Actor Stanley Tucci shares his recipe and ingredients to make the perfect Italian sandwich

In recent years, Stanley Tucci has evolved from Hollywood star to certified gourmand specialising in Italian cuisine.

New York-born but of Italian descent, Tucci spent a year living in Florence in the early 1970s and his love for Italian food has never left. In 2021 and 2022 he hosted the CNN food and travel documentary series ‘Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy’ and won two consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series.

He has started to show off his cooking skills on social media and has amassed a following of more than 5 million fans on Instagram. He is adventurous and passionate in his tastes but one of his most celebrated recipes is perhaps the simplest, an Italian take on a cheese toastie.

He writes: “In the colder months of the year I think it’s important to eat a lot of sandwiches, this is one of my favourites. Prosciutto cotto, mozzarella, tomato, basil, salt, olive oil.”

Essentially, the recipe is this: slices of prosciutto cotto (an Italian ham), tomato, mozzarella and a few leaves of basil, sandwiched between two slices of bread and lightly fried in olive oil. Tucci uses a cast iron grill press to weigh the sandwich down and ensure an even, golden crusting on the outside. As the sandwich is cooking, he even adds a touch of butter to the pan to add a nutty flavour and deepen the browning.

That’s it, a simple, four-ingredient sandwich that can be whipped up in any kitchen.

Writing in Artful Living, Tucci revealed that the food in his Italian-influenced household was the envy of his friends. While other families were often eating “bland food”, his his contemporaries began to realise that dinner time in the Tucci household was very different.

“They knew the food at our house was something quite special. The ingredients had been carefully chosen or grown according to the season; each dish had a cultural history and was lovingly made."

He continued: “It was not only the food itself in which they delighted but the passion with which it was made and presented, as well as the joy our family took in its consumption.”

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