JOAN TROPIANO TUCCI:
Secrets of Italian home-cooking
By Candace Dempsey

Baked clams on the half shell. Potato croquettes. Lasagna verde. Joan Tropiano Tucci is out to prove that the best Italian cooking is found in Italian homes. She offers recipes for these luscious treats and many more in Cucina & Famiglia (cooking and family), a scrumptious cookbook she co-authored with chef Gianni Scappin.

The two authors make a delicious team. Scappin is a Northern Italian and professional chef; Tucci, a Southern Italian (by way of New York) and a home cook of the highest order. Her recipes came in demand after her son, actor Stanley Tucci, created the mouthwatering film Big Night. The dish that steals the show is his mother's timpano — a drum-shaped, dough-wrapped concoction layered with pasta, meatballs, eggs, salami, cheeses and tomato sauce.

"Food holds any family together," says Tucci, mother of three grown children. "It's wonderful when a family sits down together as often as possible. If the dad works late and you can't do that during the week, sit down on a Saturday or Sunday and break bread at the table. So much love comes out there."

Is timpano your most spectacular dish?
Oh, yes. When it comes out of the pan, everybody goes 'ooh.' It's beautiful. It's tasty. What's not to like? We make it for holidays — a smaller version than we do in the book, unless it's Christmas. It's not terribly hard to make. You roll out the dough like you do piecrust. You can make the sauce ahead of time and freeze it. Make meatballs ahead of time and freeze them. The rest is just cutting up vegetables. You can even make pasta ahead of time if you know how to keep it from getting leathery.

Then you just put it together, and everybody can get involved at that point. So what if it doesn't come out perfectly? If not greased enough, it won't come out of pan. Or sometimes the pasta is not cooked enough. Or it's a little dry, because you didn't put in enough sauce. But it's always good, and you're with your friends and everybody has a good time.

When you got married, your husband Stan liked one kind of tomato sauce; you liked another. How did you resolve this common Italian problem?
We worked it out. Stan's mother always cooked the sauce for several hours. My mother used to bottle her own tomatoes, because she had a little garden with garlic and tomatoes, and the sauce comes out much lighter. So I had to learn to make it the way Stan's mother made it, which was fine with me. She shared the recipe. In fact I make meatballs the way my mother-in-law does. But I also make my mother's sauce.

Do you always have wine with your meals?
Yes. My dad made his own wine, so we always had homemade wine when we were growing up. I would give my children little sips of wine if they wanted it. Just a taste. Now they enjoy wine.

It doesn't have to be expensive. We buy reasonable wine. When we first got married, we didn't have much money, so we bought jug wine. Now, Stan buys Sangiovese and Chianti. I like pinot grigio or chardonnay. It's got to be a dry wine, because that'

s what I like. We usually pay from $7 to $9 a bottle.

Must we make our own pasta?
You don't have to, but it makes you feel creative. You don't have to make a lot, just enough for you and your husband. When I worked I used to come home and make fresh pasta for that night. I would get home at 5 p.m. and start dinner — make stuffed chicken breasts and fresh pasta. It didn't take that long. Most Italian cooking doesn't.

When your children were growing up, did the whole family eat together every night?
Of course. When the children were in school we always ate together, we always waited, no matter who had a basketball game or a soccer game. Growing up, in my mother's house, it was the same thing.

What about now, when it's just you and your husband?
We still eat dinner together. It's a very important part of our day. During the day he goes to his club to workout and I go for a walk with friends. And then, when he comes home, we talk about what we're going to eat, and I pour myself a glass of wine and we talk about the day. Then I start cooking. It's relaxing. It's something I love. During dinner we talk about what we're going to do that night — watch a video or see friends or stay in or what. I usually bake biscotti(Italian cookies) once a week, so we'll sit afterwards and have some wine with that. Stan usually has demitasse after dinner. All of that makes a nice evening.

How did you handle dinners when you were working and also raising the kids?
I only worked part time when the kids were in elementary school, then I worked full time. But the kids were older by then, and everybody would pitch in. The kids helped after they did homework. They would set the table. If we were having chicken cutlets, they would bread the cutlets. They all enjoyed cooking. My son Stanley loves to cook. He would visit a neighbor down the road, and he would call and say "Mom, we want to make a frittata, how do we do it?'

It's still hard to see how you came up with luscious food after working all day.
I would simply come home and prepare a dinner. Like I said, it was relaxing thing to do. It's not a chore. You have a can of tuna, so you make pasta with tuna, which takes about 20 minutes. You have a salad. If you like fish, you broil it. Or I poach it with a little wine or capers. The whole meal could take a half hour, and that's not long at all.

My children were always pasta eaters, so that made them easy to cook for. I always say when you have a can of tomatoes, you can do anything. You can make pasta fagioli, which is just beans and macaroni. You can do the same thing with peas and macaroni. These are all simple, 15-minute things. You can use almost any vegetable and mix it with pasta.

How important is dessert?
I'm not a dessert person. I have a sister-in-law who's a wonderful baker and I thoroughly enjoy what she makes. But to me, dessert is biscotti. My mom's recipe, with anise seed, is in the book. Sometimes, for a little change, I cut up some almonds and mix them with the batter. That's something you can make ahead and even freeze. Or in the summer we will make peaches and wine when the peaches are in season. That's a wonderful dessert.

Do you still make your own bread?
No, because there's a great bakery in the Bronx where I get my bread. But I used to make my own bread. On wintry days I would bake the bread and then slice it right away and put it back into the oven. It stays on low oven for several hours. We call it biscotto. It's crusty and delicious with butter, with soup, with a tomato salad that you dip in so that it's softened.

Do you still have big family dinners every Sunday?
Not every Sunday anymore, because our children are scattered. But Stanley will come over with his children. I still do it with my brothers and sisters. Maybe 10 people. It all depends. If my children come, then we're talking 15. I would make a lasagna verde. It's in the book and it freezes well. So you can do it ahead of time. Or my family would like an old-fashioned ragu (tomato sauce). It's like chunks of meat — beef, pork, sausage and, if you want, meatballs. Or I might roast two chickens, and we would have potatoes and maybe asparagus or crispy broccoli.

Do you cater to vegetarians, to people on special diets, to kids?
Of course. I have a daughter who is a vegetarian. She loves only organic food. To me, Italians are basically vegetarians, a lot of them. My mother was basically a vegetarian. There are so many things that you can do with mushrooms, so many things with cheeses. If you think of all the dishes with pasta and vegetables, that's vegetarian. I make a dish of eggplant, potatoes, zucchini and peppers. You bake it, and it's wonderful with a little tomato and marinara sauce.

What about fussy kids?
When I was young, I loved everything. I'd eat all these strange things — rabbit, whatever there was. I'd try it. That's the way I was with my kids. Basically, you put it on the table. They taste it. They get used to eating lots of things.

What final Italian cooking secret can you share with us?
Don't be afraid. Sometimes you can be terribly intimidated. If it doesn't come out the way you think it should be, it's your recipe and you can change it any way you want. Enjoy cooking and don't make it a chore. Relax. If something doesn't come out perfectly, don't apologize. Say, 'Well, this is not the way it's supposed to be. And next week we'll try it a different way.' If you're with good friends, how bad can anything really be?

From UnderWire.msn.com