We knew he was a cocktail connoisseur, but is Stanley Tucci the next Ina Garten-level food star? His dessert influence makes us think so.
On Tuesday, Blake Lively shared a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a fancy caramelized peach dessert—NBD, as now we know she’s well-versed in the kitchen. But she also called out Tucci for inspiring her to make the dessert’s accompaniment, pizza fritte.
A quick cooking lesson: Pizza fritte, or fried pizza, is a Neapolitan dish of fried pizza dough scraps that dates back to at least World War II (though it’s speculated to be a centuries-old technique). Tucci didn’t invent the dish, but it appears he might’ve taught Lively how to make it, since she also shared a photo of them in the kitchen together. (Cooking lessons with Stan, must be nice.)
Unless Lively picked up the recipe while scrolling mindlessly through TikTok—after all, the Italian specialty has recently been seeing a renaissance on the app. But we digress.
As Lively explained in her Instagram story, her version was “cut up pizza dough fried in olive oil for 3 to 5 minutes, then tossed in a mixture of cinnamon, coconut sugar (sorry Stan) and bourbon smoked sugar. I’m not salivating you are.”
As it turns out, Lively was indulging because of Tucci’s new book, Taste: My Life Through Food, which she said “makes me ravenous for all the gluten and oil and butter at every page. I’m possessed. Don’t read it on an empty stomach. Or do.” To celebrate the book’s launch, Lively is interviewing Tucci on Wednesday, October 6, for a Williams Sonoma virtual event.
It seems like a lot of effort, whipping up a fried dessert on a weeknight to promote an interview…but then again, it’s Stanley Tucci and he’s worth it.