Food And Hudson Valley Towns Feature In New Stanley Tucci Book

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — Stanley Tucci is known for exploring the culinary secrets of Italy and beyond, but his new book focuses on learning a love for food growing up in the Hudson Valley.

The award-winning actor with a contagious passion for food reflects on his life in the kitchen and his Westchester County roots in his just-released memoir "Taste: My Life Through Food," published by Simon & Schuster.

Stanley Tucci recounts growing up in an Italian-American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. Tucci shares anecdotes about his childhood in Katonah and how those experiences helped prepare him for shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia.

Tucci relates intimate true tales of falling in love over dinner and years later teaming up with his wife to create new memories around the kitchen table for a new generation of Tuccis. The surprisingly earnest account doesn't just make the reader envious of gastronomical masterpieces and the charmed life of celebrity, but also reveals failed kitchen experiments and struggles along the way to stardom.

In her praise for "Taste," Nigella Lawson writes, "It's impossible to read this without becoming ravenous."

Meanwhile, fellow celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal, said, "The only reason to put this book down is to go and cook and eat from it."

For those (with cooking shows and without cooking shows) looking to recreate meals recalled fondly and sometimes not so fondly, the Westchester foodie's earlier "Tucci Cookbook" and "The Tucci Table" would be the next logical resource. Taste is much more the story behind the recipes than a kitchen how-to.