When Stanley Tucci isn't busy making hit films like «The Devil Wears Prada 2» , he can often be found in Italy, the homeland of his ancestors. His National Geographic series «Tucci in Italy» travels across the peninsula, exploring the country's cuisine and culture. Last year, the series received two Emmy nominations, and this year it's again in contention for a win, possibly for the second time.
Tucci's latest collection features, in particular, the Marche region on the Adriatic coast.
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«"I love the Marche region… It's a truly beautiful region with a magnificent coastline," Tucci said, speaking at the Deadline Contenders TV: Documentary + Unscripted event. "It's a very sustainable region. And the food there is incredible. It's a wonderful combination of Florentine, Roman, and Abruzzo cuisine. In a way, it's almost a perfect region.".
This place is off the beaten tourist path, and that's a big part of the show—discovering places that aren't on the cover of every guidebook.
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«"It's more interesting this way. There's no point in repeating what everyone knows, what everyone's seen a thousand times," Tucci insisted. "There's no point in that. We want to delve deeper into the culture, the culinary culture, and also the culture of the city itself, the place itself, and the people themselves.".
On Procida, one of the Phlegraean Islands off the coast of Naples, Tucci samples a lemon salad. Elsewhere, he samples pasta infused with the flavors of the sea: spaghetti cooked with stones plucked from the water.
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«It’s extraordinary and delicious… I’ve never heard of either of them before,» he said of the lemon salad and pasta cooked on the tide. «And when someone said, „There’s a guy who makes this dish out of stones,“ I thought, „This is fascinating. I have to try this,“ because it’s the quintessence of poverty, cucina povera . And, as he says in the series, "When we were kids, we'd go down there, collect rocks, bring them back, and make spaghetti out of them, and it was delicious." But it was precisely this kind of Italian ingenuity and resourcefulness that has sustained this country for thousands of years.".
A video recording of the discussion will be available on Monday.
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