Stanley Tucci Always Keeps A Martini Kit On Set

Stanley Tucci nearly broke the internet in 2021 when he made a Negroni on Instagram. But long before that, the award-winning actor built his career around his love of food. He created the iconic food film Big Night, he’s written best-selling cookbooks, and now he eats his way through Italy on the show Tucci In Italy.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:42Dan Pashman?

  So when I'm in that area, I'm looking for the specialties of the region, like authentic southwestern and Native American flavors, modern Mexican cuisine, and as basic as it sounds, homemade, fresh flour tortillas. There's nothing like it, and you can't get them like that in the Northeast. And there is such a farm-to-table culture in Scottsdale, inspired by the Sonoran Desert. Everything is so fresh, the peppers, the spices, it is so vibrant. And Scottsdale's just got a great vibe. It's one of those places where breakfast becomes brunch, happy hour turns into dinner, and every patio has another amazing view. And explore old-town Scottsdale between meals, or relax at a spa after brunch. From award-winning and James Beard-recognized chefs to neighborhood gems and nationally acclaimed restaurants, every meal in Scottsdale tells a story.

• 1:27Dan Pashman?

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• 1:39Speaker 01

  Sirius XM Podcasts.

• 1:46Dan Pashman?

  This episode contains explicit language.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Where you gonna meet me?

• 1:53Speaker 03

  A Negroni.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Mmm.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  Would you like one?

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I would love one.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  Great. Do you mind if I get my wine?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:59Dan Pashman?

  This is actor Stanley Tucci with his wife Felicity Blunt. In April 2020, about a month after the start of COVID shutdowns, he filmed this video where he's making a Negroni at his home in London.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  How are you?

• 2:11Speaker 03

  And I'm back. All right. So, a fair amount of ice in a shaker. Whoops. All right, then what you want is a double shot of gin.

• 2:22Dan Pashman?

  Actually, it was Felicity's idea. She's the one filming. She thought it'd be fun to make a video to send to her work colleagues, a way to cheer them up during lockdown.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  A shot of sweet vermouth. And use a good sweet vermouth. A single shot of Campari.

• 2:39Dan Pashman?

  And then she says, "Why don't we put this on Instagram?" And Stanley says, "Sure."

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Shake it up.

• 2:47Dan Pashman?

  Maybe it's the way he shakes the cocktail, or his very tight black polo shirt, or his wry smile when looking at the camera. But when this video posted, people got excited.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  And there's that. Now, you wanna garnish it with a slice of orange.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  A pre-slice.

• 3:11Dan Pashman?

  One commenter called the video "The most erotic thing in the world." Another said, "I want Stanley Tucci to manhandle me the way he slams down his cocktail ingredients." The reactions only got more graphic from there.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  And there we are. That's that. You want it, Felicity? That will never happen.

• 3:32Dan Pashman?

  I gather that you have read some of the comments and reactions that came to your Negroni video.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 3:39Dan Pashman?

  What'd you make of all that?

• 3:40Speaker 03

  I was flattered. I mean, people were so nice and complimentary and, you know, all that sort of sex stuff too, which was, we thought was quite lovely.

• 4:07Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. And this week, I'm talking with Instagram's favorite bartender, Stanley Tucci. That Negroni video turned Stanley from noted actor to the guy everyone kind of wishes they could have dinner with. In his CNN show, Searching for Italy, Stanley eats his way across the country. New Yorker writer Helen Rosner described it like this. "He strolls the narrow thoroughfares of Florence and Naples with the physical eloquence of a dancer, at once smoldering and restrained. He gazes at wheels of cheese and swirls of pasta as if the food must be seduced before it will consent to be devoured. Taking a

• 4:48Dan Pashman?

  deep whiff of Parmigiano Reggiano, he moans, he sighs, he murmurs." Helen ends, "The whole thing verges on obscene." Now, Searching for Italy ended after two seasons, but that hasn't stopped Stanley, who's got a new show on Nat Geo called Tucci in Italy. It's been a long road to Stanley Tucci's role as a keeper of carnal pleasures. In the 90s, you might have seen him in It Could Happen to You, or A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the 2000s, his profile grew. He was in The Devil Wears Prada, Captain America, Spotlight, and The Hunger Games. And food has always been a big part of his career. In 1996, he co-wrote, directed, and starred in the classic foodie film Big Night. And only a person who really loves food could have made that film, which we'll get to a little later. He's also written

• 5:33Dan Pashman?

  multiple bestselling cookbooks. And in 2021, he released a memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food. Last year, he released a kind of follow-up food book, What I Ate in One Year. Clearly, everyone wants to know what Stanley Tucci's eating, which makes him the perfect guest for our show. When he joined me via Zoom from his home in London, I wasn't surprised to hear that Stanley Tucci has thoughts not only on acting and food, but also on the correct way for the two to come together on set whenever he's filming a movie.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  Well, here's the thing. You try to eat as little as possible. Because you're gonna be shooting that scene most likely for 10 hours or some horrible thing. Usually there's a spit bucket. So you take a bite and then you're chewing and then they say cut and you go and spit out. What's, cuz you can't do it, you know?

• 6:22Dan Pashman?

  Right, right. I think you had said at one point that you had sort of a pet peeve that when, when actors or people on food TV take a bite of something that you can kind of tell they aren't really tasting it sometimes, like.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 6:32Dan Pashman?

  And what is it about their reaction that you feel like gives that away?

• 6:34Speaker 04

  It's too fast. It takes a while to really taste something. If I put something in my mouth that I've never tasted before.

• 6:42Dan Pashman?

  There, there's a second where you're kind of thinking and registering what you're eating.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a moment, there's a pause. You have to take the time for it. It doesn't take that long.

• 6:49Dan Pashman?

  Right, right.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  It's about what? Four seconds? Yeah.

• 6:53Dan Pashman?

  If that, yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:55Dan Pashman?

  So, so really your, your pet peeve is just bad acting on food TV?

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know what I mean?

• 7:02Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, yeah. I've done a little bit of food TV and I feel like I make all the mistakes that you just outlined, which is number one, I take too big of a bite because I get very excited to eat anything.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 7:12Dan Pashman?

  And I'm, I'm not, I have zero acting skill or experience, so I'm not good at pretending and I'm very conscious that the cameras are pointed at me.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 7:20Dan Pashman?

  And so I'm like, okay, here's the spot, here's the part where I'm supposed to take this bite of this thing and show everyone how good it is and I just don't know how to do that. Um, so I always feel very foolish. Um, do you have any tips for me?

• 7:31Speaker 04

  Just take a, take a little bite, pause, taste it and then see what happens. Here, I have something right here.

• 7:39Dan Pashman?

  At this point Stanley reaches just out of view of the zoom.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  It's a piece of salami, right?

• 7:44Dan Pashman?

  Of course Stanley Tucci just happens to have a platter of salami nearby.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  So they go, if I go like this.

• 7:50Dan Pashman?

  Tiny bite.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  I put it.

• 7:53Dan Pashman?

  Chewing, thinking.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:57Dan Pashman?

  Pondering.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Now the flavors, I'm tasting the flavors. If I do this.

• 8:01Dan Pashman?

  Small bite.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  Oh my God, that's what they do. It's impossible.

• 8:05Dan Pashman?

  Right, right.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Physically impossible.

• 8:08Dan Pashman?

  Okay. Well, this has been Stanley Tucci's masterclass, how to eat on camera. Thank you so much.

• 8:16Dan Pashman?

  Stanley doesn't just have a lot of experience and opinions about eating on camera. He's also got a lot to say about eating once the cameras are off. In his memoir, he writes about meals eaten on film sets all over Europe. And I was like, I want to hear more about that. He says, in England, the main staple is sausage on a roll, or as they call it, on a bap.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  You can put an egg in it, or bacon, a bacon buddy, I think they call it. And when they're good, they're so good. Oh, my God, they're so good.

• 8:44Dan Pashman?

  Right. And then when you were filming in France, they have white tablecloths on set?

• 8:48Speaker 04

  That was cool. That cannot be the way it is all the time. There's no way. But in this experience with, I was observing Robert Altman make prete porté.

• 9:01Dan Pashman?

  Wow.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  And that's what they had. I mean, they had this huge 18 wheeler that was set up like a big dining room. And they had waiters and white jackets and everything. And I was like, what's happening? It was so weird. And the food was amazing. We had wine. It was, it was great. Yeah. And then Italy, no, Italy's not good, which is weird because everybody just goes out and eats.

• 9:23Dan Pashman?

  But you say in Italy, all they, like, when you sort of quote unquote, place your order for lunch, they just ask you what kind of wine you're going to have.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's all they say. Do you want red or white? You go red. So you might get a piece of lamb. And if you say white, you get chicken or fish.

• 9:37Dan Pashman?

  So you order the wine and then they pair the food. They pick the food to go with the wine.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you get a little bottle, you know, like you get on the airplane, like a little.

• 9:45Dan Pashman?

  A little mini bottle.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:51Dan Pashman?

  Long before Stanley was an international film star, he was a 19 year old kid waiting tables in an Italian restaurant in New York. When he started acting, it was first in the theater. And he saw parallels between the theater and the restaurant.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  We have backstage, right? Offstage, which would be the kitchen. And then we have onstage, which is the dining room. The behavior, what's going on backstage and what's going on in the kitchen is the complete opposite of what's happening onstage in the dining room. Everything is controlled. You know, every cue is being picked up. Every mark is being hit. Every table's being served properly, blah, blah, blah. And then backstage and in the kitchen is like a fucking, it's like an asylum.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  And that, I love that.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  You know, you'd be backstage going, I can't get this on, I can't get this. I fucking built this corner. Trying to get it on. I got it, I got it. You walk out and go, hello, my dear. I'm so glad.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  You thought I'd never come back, but I'm back. Do you know what I mean?

• 10:58Dan Pashman?

  That dynamic basically describes Stanley's character in Big Night. It's widely considered to be one of the greatest food movies of all time. And as I said, Stanley co-wrote it. The film's set in the 1950s. Stanley's character, Secundo, and his brother, played by Tony Shalhoub, are Italian immigrants. They own a restaurant on the Jersey Shore. Stanley's character manages the front of the house and he's constantly arguing with his brother, who's a great chef who refuses to cook the Americanized Italian food that their customers want.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Primo, please, just, just make me an entree spaghetti, please. I want to know for who is it for? For the lady with the risotto.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  What? Why? That's what she wants. That is what the customer asked for. How can she want? They're both are starch. Maybe I should make mashed potato for on the other side. Primo, look, don't, okay? Because they are the first customer to come in two hours. The fucking pipe. No, she's a criminal. I want to talk to her.

• 11:52Dan Pashman?

  So Stanley's character is in the kitchen screaming at his brother, and then he transforms into a charming host as soon as he walks into the dining room. But business is not going well and they need a way to turn things around. They hear that the famous singer Louis Prima has come into their restaurant. So they decide to spend a bunch of money and throw a big party, hoping it'll attract customers. It's their last chance to save the restaurant. But it doesn't go as planned. The brothers have a huge fight and by the next morning, it looks like they might have lost everything. The film ends with you cooking a frittata in silence. It's one shot, no cuts. What kind of preparation did you do to shoot that scene?

• 12:30Speaker 04

  I mean, two years prior to that or more, I learned how to do that. I learned how to make the frittata so it looked like I'd been doing it my whole life. It's incredibly simple. It's egg, oil, salt, bread. That's it. And there's a lot of nourishment in there, too. And it's the only time you see my character eat throughout the entire film. He never eats.

• 12:57Dan Pashman?

  That's true. I hadn't, that had not occurred to me, but you're right.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  He only drinks. Cause he's a wreck.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  So he never touches food.

• 13:07Dan Pashman?

  And the the fact that your character and Tony Shalhoub's character end up physically right next to each other with their arms over each other, like that's that tells you all you need to know about the final scene. And not all you need to know, but like that's it's that physical connection that that concludes the movie.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the only time they touch each other, too. It's not, it's very different than most movies about Italians, where they're always hugging each other and they're, no, these guys are, they never touch each other. They never hug each other, only until the very end. And they don't even hug each other. They sort of tentatively pat each other's shoulders and sort of put the arm out and rest it there, kind of uncomfortably. Because that's more truthful.

• 13:54Dan Pashman?

  That frittata scene at the end is really beautiful. But when most people think of Big Night, they think about a different dish, timpano. It's layers of pasta, meat, cheese, sauce, eggs, and more, all wrapped in dough. When it comes out of the pot, it's the size of a slightly deflated basketball. In the film, when they serve the timpano to everyone at the party, all conversation stops. People are blown away. There are still articles about the timpano from Big Night coming out now, more than 20 years after the film. One YouTube video of how to replicate it has nearly 7 million views. I think you get the idea. Everyone seems to love timpano from Big Night, right? Well, it's also a Christmas tradition in the Tucci household, but that doesn't mean everyone's a fan.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  A lot of people don't like it. That's a very strong flavors, and it's incredibly heavy. I love it. It's just the amount of salt in it. I mean, it's it's a killer, that that recipe, but I find it delicious. Kate did not care for it.

• 14:55Dan Pashman?

  Kate is Stanley's late wife. She died of cancer in 2009. When he met his current wife, Felicity, he was hoping she'd have a different opinion on the timpano.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  And Felicity doesn't care for it either.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you can't time the rest of the meal. It's very hard to time like a goose or a ham or whatever. Because the tempah is very fickle. So you just never know when it's going to be ready. It has to rest and it's this and that, you know.

• 15:23Dan Pashman?

  It's funny. Sometimes I think of certain foods as being like a food, a dish that should be the star or like an ingredient within a dish that is the star of that dish. And then other times I think of a food that's more like an ensemble cast.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 15:35Dan Pashman?

  You see tempah as like the star of the meal and Felicity is more, more wants an ensemble cast. She wants Ocean's Eleven, you know, at Christmas.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Tempah is a one man show.

• 15:51Dan Pashman?

  Right, right. It's a really long monologue.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like, it's like a Beckett piece.

• 16:00Dan Pashman?

  Oh, and you talked a bit about Kate. What was the role of food in your relationship with her?

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Well, from the time we had our first date, I realized that she really loved food and she was a really good cook. We both loved cooking and eating and throwing dinner parties and having parties on the weekends, having people over. We loved it.

• 16:20Dan Pashman?

  Are there certain foods that still remind you of her?

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, we have some of them in the cookbook that Felicity and I did. It was Felicity's suggestion that we put in some of Kate's recipes, like her baked beans and these barbecue chicken wings that she used to make that were delicious and I can never make quite like she did. But stuff like that, her, her blueberry muffins and things like that. She was really, she was a really good cook.

• 16:46Dan Pashman?

  Food is also a big part of Stanley's relationship with Felicity. When they were first dating, she made her grandmother's English roasted potatoes for him.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Felicity said, oh, make some roast potatoes. We're like, yeah, great. And she took these potatoes, she peeled them, she boiled them. Then she dumped out the water and she shook them in the pot with the top on it so they get all these kind of like fluffy edges, craggy edges. And then she puts them in a tray of goose fat. Then she carefully puts them in and sticks it in the oven. But the oven is smoking like crazy. It was like, I was like, what are you doing, my parents? You know, people like alarms are going off and, and she goes to make a roast potatoes.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  I was like, what? She goes, this is the way we make them in England. This is what you have for a sundae. It's her grandmother's recipe. And then we ate them and what happens to them, as I don't know if you know, but they, you know, they get this crunchy crispiness on the outside. And then inside they're soft. So it's almost like, I think Ina Garten said the other day, she goes, we were talking about them because Emily, my sister-in-law, made them for Ina. And so it's like a french fry, like a chip, you know, what they call a chip here, on the outside. And then the inside is almost like a mashed potato. It's, excuse me, but they are fucking incredible.

• 18:10Dan Pashman?

  That sounds really good. Right? It's, it's about that contrast in textures.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And especially you can do them in vegetable oil, but to do them in like goose fat or something is like even better.

• 18:22Dan Pashman?

  Right. Plus it's just more fun.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  It's more fun, yeah.

• 18:24Dan Pashman?

  To say like, we, we cook these in goose fat. It's just sort of like, I mean, if, you know, you're basically royalty at that point. You're like, like it's, it's just, it feels so decadent. You know, it's like-

• 18:34Speaker 04

  So decadent.

• 18:34Dan Pashman?

  It, it just, you know, you feel like you're treating yourself.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  I want to cook them in swan fat.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  Truly royal.

• 18:44Dan Pashman?

  Right, right.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:50Dan Pashman?

  Clearly, food is a huge part of Stanley Tucci's life and his work. He's known as a public figure who takes a lot of pleasure in food. But as he recently revealed a few years ago, all that was nearly erased because Stanley almost lost the ability to taste altogether. We'll have that story after the break. Stick around.

• 19:26Dan Pashman?

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• 20:07Dan Pashman?

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• 20:51Dan Pashman?

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• 22:00Speaker 07

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• 22:22Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. Hey, if you want to hear more about the behind the scenes of the classic film Big Night, well, guess what? You're in luck because back in November, I spoke with Tony Shalhoub, Stanley's co-star in the film. Tony told me about how he trained with professional chefs to prepare for his role. But to learn how to make tempano, he got a different kind of preparation. Stanley had invited me to his parents' house and we made it with his mother, who's an expert at this dish. And it was so labor-intensive. We worked with her and watched her do it and it was just so eye-opening and beautiful, the way she did it. When we brought it out in the movie, we, you know, we had a kind of memory, a sense memory of what went into it. Tony shared a bunch more interesting details

• 23:07Dan Pashman?

  about Big Night. You got to check this one out. He also talked about his iconic role as Adrian Monk on the long-running TV series Monk and his new food TV show, Breaking Bread. That episode is called, "How Did Tony Shalhoub Learn to Play a Chef on Screen?" It went out November 3rd. Check it out. One more quick note. If you're single and looking for a big night of your own, I want to hear from you. We're going to set up three lucky couples of Sporkful listeners on dates. We're going to send you out on a blind date. We'll cover the cost of dinner and we'll see if we can play matchmaker here on The Sporkful. If you end up getting married, I will provide cask atelier for your entire wedding. If you'd like to sign up to possibly be matched, head over to sporkful.com/matchmaker and enter. And hey, make sure you stick around to the end of this episode. I'm going to talk about a super easy way to maximize deliciousness

• 23:52Dan Pashman?

  when making holiday leftovers using a special ingredient that I love better than bouillon. Now, back to my conversation with Stanley Tucci. As we mentioned earlier, in 2021, he published a memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food. The book is full of stories from his career and meals eaten along the way. It also includes a new revelation, something he hadn't talked about publicly before. Eight years ago, he started to feel a pain in his jaw. A dentist told him it was a tumor on the base of his tongue, and that it might be cancerous.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  I almost fainted because, you know, I watched my wife die of cancer. And I watched her suffer through all the indignity of the horrible treatments. And I had vowed, were I ever to get cancer, that I wouldn't do standard of care.

• 24:41Dan Pashman?

  Standard of care means the standard or recommended treatment, which in this case was radiation and chemotherapy. So Stanley put off getting it examined for months. When he finally did, the dentist confirmed it was oral cancer. The tumor had gotten so big that surgery wasn't possible. Stanley was told that radiation and chemo were the only option. Still, because of his late wife Kate's experience, he was reluctant.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  But Felicity and the doctor that we ended up talking to at Mount Sinai in New York, it convinced me that it was indeed the right thing to do. And when you looked at the statistics of this, of this particular cancer, also the fact that it had not metastasized, which was a miracle. The cure rate was so high that you were like, you would sort of like be an idiot if you didn't do it. So I did it.

• 25:39Dan Pashman?

  For seven weeks, nearly every day, his head, neck, and shoulders were pinned down. He had to bite on a block to keep his mouth and tongue completely still as he received radiation and chemo.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Doing that radiation is so damaging to you that you're...

• 25:57Speaker 04

  Saliva disappears, your mouth is filled with ulcers and hypersensitive for months and months and months and months. You lose your taste buds, but we're actually, I wish I'd lost my taste buds.

• 26:09Dan Pashman?

  He writes in his memoir that after weeks of treatment, anything he ate tasted like wet cardboard or worse.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  I had a feeding tube. I couldn't even drink water through my mouth. It hurt so much. You're on morphine, you're on fentanyl or whatever that stuff is. I lost thirty, thirty-five pounds, something like that. I mean, you're completely atrophied, you're laying in bed for months and months at a time. You're so nauseous that you can't even think about moving. I couldn't read, I couldn't do anything. It was bad, it was bad. It was bad.

• 26:47Dan Pashman?

  When you were laid up and in such, in, in, like you said, in, in pain, unable to eat or drink or enjoy any kind of food, like, did you think about food, were there foods you were missing?

• 26:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I missed everything. But I couldn't bear, if anybody came in and they had eaten and I smelled it on them, I would, I'd have to say, get out, get out of the room, don't. It was bad.

• 27:12Dan Pashman?

  But did you say that you would sometimes watch cooking shows?

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I watched cooking shows when I was in the hospital, when I was getting, I'd go every day for treatment. And then every few days I'd, you know, have to get, you know, fluids, but to stay hydrated. And I would just watch cooking shows, which is weird.

• 27:31Dan Pashman?

  Well, you say it's weird, but I think it actually makes a certain amount of sense. There's this famous experiment called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. It was back in the 40s and they had these men who volunteered to be subjected to extreme starvation and they became obsessed with food, to the point that several of them, even after the experiment was over and they were able to go back to eating whatever they wanted, a lot of them actually switched careers and went into the food industry in some way.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  What?

• 27:57Dan Pashman?

  So the obsession with food didn't end, even after they were no longer deprived?

• 28:02Speaker 04

  Whoa, that's amazing. That's really interesting.

• 28:05Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, right?

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it makes, it makes sense. I mean, I, I couldn't get enough of it because I wanted to be there again, you know? And if I couldn't have it, have it, at least I could watch it.

• 28:28Dan Pashman?

  After the feeding tube was removed, Stanley needed speech therapy. And for two years, he still couldn't eat anything spicy or drink anything carbonated. His mouth was too sensitive. He still wasn't producing enough saliva to eat certain other foods. All kinds of things he used to eat suddenly became choking hazards. Even today, he still has to be careful.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  This piece of salami and a cracker, that's a very bold move for me to attempt to eat that to this day. Because it's not, there's no moisture. So the salami has moisture from the fat, right? But this is like...

• 29:06Dan Pashman?

  The cracker's dry.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:08Dan Pashman?

  Do you remember the moment that you ate a meal and were able to enjoy it in a way that you hadn't been able to enjoy it for so long?

• 29:16Speaker 04

  I think it was probably going to this restaurant near my house where he makes a nice gnocchi with pesto and string beans. And it was nice because it's quite moist and the gnocchi is very soft. And I could really taste everything. And I was with my friend Colin Firth. We went and it was very exciting. And it worked. I tasted it and I was able to swallow it. It took a while, but I did it.

• 29:45Dan Pashman?

  And so, but when you had that first meal where you're like, "I'm back", how did that feel?

• 29:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. You're back, but you know you're not back.

• 29:54Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  You know you're not. Because also it's sort of, sort of the next day, you can't do it.

• 30:01Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  But the next day, you can. It's very, very slow, tiny baby steps to get there.

• 30:08Dan Pashman?

  Is there a food out there that's sort of like your holy grail that like you still don't feel like you've worked your way up to be able to enjoy, but like one of these days, then you'll really know you're 100%?

• 30:18Speaker 04

  I would love to be able, and I've done it a little bit, but love to be able to have like a really nice aged T-bone steak and just sort of tear into it.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  And and just really eat it and just talk and eat as opposed to taking it very carefully chewing it, making sure there has enough sauce or whatever. And then, you know, because it takes me a while to get through that.

• 30:47Dan Pashman?

  So things for Stanley are still not 100% normal, but his cancer treatment has been successful and he can get pleasure and comfort from food again and from drinks. It took a long time, but he can enjoy his beloved martinis again. In fact, on movie sets, that's the drink he's best known for. He travels with his own martini kit. When the Negroni video went viral, Chris Evans shared it on Twitter, writing, "I love Stanley Tucci." Most days after he finished filming on the first Captain America movie, Stanley would make us martinis in his trailer. He's an absolute gem. I asked Stanley to share his recipe.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  It's really simple. You just take like a half a shot of good vermouth, dry vermouth, put it in a beaker of ice filled with ice, give it a good stir, let it sit, give it a good stir, dump it out, put in your vodka or your gin, a few shots, stir it, sit, stir it, sit, stir it, sit, pour it, garnish, that's it.

• 31:48Dan Pashman?

  So but you're really just like barely coating the inside of the shaker with vermouth?

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:56Dan Pashman?

  You're not actually pouring any directly into the drink?

• 31:59Speaker 04

  No, unless people want it, but I prefer it that way.

• 32:04Dan Pashman?

  At the end of a long day of shooting, Stanley doesn't just make martinis for Captain America.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  I love like being in the makeup trailer. Like it's fun. Everybody's chatting and you're making jokes and you're getting ready and then at the end of the day, going to the makeup trailer, you get your stuff off, you're chatting about the day, you're chatting about this, and then you make a cocktail in there and it's and it's nice. Or I invite, you know, people who come into the trailer and, you know, have a drink before they, you know, before they go home. So and it's really nice. Just a nice way to end to end the day.

• 32:38Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, it is a nice way to end the day. Is there a part of having that drink at the end of a day of shooting that is part of kind of like getting out of your character for you?

• 32:48Speaker 04

  When I was doing this one movie, yeah, because it was really painful to do the movie, The Lovely Bones.

• 32:53Dan Pashman?

  In The Lovely Bones, Stanley plays a serial killer, so it's a dark film.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  And you just needed.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, you just needed to, it, once you take all the makeup off and all the stuff I had on and the fat suit and the teeth and the whatever, all that sort of awful, awfulness that you are accessing, you have a cocktail while you're doing that and it's just, everything just disappears.

• 33:25Dan Pashman?

  That is Stanley Tucci. His memoir is Taste: My Life Through Food. He also released another book about food called What I Ate in a Year. You can also check out his latest show on Nat Geo, Tucci in Italy. Next week on the show, we are nerding out big time. Fire up your Bunsen burners. We're talking food science with Sweeta Sivakumar and Daniel Grietzser. We'll get into the optimal temperature for eating ice cream, the best way to preserve fresh bread, and a lot more. That'll be next week. While you're waiting for that one, check out last week's show. It's our New Year's Food Resolutions episode. We heard all of your New Year's food resolutions and I revealed what food I resolved to eat. More of in the new year and why. What did I choose? You'll have to tune in to find out. This episode was produced by me along with managing producer

• 34:08Speaker 06

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 34:09Dan Pashman?

  and senior producer Andres O'Hara. It was edited by

• 34:12Speaker 06

  Tracy Samuelson.

• 34:13Dan Pashman?

  and engineered by Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 34:24Speaker 06

  And I'm Alicia in Vermont, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 34:29Dan Pashman?

  And Happy New Year!

• 34:42Dan Pashman?

  This next segment is brought to you by our friends Better Than Bouillot. I'm in my kitchen, looking in the fridge, and if you're like me, you've got a lot of leftovers, right? We're winding down the holiday season. And you have all this delicious food in your fridge and you're not sure what to do with it. Well, I'll tell you what I'm making. I am making turkey hand pies. All you gotta do, go to the supermarket, you get frozen, pre-rolled puff pastry. Now, I'm doing these with leftover turkey, but you can do it with prime rib, you can do it with almost anything. It takes some turkey, maybe a little cheese, maybe some sage, whatever you have around. You toss it together, you put it between two sheets of puff pastry, you bake it up, you got hand pies. But there's one key ingredient, because you're mixing all these leftovers together, but some of them may have more flavor than others. How do you make them delicious before you wrap them in that puff pastry to turn them into hand pies? Well, I'll tell you.

• 35:25Dan Pashman?

  Two tablespoons of Better Than Bouillon Roasted Turkey Base. And this base can help you transform a million other kinds of leftovers. You can make bacon cornbread stuffing. Or how about leftover turkey and stuffing waffles with gravy? You just fold in some turkey, stuffing and cheese to the waffle batter and it is, it's, it's, it's like better than you can imagine. But again, you need that gravy. How do you make a good gravy without simmering and baking and roasting for hours and hours? You already cooked the turkey. So how are we gonna make more gravy? Better Than Bouillon Roasted Turkey Base. Melt a little butter in a saucepan, sprinkle a bit of flour on the top, you cook, you stir. And eventually you stir in that Better Than Bouillon Roasted Turkey Base and it will transform

• 36:07Dan Pashman?

  the liquid in your pan to a gravy with such depth of flavor in just a few minutes. And that's the thing about Better Than Bouillon. If you were to spend, I don't know, an hour chopping vegetables, simmering them down in broth with all the whole, you know, the turkey bones and you got the collagen and the fat and the little bits of meat and you're cooking it down and cooking it down to make the most concentrated possible roasted turkey flavor. I mean, you could spend two days on that project and you would not have the depth of flavor, the deliciousness and the concentration that you get in one tiny jar of Better Than Bouillon. And they make so many different kinds of bases. They have an adobo base, a sofrito base, a smoky chipotle base. If you're making a soup or a stew, if you're making rice, if you're cooking beans,

• 36:52Dan Pashman?

  a tiny scoop of Better Than Bouillon into almost anything is gonna make it phenomenal. They also have organic bases and vegetarian ones, a mushroom base, a roasted garlic base. Add instant flavor. Your holiday favorites with this secret ingredient. And let me tell you, it's not even that much of a secret because when I talk to people who cook a lot and love delicious food. You mentioned Better Than Bullion, their eyes light up and people are so devoted to it. Better Than Bullion has a paste, a base, a flavor enhancer, a kitchen shortcut, a secret seasoning, and pretty much whatever you want it to be. And unlike blocks or cubes, Better Than Bullion has this deep, rich, satisfying depth of flavor that you just don't get with some powdery thing. Plus, Better Than Bullion makes it easy to add just the right amount of flavors. You can be more confident and creative with your dish. Add in a little, a lot, whatever you want.

• 37:35Dan Pashman?

  And with only premium ingredients across a range full of bases, you can trust that meals will be more complex and memorable. Whether it's a weeknight stir fry, a slow simmer Sunday roast, or a holiday spread packed with family favorites, one simple scoop transforms an everyday dish into something extraordinary. Everything is better with Better Than Bullion. For more recipe inspiration or to learn more, visit betterthanbullion.com.

• 38:00Dan Pashman?

  Hey, it's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a White Claw. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it. Oh, hey, man. Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life by the claw.

• 38:24Speaker 06

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