Taste by Stanley Tucci

With some pride, I admit I make a mean spaghetti sauce – a recipe handed down from my maternal great-grandmother who got the original from a newly immigrated Italian family – or so the story goes. Anyway it is Husband’s favorite meal and I make it on his birthday with plenty of extra sauce to freeze for during the following months.

This year, I deviated for Husband’s birthday. Why you may ask? Well I had just started Stanley Tucci’s memoir Taste and the way he describes his families’ ragu made my mouth water. The book contained the recipe (among others) and I followed it to the letter. It was very, very good, – a little simpler, a bit lighter, and fresher. It won’t replace my mother’s/great grandmother’s version, but it was in one of the first few chapters –and I just had to try it.

But lets get to the book shall we? Taste falls into the genre of narrative cookbooks, but this is more of a memoir of meals and should come with the following advisory:

Warning. Reading this book may cause unexpected weight gain.

Stanley Tucci recently had a CNN series touring Italy and …eating … and eating. As I watched the series, I remember how much I like Stanley Tucci – he is funny, smart, and good looking. I loved him in ‘The Devil wears Prada,’ and ‘Julie and Julia. But reading this book, I was also reminded of his film from 20+ years ago ‘The Big Night’ which showcases his love of cooking and food.

Taste is Mr. Tucci’s own story about the importance of food and family. His upbringing and relationship to food throughout his life. A funny and wry writer who leads you through his life, career, the ups and downs, interlaced with frequent recipes, memorable meals and food experiences.

With charm and wit, he shares personal anecdotes to show how food influenced his life and how food connects him to his family and Italian heritage. He also shares his health battles and a very relatable (we were all there) section on how his family handled the pandemic.

Reading Mr. Tucci, I was in the presence of a foodie of the best sort. One who makes sure you are comfortable, with a drink in your hand, and takes undisguised joy in preparing a wonderful meal for loved ones to enjoy around a warm and welcoming table. But it’s not just the cooking and preparing of food. Taste shares Mr. Tucci’s love of good ingredients and our relationship to those ingredients is of great importance.

To me, eating well is not just about what tastes good but about the connections that are made through the food itself. I am hardly saying anything new by stating that our links to what we eat have practically disappeared beneath sheets of plastic wrap. But what are also disappearing are the wonderful, vital human connections we’re able to make when we buy something we love to eat from someone who loves to sell it, who bought it from someone who loves to grow, catch, or raise it. Whether we know it or not, great comfort is found in these relationships, and they are very much a part of what solidifies a community.

While I found Taste a little jumpy and in need of some editing, it was really enjoyable. There are many fun vignettes and the food descriptions are absolutely wonderful — see advisory above. He describes his mother’s wonderful cooking, praises restaurants where he had fantastic meals (sadly many now closed), and goes on (and on — where was his editor?) about food that made a lasting impression on him. His description of the best spaghetti carbonara he’s ever had will have you salivating. And if you’re still using grocery store parmesan in the green can, Taste will have you contemplating saving your pennies dollars for some real Parmigiano Reggiano.

Mr. Tucci is a Hollywood star with famous friends and he does do some name dropping which he endearingly fesses up to right at the beginning. He is also able to frequent the best butchers, greengrocers, and specialty food shops in London where he now lives. Mr. Tucci’s pleas to find the best ingredients may be hard to swallow (pun definitely intended) for some more moderate food budgets. But try to overlook those and enjoy the read.

Taste is a delightful romp through Stanley Tucci’s life, table and career.

HERE is the Tucci Ragu Recipe – well worth making.

Warning: Taste contains profanity, and if you’re squeamish, there is a home slaughter of a goat.

Always Home by Fanny Singer

A fellow foodie friend loaned me his signed copy of this book — calling it the perfect escapist read during the pandemic. Given the title, I had to laugh and agree.

I just finished Always Home, having dipped in and out of it for many months now.

But first a little background; Fanny Singer is the daughter of Alice Waters, one of our most beloved chefs and founder of the famous Chez Panisse restaurant.

Alice was an early advocate of sourcing only the best local ingredients and is also known for her edible schoolyard program in Berkeley. And, although I am now weary of Alice and her endless publicity, I was fascinated to read this lovely memoir by her daughter, Fanny, who grew up in the glow of this revered chef.

Husband and I have been fortunate to have dined at Chez Panisse (and the more casual upstairs Fanny Cafe) and Always Home brings Fanny, her family, and behind the scenes of the restaurant to life. Turns out, Fanny was partially raised in the restaurant kitchens, surrounded by attentive chefs and prep cooks. Hers was a life full of love and really, really yummy food. Even Fanny’s lunchboxes were meticulously curated by her culinary-obsessed mother:

My lunches were not broken into courses as much as they were divided into multiple parts. There was a largish container that held a salad, a medium container for garlic bread (levain toast rubbed with olive oil and garlic), another for a season fruit compote or macédoine, a very small jar with a vinaigrette because, of course, we were both aware of the perils of prematurely dressing the salad.

Of course, I was intrigued by the recipes throughout the book and made notes to copy such delights as authentic French Citron pressé, various simple salad dressings, real Aioli, and Franny’s roast chicken which requires such high oven heat, that it comes with a warning to disable your smoke detectors.

I found Alice Waters’s quirks weirdly fascinating–her tendency to drink from bowls rather than mugs and to “jettison her silverware and delve in with her fingers,” expressing “a primal impulse to be closer to the thing she was eating, to be more sensuously acquainted.” Alice is dogmatic about sourcing only organic, locally-sourced ingredients and it’s revealed as what it actually is – an life-long obsession — which is termed “Chez shopping”.

But mostly I was drawn into the beauty of this life — how even the simplest meal could be made special, the focus on the fresh ingredients, and even the endless curation of flower arrangements everywhere:

Flowers were for my mom not just a confection to be enjoyed at the restaurant, but a part of what made any room complete. Billowing leafy branches and a few stems of some decidedly un-showy flower seem to be permanently installed in a large green urn in the far corner of the kitchen.

Fanny’s childhood trips to France are some of the best parts of Always Home — how their French friends sought beat up Brocantes (antiques) to restore, the overgrown but abundant garden, and evening meals outside under heavily scented rose bushes.

At the same time, this was (and is) a privileged life of wealth — surrounded by renowned cooks, celebrated artists, the access to abundant food resources, and the Berkeley bohemian culture. There is no shortage of name dropping, and a wee bit of trying-too-hard-overwriting. But, in the end, Fanny’s love and admiration for her mother emanates from every page:

There is a quality of ‘homecoming’ that transcend location, and not just because I reach deep into my repertoire of my mother’s recipes to animate her table through mine, but also she is somehow present even when she is not.

Always Home is charming, funny, full of love and really, really (did I say really?) good food. And, hey, any book that helps make a home special for those we love, and perhaps even ourselves, is beyond value these days.

But let’s turn to one of my favorite foodie writers Ruth Reichl — here is her review of Always Home

You will probably pick up this book because you’re curious about how it feels to grow up with Alice Waters as your mother. But you will inevitably be captivated by Fanny Singer’s sensuous voice and sensible soul. The writing’s lovely, but more than that, Fanny has struck a kind of brutal honesty that is extremely rare and completely beautiful. Her writing makes you want to taste every flavor she describes, and soon you’ll be dashing into the kitchen to make watercress soup, wild fennel cakes, and breakfast pudding. But the really important thing is that I’m pretty sure everyone who reads it will come away with the same feeling that I have: Why don’t I live my life like this? How can I do better? I love this book.”

A side note, this is quite an expensive book, however it feels nicely substantial in one’s hands, it’s printed on heavy paper, and contains many beautifully produced photographs. And the best — it’s bound so it will stay open for the recipes. Such a pleasure to have a book printed with that sort of craft and thought.

Welcome Back

Our beloved cable cars shut in the spring of last year due to the pandemic and remained out of service ever since. During this down time they worked on the cable system under the streets, as well as the cars themselves.

Now they’re back and for the month of August free to all (normally an astounding $8 each ride). One beautiful sunny day last week, Husband and I donned our masks and rode every cable car line.

First thing we noticed was how empty downtown was – this area is normally wall-to-wall pedestrians and traffic – eerie.

First we reviewed the new cautionary signs on how to ride a cable car. No such rules before — we laughed at how we used to run for the car as it was moving and hang on the outside. A bygone era it seems.

It was fun to play tourist in our own city and we noticed just a few of our actual tourists are back.

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The Buena Vista has opened and serving their famous Irish Coffee – outside under the tent. But we didn’t stop this time.

The cars were relatively empty and everyone wore masks.

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We had lunch at the famous Sears Fine Food – a San Francisco institution since 1938. Normally, it’s packed with a long waiting line out front. Not this day.

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We went up and down the hills of San Francisco – our trusty cable cars pulling us up and gripping us down.

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The fog waited until we were done to start rolling in.

It was one of those great days – wish you were here.

As Always, Jack by Emma Sweeney

Whenever we travel to a different location, I like to visit a bookstore and search for local authors or books set in the area.

When we were in Coronado, California – (yikes, over two years ago now) – I bought this little book written by a woman raised on the island. I only just read As Always, Jack, having re-discovered it when shopping my home shelves during Covid.

Ms. Sweeney never knew her father, Jack, who shared a whirlwind romance with her mother via letters while stationed in the Pacific just after WWII. This slim volume, contains the actual collection of letters from her navy pilot father to her mother during the last months of WWII.

They met in Coronado and knew each other a mere two weeks before he got shipped off. Through their letters they got to know each other, and fell in love. A ten year marriage and five children were the result. To avoid any confusion, I’ll tell you that the author’s mother was pregnant with her when her father’s plane went down during a routine Navy flight.

By the time the Ms. Sweeney was old enough to start wondering about the father she’d never known, her mother had remarried. And with a reluctance to revisit the past, details about her father and their romance were scarce. Following her mother’s passing, Emma discovered a ribbon-tied packet of fragile letters and a photo — through which she finally met her father.

These letters depict far more than the typical navy pilot meets and falls in love with a beautiful California girl. Jack’s sense of humor and wit shines through. His personality is bold and cocky – as he woos, cajoles, and romances this beautiful girl from Coronado. Yet as the same time, he shows his insecurity that she doesn’t love him as much, and grows despondent when her letters don’t arrive.

Well, HALLELUJAH! FOUR letters – ranging from April 28th to May 27th – came home today and the world looks much different. One was sealed with a kiss, one was sealed with a Big kiss, one was sealed with a peck (?), and one was just sealed, which means I got spit on.

Jack tells of the foreign culture (Shanghai, Japan) boredom, lousy food, routine and when he writes about his actual flights, — he glosses over the obvious danger.

I feel pretty good, even though the immediate future isn’t so bright. Not enough of you in it.

Throughout the letters are Jack’s comical illustrations, 1940’s slang and references – from the films he sees on base to the virtues of the Fibber MacGee and Molly radio program – over which they disagree. Jack teases his girlfriend by mixing up her name, adding ten years to her age, and speculating on the number of children they will someday have.

After his release orders come through, and Jack is waiting for transport back to the States, his letters become a bit more subdued as he worries that after five months apart, that she won’t feel the same about him. But he tries to hide his jitters behind his ever resilient humor.

The only disappointment for this reader was that, through no fault of the author, As Always, Jack is one sided – only his letters survived. How wonderful it would have been to have the full correspondence. I’m sure Ms. Sweeney feels the same way.

As Always, Jack is an intensely personal gift from the author — not only by the sharing of her father’s letters, but also with the introduction and afterword she wrote to give a fuller picture of her parents endearing romance.

From Scratch by Tembi Locke

Friends and loved ones often say I have too many books. I still love these clueless souls, but they don’t understand. It’s not that I have too many books, it’s that these books are quite happy on my shelves, just waiting for me to find them.

Such was the case with From Scratch. A friend gave me this book and because we have different tastes in reading, it has languished in my ‘maybe I’ll read, maybe I won’t’ section. Rattling around the house on a rainy afternoon, I picked it up and decided to give it a try. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into when I started this book, but before long I was deeply entangled in a beautiful story of love and loss, and all that comes with it.

“In Sicily, every story begins with a marriage or a death. In my case it’s both. And so it was that I found myself driving a rusted Fiat through a winding country road on the outskirts of Alimunusa, a small Sicilian village, with my husband’s ashes in a small wooden box tucked between my legs.”

So begins this luscious memoir by Tembi Locke (that word luscious will be back). Tembi is an American television and film actress and she recounts her college semester abroad in Florence where she meets Saro, a chef. At first, Tembi is not interested in a relationship. But, for Saro, it’s love at first sight. She tries to discourage him, but he doesn’t give up. He makes her amazing romantic meals in his restaurant, he brings her flowers, in short, he woos her until she falls for him too.

When the semester ends and Tembi goes back to California, Saro eventually comes to the US where their relationship blossoms. They marry in Florence several years later. They build a happy life in Los Angeles, with fulfilling careers, luscious meals, deep friendships and the love of their lives: a baby girl they adopt at birth.

Don’t leave me now folks, there’s so much more.

There are gorgeous food descriptions and beautiful Sicilian countryside. There are cultural and family dramas to work through when Saro’s Italian family rejects Tembi because she is black. They navigate their way through two clashing cultures and eventually create their own.

Saro develops cancer and they struggle through ten years of his sickness …and as we know from the first paragraph, sadly he dies. Yes, From Scratch is sad (have tissues nearby) but it is also a fascinatingly upbeat tale, that once I was 50 pages in, I had to give it my complete attention.

Saro’s death changes Tembi’s relationship with his family. After his death, Tembi returns to Saro’s family home every summer with their daughter. And, against the backdrop of Sicilian culture & countryside — they heal and cook together – a new relationship and mutual appreciation develops. They connect as a family and Saro’s family lay aside their previous rejection of both the marriage and her. Tembi and her daughter soon also accept and understand the Sicilian culture:

I was witnessing another example of the way community functioned so tightly here, for better or for worse. Each of the women on this street will be called upon and expected to participate in the illness or death of the others. They held one another up, it was a custom as ancient and alive as the ruins of Sicily’s Harrah temple.

From Scratch shines with the food –there are luscious (there’s that word again) descriptions of food and how it bridged relationships, how it can be both comforting and sensual, but mostly it’s shows food’s significance to every family and culture.

Tembi tells of the Sicilian homemade tomato sauce, fresh made pasta, olive oil made from olives grown on the family’s land, fresh bread, lemons, herbs, and bonus — there is a collection of these family recipes at the end of the book — many of which I’ve marked to try.

This beautiful reflection on grief and healing is sometimes overly dramatic, but the majority of the writing is poetic, warm and heartfelt. This memoir is an age-old story of love, loss, reconciliation and belonging. Yes, it’s sad but yet also joyful. The food, the language, the love, the families– all of it — well just luscious.

From Scratch was a captivating read. I’m glad I found it on my happily-waiting book shelves.

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After I closed the book, I made Husband his favorite pasta sauce and hugged him close and tight.

Educated by Tara Westover

I’m late to the party on this one. It seems everyone has read this gripping memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, escapes her survivalist family, goes on to college and eventually earns degrees from Harvard and Cambridge. Ms. Westover has been interviewed by all the major press and television outlets and Educated was on the bestseller list for many, many weeks.

Tara’s father, Gene Westover is a self-appointed prophet, with a psychotic nature, as well as revolutionary religious beliefs. He traumatizes his family both emotionally and physically. His children are indentured workers for his scrap metal business — and they suffer burns, head injuries, and deep wounds. No medical intervention was allowed, so these dreadful injuries are treated at home with the mother’s homemade collection of herbs, tinctures, and salves. The children and their mother are manipulated and controlled by Gene who demands loyalty at all costs.

On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping. I am only 7, but I understand that it is this fact more than any other that makes my family different. We don’t go to school. Dad worries that the government will force us to go, but it can’t because it doesn’t know about us. Four of my parents’ seven children don’t have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.

I kept having to put Educated aside, not because of the writing — no, no — Ms. Westover writes beautifully — but because this book is so very hard. This is no sugar coated story – this is grim reality and I needed many breaks from this mesmerizing but cruel account.

I no longer needed breaks once Tara strikes out on her own and surmounts many, many hurdles — from passing the testing required to get into Brigham Young, to interacting with the outside world. She makes friends, gains mentors and discovers just how much she doesn’t know. This second half of the book tells of her struggle to be ‘educated’ and her pursuits to pass the next course, the next level, the next requirement which takes her eventually to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.

During this time Tara goes back home to try and help her sister in law (married to Tara’s abusive brother) and then again to nurse her father after a horrific burn accident. Each visit leaves her with a new perspective that even this craziest of upbringing was, in her child’s view — normal.

Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.

Having grown up loving school and education, I found the notion of being deprived even the basic education just heartbreaking. I finished Educated feeling wrung out, yet I still must recommend this incredible memoir. Educated is beautifully written, heartrendingly insightful, and uplifting.

So if you think your New Year’s resolutions are insurmountable – read Educated – getting back to the gym will seem like a cake walk.

A digital review copy was kindly provided by Random House via Netgalley.