto, and zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella.

There are many versions of strozzapreti, which means “priest chokers.” Supposedly this pasta got its moniker because during the Middle Ages, Catholic priests felt it was appropriate to freely help themselves to the eggs harvested by their poor parishioners. This selfish act caused the parishioners, who were already lacking in just about everything, to make their pasta without eggs, resulting in a very thick pasta they would serve to the priests in the hope that they would choke to death. Another version of this story is that the priests were just innately gluttonous and ate so much so fast that they choked to death.

I also ate in the extremely ascetic hotel restaurant. Though the place was never busy, the food always took ages to arrive, and when it did, what was put before me were small portions of some dish that was overthought, overwrought, and fussed over to the point of unrecognizability. During the course of my stay, I ended up eating there only a few times merely out of convenience and left hungry every time.

But no person should ever do what they do to win awards, because their work will reek of desperation and therefore never ring true. Or, in the case of a chef, taste good.

Unless I have someone to read the lines with me, I do this with the aid of a tape recorder. I record the other actor’s lines and leave gaps for my own. And then I do it over and over and over again. Tedious but necessary. Especially as one ages. If a script is well written the lines will come easily. If not, then they don’t.

Years later it was discovered that within this man-made terra-cotta hill, when caves were dug as part of new builds, wine could be kept at a perfect temperature due to an ideal circulation system that was created by the way in which the shards were stacked.

To make matters worse, the catering is dreadful. Really. Dreadful. Gross, even. Heavy-handed sauces, overcooked pastas, stringy meats.

Sunday, I make a large pot of minestrone and reheat it in the dressing room microwave over the course of two or three days. The second half of the week I make pasta or a risotto with marinara or sautéed vegetables and do the same. Something light but filling.

It is run by French Carmelite nuns and has been since it opened in 1969. Housed in an old palazzo, it has a small dining room on the first floor and a large one on the second (the piano nobile), where patrons sit under high vaulted, frescoed ceilings.

In a Catholic country I suppose it’s only logical that nuns would make the best bouncers.

Although I was raised a Catholic, I never fully acquired the assurance of belief and therefore never really believed.

But now, in the early winter of my years, it’s through nature, art, and my children that I experience reverence, and in moments around the table that I experience ceremony. All guilt-free.

But if the table was American, without a doubt she would sing “Country Roads” by John Denver. Why that particular song, I wish I knew.

(If my publishers allow, I will sing it for the audiobook version.)

“Country Friendly” because everything that is sold comes from within a one-hundred-kilometer radius, and “Circus Maximus” because it’s right across the street from the Circus Maximus.

wandered a bit aimlessly through the city where shards of ancient Rome punctuate the streets as magnificent but blunt reminders of civilization’s fragility.

There is a restaurant about thirty yards away from that hallowed dome, run by two brothers, called Armando al Pantheon, where I filmed a segment for the first season of Searching for Italy. Even though we had just eaten not long before, Oriana and I were hungry again, so we went there. That happens a lot when one is in Italy.

Stracciatella is in essence an Italian egg-drop soup made with chicken broth, escarole, and, obviously, eggs. I am a soup lover. To me soup may be the greatest culinary invention. It can be made with two ingredients or two hundred twenty-two ingredients.

I think it’s one of the best stories about how man treats his fellow man (badly in the case of the villagers and kindly in the case of the soldier). But it’s also about how food not only brings people together but makes life better.

We wandered past the Vittorio Emanuele II monument, an ill-proportioned white marble monstrosity that looms over Piazza Venezia, known by the locals as “the wedding cake” or “the typewriter” because it resembles grotesque versions of both, and made our way to the Spanish Steps, which I happen to think are beautifully proportioned.

The sauce is made with the intestine of a baby calf that is slaughtered while the mother’s milk is still inside of it. (Apologies to the fainthearted.) The intestine, its contents, and the light tomato sauce they are cooked in give the dish a singular flavor that is at once sweet and slightly sour.

We ate a great deal that night, although Millie was a bit picky and just ate her usual handfuls of prosciutto and bread, followed by pasta with butter and cheese. Matteo was more adventurous and devoured his first arancini along with some pasta alla marinara.

We took a tour of the Colosseum, which was wonderful but a bit long for four-and-a-half-year-old Millie, even though she had a carton or two of breadsticks to keep her occupied. After she took her first bite and showered the ancient floors with crumbs, the legion of pigeons who frequent that ruin followed Millie (now known as Gretel) and remained her devoted companions for the rest of the tour.

Most men prefer heavier, “meatier” wines with lots of tannins. Due to insufficient saliva (a lingering effect of radiation treatments), anything that is too tannic is nearly impossible for me to drink, so I have found my way to soft, silky pinot noirs and the like and am happy with them.

I had always wanted to go in as it looked quite different from a lot of others in the area, but I never had. It was a casual place filled with a younger crowd (well, just about any crowd is younger to me these days, unless I’m visiting a nursing home) that seemed to be comprised of mostly Italians.

Within moments, a warm sandwich of ox tongue, homemade pickles, and a delicate mayonnaise on toasted bread was placed before me. Because of my difficulty eating meat (again, due to a lack of saliva), I was hesitant to try it, for fear of choking, but I did. I’ve never made a better decision. I’ve also never been so glad to be bullied into eating something. It was delicate and rich and like nothing I had ever eaten in Rome.

Sometimes what one thinks will be an integral scene or moment in a film ends up on the cutting-room floor. Although since we no longer use actual film, the cutting-room floors are free of celluloid snippets.

(I met her when she was twenty-two. Christ. Why doesn’t this “time passing” thing stop for a while?)

When the ambassador had extended the invite to King Charles, HRH told him that he would indeed come, “but only if Stanley Tucci is invited as well.”

and in the end, we decided to serve four courses, alternating between Italian and British recipes that complemented one another, and hoped that the king and queen would enjoy the positive bicultural sentiment as well as the food itself.

She owns Violet Cakes in London and has written a book called Love Is a Pink Cake.

Once you enter this indoor/outdoor space, London disappears, and no matter what, the weather, place, and time become vague. What exists is only the casual elegance of the space and those inhabiting it at that moment.

The seasonal menu is fresh and thoughtful but not fussy.

My mother overfed all of us, which brought her even more joy.

We splashed about with them, played the loudest games of Marco Polo the condo residents have probably ever heard, and helped Matteo as best we could to capture and hold chameleons for hours on end.

All those wonderful dishes that date back countless generations, born of poverty, still endure in the digital age, nourishing bodies young and old and solidifying the connections between them.

But like most grandparents, she has been much more willing to cater to each child’s needs for every meal than she was when my sisters and I were young.

The grandparent indulges the grandchild’s desires. That’s one of the reasons why kids usually love going to visit them. But nowadays we often parent our children like we are their grandparents.

Anyway, whether we indulge them a bit or not, what’s important is that they learn to love home cooking. Home-cooked food strengthens our bonds when we are together, keeps us connected when we are apart, and sustains the memory of us when we have passed away.

But she still hates to cook. We will get there whether she likes it or not, because I will always be in her life, whether she likes me or not.