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exploring taste – Spring/Summer 2016 people – Classic Tucci

ingredients are basic: eggs, rice and wine. Eggs are protein, rice Did food play a part in the seduction of your wife Felicity?
is starch – and wine goes perfectly with both.
I spit-roasted a twenty-six pound suckling pig for her...
Do you often get a chance to cook at home? Unlike most guys, I like making really complicated dishes.
You have a few glasses of wine. You really get into the
Constantly – when I’m home. I don’t really have a chance to process. You have so much fun, you just don’t want it to stop.
cook when I’m away, but when I’m home I cook every night. Risotto is another great seduction dish – it takes care and
When I go to my parents’ house I’m able to cook with my mum, attention to detail and you get the chance to show the lady
which is really great. Food brings a great sensuality to life. It’s that you’re good with your hands.
creative, but it’s also edible. I like that. I didn’t expect to fall in love so soon after my wife’s death, and
also not with someone so much younger (Felicity is twenty
Given that food and wine play such a big part in your life, what years his junior)... But after spending a few minutes with her, I
would be your last meal on Earth? asked her to have lunch with me the next day.

I’d have tagliolini with white truffles, and risotto with shrimps What do you think it is about food and wine that makes it so
– a dish I had on my honeymoon. I had the risotto in Venice important to you?
a very long time ago and it is definitely one of the best dishes
I’ve ever tasted. For the main it would have to be a whole Food is comfort and it’s meant to be shared with other people.
branzino, a simple sea bass dish. Also a Florentine steak You remember food and wine throughout time because of the
with my mother’s own recipe for broad bean minestra. My people you were with. Before my wife died, we were skiing, and
grandma made a delicious minestra with potato and zucchini then we went out to lunch. The meal was nothing special, but
– so hearty and fresh. All of these are simple recipes, but it was the best bottle of wine I ever had in my life. And it was
they’re the essence of Italian cooking. about that time, that place, and that person.

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