Stanley Tucci on hosting skills and the "ceremony" of cooking

It takes just one look at Stanley Tucci - be it in one of his films such as Big Night, on Instagram mixing up a negroni with world class finesse or, as I spoke to him, over Zoom, kitted out in yet another understated but elegant outfit and oozing with charm - to imagine that he is an impeccable host.

Possessed with both a taste for fine things - be they luxury or homely - and a graceful, old world decorum, he seems like the kind of person to whip up a seven-course meal, mix you a cocktail and ask insightful questions about your life.

If you ask him, though, he's predictably humble: "I'm okay."

Despite being making his name as an actor in films such as The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games and most recently Conclave, Tucci arguably entered superstardom thanks to food. An Instagram video of himself mixing a negroni cocktail for his wife Felicity went viral in April 2020, when scores of people were shut in their homes during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since then, the part of his career dedicated to food and travel has flourished, having published his first cookbook, The Tucci Cookbook, in 2012. He followed that with The Tucci Table in 2014, Taste, a memoir about food that covered his diagnosis of throat cancer, in 2021 and What I Ate in A Year, which was published this year.

So when I got a chance to speak with him about Christmas, and what a Tucci Christmas looks like, I jumped at the chance.

"It's a mix between the British and Italian", Tucci says, acknowledging both his Italian heritage in his parents and his home in London with his family.

"When I was young, we used to do fish every Christmas Eve, which was an Italian Catholic thing. And then you would have meat on Christmas Day. We've gotten away from that because the British don't do that. But I would like to get back to it. So we'll do something really simple on Christmas Eve.

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"We don't even really do a celebration on Christmas Eve. It's more just a quiet dinner or something like that, just at home. But then we have Christmas Day, and we'll do a roast of some kind, either at our house or at a relative's house. And then, obviously, they do Boxing Day, which is still new to me. So we do then we eat more meat on Boxing Day."

Watching Tucci's cooking videos on Instagram you can imagine he's both equal parts a detail-oriented cook, with multiple hobs firing at once and something chilling in the fridge for later, as well as a make-it-up-as-you-go cook. When it comes to prepping for company at Christmas, his advice is simple.

"Just be prepared. Have your table set nicely. Everything should be tidy. You should have hors d'oeuvre out for people and red and white wine."

As for beverages, he says: "Offer them a cocktail, if they ask for something really complex, don't make it and never invite them again. It's not bad to have a pitcher of martinis."

That said, he added that at Christmas time there should be some room left for a drink made of "amber liquid" - whiskey, rum, bourbon.

Passing his family traditions onto his children is a priority for Tucci, and one that he clearly sees the beauty in. "Having little kids, it's really important to teach them, like, really simple things", he says. "Hey, I need you to go get that spatula. And then they know where the spatula is, what a spatula is, and what you're using it for.

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"And you say, I need you to set the table And I need those napkins to be on the other side of the plate.... They understand how it functions, but also they understand the right of it and the ceremony of it."

When it comes to Christmas traditions, Tucci has written about a key one for his family: the timpano, a large traditional Italian pie filled with pasta, ragu, meatballs and all sorts of meats and cheeses, which featured in Big Night, Tucci's 1996 passion project that he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in.

"We don't make it anymore", he tells me, when I ask has the tradition continued to this day.

"Every now and again. If my father's here, we'll make it. But I'm very tempted to make it this year." It can take days to prepare for, but it's more than just sourcing the right meats and cooking the best ragu you can.

"Mentally, you're dealing with history, right? So you have to start with your past, and you have to start with the past of your parents and the past of your grandparents. So it's quite loaded emotionally in fauna, which makes it really exciting, really fun, and also makes it terrifying because you want to live up to those stories that you heard about. The ones you ate when you were young. So it's a lot. And then technically, it's not easy. And time-wise, it's not easy. It's a day and a half of work.

"But it's beautiful. And then if it doesn't work- Well, that becomes a great story."

* Drink responsibly