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

by Stanley Tucci

We made grilled eggplant and five large T-bone steaks seared on the griddle because the barbecue was too far away and we were behind schedule (and it was not a regular barbecue but a Big Green Egg, which I still haven’t learned how to use even though I’ve owned one for eight years), along with roasted potatoes with garlic, olive oil, and rosemary.

I said that I thought our original idea of alternating British and Italian dishes seemed a bit contrived and would be a recipe for overfeeding. Instead, I suggested that we create a proper Italian menu using as many British ingredients as possible, which is something Francesco has tried to do over the last few years in his restaurants.

If the dinner indeed happens, I will tell all.* * The king canceled dinner. That’s okay. There are many monarchs in the sea.

I was first taken there in 2000 by the cast of an HBO film that I was filming called Conspiracy by my cast members, including Kenneth Branagh, Kevin McNally, and my now longtime friend and sometime on-screen lover, Colin Firth, and a great time was had by all.

Just as a note: Carciofi (artichokes) alla romana differ from those alla giudia that I described earlier. This recipe is usually made with small purple artichokes. They are first stripped of their outermost leaves, the stems trimmed so that just an inch or so remains, the inner beard scooped out, and the cavity stuffed with just a bit of chopped mint, garlic, salt, and pepper. They are then boiled until they are very soft and dressed with olive oil.

After the meeting, Lottie and I had lunch at a dumpling place we had eaten in a while back. It was good but not quite as good as we remembered.

I could eat shrimp fried rice every day. I have made it several times with some success but not consistently. I am slightly intimidated by making dishes that aren’t Italian or at least Mediterranean.

My acting teacher always encouraged us to “go beyond what’s comfortable,” not just as actors but as people. I have made a conscious choice to follow his advice in my work and in other aspects of my life over the years, but not so much in the kitchen. I guess it’s time I started. It means I am going to have to plan meals ahead of time.

(It’s just our small backyard but the British call it a garden, which sounds better.)

I adore wild garlic. Its flowers are bright white and delicate, and its aroma powerful and somewhat intoxicating.

Its closest relative would be ramps, which I also love, and although their taste is suggestive of garlic, ramps are related to leeks and onions.

Chopping something with a sharp blade and smashing something with a dense stone are very satisfying activities for a growing boy. Why didn’t I think of harnessing this young man’s burgeoning aggression in this way before?

I made crepes that morning for them, some slathered with Nutella, others sprinkled with sugar and a squeeze of lemon. The first one came out well but the following few were embarrassing failures about which the kids were kindly sympathetic.

Only after I discarded the copper pan especially designed for making them and switched to a small stainless-steel one did I have success. I ate one and it was good. The kids were happy, and my embarrassment disappeared until the next time I would commit another culinary faux pas.

They ordered focaccia as Millie hates tomato sauce (who is this person?) and Matteo seems to prefer only Pizza Express and the like.

I had a pizza with tomato sauce, basil, and ricotta, which was delicious.

Tropea onions come from the west coast of Calabria and can only be grown in a small area (the environs of the town of Tropea) that has a singular kind of sandy soil. Shaped like a shallot with a skin that is a deep reddish purple, they are so sweet that they can be plucked out of the ground, peeled, and eaten like an apple.

Wow.

(timing a meal not usually being my strong point, especially when I am cooking alone)

For breakfast, I baked frozen croissants for the kids, which I find are often better than most of the fresh ones you get in overpriced cafés in London.

I roasted the remaining small potatoes and carrots with garlic and onions, rosemary, thyme, and EVOO.

I thought this would give Felicity some light but hearty dishes to choose from when she returned from her Gallic roistering.

The menu is fish-forward.

I was so tempted to order the fish and chips because I know it’s excellent. However, it’s also a sizable portion and I knew if I ate it, I would be fighting off sleep for most of the afternoon, and I needed to do a few things, like write this book and other stuff that unemployed actors do.

The soup needed a bit of salt, so I added a little, but I find that sometimes when one adds salt to soup after it’s cooked, one ends up tasting only the salt.

it was the right amount of food to fill me up but not drag me down.

Felicity, Lottie, Isabel, Nicolo, some friends, and I all went to see Harry Styles at Wembley. Staggering. It’s as though he has the combined talent, charm, and energy of every great musician and performer who has ever made music or performed. And he’s a nice person. And he loves Italian food. And he loves to cook. And he’s our friend. And we love him. Who the f— doesn’t?

Yaas!

After checking in at the airport, we were given an option of lounges, and I chose the Cathay Pacific lounge. Having flown that airline many times years ago from NYC to Vancouver while making a film of questionable quality, I knew that the food was always better than most.

Lol.

I love congee. I first had it over thirty-five years ago in Vancouver working on a TV show.

Congee was a part of the breakfasts on set, and I couldn’t get enough of it. For those unacquainted, congee is rice that is cooked slowly, for a long time in a large amount of water, so it basically takes on a porridgelike consistency.

It is a comfort food that is supposedly very good for you, and if that is true, then that is wonderful. If not, I am not so sure I care. I’ll eat it anyway.

It was a tiny restaurant with about ten small tables, which I think served only hummus, pita bread, and cucumber-tomato salads. The décor consisted of plastic-wrapped pallets of bottled water and soft drinks.

Hummus is everywhere these days, from posh restaurants to fast-food joints, and like so many of us, I have eaten my fair share of it.

Poached eggs, very buttery hash browns, toast, and avocado.

Tasted three different kinds of oysters, but sadly two of them, from Prince Edward Island, tasted metallic and flat. The Ichiban from Washington State were great, but none matched the mollusks of Bordeaux.

Chicago O’Hare airport covers over seventy-five hundred acres.

Averting my eyes from the horror of the buffet, I grab a very white roll from the bread basket to coat my stomach.

The head flight attendant gets on the intercom and tells us that there is no drinking water on the plane, and we can’t take off without drinking water.

The tiny restaurant is run by Liam, a twenty-two-year-old fellow who opened it a couple of years before while the pandemic was still rearing its ugly head. He and his father, who is a builder, renovated it themselves. It is primarily a steak restaurant, with all the meat and just about everything else sourced locally.

The fact that this young man has been able to create and sustain an excellent eight-table restaurant in a sleepy, rather-hard-to-reach town on the heels of a pandemic is an astonishing achievement.

where my daughters, or sons, can get married, where Felicity can bring her lover(s), where my proctologist(s) can visit, and where our grandchildren can spend time with their cousins for years to come when I am no longer here.

Driving home, we stopped at a motorway service area and ordered two sausage rolls and a Cornish pasty from a van there. They were not half bad.

Bought lots of chicken breasts, a steak, and bags of baby zucchini. We were to cook all of it that day for our friends Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, who have recently arrived and are staying about a mile and a half from us in a house that Felicity found for them.

Who does he not know?

We fried up the steak for Ryan, who’s on a high-protein diet. (God, he bores me.)

Pasta with butter and cheese laughs in the face of our complex lives.

I know she has work to do and is doing it more brilliantly than ever, but I hate her not being around.

I love being with the kids alone, but I love it more when we are all together.

The addition of grated cheese is discouraged. Extremely. Actually, just don’t do it.

A great Italian restaurateur is generosity incarnate.

That evening I had dinner with Colin Firth and Tom Ford at the River Café.

Who does he not know?!

My parents arrived. I was thrilled, as were we all, to see them. I was also relieved. Relief is now just part and parcel of what I feel when I see them.